AT THE STREET WATER FOUNTAIN
I already live alone 2 months in a big town. I have no relatives here only a few acquaintances of mine and I have not found special places where I could go to spend my free time. That’s why I thought up an amusement for myself: every Saturday I go to a tram stop. It is just opposite a street water fountain. I take my seat on a bench and begin to observe the live around me.
This time I see two little ones – a brother and sister – coming to the water fountain. The boy has two empty plastic containers in his hands and the girl is carrying an empty sprite bottle. The boy is walking like a solid man but the girl is moving energetically in rhythmical dancing steps so her short plaits are bobbing up and down. They stop at the water fountain. The boy turns the tap on, fills the bottle at first, gives it to his sister for her to have a drink, then rinses the cement base of the water fountain and puts his containers under the stream of water, fills one of them, moves it aside, fills another one; after that he fills the bottle, twirls it and hands the bottle to his sister. After that he takes his containers and they go away. The girl isn’t moving so energetically now. Carrying the bottle in both hands in front of herself she is walking solidly like her brother.
I keep observing. A tram pulls in and stops. A girl of about 15 years old with long fair hair gets off the tram. She puts the strap of her bag on the shoulder, comes up to the water fountain, turns the tap on. Having quenched her thirst she wipes her mount with her hand and goes back to the stop. Another tram pulls in. The girl takes the tram.
It is not difficult for me to imagine a traveller in the steppe who, having noticed a well, turns his horse towards it to quench his thirst. But it was wonderfully to see how a young Kyivite got off the tram only to drink some water from a street water fountain. Not the sterile water from a tap at one’s own place but the water from a street water fountain, that is – pure water from an artesian well.
I couldn’t but taste the water from this fountain myself. Nothing special. Water like water. Althoung, telling the truth, without the smell of chlorine. I can’t say it migh have been called ”crystal” water – it smelled of silf a little bit and of water – pipe rust. But there was something in it that attracted people.
Two families return home from a picnic somewhere near a lake. The grown-ups are a bit tipsy, the little ones are tired, the men have bags in their hands, the women carry clothes, the children have rush ”bunches” – everyone is tired. The company stops at the water fountain. One of the men turned the tap on, a strong stream hit against the cement foundation… What a noise has arisen! At first the little ones began to splash water on one another. Immediately all their clothes – shorts, skirts, sport shirts became wet, their hair too, – screams of laughter, running about… The parents joined their successors. The bags fall down, the men jump, the woman laugh, the little ones run about; splashes here and there – fiesta, nothing else but fiesta! Tiredness has gone away! Drunkenness has disappeared! Ingenuousness and sincerity of the fiesta cheered up the people around. They looked at one another, smiled, nodded their heads and but for the tram that pulled in from behind the corner – they would join the merry company.
THE WELL IN THE VILLAGE
I remember wells in the village. Late in the evening when most of the people are not busy about the household any more, woman got together at the well. Some men joined them too. And it didn’t matter what the talk was about – about the head of the collective farm who got into trouble again because he had stolen some grain or about the clothes this or that woman had bought for her children on the eve of the school year, or about their hard life. All those things did not matter. The matter was in being together at that place, at the well from which theit parents and grandparents used to take water and their children would take water too. A well in the village is not just a source of water but a source of energy containing eternal power of the earth. And that power charged them, their soals found a rest there, they summoned up fresh energy and health there.

THE TOWN KITCHEN CHATS
Where can one find such a place in the megalopolis of many millions completely asphalted, rammed and concreted? At the water tap in the kitchen with its water that had been filtered through hundreds of filters, disinfected by tons of chloride and in addition lost its strength while running through kilometres of rusty pipes and has become the liquid which inhabitants of megalopolis called water? May be. In the long run there exists such a conception as ”the kitchen chat”. One way or another but the liquid from a tap in the kitchen cannot be equal to genuine water from a well (read – a source). That is why some inhabitants of monster – megalopolises go to the suburbs in hope of finding a well with genuine water somewhere in a lane or a quiet little street. And street water fountains that are built from time to time here and there become the wells – sources that attract people.

OTHER SCENES AT THE WATER FOUNTAIN
I keep sitting on my bench and observing the behavior of the people around. Two homeless men came dragging themselves along. They drank some water. Then one of them, after a long searsh of something in his pocket, took something wrapped in paper out. It was a bar of cheap soap. The homeless filled their 2 litre bottle with water, moved aside from the fountain and then in turn washed their hands and faces with the soap. I would not have been surprised if they had taken out raisors and shaved their two – week bristle. But they did not shave themselves. But even without it one could notice that their faces had brightened up.
I sat there about 2 hours. The day was drawing to a close. But the life near the fountain was going on. An old woman of about 70 with a walking-stick in her hand and a soldier’s water-bottle came to the fountain. Obviously she was a person with religious faith. But I couldn’t guess which faith she belonged to. Befote filling her water-bottle she crossed herself, took a handfull of water, washed her face and whispered a centain prayer. Only after that the wonam filled her bottle. She wasn’t in a hurry to leave. She stood at the fountain for a while, looked around, put her bottle on the water fountain, bent down and began to gather the rubbish: ice-cream wrappers, cigarette-ends, dry leaves and took everything to the refuse bin. After cleaning the place she washed her hands and straightened herself. Then she whispered her prayer again, crossed herself, took the water bottle and helping herself with her walking-stick, slowly left the place.
A HAPPENING IN THE VILLAGE
Last winter, while visiting my relatives in the village, I became a witness of an unusual happening: a collective farm nightman Mykola, known in the neighbourhood as an expert well-digger, may be after drinking too much alcohol or from malice came to the square right in the centre of the village and began to dig a well. A crowd of people immediately gathered around him. The well-digger, paying no attention to the spectators, put his special instruments – stakes, pieces of wire, strings on the tramped snow, took off his ”kuffayka” – a quilted jacket (usually worn by convicts, collective farmers, unskilled workers etc) – and threw it down on the snow. Turning around on his left foot he traced a circle around himself with his right foot, put his warm winter hat on one side, spit on his palms, took his sharp spade and began to dig the frozen ground. But he didn’t manage to work for long. An ambulance (called by the head of the village) came and took the drunk well-digger avay. But the people didn’t leave the square. They were looking at the clods of frozen ground and the spade left by Mykola. Then someone said: ”Nobody has dug a well in the course of the last 5 years in our village”. Another one added: ”It there’s no well in the yard of a household – it has not a master”. Someone else said: ”Who needs wells after the construction of the water – supply system?”. And little by little, with sighs of sadness and regret the people began to leave the square. A very small boy came back and took the spade. It was too heavy for him to put it on his shoulder so he dragged it on the snow…

WHAT ATTRACTS PEOPLE TO WELLS
I was going to leave my place at the tram stop and go home when, all of a sudden, I saw those little ones – the brother and sister – with plastic containers and a sprite bottle again. It was already 8 p.m. To my mind it was too late for such little children to leave their home. But may be their parents decided to suppliment their reserves of water before the days off and the children agreed to go to the water fountain again because they liked going there.
I have doubts as to seeing people standing in line for water at street water fountains but it’s an irrefutable fact that more and more town – dwellers give preference to natural water and don’t drink the water running from taps in their houses. And who used to get together at street water fountains and pump-rooms some time ago? Adherents of Porfyr Ivanov, the man who had worked out his own system of healthy way of life ”Be closer to Nature!”. Those were the people who suffered from certain diseases or prefered, so to say, natural beginnings. There was something ritual in their gatherings – they were the people belonging to ”one’s own company”, they got to know one another, had common problems to be discussed, exchanged specific information. At present ”street water fountains” became, if it is possible to say so, more democratic. Who goes to water fountains now? – Common people who are very remotely connected with any theories or sanitary and recovery measures. Now people simply thirst for normal natural water and no half-artificial half-sterilized bonanzas, fantas or colas are able to substitute natural water. (To say nothing of the liquid running from our kitchen taps).
IN MY NATIVE TOWN
Of course, everyone ought to have his own well. Everyone out of 50 million inhabitants of my country. To our regret there is a decrease in the number of wells for some past time: that well has dried out, that one has silted… That is why people are wondering in search of ”one’s own” source. The water from town’s water supply systems does not enjoy people’s trust in its natural strength. What unexpected surprises – from banal dysentary to typhoid fever – it brings! Newspaper write about such cases practically avery day. And a deep well dugged by an expert master in a good place and taken a good care of by its master won’t bring any unexpected surprises. In those towns which are supplied with drinking water from artesian wells, water is not dangerous either. I take, for example my native town- Kaniv. The town’s dwellers not only drink artesian water but use it as technical one for washing clothes and in water-closets. Of course, it is a sin to waste such water for such purposes (to say the least of it) – the town stands on the river Dnipro but until now we have no system for taking water from it. At the same time the existing state of things has its advantages – in the course of the last 30 years we had not even a single case of illness caused by water taken from the town’s water supply system. It the long run, the aura of the town itself, in spite of the total unemployment and poverty, remains bright, powerful, it keeps people in their native place and the majority of them does not not leave it, does not go to other places and countries in search of a better lot. To a considerable extent it is no concern of the inhabitants of the greater part of small and big towns of such Ukraine’s regions as Chernihiv, Lviv and Ternopil where people mainly use water from artesian wells.
It is evident that there’s the inverse relation – people give strength to water too. Everyone knows such a concept as ”the memory of water”. Scientists state – if you pour 100 grammes of alcohol into, for example, the Geneva Lake, – in a considerably short period of time analysis will indicate the presence of the alcohol in the water of the lake near the other bank of it which is some dozen miles away. Taking the water from his well, drinking it, taking care of his well, cleaning it the user also ”tames” the water, attaches it to himself, encodes it, even – makes it love its master, who, in his turn, expects mutual respect and love on the part of the water from his well.
In general, what’s the difference – whether it is a spring, a well, a street water fountain or a pump-room? The main thing for each person is to have one’s own source. Our water will fix us in its memory and give us its strength in the course of all our life. And in spite of the fact that our water sources are not taken appropriate care of (somewhere they are unattractive and miserable, the territory around them is untidy) and water is not pumped from the best strata – such things are of no importance. The time will come and we shall learn to dig fine wells again: genuine deep wells with cold crystal water. Not without reason that small village boy took the well-digger’s spade home, not without reason one of the best occupations of town’s little ones, including the brother and sister I spoke about, is to go to a street water fountain for water.

AS USUAL…
…I woke up late at night because I saw a dream: a bucket slid off the well’s adge, tore the chain it was fixed to and, with a terrible noise, beating against the walls of the well, was falling down into its depth. I rubbed my eyes and listened to the noise. Being only half-awake, barefooted I went to the kitchen and stroke the tap with my hand. The tap stopped making the noise. I took a glass out of the cupboard. Turned the tap on. Not a single drop. I put my finger into the tap. I heard indistinct mumbling in the depth of the water pipe. Then it disappeared. I turned the tap off. As usually I had to satisfy my thirst by as warm as compote water from the kettle.

Not so long ago Pope John Paul II paid an official visit to Ukraine. The confessions are discussing the event and arguing, trying to prove they are right and rejecting the reasoning of their opponents. Sometimes the debate is reduced to the lay level, sometimes it comes to everyday life. It is not a pretty picture.
Knowing that correctional facility No. 62 near Cherkasy (the village of Khutory) has at least two churches, Orthodox and Evangelical Baptist, peacefully coexisting, I took a photo correspondent, got in the car, and drove to the prison camp. I thought I would just conduct some brief interviews: let the prisoners tell me where the truth is, let them judge whether it is politics or religion, whether or not Ukraine needed the Pontiff’s visit. They, of all people, will not lie.
Despite the pressing nature of this subject, I began to wander off the topic as soon as I talked with the inmates for 15 minutes.

“I THANK GOD FOR LETTING ME COME HERE”
There are almost three thousand of them — murderers, rapists, thieves — here. They were isolated from society, depending on the offense they committed, for 5, 10, or 15 years.
While they are here, their sons grow up, their mothers grow old, their wives fall in love with others, and their souls sink into despair. Some of them, bearing a grudge against the whole world, have repudiated freedom, had their skin tattooed, as befits a true jailbird, and consider the prison camp their true home. They need no one. They don’t need themselves. They live like machines: you eat, sleep, do some work, so the day has passed. What then? They know not and do not want to know. There is no way out for them.
But there is a way out. I saw it with my own eyes. It is Vasyl KOLODCHYN, chief of Penitentiary Facility No. 62, himself who showed it to me.
Fear not, all prisoners are in their places. But I saw people in prison fatigues going freely through all the checkpoints to freedom. Oddly enough, they later return back some time later.
“Paradoxical as it sounds, I thank God for letting me come to this camp,” 33 year-old inmate Ruslan confessed.
“You killed a man. Do you thank God for this, too?”
“You know, perhaps for this, too. Otherwise my soul would still be raging in chaos. But now I know the way out.”
Looking at Ruslan, I was thinking that in a few hours I would be at home, kissing my beloved wife, talking to my son, having dinner. I will be able to do everything I want: go fishing in the evening, sit up late in front of the television, or go to bed earlier. I also seem to have a way out. I seem to be a free individual, I have the right to do what I want, say what I want, and go wherever I want. But I can’t do things Ruslan can: go at once through three stone walls, a hundred locks, a dozen armed guards, barbed wire with 10,000 volts. And I will hardly ever be able to unless I get into this camp as a prisoner…

“I KILLED A PERSON WITH THESE HANDS, NOW I HOLD THE BIBLE WITH THEM”
“I was cool, as they put it,” Ruslan tells me. “I could afford everything. Just imagine: Kyiv, the early nineties, chaotic development of business, no clear laws, so life seemed a bed of roses. I could stay away from home for weeks, going on a binge, because I had lots of money and no brakes. Police? Screw ‘em! Security service? Up theirs! Organized crime squad? My sweet petunias! I was once summoned to the organized crime police unit, so I was trying to show off my cool and thought up this: I put on Bermuda shorts, sunglasses, a cork helmet, got into a open-top jeep, came around and shoved into the office of a lieutenant-colonel. His eyes flung wide open. How I loved myself! Was I flaunting my own brazenness! In a word, I felt no limits. In the long run, things went so far that I could come up straight to a man at a bus stop in broad daylight and fired my pistol in his head.”
Ruslan and I are standing in a church officially named the Freedom Evangelical Christian Baptist Church. The spacious room can contain up to 400 parishioners at a time. The sermon sound is amplified with powerful microphones and accompanied with music (there is an electric organ and an acoustic piano here). There is stained glass in the windows, lights on the walls, and flowerpots on the windowsills
“Here our newly-converted brethren receive baptism,” Ruslan says, lifting a heavy lid in front of the priest’s rostrum.
Indeed, there is a small (2×3 m.) tiled pool built into the floor.
“On August 7 this year we will celebrate the seventh anniversary of the evangelical church in our penitentiary,” Mr. Kolodchyn says. “At first, believers had to huddle in a 15 sq. m. room turned prayer house. Then, two years ago, assisted by the Annunciation Mission, the prisoners built a new spacious temple with their own hands.”
Ruslan has belonged to this church since 1999. After taking a human soul in 1993, his own soul wandered in darkness for another six years until it found the light. Now Ruslan, who is entitled to a long (72 hours) visit by his family once in three months, spends most of this precious time reading aloud the Bible to his wife and the 13- year-old son Oleksiy.

“ORTHODOX, GREEK CATHOLICS, ROMAN CATHOLICS ALL COME TO OUR CHURCH”
There is also an Orthodox church in penitentiary No. 62. It is much more modest that the Evangelical church, with a narrow room hardly allowing forty persons. The church dean, Father Oleksandr, comes here every week. On other days, the temple is looked after by the 40-year-old S exton Mykola (in for major embezzlement of public property) and the 72-year-old church warden Vasyl (for murder).
“Papal visit to Ukraine?” Mykola shrugs his shoulders. “This seems to be politics, and prisoners don’t go in for politics. I’d rather tell you about life here. Yes, we know there is one more, Evangelical, church on the territory of our camp. But we do not rival each other. God is one. By the way, our temple’s services are visited by one Roman Catholic and two Greek Catholics. And everything is all right: none of the Orthodox push them out — let them come! I think the same should be in society. Out there, you only live in turmoil and everyday chores. You sometimes don’t see truths in your daily routine. But we, deprived of the main thing, freedom, see everything from a somewhat different angle. We first of all choose the truth, and it does not matter much which way you go toward it”.
Waiting for Mykola in Odesa are his wife and two sons, Illia and Mykola. They will meet in three years and nine months. Mykola puts it a little differently: in 1365 days. This is very long. But he will live to see it.
The 72-year-old warden Vasyl will also see his day. They all will. For they believe in God, in people, in the truth.

THE POWER FIELD OF A PRISON PRAYER
They are just a few: 28 parishioners of the Evangelical and 12 of the Orthodox churches. In other words, there are 40 believers against the overall 2800 inmates. But Christ did not have a thousand apostles, either. They are suffering for their faith. All are not so righteous as they are. This is, after all, a prison camp for murderers.
Ruslan has been praying ardently, so he had six years remitted recently.
Penitentiary chief Mr. Kolodchyn says that, although his administration does not keep accurate records on this matter, the recidivism rate among those who were prison church parishioners is almost zero.
One more detail. A new Orthodox church, of the New Holy Martyrs of Cherkasy, is being built in the village of Khutory on the territory of which the prison camp is situated. Thus according to Sexton Mykola, many brethren among the released prisoners have put off their trips home and stayed behind to help erect the church walls. There are more than one such example. The power of prison prayer overcomes all obstacles, pierces the thickest stone walls, and turns on the light at the end of the tunnel.

BY THE WAY: according to the information given by Interfax-Ukraine, there are 170,000 convicts in Ukraine’s prisons, among them – 12,000 women.

Ukraine celebrates St. John the Baptist’s Day (Bonfire Night) almost at the same time that the US does its Independence Day. In all probability, this is not an accidental coincidence. For us, the date of July 7, as July 4 for the Americans, is to a large extent the symbol of freedom- loving, disobedience, and, after all, independence. The ancient pagan rite has lived through a millennium and become an integral part of our people’s time-honored traditions. On this day, even the most “advanced” youth take off their roller- skates, switch off their CD-players, spit out their chewing-gums, and, together with the elders, willingly go looking for fern flowers, weave wreaths, sing, jump over bonfires, and have fun to their heart’s content.
Out of place during this feast are public rallies, tedious sermons and gobbledygook. It is perhaps for this reason that it enjoys such popularity. The wood Mavka (Ukrainian folklore character) charms the world with its majestic beauty, leaving no place for rostrums and microphones. As if brewed in a fragrant concoction, St. John’s evening carries Ukraine, as a stream would do a wreath, somewhere far away toward what you hope is a radiant and joyful future.
Stetsivka (Zvenyhorodka district, Cherkasy oblast) High School Principal Liubov Bilozirska, surprised the whole village, district and even oblast in the early nineties: she decided to organize the whole village’s celebration of St. John’s Feast. Young and old alike are said to have been walking to the pond. The village found its own musicians, actors, and connoisseurs of old songs and rites. The men donned their dress shirts, women pulled woolen plaid skirts and scarves out of their grandmothers’ chests of drawers.
What was important, in the long run, was not the outer side of the matter but what went on in human souls. July 7 became kind of a Rubicon for Stetsivka residents: having crossed it, they seemed unlikely to ever turn back. Indeed, the holiday was over but children kept bringing to school various old things which became exhibits at the local ethnographic museum, a special team went through the village to record songs and oldsters’ stories and to make inquires about traditional crafts. Having learned about this revival of local traditions, documentary film crews came to Stetsivka from the oblast center and the capital.
The initiative was highlighted in the press. The village lived and swirled in the whirlwind of these events for years. Stetsivka was visited by famous people, such as poets, political journalists, and high-ranking officials. Finally, the initiative was given the status of the Small Academy of Folk Traditions and Handicrafts. This gave another impulse to action. A hitherto ordinary and inconspicuous village, Stetsivka suddenly resonated throughout the country, with its academy members being invited to various festivals, contests, and campaigns. It seemed the process would just go on and on.
But in a country with so many beggars on the street you cannot celebrate forever. You cannot hold feasts year after year, while living standards plummet. Stetsivka fell silent. No new exhibits at the school museum, no singing groups walking around the village, no more stories from the old- timers: they have other things to do, for example, to hope to get their pensions. Teachers dream about their salaries and children about at least some sweets. Alas, even Kyiv’s academies barely eke out an existence, let alone an amateurish rural one. In other words, a host of problems cropped up. The main problem is lack of money: you cannot afford to buy a new accordion, send children to the oblast talent contest, or even mend the lead dancer’s boots. But, come what may, today most of the residents of Stetsivka as well as Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Lviv, Odesa, etc., are going to the banks and celebrate St. John the Baptist’s Day, their own small day of independence and rebellious spirit. Even if wearing worn-at-the-heel boots and faded scarves and playing a beaten up accordion, people will nonetheless pay tribute to the miraculous and still never seen bloom of the fern. Wreaths will float downstream, the bonfire will flare, and one of the wishes the Ukrainians may express this night is this: let all our troubles and superstitions burn out in St. John’s fire.