Word - Гигиена (Guiguiéna*)
Word - Слово (and anthropological experience...)
Гигиена (Guiguiena*) = Hygiene.
At the beginning of March 2020, as I was heading to the airport to return to Belgium, I received an SMS from Aeroflot informing me that at Sheremetievo, the Moscow airport where I have a stopover, our flight was going to arrive at a terminal other than the usual terminal planned... Ok... At the bends of the multiple labyrinthine corridors leading me from one terminal to the other, to the flight to Brussels, I see, without paying much attention, staff setting up Red Cross tents... The flight to Brussels went smoothly. Return to the banality of the usual route. Nothing special in Brussels-National airport. I forget what in my memory probably then seemed to have to be classified in the category of "unimportant details"...
About ten days later, it was all up the headlines of the News. Covid is upon us !
In fact, while we were still acting "as if nothing had happened", the Russian authorities had already taken the precaution of isolating all flights from Asia to a single terminal...
You may remember, there was then the very first long crisis meeting, the first in an endless series, and after hours of discussions behind closed doors, the government spokesperson declared, during the press conference which followed, that citizens were recommended... to "wash their hands well"... And that was all !...
The various kind of "measures", which even today no one dares to undertake a factual analysis of, will come later. But that day, the fear amplification operation, already well underway in most of the media, ended with an incredulous "all that for that"?... Those who know me will think that I am taunting... It is not so. No irony here. For once, it was not the government that was pathetic, but rather the fact that this recommendation was perfectly justified...
"Not so long ago, and don't ask me how we ended up talking about this at work, a colleague told me that if he had to take off his shoes to come in, he preferred that I do never invite him at my house, because he wouldn't come..."
In Crimea, when we come home, we take off our shoes, of course, and we wash our hands, of course. It's "guiguiena", as my Lady says. But we also change clothes. There, we have clothes "for the city", and "indoor" clothes (and clothes for the garden, in my case, since I often work there). Our grandparents also, if you are, like me, of a certain age (I know, being a grandfather myself, my grandparents' time is a long time ago...), had indoor clothes ... Because it wouldn't even occur to you to wallow in your sofa with your clothes worn outside (°), on the road, in town. That would be disgusting! First we change clothes. It's guiguiena!...
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(*) Note the confusion between the letters H and G in the transcription of words imported from French, the H not existing in the Cyrillic alphabet. As in Гипноз (Guypnose), Геликоптер (Guélicoptere), or even Алкогол (Alcogol) imported from the English alcohol... Or in my first name, Генри (Guenri), pronounced like in English, given that the diphthong "en" cannot be pronounced in any language other than French... This kind of confusion in the transcription of certain letters also exists in the reverse direction. For example by confusing the V (which is written В in Cyrillic) and the B, as in Sébastopol, which only exists in French. In all other languages it is Sevastopol...
(°) "outside" in Russian is "на улице" literally "on the street". The opposition "inside/outside" is embodied in the opposition "дома/на улице" (at home/on the street). Here we find the fundamental importance of "the house"... (cfr Note "Город (Gorad)" dated 07/10/2023, and others to come...)
Other Intercultural Notes...
"Si vis pacem..." the article, some kind of manifesto of our association.
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