Spring has arrived—and with it, the pressing question: Will there be a camp this year? Where? When do we leave?
We are all in a state of suspense. The mothers especially: "You're not taking us back to that horrible place from last year, are you?" Off they go, swapping memories. It had been one of those camping trips impossible to forget.
We had arrived one brilliant morning at a new country house built by our Catholic friends from Bruno's community, about 100 kilometers from Moscow. The house sat beautiful on a hill, made entirely of wood still fresh and fragrant. Around it stretched vast meadows full of wildflowers.
Inside, the house was dark, cool, and mysterious. Dark because electricity hadn't yet been connected. Cool because it had gone unheated all winter, and the walls still held the cold. Mysterious because no one had cleaned it in the last eight or nine months. Then we discovered there was only one toilet—ancient and broken—fifty meters from the house. No sink. Nothing to wash with.
Encouraged by the fact that we had arrived and the rental van had driven off, we all grabbed rags and cleaning supplies and got to work, inspiring the few electricians who were finishing the wiring.
For a week, our main entertainment was washing windows and floors, hauling firewood to feed the stove and warm the house, carrying clean water inside for cooking and washing, hauling out the dirty water, building lampshades and washstands, hanging curtains and painting pictures to make the place welcoming.
Then, starting the second day, it began to rain. We discovered that the two kilometers of dirt road we called a driveway had become one enormous mud puddle. There would be no way to evacuate people or cars. And indeed, both our vehicles and a tractor called to rescue us got stuck in the attempt. We all spent unforgettable hours digging cars out of mud with shovels, carrying them—along with the local boys, practically in our arms—to the paved road. When we finally gathered there together, all of us filthy and covered in straw and flowers, caked head to foot in wet clay, we saw ourselves differently. A little older. More mature. And so much more united and joyful than before.
"You're not taking us back to that house," the mothers say now, while we dream of it like paradise.
Olga Gurevich (Moscow)
Olga Gurevich teaches Italian at Moscow University. She has been part of Faith and Light since she was a teenager. She is the regional coordinator for Faith and Light in the Carpathian, Urals, and Caucasus region (Armenia, Georgia, Poland, Ukraine).