The day we met the students at Masha’s church, we asked her if it was simply the case that most people in Lutsk had never seen anyone of “color” before. She laughed and said “yes they have, two players on the cities futbol team are…” she rubbed the sleeve of her black sweatshirt searching for the word so I filled in “black”, then she giggled and said ” There are two of you and two of them, what if you came here so you could fall in love and get married”. Lili and I were only too pleased :/
So today Lili and I went shopping for the weeks groceries, just the two of us. We hit the meat isle and then searched for tomato sauce that wasn’t ketchup. We got cereal and eggs and oatmeal and canned fruit, then we came to the produce isle. I was trying unsuccessfully to reach the top shelf where the purple grapes sat taunting me (everyone on our team is 5’4″ or under) when out of the corner of my eye I saw them, the futbol players. I stopped my reaching and turned to Lili excitedly (they were behind her) and said “they’re here”. She turned to look and by then the first player was very close I asked “do you speak English”, I don’t know why I assumed that being black, they would speak English but that was my assumption and the true source of my excitement. He didn’t speak English but gestured to the second player, in the red jacket, who I then addressed. Turns out they are from Brazil and didn’t seem half as excited to see us as we were to see them, we took pictures with them like tourist and I spent the day telling our team and random acquaintances “look what we found” and showing them the pictures.
Among all the fiery orange, electric red, blue and purple and natural colored mullets on men, women and children, the holey jeans, ripped up t-shirts, rhythm nation wannabe ensembles, chain smoking 8 year olds and stray dogs we are always the oddity, the group of American girls is strange enough, but Lili and I are the stars of the freak show. We get stared at and talked about, we frequently see the obvious marks of people being dared to approach us by their friends. It was refreshing to find the other freaks in town, pepper in a sea of salt.
