A Belarusian woman worked as a long-haul truck driver in Europe for a year. Now she's trying to get into an Italian university
"I work like a man to live like a woman," says 26-year-old Sviatlana Arlova from Brest. Despite a law degree, the girl decided to get behind the wheel of a truck. Her first stint had many adventures.
The young woman shares her life story on Instagram. She is originally from Barysaŭ, but spent most of her childhood in Bierazino, and has lived in Brest since she was 18.
Sviatlana is raising a second-grade daughter, rides motorcycles, and loves to travel.
Sviatlana jokes that so far, the only education she has truly needed in life is driving school. Because thanks to her driver's license, the Brest resident is now earning money.
Despite loving dresses and heels, the girl admits: her soul yearns to drive a 40-ton truck.
She couldn't find such a job in Belarus — everywhere she was rejected: "We don't hire girls, you won't manage, it won't work without experience." But in the European Union, she didn't encounter such problems.
She got behind the wheel about a year ago. Her first stint wasn't easy — but thanks to the support of management and colleagues, she managed to master the new profession. Now, a parking maneuver that barely worked on the fifth attempt on her first day, Sviatlana considers an easy warm-up.
On her third shift, she got stuck in a private sector in Germany, and local residents called the police on the truck driver. The evacuation took more than five hours — with a bonus fine of several thousand euros.
However, the Belarusian woman is convinced: people don't get tired from work, but from low wages. And people don't burn out from workload, but because their work is cheaply valued.
Sviatlana doesn't regret her choice — she says that if she had given in to gender stereotypes once, she would never have known what the world around her could be like. And she urges other women: "Work, girls, happiness is in money."
It's funny, but men are sometimes offended that a woman works as a long-haul truck driver. Sometimes, Sviatlana receives messages saying that she — a delicate girl — has fled her family responsibilities: "Children need to be raised, warmth and comfort maintained in the home, not intrude into a man's profession!" They accuse her that because of women in long-haul trucking, "men's work has been devalued."
The Belarusian woman, however, treats this with irony: "Learn, little one, maybe you'll succeed at being a man too."
"When I was a teenager, I dreamed of driving a car. And I thought that when I grew up, I would definitely get my license and drive a car. I really dreamed about it. And now I'm behind the wheel, I'm doing something I just incredibly enjoy."
So it turned out that she is even paid for realizing her dream. For Sviatlana, it doesn't matter what she drives — a motorcycle, a car, or a truck. She claims she would gladly fly a plane too.
By the way, her blog helps the truck driver a lot in real life. One time Sviatlana recounted how she was working on the Germany-Netherlands route. At that time, she needed a dermatologist's consultation. The conversation with the Belarusian doctor took place online — she prescribed an ointment that could be bought without a prescription in Poland (the girl couldn't get there anytime soon). As a result, through her blog, she found another truck driver who was driving through Poland and could stop at a pharmacy. Since they couldn't meet in person, they calculated a parking lot where both would arrive at different times — and the colleague hid the ointment for Sviatlana between the posts.
The girl says that working nine months in Europe without a break was not difficult — because she was constantly focused exclusively on work. The last two weeks before going home proved to be the hardest — because by then Sviatlana was already shopping and packing her suitcases, and her thoughts were already in Belarus.
Now Sviatlana has decided that she is ready for changes in her life and has dusted off her law diploma. She has started preparing documents to enroll in a master's program at an Italian university.
She admits that she understands: the idea even sounds crazy, but she doesn't intend to back down from the plan: "The decision itself was spontaneous, but it was prompted by an unpleasant incident when I believed in my abilities, discovered new knowledge and new opportunities. There's no turning back..."
For now, Sviatlana does not plan to quit her trucking job — she intends to study part-time and combine work and education. Among her first goals is to raise her Italian language level from A2.
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