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TRAVEL MEMOIR
Going Home
A journey of redemption in Ukraine, 2019
The bus starts up with a squeal of the fan belt that drowns out the radio. A front wheel thuds into a pothole the size of a garden pond.
It’s September 2019 and today’s destination is Kamianets-Podilskyi, Central Ukraine. I’ve spent the month travelling around Western Ukraine searching for monochrome people from a handful of old photographs. Last week, that long-lost family morphed into actual people around a dining table, tripling the size of my family.
Cousins who knew of me, cousins who’d been anticipating my arrival for decades, they said. Ashamed of my former indifference, I kept quiet about the fact I’d taken no interest in them. Until, inexplicably, I’d found myself unable to get them out of my mind. It’s an age thing, people said.
Ukraine through the bus window
Now I’m working my way home, towards Lviv and the airport, stretching out the journey to see the Ukrainian countryside through the windows of its buses. Like every other bus I’ve ridden here, this one is half the size of the usual European bus — overflowing with bodies and bulky shopping bags. The air turns so rancid that a passenger stands on his tiptoes to push open the roof vents.
