Moscow (January 1996). "Oh Karsten, I did a big mistake." Ananda Samantha looked out the window of the dorm room. Besides the snowflakes umwirbelten the skyscraper, was not much to see. Since I made in our small two-man rooms 13th Floor was stripped, Samantha had the room to yourself, but happy he was therefore not the same. He had presented Russia very differently.
In Sri Lanka, where Samantha is a man's name, there were many graduates of Soviet universities. They praised the high level of training and the low cost of living. From the icy winter they had not said anything, or Samantha had not been listening. He had been advertised as a medical student at the University of International Friendship, for in his home country places were hard to come by. A dubious intermediary company, he had paid a lot of money so they forwarded his request to Moscow. He finally got the approval. We met in the hall in a queue in front of the Housing Department and spontaneously decided to take care of us together for a room.
That was a good decision. We could train both our English and boring it was rare when we have told our home countries, which had absolutely nothing in common. On the first day after we moved into our common room, he called me concern to the bathroom: "The tap water is broken," he said. "Why?" I asked, finally scored a steaming stream from the faucet into the sink. "The water is very hot," Samantha said helplessly. In Sri Lanka, apparently did not need a man hot tap water.
Shocked by the Russian conditions
Samantha's family was wealthy for the situation in Sri Lanka. His brother dealt in precious stones and traveled abroad. After all, Samantha was in the summer holidays to fly to his home and had therefore to the many Africans and Asians are a big advantage, because the had some seven years long stay in Russia without even seeing her family again.
felt the conditions in Moscow itself, many students from developing countries as shocking: The dilapidated home for the newcomers with the filthy floor, showers and toilets, where it was held Klobeck only holes in the floor, the humiliating treatment by many university staff, the tough, lukewarm meat in the student cafeteria. Of which the trained in the Soviet Union doctors Samantha had also told her anything. But he also wanted to be a doctor and was willing to hold out for seven years. A termination of the study would have also forgiven the family barely. Before
Medizinstuium began the six-year, he first had for a year a so-called preparatory faculty ("Podfak") to visit, where the students were taught from the world of zero in Russian. The older ones made a game of it to teach the newcomers their own lessons. The teachers must be at the beginning of the day politely ask after her health, she says, leaving the unsuspecting "Podfak" learn-students memorize instead of supposed greetings a few particularly nasty mother curses that they used but generally only once in conversation with their teachers.
The water is very hot
Getting used to the harsh living conditions on campus, was in any case not easy. How difficult it is for a man should be, who was on a tropical island grew up, where bananas and mangoes growing on the roadside, I could hardly imagine. Sri Lanka, the paradise island that was hit by an unspeakable civil war had to be a very different world than anything I had ever seen.
One evening, as it seemed to me that Samantha particularly saddened by his textbooks was sitting, I decided to go to the market and something to cheer him. I purchased from a Central Asian traders oragnefarbenen two kilograms of that fruit, which the Russians "Churma" call, the Wörtbuch translated as "persimmon" in German supermarkets, however, sold as "Sharon". "Here," I said to Samantha and asked him a plate with the sliced fruit on the table. "It may well be that grow in your home avocados and papayas in the garden. But something you do not know. "Samantha looked determined at me in amazement. "Yes, yes, we know that. But the fruits are often stuck in the mouth. Therefore, we feed it only our pigs. "
evening Samantha often told by fakirs and psychics, explained how he was meditating in front of a Buddha image, if he had problems. He taught me lentil stew with red pepper offset to cook and to write my name in Sinhalese characters. Soon he met a cute medical student to know who lived a few miles from his hometown. A meeting of the two would be during the holidays was a breeze but an impossibility. No young man in Sri Lanka would dare to openly enter into a relationship with a woman without asking the blessing of the family, complained Samantha.
awaited the first snow of his life he was still awaited. He fell in late September, now he bought thick winter clothing and a hat with earflaps, as they had almost all foreign students. "Karsten, I think I'm getting crazy here in Russia, "Samantha finally said in early November. "It seems as if the days are getting shorter and the nights longer and longer."
registration certificate torn
At the university, the students from Sri Lanka, one of the largest groups. To outsiders, it was under the impression that stuck together Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims in Moscow and the surrounding circumstances, they welded together. Soon, Samantha also understood that the winter was not the greatest evil in Moscow, but the racism. Dark-skinned students dared in the dark only in groups on the road, they always left behind at one of the older students target and route.
fear they not only had prior bald young Russian Nazis and drunken football fans. More important, they feared the police. Of the youths threatened worst beatings or abuse. The militiamen wanted to see the money, otherwise it could happen that they rent out identity checks on the valid registration cards and the students then dragged for lack of papers on the guard. All students with dark skin could tell such stories. After a half years, my Sinhala friends traveled again for a long weekend to St. Petersburg. They came back excited. But more than the Tsar's palaces, canals and the Hermitage, they were thrilled that during the days not even their passports were checked.
When Samantha was in her second year, he experienced a very unpleasant news for him. Because in Sri Lanka practiced more and more doctors who had their Russian higher education diplomas bought with bribes, the government pulled the emergency brake in Colombo: All graduates of Russian universities had when they return to Sri Lanka once again put all the state exam. The Indians had introduced a similar scheme. Samantha said now passable Russian, had to the foreign food habit started to act a little bit of tea, in order to finance his living. After all, we agreed: who would hold out as a foreign student for seven years in Moscow, the additional tests are expected to actually make no more fear.
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