Tuesday, January 30, 2007

A job opportunity

My enterprising mind sprung on an enterprising way to make some money: copy off other people's enterprising ideas.

I've always been a bit of a foodie. I really love cooking and using fresh produce to create really yummy flavours that both feed and really impress people at the same time. So in my current employment-drought, I thought perhaps I can get a foot in the food industry here in Kyiv. And once again, I look to the source of all things wise: babushkas.

These women are survivors. While their husband-muzh throws back the vodka in the village, these ladies are up with the birds, on the train to the big smoke to sell their fresh farm produce, before going back to the village to haul her husband-muzh out of his vodka stupor and into bed.

The only thing about selling vegies is, they have to buy them first.


So on the way from the train-vagzal to the market-rinok, they detour to the local supermarket to buy up a day's worth of vegies. And then onwards to the rinok to sell said vegies at highly inflated prices to useless foreigners (like Little_Miss_Moi).

Ukraine is a land where the food flows a-plenty at generally cheap prices (probably to make up for the occasional say, pebble in one's yoghurt). But when you're asked to pay $12 for a single cauliflower, you know the joke's on you.

(Lucky for the Bessarabskii Babushkas, I'm a total pushover. With my head bent in shame, I paid the dosh and exited the rinok. If I'd turned around, I'd have seen those wily old tarts giving each other high-fives and circulating a picture of me for future reference with the caption: 'She can't say no'.)

Ukraine is a happy go lucky sorta country. I'm sure no-one would care if I entered the fruit-reselling market. Except the scary babushkas.

3 comments:

enidd said...

enid's a pushover in bessarabska too, don't worry about it. those sour cream women always manage to sell her some cheesecake too. enid thinks you must live really close to her - she's near the ivana franka theatre. coffee?

Brooke - Little Miss Moi said...

Hello Enid. I live near Lva Tolstogo. Coffee is something I shall thorougly enjoy, especially since my weekend is shaping up to be a rugby watching extravaganza at O'Brien's with Mr Moi.

Anonymous said...

brr, Bessarabka is something else.. those are not your regular babushkas! When I lived nearby just a few months back I tried to avoid that place so much, but you can't beat the rich choice of produce there. The neighboring Furshet under the Arena City "otdyhayet".a