Always a new adventure

Yesterday turned out to have some unexpected, and unwanted, excitement. After a few hours in the office, I met Pierre at the metro station to go to the Chornobyl Museum. The metro is often quite packed, but I was surprised by the “rush-hour” size of crowd we found at 2:30 in the afternoon.

It was a classic pickpocket scenario, a huge mass of people squeezing into an already full metro car, and my purse got jammed in between people as I was shoved forward. Someone managed to pop it open and pull out the wallet. I felt immediately that my purse was being pulled and tried to pull it closer but was too late. When I finally got a good hold on my purse, my wallet was gone. I was kind of stunned, a bit confused, and didn’t know what to do. I tried to look around on the floor, thinking maybe it had fallen out. In the confusion I missed the next stop, but then I started telling people around me that someone stole my wallet. I don’t know what I expected them to do, but I guess I was hoping for some Citizen Action or something. The most anyone did or said was to tell me to go find the police. I got off at the next station, the second from where I had started, and went up to one of the workers at the entrance gates. She called the station police officer, who took me to their small “office”, which I think if I was so disoriented and upset, I would have found to be a fascinating place – a small cage/holding cell, miserable cement walls, an ancient desk with an even more ancient rotary telephone, and a bench along one wall. I couldn’t remember the Russian word for “wallet” but opened my purse, revealing the empty space and said someone took my money and documents. Really, the money didn’t worry me so much as did the loss of my UN ID and my bank cards. Those would be a pain to replace, I knew. The officer asked a bunch of questions and wrote down my information. “What’s your name? Where are you from?” (My name, which seems so simple in English, never fails to baffle people here. Double letters aren’t common in words or names in Russian, and when you’ve got 3 sets of double letters, plus a name that just doesn’t sound write in Russian, it takes some time to get my name written down. Thank goodness for bi-lingual business cards!) “What was in the wallet?” (‘kylochik’, that’s the word!) “What station did it happen at? Why didn’t you go to the police in the first station? Did you see anybody near you?” Yeah, only about half of Kiev!

Then he started trying to call the police at the other stations, getting no-answers and/or busy signals. Finally he got through to somebody someplace, and he asked them to pass along to the guys at the first station what had happened. Then he told me I’d have to wait about 30 minutes as the officers checked the stations, and he suggested I could wait outside, if I wanted. Pierre and I went up into the fresh air and I called my parents to have them cancel my U.S. bank card, and then suddenly I remembered my Ukrainian bank card was in the wallet, too, and so we went back to the police office to use their phone to call my bank here. Just as I was about to call, the phone rang, the officer answered and listened for a minute, then hung up and told me might want to wait before I called my bank. A wallet had been found in the first station after where I had gotten on, matching the description I had given, and I could go get it from the officer there. “There’s no money in it, of course,” he said, “but your cards may be there.” Wow! I’ve heard a lot of stories from disgruntled and disillusioned Ukrainians about the uselessness of the police, but I was pretty damn impressed with their speed and assistance.

We went back to the other station and I was very relieved (and surprised!) to get anything back at all, not to mention so quickly. I figure the guy was on the train with me and got off at the next station, where he dropped the wallet and the police found it. Some jerk has some pocket money now, but at least he did me the favor of not keeping the cards and the ID!

After that adventure we went to our original plans and met Alessandra and crew at the Chornobyl Museum, where we had a guided tour. Man, did that make all the difference! The first time I visited the museum, with my parents in September, we didn’t have a guide and I realize now how much of the museum’s symbolism, not to mention just basic facts of history, we missed at the time. It was particularly interesting to revisit the museum now after I’ve learned so much about the Chornobyl accident and its effects at my job. Alessandra and I both felt like we’ve experienced too extreme descriptions of the event – the dramatic, emotionally-charged retelling and documentation of a national tragedy, in the museum, and a “it’s not as bad as all that” perspective from my colleagues at the Chornobyl Program.

In the evening we finally made it to “The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe.” I thought it was fantastic! It was really well done, very true to the book, and really beautiful to look at. It makes we want to read all the Chronicles again.

Joanna and Krystal arrive Friday afternoon from Chisinau. We’ve got a table booked for 12 of us Saturday night in a club near Independence Square. With the reservation, we get: 6 bottles each of champagne, vodka, wine, plus water and juices; tons of food and desserts; and a live band. The table is our’s for the night, so we can go out at midnight for the fireworks and get back inside the warm bar to party some more. It should be a very fun weekend!

Merry Christmas!

We had a nice, quiet Christmas here – and a very white one, too! Pierre arrived on Thursday, as did Alessandra’s mother and her mother’s boyfriend. Hubert’s girlfriend is visiting from Prague, too. On Christmas Eve, Alessandra hosted us all for dinner, including Hana (the newest UNV, working for UNAIDS) and Hanifa, a native of Afghanistan who has been living in Ukraine for about 11 years with her family as refugees and who now works as National UNV for UN High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR). Earlier in the day, we had hoped to see the English-language version of “The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe” playing at a local movie theatre, but our “best guess” at the movie time was off by about 2 hours. 🙂 Sunday we had a lovely Christmas lunch at Igor and Olga’s, with her brother Sergei and his girlfriend Ira. In the evening, Pierre and I treated ourselves to cappuccino and ice cream in a fancy cafe and later met up with “the gang” for a beer in one of our favorite pubs. Not exactly a traditional Christmas, but then again, it’s not quite Christmas by Ukrainian standards!

Christmas here is celebrated by the Orthodox calendar (January 7), which means the holiday season was only just getting started at the time that feels like the apex of it for us westerners. The New Year’s Tree was officially lit on Sunday evening (December 25), following a parade down Khreschatyk Street.

Monday was an official UN holiday, and it was nice to have some free time on a regular working day. My big accomplishment for the day was mailing home my Christmas presents (finally!). I’ve been so busy lately that I didn’t have time earlier to send the package, but my dread of Eastern European post offices and postal employees didn’t help me get there any sooner, either. My initial fears were realized when we entered a huge hall, lined on both sides with clerks at windows with long lines, not a one of which was labeled anything remotely like “mail stuff here.” I walked out, tried to find a sign or directory (no such luck) and then back into the pit. Finally I found an “Information Desk” with a woman talking on the telephone, calmly ignoring the growing line of customers. Although I realize that often the only way to get something accomplished under such circumstances here is to interrupt the clerk, I just can’t bring myself to do it. I still want to believe that polite patience will eventually pay off (although time and time again I’ve been proven wrong…). When the lengthy phone conversation ended, I finally learned that in fact the part of the post office where you actually mail things is in a completely different part of the building, up the block, and entered by a different door. Up the street we went, my anxiety growing as I recalled all the hassles I had last year in the Moldovan post office. When I tried to mail calendars home for Christmas last year, the clerk would only repeatedly tell me “it’s very, very expensive.” While on the one hand, it was sweet that she was so concerned for my financial well-being, it was, on the other hand, frustrating to have so much hassle to just be able to mail something. Much to my surprise and delight, the clerk in the Kiev Central Post Office wasn’t quite as horrified by my desire to mail a box to the U.S. She wasn’t exactly thrilled, don’t get me wrong, but compared to what I had expected, filling out 4 copies of a form, discussing in detail the contents of my package, and assuring the clerk that I had, indeed, carefully padded everything inside to prevent breaking, mailing my Christmas presents home was a piece of cake this year!

Tuesday we had incredible snow all day long. I thought it was beautiful, Pierre thought it was absurdly cold. Despite the weather, though, we made a day of sight-seeing and went to the famous Kiev-Perchersk Monastery. We visited one of the many museums in the complex, which contained an exquisite collection of gold jewelry and artifacts from the ancient Scythian civilization that once lived in the area of present-day Ukraine. We also went on a tour of some of the catacombs, or caves, where the original founders of the monastery lived, and in which for many centuries preceding generations of monks lived and prayed. Today, the caves contain the tombs of about a thousand monks and saints. The oldest remains there are over 700 years old and are said to be miraculously preserved. Many saints bodies are kept in glass caskets, wrapped in embroidered silk vestments, lining the narrow hallways of the caves. The system of caves is vast and complex, and our tour provided just a brief glimpse into the special monastic world.

From the monastery, we walked to the hillside park that contains the 108 meter tall statue of Rodina-Mat’, or Motherland, a monument to the Soviet Union’s victory in World War II, or the Great Patriotic War as it is known here. Under the huge statue is the WWII Museum, and surrounding her are examples of tanks, fighter jets and other military vehicles.

Normally you can see the Rodina-Mat’ statue from very far away as she stands on the top of a hill overlooking the Dnieper River. Tuesday, though, the snowstorm was so intense that we were within a few hundred feet before we could actually see her!

Today, Wednesday, we will visit the Chornobyl Museum and try again to see “The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe.”

Joanna and Krystal, two PCV’s from Moldova, will join us this weekend to celebrate New Year’s Eve. We have a table booked at our regular bar, 44, which is conveniently located just a couple blocks from Independence Square. We’ll rush out close to midnight for the fireworks and then rush back to the food, drink and warmth of the club!

Chornobyl

On April 26, 1986, a test of emergency equipment went awry at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant in northern Ukraine, and a series of explosions led to a nuclear core meltdown in reactor #4. The roof was blown off the reactor and large amounts of uranium fuel and other radioactive material was released into the environment. 2 people were killed immediately by the explosions and 1 person died presumably of a heart attack. A fire burned for 10 days.

On the day of the accident, the winds were blowing in a northwesterly direction, thus carrying the initial contamination away from Kyiv. Instead, the radiation cloud went across Belarus, Russia and into the Scandinavian countries, who were the first to publicly announce that something had happened although they didn’t know exactly what until 3 days later when Soviet authorities began to release a few details. The natural wind cycle carried the radiation across Europe and back around across Turkey and the Black Sea. Thus, some parts of Crimea (southern Ukraine) actually ended up more contaminated than areas much closer to Chornobyl. And although we think of Chornobyl as a Ukrainian problem, in actuality, parts of Belarus were much more severely affected. Check the map – Chornobyl is almost within walking distance of the Belarus border.

Over 200,000 workers (known as “liquidators”) from the police, fire services, and the Army were initially involved in containing and cleaning up the accident in 1986 and 1987. Ultimately, as many as 600,000 people were involved in the clean-up and became registered as liquidators, although many so listed received only low doses of radiation. However, the Soviet authorities kept poor records of all the people involved in the clean-up and the actual number of “liquidators” is not known.

Scientists consider the Chornobyl accident the worst nuclear catastrophe in history. We were told that no comparison can be made with Hiroshima and Nagasaki because those were controlled explosions. In human terms, the attack on Japan was exponentially worse, but from the cold perspective of science, the lose of control in the Chornobyl reactor that led to the unexpected and uncontrolled explosion was far more catastrophic.

80% of the radiation a person could receive from the Chornobyl accident would have been received in the first 10 years following the accident. In other words, scientists can determine how much radiation a person living in the affected region can expect to receive in the course of a normal 70-year life. Someone born in April 1986 would receive 80% of that radiation in the first 10 years of his/her life, and the remaining 20% is received in gradually decreasing increments over the next 60 years. A person born today, nearly 20 years after the accident, can expect to receive over the course of his/her lifespan a dosage of radiation slightly higher than what anyone on the planet gets.

Radiation exists both naturally and artificially in all parts of the world, and each and every human being is exposed to nominal levels of radiation throughout his/her life. Flying in an airplane exposes you to the same amount of radiation as a couple X-Rays, for example.

Soon after the accident in April 1986, four zones were identified as Chornobyl-affected areas with varying degrees of affectedness. Zone 1 is the power plant itself and a 30-kilometer radius around it, known as the Exclusion Zone. No one is supposed to live there and you need special permission to enter into this zone even today. Zone 2 was Mandatory Evacuation, and all persons residing in this area had to leave their homes, gardens, animals, and the vast majority of their personal belongings behind; they took with them only their most vital documents and perhaps a few personal items. They were provided with new apartments in different places throughout Ukraine. Zone 3 was Voluntary Evacuation, and anyone who chose to relocate was also provided with a new apartment in another town. Zone 4 was “Radiological Monitoring”, from which no one was evacuated but in which the radiation level is supposed to be checked two times a year.

The first evacuees were the 45,000 residents of the town of Pripyat about 3 kilometers from the plant, who were the plant workers and their families. They were evacuated 3 days after the accident; the entire town was evacuated in 3 hours. Residents were told to take only their most essential items – mainly important documents – everything else was left behind. A new town was constructed outside the exclusion zone, and most of Pripyat’s former residents were re-located there. Ultimately, about 116,000 people were evacuated to less contaminated areas in the months following the accident.

Much as it can be raining on one side of town and not the other, or even on one side of the street and not the other, the radiation cloud created by the Chornobyl accident spread in such as way as to contaminate one village or piece of land, but not another just a few kilometers or even just a few meters away. The 4 Chornobyl Zones are not in any way like a circular “bull’s eye” target of contamination, evenly decreasing in danger as you move out from the reactor. Quite the contrary, in fact. One village may be in Zone 4, and just down the road, farther from the Exclusion Zone, a village is in Zone 2.

Due to rapid radioactivity decay, the radiation dose rates around the plant had already declined by a factor of 100 by the Autumn of 1986. The natural environment was already showing visible signs of recovery by 1989. Some plants pose no danger for human consumption today, but others are still unsafe. Mushrooms and blueberries are the most dangerous produce in the contaminated forests, as both have very shallow roots and thus absorb a lot of the contaminants (primarily caesium) in the soil.

Today the 4 Chornobyl Zones are as much, if not more, a political categorization as they are a contamination status. Each Zone brings its residents a set of social and economic benefits, first implemented by the Soviet government and later made permanent by the Ukrainian constitution. Furthermore, anyone identified as working on the clean-up at the plant is also guaranteed a certain set of rights and benefits by the government. People designated as “Chornobyl disabled” have free travel on public transportation and receive financial compensation, in addition to other benefits. Those registered as “liquidators” receive free vacations at a sanitorium (or health spa) as well as financial compensation and other benefits. Zone 3 residents have the right to retire 5 years earlier than normal, they receive an additional 13 days of vacation per year, and they pay slightly lower taxes. Zone 3 residents are also compensated with an extra 2 hrivna/month to help them buy “clean” food and they are paid 10 hrivna/month because they work in a contaminated zone. 12 hrivna is equivalent to about $2.15 USD, an amount of money with which you can buy a few loaves of bread or a couple kilos of potatoes. Children in Zones 3 and 4 receive one free meal a day at school. As for the extra vacation days, I am told that few people are actually able to take advantage of that benefit, as many live like my host family in Moldova, keeping their own large gardens and livestock as their primary food sources. Running your own farm, whether hundreds of acres or just a few, is not the kind of work you can leave for even a day, much less two or three weeks.

Some recent reports refer to the Exclusion Zone as a kind of “nature preserve” now. Wildlife is thriving in the human-free zone, and there is even a breed of wild horses flourishing in the area that is near extinction in other regions. Plants and animals are adapting, and Mother Nature is, as usual, proving to us her ability and power to survive.

Chornobyl Timeline (Reuters)
Aug. 1977: The Soviet Union launches Chornobyl’s reactor #1
May 1979: Chornobyl starts operating reactor #2
June 1981: Reactor #3 is put into operation
April 1984: Reactor #4 is started up
April 26, 1986: A test of emergency equipment went awry and a series of explosions led to a nuclear core meltdown in Chornobyl reactor #4. The resulting radioactive cloud of dust spread over Ukraine, Belarus, Russia and other parts of Europe. The other 3 reactors are shut down. Soviet nuclear officials give no details of the accident.
Nov. 5, 1986: Reactor #2 is restarted
Nov. 1986: Hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilian experts construct a cover, known as the sarcophagus, above the destroyed reactor.
End of 1986: Reactors #1 and #3 are restarted
Oct. 1991: Fire in reactor #2 forces station officials to shut it down
Nov. 1996: Lifespan of reactor #1 expires and it is shut down
April 2000: Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma says Chornobyl’s last operating reactor, #3, will be shut down by the end of the year
Dec. 15, 2000: Chornobyl shut down for good

Chornobyl Facts (Times)
– 30 people were immediately killed by the explosions.
– From 1986-87, 240,000 people took part in the clean-up operations at the plant and up to 30 km around. The clean-up continued until 1990 and eventually involved 600,000 people.
– 116,000 people were evacuated from the surrounding area in 1986; later a further 220,000 people were relocated in the former Soviet republics of Belarus, Ukraine and Russia.
– Highest radiation doses were received by about 600 emergency and plant workers on site the night of the accident. An estimated 100 people died, but because of Soviet failure to keep records, the exact number is not known.

(“10 Years After Chernobyl – What do we really know?”, a booklet produced upon the results of the international conference, “One Decade After Chernobyl: Summing Up the Consequences of the Accident”, Vienna, Austria, 1996; sponsored by The European Commission (EU), the World Health Organization (WHO), and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)).

For more information about Chornobyl, I recommend a few sites:
International Atomic Energy Agency Chernobyl FAQ
The Human Consequences of the Chernobyl Accident: A Strategy for Recovery, UN Report 2002
Ten Years after Chernobyl: what do we really know?, a booklet produced on the results of the international conference “One Decade After Chernobyl: Summing Up the Consequences of the Accident,” Vienna, Austria, 1996
Chornobyl Nuclear Disaster Zone Administration
Chornobyl.info

International Volunteer Day

I am happy to report that our events on International Volunteer Day went really well! You can read about it and see some great photos on the UNDP/Ukraine website: http://www.un.org.ua/?p=news&article=622.

The Language Issue

I’ve forgotten to mention what I’ve been reading lately. In the last month, I’ve read: A Primate’s Memoir, by Robert M. Sapolsky (thank you Bob and Jenny!); Sea Glass, by Anita Shreve; The Translator, by John Crowley; Falling Angels, by Tracy Chevalier (thank you Sophie for all three of those!); The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, by Haruki Murakami (thank you Emily!); and The Dew Breaker, by Edwidge Danticat.

Language is a bit of an issue here in Ukraine, as in Moldova. Ukrainian is the official language of the country since Ukraine became independent in 1991, although there is still a large population of ethnic Russians and even ethnic Ukrainians who speak Russian as their primary language. Russian is much more common in the eastern half of Ukraine, which is geographically and ideologically closer to Russia. Ukrainian is much more predominant in the western half of Ukraine.

The capital, Kyiv (as it is properly translated from Ukrainian, “Kiev” being the translation from Russian) is a mix of both languages. In the shops and markets, on the street, and in restaurants, you are more likely to hear Russian spoken. On a few occasions, though, a vendor has started in Ukrainian with me, but it has been the exception. But all government and official business is conducted in Ukrainian.

Much of the television programming is in Ukrainian, and if it’s an imported show from Russia, Ukrainian subtitles are always added. Signs and advertisements (whether on television, outdoor billboards, or ads in the metro) by law must be in Ukrainian.

As I encountered in Moldova, there is a real mix of languages here in Ukraine. Ukrainian words slip into the Russian, and vice versa. For example, I kept hearing my Ukrainian colleagues at work use a word I didn’t know and I finally asked what it was. It’s a Ukrainian word, they told me, and in English means “community.” Oh, like “so’obschtvo”, I said, giving the Russian word I knew for “community.” No, they told me, the Russian word doesn’t mean “community” the same way that “hromada” does in Ukrainian. OK, I’ll take your word for it!

Ukrainian and Russian are not as drastically different as Russian and Moldovan/Romanian are, since they are both Slavic languages, but nonetheless the two languages have their distinct qualities. Many native Russian speakers can generally understand Ukrainian, even if they never formally studied the language. As a non-native speaker, though, I find the two languages very different and don’t find myself innately understanding Ukrainian. I can usually get the gist of a written document or newspaper article, but not always. Spoken Ukrainian I don’t have a grasp of yet, which I can see will present some struggles in the areas where we work, in the Chornobyl affected region (Chornobyl, by the way, is the translation from Ukrainian for the place most of us English speakers know of as Chernobyl, which is the translation from the Russian). Ukrainian has been the primary language in the villages and towns I’ve visited so far in the Chornobyl affected region, and although most people do speak Russian, their day-to-day life is conducted in Ukrainian.

Well, I learned a bit of Bulgarian during my year in Tvarditsa and was eventually able to follow most conversations, so I hope I’ll reach a similar level here with Ukrainian. At the least, I need to learn a few phrases to show people that I’m trying.

Here’s a link with more about Ukraine, and scroll down for more information about the language issue. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiev