Dimitri speaks good English since he has been working for several years in a greenhouse in Norway. He earns five times as much money in Norway as he does in Minsk

-But that is also because I have nothing else to do in Norway but to work. I don't have my wife there and so I take as many shifts as I can. If I would move there I would probably not earn as much because I would like to spend more time with my wife and raise a family.

He has been thinking about moving to Norway permanently but most probably he will stay here in Minsk. He runs a small business with some friends and together they tour around Belorus with a huge tent and sell honey at markets.

But today he is working for the monastery and the honey tent is going to be placed in a big square in the middle of Minsk. The Sisters will be working there on easter eve to sell candles, icons and handcrafts. This morning offered my hands to help out and since Dimitri speaks good English I was assigned to help his work team put up the tent.

We stop at a huge square in front of a big supermarket and start unloading the truck. The work is heavy, because the frame of the huge tent is mainly made by thick steel pipes. I work with a determined fellow who apparently has done this many times before. He and I stand in the large truck handing down the steel pipes and the decorations to the guys in the square. He doesn't speak English but he's got a very good signlanguage which makes him very easy to work with.

After an hour or so everything is unloaded and we proceed to put up the tent. The air is still mild but the hard work and the beaming sun makes me thirsty, so I run across the square to by a soda at a small wending cart outside the huge supermarket.

The supermarket is a huge old building in old soviet architecture. The lady at the wending cart is nice and helpful and I manage to buy an orange soda pop mainly just by smiling and pointing.

For several hours we work hard to get put up the tent up and to assemble the interior furniture. I am assigned to put together the shelves from Ikea which is a task I like, it makes me feel like home.

When practically everything is in order there is a man in a gray suit who comes up to Dimitry and starts arguing with him. He is a heavy middle aged man dressed in a well fitted suit. He's got the posture and the look about him as someone who is very rich and used to get his will through.

After the rude guy has left, Dimitri quickly tells everyone what to do and there is a noticeable increase in the work pace. So when the man in the suit returns, everything is finished and we are already packing the tools back in to the van.

The guy in the grey suit has brought yet another person also with a big belly and gray suit, they look so much alike that they could have been brothers. The two of them have also brought and a third person whith a puffy red face and peering eyes. He seems to be some kind of official or inspector.

I toy with the imagination that these guys belong to some branch of the Russian mafia and that they are here to squeeze the convent for money for protection. I keep myself in the background since I don't know what they would do if they found out I am a foreigner without a work permit.

The two bloated guys in gray suits argues for a while with Dimitri who only shakes his head and seem to say tat there is nothing he can do about it. The suits points at him and then waves with a hand at the tent and it's obvius that they aren't happy with the situation.

Meanwhile the red faced inspector walks around inside the tent inspecting it thoroughly. He even scrutinize me for a while as I am sitting having a smoke, but I turn my head away and look in another direction.

After they have left we continue to pack up the tools and I ask Dimitri what it was all about.

-It was the owners of the supermarket and they weren't very happy, he says, they told me we have to take it all down again because when they gave their permit they thought it would only be a small tent.

Everything here seems to need a permit of some sort, even the house I live in have it's own passport. As if it would go anywhere.