Watching the news, anxiously

“Oh my gosh,” people say to us in messages. “We’re so relieved that you left Kiev when you did. You must be so glad.”

                No doubt about it, we are. But like so many other things we have encountered, our feelings are, well, complicated. On the one hand, there’s no way we would want to be in Kiev at the moment. But on the other hand, we find ourselves glued to the news, jumping at every New York Times news alert about Ukraine, Theresa keeping up with young journalist Olga’s posts on Facebook, both of us trolling the website of Kyiv Post and devouring the videos, the blog postings of friend Vlad.

                The detail maps of Kiev in the Times show many of the streets and areas we wrote about and had pictures of in our blog; the first week of the protests, Drew sent us a picture of one of the journalists we had worked with, now bloodied and bruised from an encounter with police.

                And then a week or so ago Sarajevo blows up again, and our attention is pulled back that way. “Protests are still ongoing. Who knows how this will end?” writes friend Magdalena. “People are poor and sick and tired of everything, but unfortunately it's almost impossible to change things for better, to get rid of criminal, corrupted nationalists governing this country. I'm sad.”

                Yes: surely, we are glad not to be there, where streets once decorated by festive lights are blocked by barricades; where photographs show the air full of the smoke of burning buildings; where now, tragically, bullets are flying. But there is something more as well, because now we actually know, if just a little bit, some of the very brave, idealistic and dedicated young people who are fighting these fights; and we know, just a little bit but in a first-hand way, the corruptness of the regimes (and oligarchs) they are fighting against.

                And so as we watch, and know that while we absolutely do not want to be there, we also feel a pull; we care deeply about what is happening, all the more because it is so personal, and vivid, for us.

                It is, we guess, an inescapable part of the choice we made, seven years ago – without knowing we were making a choice – to go to parts of the world where things aren’t quite settled yet, where some people are doing their utmost to retain their grip on power while others, some of whom we have worked closely with, are trying to figure out a new way. Journalism, with all its imperfections, can be a way of helping do that. We have been lucky to see some of it on the ground, in action.