Seventeen-year-old Seryozha squeezes himself through a pair of
absurdly narrow bars and beckons me to follow. It's -8C, but I have to
take off my coat or I'll never make it through the gap. I lie on the
ground, hold my breath, and wriggle slowly under the bars. It's
undignified and awkward, but there's no other way in.
The bars fence in an underground utility room that holds the heating and sewage system for a Soviet-era apartment complex. I follow Seryozha warily through a series of pitch-dark chambers, using my head torch to avoid low-slung pipes and piles of human shit. Above us, Kiev is enjoying a day of crisp winter sunshine. At the far end of the chambers, a jury-rigged lightbulb casts a pale-yellow glow on a row of filthy mattresses.
Seryozha shows me a bag of food-scraps he has scavenged from bins. The smell makes me gag. For Seryozha and at least two others, this place is home. They seem indifferent to its shortcomings; probably because they are all high. The dirt floor underfoot is scattered with empty yellow tubes. They're from a brand of Ukrainian glue that's used for resoling shoes, but when inhaled from a plastic bag, the fumes suppress feelings of cold and hunger and produce auditory and visual hallucinations. They also cause brain damage. Full Read
The bars fence in an underground utility room that holds the heating and sewage system for a Soviet-era apartment complex. I follow Seryozha warily through a series of pitch-dark chambers, using my head torch to avoid low-slung pipes and piles of human shit. Above us, Kiev is enjoying a day of crisp winter sunshine. At the far end of the chambers, a jury-rigged lightbulb casts a pale-yellow glow on a row of filthy mattresses.
Seryozha shows me a bag of food-scraps he has scavenged from bins. The smell makes me gag. For Seryozha and at least two others, this place is home. They seem indifferent to its shortcomings; probably because they are all high. The dirt floor underfoot is scattered with empty yellow tubes. They're from a brand of Ukrainian glue that's used for resoling shoes, but when inhaled from a plastic bag, the fumes suppress feelings of cold and hunger and produce auditory and visual hallucinations. They also cause brain damage. Full Read
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