Normalcy - Vegan Festival In Kyiv

Full Photo Album: https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjAU6Sg

My final full day in Kyiv was full of faux normalcy. It was a weekend, and my new friend Olie (of Kyiv Punk Rock Tour) invited me to a small Vegetarian Festival. I had several interviews I still needed to get, including with a Polish American filmmaker, Mania, whom I’d met months earlier in New York City at her Ukrainian fundraiser. I was introduced via social media to Mania by Mark Cary, the U.S. Marine turned humanitarian with whom I was in Ukraine primarily to film. See how connections work?

I also wanted to meet another contact of Dima, the now exiled lead singer of the Russian punk rock band Tarakany! (Cockroach), who suggested I hook up with Morj, a fellow punk rocker and co-creator of a vegetarian brand of MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) called Loopci, which was born out of the vegetarian soldiers at the front wishing to maintain their vegetarian lifestyle, which I still find so astounding. I can barely maintain my vegetarian (or what I call “mostly meatless”) plant-based lifestyle in New York City, yet these guys, facing death daily, insisted on keeping a “clean” diet. Talk about discipline.

Morj gave me some samples, and when I finally tried them at home, they were delicious. I posted a short video about this on Instagram, and you can find it HERE

I went with Anastasia and her boyfriend, Vlad, later met us there. This day turned into a big old party, where strangers became friends, and everyone was in a festive, enjoy-the-moment mood. Perhaps this was because of the war, but it would have been so much fun had we not been reminded of war’s toll so often.

During my interview with both Mania and Morj, I was reminded of the toll this war has taken on everyone in Ukraine’s mental and physical state. Imagine having friends and relatives on the front dying and, in Morj’s case, the risk of being called up to a meatgrinder like Bakhmut or, in Anastasia’s case, her father already there.

Nonetheless, when curfew hit at 11 PM, no one was ready to go home, and the party-hardy crowd all seemed to hit the same supermarket simultaneously to get supplies for house parties before the stores closed. The day was an apt reminder that it would take a lot more than a brutal war to extinguish the good-time spirit of these optimistic, life-loving people. In Ukraine, having a sense of normalcy is a mighty act of rebellion.

PS Apologies for the profanity in a few photos, but a Raw Travel viewer in the Midwest, Thomas Shockey, created the artwork. Thomas sent these works of art to me, and I wanted Ukrainians to have them. I thought about editing the photos, but what is more profane in the end, showing the “F” word or killing, wounding, displacing, and traumatizing thousands of innocent civilians and upending an entire world? War brings out the ugly in people, and I’m no exception. I’m keeping it in.