gone with the blue

Flip-flops, brooms & pillows

working as a fundraiser for greenpeace im getting to talk to lots of people. some people are rude, some are busy, some are crazy - one man told me today that in europe they turn dead bodies into diamonds which they make into windows for concorde planes - but some have amazing stories. i was speaking to a cool guy about fundraising. he had done the same job before, and we chatted about sales and psychology etc. then he told me a little about his life. so his father was from russia, and had been imprisoned in a siberian gulag for 10 years for his involvement with solidarity. upon release his father eventually bribed his way out of the country, taking the wife and two sons with him, and escaped to spain where they arrived with one suitcase. they then emigrated to australia. years later his parents split up and his father moved back to russia. he had not seen his father for 6 years when he turned 18, and on receiving an invitation to visit him in the mother country he believed this was his chance to reunite. but on arriving at the airport ready for his holiday he was greeted instead by his uncle. he was driven to the army camp and enlisted for service. he spent three years in the russian army (two years was compulsory for russian citizens, which he was), with one year stationed in chechnya. what angered him the most was that his brother had served in the army a few years before and had been killed in chechnya. did his father want him to suffer the same fate? it took some years for him to forgive, but before the man died he understood why he had done it. he had to go through it to know who he was, and to experience just a fraction of what his father had been through in the gulags.   ... still a bit harsh i thought.