Roasted Uganda

Of all the things I brought to Ukrainian soldiers at the front, the most important was a package of coffee. A kilogram packet of freshly roasted coffee from a hipster coffee roastery in the center of Uzhhorod. A rectangular shiny package with a stylish Roasted Uganda label. Something more suited for Instagram than for the front.

However, it served a completely defensive function, indeed, helping to protect not the body, but what is more important than the body. The human element in a person. Previously, when I wrote poetry, I would have called this strange substance the soul, but now I use a more prosaic yet more precise formulation. That coffee helped protect the psyche because it created a feeling that you are not just a piece of meat, a target for snipers and bombs, but a human being. A human with their tastes, preferences, and habits.

I remember that morning well. Early May, when nights are still cold, but in the morning the air quickly gains warmth and scents. A village somewhere beyond Sloviansk in the Donbas, where local residents are now fewer than military personnel. Most people left because the surrounding areas are shelled almost daily, and it's impossible to sleep at night due to the sounds of explosions. At night, by the way, you can hear them better, they gain volume, sounding ominous in the dark silence, like an alien heartbeat.

That time our volunteer team arrived at the military unit's location too late. We were checked for a long time at checkpoints, the road was difficult, and due to the lack of connection, we wandered a bit on unfamiliar roads, so we arrived at the site when it wasn't dark yet, but light needed to be turned on. This meant we would have to spend the night with the military: it would be impossible to leave after dark due to the blackout regime. Online maps don't work, we're unfamiliar with the area, and turning on headlights is forbidden: in such a situation, we could accidentally drive straight into Russian positions.

And when after a short and anxious sleep, interrupted by the sounds of nearby and distant explosions, we woke up, we needed to quickly head to the next unit. However, my friend, who had put on a military uniform after February 24, stopped us:

"Wait," he said, "I'll make coffee now." There was no electricity, so he started a diesel generator, connected a small coffee maker to it, poured in water, and then took out the package of coffee from the box I had brought him yesterday. Roasted Uganda - was written on it. He poured it into the coffee maker - and within a minute the morning May air was filled with the scent of elite Arabica.

I think this is approximately how the Bible was written. When Jesus began to share fish and bread among the people, they must have been as amazed as we were now. A pure miracle: in one of the worst places in the world, somewhere near Sloviansk in the Donbas, in the heat of war, to receive a metal mug with perfectly prepared espresso. Perhaps it was the most delicious coffee in my life. Sounds banal, but that's how it was.

Catching our gazes, my friend held a theatrical pause, and then answered the question that no one had dared to ask aloud: "So what? I might die today. Why should this be a day when I don't have my traditional normal morning coffee? To hell with them all, I'm not going to give up coffee. No Putin can break this. I'm used to drinking good espresso in the morning, so at least I have the right to that?!"

After that, I visited various military units fifteen more times - to the north, near the Russian border in the Kharkiv region; to the south, near Kherson,

to the deoccupied territories of the Ukrainian Black Sea coast; and I now know the Donbas perhaps even better than my native Transcarpathia. In short, I experienced, saw, and heard a lot during these months, but that phrase etched itself in my memory.

Because it's about something more important than geopolitics, theaters of military operations, and news headlines. It speaks of the fundamental human right to preserve one's individuality, oneself, one's own identity among hundreds of thousands of other people. The right not to dissolve into the million-figure number of Ukrainian military who are defending their land, not to be one of them, but to be one. The only one like that.

Imagine a person who until February 24 was completely civilian, perhaps even a latent pacifist, and after the beginning of the full-scale invasion found themselves at the front. Everything changed in their life: torn away from family and home, from their work and social circle, from their lifestyle and ability to make plans for the future, dressed in camouflage uniform that helps them blend not only with a million other soldiers but also with the surrounding nature, such a person - even if dressed in the thickest armor - suddenly finds themselves bare to the bone. Because they no longer have anything that would make them uniquely themselves, they no longer have their own flesh and blood - everything serves a common, general purpose.

That's when another war opens up - for the right to be yourself, to have your own tastes and at an incredible price

maintain your routine habit. After all, drinking your favorite coffee in the morning is like visiting home, like spending time with your family. Being yourself. Just three minutes a day that you have not for global goals, not for the state, not as a statistic, but only for yourself.

Yes, this is another war - an invisible war for your personal time. From dozens of soldiers, I heard that during combat duty in trenches and bunkers, they actively read. Particularly those books they missed in university, as well as contemporary bestsellers on marketing and the history of business empires. They read because in this way they create a feeling that these days aren't passing in vain, that they're using them for personal development. Because war steals everything from us, but above all - our time, our productive years, the period idiomatically described as "in the prime of life." It steals irreversibly, so what else remains for civilians who by fate's will ended up in trenches, if not to try to catch this time by the tail, to tear off a piece for their own life? That's why they learn German on the front through smartphone apps, read about the history of IKEA's creation, take driving lessons right next to the battlefield: so that wartime isn't just wasted. Yes, I know it's self-deception, but it helps a person hold on.

Perhaps it's because of this knowledge that I travel to our military at the front. It all began in April, when my friend - yesterday a civilian, today a soldier - called and mentioned in conversation that their unit now most urgently needs a 4-wheel drive vehicle. After the war began, the Ukrainian army increased sevenfold, soldiers were recruited and issued uniforms and automatic rifles, but the newly formed units are very poorly equipped with vehicles: they have some huge trucks or old buses, but mobile and off-road transport is extremely scarce.

I'll give an example of a unit from my hometown, Uzhhorod. A newly formed battalion was sent to Donbas in early March. Since the unit was new, created essentially "on paper," it had no transport at all. For transportation, the military was given an old school bus. It's closer from Uzhhorod to Venice than to Donbas, so it's not surprising that the decrepit yellow bus broke down on the way. The soldiers waited almost a day in the freezing cold for a replacement, but since the country was still in chaos during those early March days, no help was sent to them. In the end, the soldiers, who, I remind you, were civilians just two weeks before these events, pooled their own money and traveled the last two hundred kilometers to Donbas by taxi. A Ukrainian soldier heading to the front in a taxi - that's also one of the symbols of this war.

So when in early spring 2022 I heard from my friend that their unit urgently needed a jeep, I had a natural desire to help them. I started thinking about acquaintances or charitable foundations that could quickly resolve this issue, but soon realized that no one would do anything so urgently. That meant I needed to look not for charitable organizations, but to look in the mirror - and take on the task myself. That same evening, I posted an announcement on Facebook that I was collecting funds for a jeep for a military unit in Donbas, and provided my bank card number. And when I woke up, there was enough money in my account for two jeeps.

That's how my current zone of responsibility in this war was determined. Since April 2022, I'm no longer a writer, because I'm not writing anything at all. Instead, I raise money and buy jeeps for the Ukrainian army. Together with a team of like-minded people, we repair them, paint them in camouflage colors, and deliver them directly to the front. As of today, I have purchased 227 vehicles for the Armed Forces of Ukraine. More will follow.

All this became possible thanks to my readers, who previously read my texts and came to book presentations, and today support my volunteer activities with their money. This is a special satisfaction and recognition for a writer - to see how your readers trust you in real life,

understand that previously written books have created an invisible but reliable community. A writer who writes nothing is also, perhaps, one of the symbols of war. Sometimes I joke that readers are so active in re-counting their Donets to me, so that I would deal with cars and not write anything else.

Although I have something to write about. When the convoy of jeeps and I drive east, a journey that takes a day and a half each way, I have a lot of time to think and dream. At such times, I imagine my first post-war book. It will be about everything in the world, but not about cars. After the war, I will generally buy a bicycle and will not even look at cars anymore, they are already in my liver. And I wrote a lot, making up for the pause forced by the war.

I will write about people, about human things, about situations and voices. About the war as a private experience, not as a geopolitical catastrophe. I will write about how scary it was to go from peaceful Uzhgorod to the front-line Donbas for the first time. But when I got there, it turned out that there, near the war, there is no fear, because fear is primarily an internal concept, not a geographical one.

I will write about one of the drivers in our team, who during a stop in Sloviansk was preparing sandwiches for us and cut his hand while opening a metal can. Fifty years later, when his grandchildren ask him: "Grandpa, what did you do during

war?", - he will be able to tell them the truth: "I can't tell much, I will only say that he shed his blood in Slavyansk."

I will not write only about the conversation when one soldier, who came home on a short vacation, sipped some wine and told me: "You know, I only want one. It's an artillery war, most of the time we sit in the trenches and pray we don't get bombed. I've been in the war for nine months, and still haven't seen a single Russian in sight. So, I am afraid that a bomb will fall on me and I will die. I am ready to die, I am not afraid of death. I am afraid of death from a bomb, in a dream, during lunch, at the table or the fear of imagining yourself in the toilet. The bomb does not choose a place. I went to war and accepted the possibility of death, but I ask only one thing: let me be killed by a person, not a bomb, let me see the enemy with my own eyes. May God grant me this last human grace to perish at the hands of man. Am I asking so much?!"

памʼятати - to remember пригадувати - come back into mind

Я памʼятаю. пригадувати спогади памʼятати