A Mountain of Frozen Crap

Winter is going to end soon. The temperature outside is still below minus 20, snow built up over the long Russian winter is several feet deep in places and icicles still hang from my window. My office is in a huge compound with a network of erratic and poorly built timber workers accommodation and the more stately but still grim looking managers offices. Power cables stretch in a labyrinth of deadly add-hock executioners from cabin to cabin. Every week, it seems, power is lost in the compound and the threat of an uncontrollable fire amongst these dilapidated wooden cabins is a disaster I pray never happens. Power was cut last month, my lads faced a night surviving in a temperature that dropped below minus 32 degrees. They made a fire in the middle of their cabin breaking up their wooden stools and a small table but even so the 20l container of drinking water was frozen solid. I was fuming, my lads could so easily have perished. But they are Russian, Kholkozniks, born and bred in the remote village of Kachelino near Kazan where life is predictably tough. Impoverished but enriched with pride of being Tatar blood Russians.  

 

The Uzbeks have built a wash tunnel in the snow and ice. I still don’t know how it exactly works or what’s inside. Early on in winter, when the temperature hideously hangs around zero turning grass into mud and early snow falls into a dirty brown slush, they formed a tunnel from bales of hay. Now covered deep, hidden in snow except for a tall tin chimney which puffs woodfire smoke.  Taking turns, they crawl in the tunnel to bathe, or wash.

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One of the Uzbeki workers stands obediently in Olegs office. Docile to the request from Oleg to smash the frozen crap mountain before Spring arrives. I’m sure I heard Oleg right, pretty confident the Russian words of shit, mountain and hammer were articulated in his instruction to the Uzbek who nodded and just simply replied okay, all good.

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I asked Oleg what he ask the guy to do, even in this world it sounded a strange request. With a dry composure said: go have a look at their wooden toilet shack. Through the hole in the floor each day the mountain of frozen crap and urine towered higher and higher until, apparently as I decided not to go look, had risen a couple of feet above the hole. If the thaw comes the frozen mountain will turn into a river of shit. It needs to be beaten down and removed whilst still frozen. Such is the life of cards your dealt with.