White, red, white

Today’s the day that the Belarus opposition, whom all but the current president recognize as having won the August 9 elections by collecting at least 60 percent of the vote, set as the day the current president resign from office. The current president, who is no longer considered president by the overwhelming majority of Belarusians and … well, pretty much most people, didn’t resign. No surprise there. He’s held onto power for 26 years – “Europe’s Last Dictator”—and claims to have won 80 percent of the vote.

Deadline time has come and gone, so we’ll see what happens next. The opposition leader, who is exiled in Lithuania, has called for strikes. What that means, I don’t know, but I’m staying by my phone in case we have any alerts of anything.

 here’s no expectation of violence, but it could be that people don’t go into work tomorrow and continue to protest. (NOTE: reiterating again that “protests” here equate people walking along the sidewalks with flowers. These are not violent protests whatsoever.) I may not have internet and there could be police standing around tomorrow.

They do that every weekend and today I realized I’ve become somewhat immune to it. I walk early on the weekends to be in by the 2 p.m. protest start – Saturdays there are women’s marches and then the general ones are on Sunday – to walk. This morning I’d walked by several of the pro-government trucks that carry the enforcers before realizing they were there. I guess it’s just a given that the squares will be blocked off and there will be uniformed thugs every so many meters. I just walk right by them.

The pro-government buses are distinguished by the Belarusian flags. The pro-opposition protestors have adopted the “white, red, white” flag. It was the official flag when Belarus was declared a republic in 1918. The whole republic thing didn’t last long, but the flag re-emerged after the fall of the USSR. At this point, it basically means “not Lukashenka.”

It’s everywhere, too. Once you realize what to look for, you see white-red-white all over. People very subtle intertwine it sometimes, but often it’s boldly displayed. In those cases, the pro-government gets out really quick to paint it over or remove it.

Still, white-red-white persists. I have no idea where people buy red and white umbrellas, but I see people using them every day. (It rains here as much as it does in London.) The funny thing is, once you start looking you can find the pattern in lots of weird places. You know the road barricades that normally come in orange in America? They come in both red and white here, and normally they alternate colors. I found it funny that in the construction across from the sitting president’s palace, there is a half-kilometer stretch of white-red-white-red-white barricades.

Red and white ribbons hang from trees; rogue graffiti artists spray paint red stripes on the signs featuring white-painted silhouettes that mark which sidewalk lane is for walking and which is for bikers. (The school crossing sign, which has a big person walking a little person, can be found with a police stick added to the big person, giving the illusion of that one beating down the little one. I haven’t seen one of those but have seen them in the press.)

 I snap photos of all I run into and am constantly surprised by the creativity – and the ballsiness. Of the three pictures in this post, the flag – I couldn’t rotate it on the blogspot software – was on a walk by the river and was painted over fairly quickly.

The series of planters have been covered up as well; they are off the beaten path and lasted a little longer. They’re in the courtyard area of my apartment building.

The big-ass flag wasn’t near my house; a colleague saw it as he set out on a bike ride; it was gone by the time he came back. Word had it that firemen were dispatched to take it down; the fireman who wound up with it tossed it off to a protester, who ran off with it. Maybe we’ll see it again. If not that, I’m sure there will be plenty more.

No idea how this is going to turn out, but it really is fascinating witnessing a revolution.

Up, up and away

Weekends have been fairly boring for awhile. The days are getting a lot shorter, the sun goes missing, rain threatens and it’s normally bleak looking outside. Summer is definitely gone and the prelude to winter that’s fall is kind of depressing.

And then there are still protests, meaning I really can’t exit my apartment courtyard after, say 1 p.m. The protests are peaceful but I never know where they are going to be. Saturday’s protests are women’s marches, which means today I can peek out the window and see women wearing white-red-white scarves or carrying white-red-white umbrellas out for a walk. Occasionally, a driver will go by and lay on the horn, but for the most part, I see women carrying flowers, which are a symbol of protest.

There’s no telling when – or how – this is going to end, but it seems like it’s going to go on for awhile. The president here inaugurated himself a couple of weeks ago, prompting weekday protests in addition to the weekend ones, but nothing is resolved. Belarus un-invited several EU countries’ ambassadors, leading a couple of others to depart in solidarity.

Meanwhile, we’re still without an ambassador. There’s one lined up but still has to be confirmed by the Senate, and, let’s face it, as much as we need an ambassador here, there are more pressing domestic issues. At this point, no one expects her to arrive until mid-November at the earliest.

That thwarted my hopes of taking off the first two weeks in December. I had no place to go, but if I don’t use just over a week of annual leave, I will lose it and I don’t want to that happen. Considering we’re supposed to “quarantine” where we go, I figured I’d just have to be gone two weeks. I have a virtual class planned for the third week in December, so taking off the first two seemed reasonable.

Now, though, knowing we *might* get an ambassador soon after, I can’t count on that. My additional wrinkle is that so long as the ambassador doesn’t have an assistant, I will fill in. Essentially, I’m pretty much counting on not going anywhere from the time she arrives – whenever that might be – for at least a month after and possibly longer. I’m perfectly fine with that; it’s just that I don’t want to lose my week of vacation.

Still, knowing I’m trapped here makes me kind of want to get out, so it was a relief when we got a TDYer who came to post by car. She hoped to explore a bit on weekends and I offered to tag along. (So considerate, I know.)

We’re limited in range because of the time; she needed to be back by 2 p.m. or something, so I got on Viator and poked around for a place to go and came up with a little outdoor museum that’s only a half-hour from the central part of the city, if that. IT’s called the Belarusian State Museum of Folk Architecture and Rural life, and it mainly consisted of wood buildings depicting life in the late 1800s in Belarus. I love stuff like that, and it was a non-crowded area in which to walk around.

They had little homes and buildings set up to show what life was like throughout the country during the late 19^th and early 20^th century, including a little tavern, a couple windmills, a church and a school.

Just as we were getting ready to turn into the place, Colleague saw an ultralight flying around, and we thought, wow, that’s pretty cool; I wonder where they take off from. Immediately upon entering the museum, we discovered it: right there.

My Russian isn’t good enough to query about it, but Colleague discovered it only cost about $20 for a 10-minute ride and asked if I wanted to do it. She said she didn’t because she’d been up in a little plane and had gotten sick.

Me? YES. Absolutely.

My only hesitation is that it was chilly and a bit overcast, but the place had this giant jacket for me to borrow so I tossed it on over my LL Bean barn coat. (Upon return, I learned I could have borrowed snow pants, too, and should have – it was COLD.)

Oh, it was so much fun. All we did was a giant circle but it was beautiful. I thought I’d be able to take photos, but they – fortunately – also loaned me some gloves in Shaquille O’Neal’s size. Trying to take a photo would have put either the phone at risk due to clumsiness or my fingers from frostbite, so I just took it in. There was one shot I regretted missing – an overhead (obviously) view Belarusian tractor working a field – but other than that, it was mostly just pretty landscape. Seeing the little open-air museum from the air gave me a good perspective of how big it was, too.

If you’d have asked me on Friday what I would do this morning, that would have been a blip on the conscious-o-meter, but boy, it was fun.