Our plan for the day was to walk around the market in Odessa with our contact, Anna. As we were getting ready to leave our ‘resort’, we noticed the cops had walked in and were talking with Olga (the woman we’re renting from). She had her arm around one of them as he was walking in, so we figured they were friends and the girls and I went about our way to town.
We have been warned from day one that we need to be aware of how the police work so that we can act accordingly if we’re ever stopped. Basically, everywhere you go – from the doctor’s office, to professor’s at the colleges around here, to the police -openly accept and expect bribes in just about every situation. The crazy thing is, they don’t even try to keep it secret. Literally, everybody knows that this is how it works. If you want to get seen first at the doctor, you give him a little extra money and move to the front of the line. If you skip or fail a class, give the teacher a little extra money and you’ll pass. If you get a speeding ticket, you pay the cop a little mulah and move on. They even have different levels of bribes, and those are all known, too. The bigger the offense, the bigger the bribe. Other than that, the cops are harmless…they just like to get some extra money when they can. Our contacts said the cops may stop us on the street to ask us some questions but they aren’t allowed to do anything more than that. We were told to tell them we didn’t have our passports on us, and if they tried getting us to go in their police car- refuse. Basically, all they want is a bribe. Ukraine’s economy is literally about to go completely bankrupt, so they take all the money they can get when they can get it.
So anyway, Anmari, Ashley, Brittany, Anna and I were at the market looking at all they had to offer and the guys were hanging out at our place catching up on some reading. They have all kinds of goods at the market, including: meat, cheese, jewelry and clothes. We got through the meat and cheese section, and we’re on to the honey tasting portion of the market. Stacks of honey jars we’re piled up, and the woman selling them would put a drop of honey on the back of our hand to try out and see which was our favorite.
Then, we got the call from Anika (a friend we met through Living Hope Church) that the cops we’re still at our place and we had to go…NOW! We finished buying our honey (we couldn’t pass it up:), and then we hurried to the bus. Anna couldn’t go with us because she was an American and that could have meant more issues, so our other friend from the church was on his way to where we were staying to talk to (and translate for) the cops.
We walked in and everyone seemed pretty tense. We immediately went up to our room to get our passports and then we headed into Olga’s living room (aka a room outside in the middle of our ‘resort’ that has a table, couch/bed, and tv the tarp over it), sat down and didn’t say a word. The cops walked over and we handed them our passports.
They looked over the information in our passports and on the visa’s we got when we came into the country. There is a place where we’re supposed to write our location where we’ll be staying in while we’re here…I’m talking exact location, including city and address. We did it a little different… a couple of us wrote Odessa, a couple of us had written Kiev (the city we flew into), and one of us wrote Romania. Typically, it’s not a big deal if the exact location isn’t written in because we’re “tourist’s” and we’re here short term. But technically, it is a felony to not have the correct location for where we’re staying while we’re here, let alone the wrong country all together. However, since the police are corrupt, we have to question everything that they’re trying to hold against us.
After a few more questions and after Arcotti (our friend from church) and the police talked some more, we were told we would have to pay $480 so that we wouldn’t have to go to court for the offense. A bit later, the police finally left and we had a chance to take a breather.
We’ve been debating the last few days whether or not the cops should have really had us pay anything. At this point, we’re pretty sure they pocketed the money because they were paid on the spot instead of at court, but who knows. Most of us were happier to have it all done with, rather than worrying about it in a court system completely different from our own in the U.S.
Every day is definitely a learning experience while we’re here. It’s weird to have to stay away from the cops and be concerned more than comforted when we see them. It feels a lot like we’re in a movie or a game, but of course, this is real life, so we’re staying on top of it. No worries J I’m hoping that we just got our one and only run in with the cops done now and the rest of the World Race will be smooth sailing.
That’s all for now. Until next time!
I love and miss you all like crazy. Talk to you soon <3
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