Looking at my keychain today, I was again reminded of how symbolic keys are of life changes. Each key I removed, one by one, from the ring 2 years ago, meant I was a bit closer to the life change that was awaiting me in Peace Corps. For a year in Moldova I lived more-or-less keyless. The one key I did possess, for Alyona’s apartment in Ialoveni, eventually became obsolete after she got married and moved to London.
When I moved to Kiev 3 months ago, the changes in my keychain were again a tangible representation of the changes in my life. First of all, just needing a keychain again was the first sign that life here would be different.
Three keys for my apartment (I feel like I live in a safe!) plus the mailbox key. I have my own apartment! The joy of living on my own again, the responsibility of maintaining a household again. Some things are so much simpler here, others are absurdly complicated. In particular, there are a few things that I think make life so much easier and better. The utilities are all in the name of the landlord, so I didn’t have to deal with getting electricity, phone or cable turned on, as they’d never been turned off. Heating is centralized in the building, which has its pluses and minuses; although I don’t have a thermostat to control the temperature in my own apartment, I’m lucky that my building is well-heated and apartment is well-insulated, and I’ve been comfortable even on the coldest days. I mentioned to my friends Igor and Olga, who lived in Columbus about 10 years when Igor was a graduate student at Ohio State, that I thought it was a great that I didn’t need to deal with the utilities myself. Igor recalled how when he moved into his apartment in Columbus, there was a note from the gas company about a “yellow slip” that he would receive on such-and-such a day, and he had absolutely no idea what “yellow slip” meant! I also think the water heater is fantastic. Instead of some bulky, energy wasteful monster like we have in the U.S., I have a small wall-mounted unit that heats the water as I use it. This means that (a) I never risk using up the reserve of hot water, and (b) only as much water as is needed is heated up at any given time. Brilliant! There are, of course, more than a few things that aren’t so simple. Absolutely nothing is standardized. I have at least 3 different kinds of electrical outlets in my small apartment, which means I need to keep on-hand several kinds of adapters, depending on where the electrical appliance in question was made. I bought a cordless phone when I moved in, but the modern phone cord didn’t fit in the Soviet-era phone outlet. After my neighbor was kind enough to install a new phone outlet for me, he reflected on a trip to the U.S. when he’d marveled at the notion that you could buy an outlet in New York City, and install it in your apartment in San Francisco, and wouldn’t have to worry about compatibility at all. When he was over again today to help re-set my water heater, he joked that his old Soviet-era water heater just needs a good beating with a hammer once in a while to keep it running, but these modern European devices (mine happens to be Bosch) are much more “sophisticated.”
Three keys for the office. An office! Who would have thought I missed having an office to go to? I was surprised to realize that I look forward to working more-or-less normally again – professionally, seriously, etc. I enjoyed my 1 year “sort-of”‘ vacation from my life, and it definitely paid off in terms of refocusing my career, as I had hoped and wanted. It’s interesting to note that I feel motivated and excited about work again for the first time in a really long time. I think I was more burned out after 10 years at Ohio State than I even realized, and PC was as much about just taking taking a break as it was about gaining new experience and skills.
I’ve been re-reading some of my old blog entries today. The confusion, the change, the friends, the intensity, the incredible people, the boredom, the mind-boggling slowness, the unbelievable complexities, the overwhelming sense of pride I felt at the Swearing-In Ceremony, when I actually, finally, officially became a Peace Corps Volunteer. Although I know that I made the right decision to accept this position with the Chornobyl Program, it continues to nag at me that I left PC early. Re-reading my essays today got me thinking that maybe someday I’ll join PC again, maybe at retirement, like I thought for many years would be when I would do PC. Who knows?
In the meantime, I continue to love Kiev and Ukraine. A Ukrainian friend asked me the other day how the heck I ended up here (well, that’s more or less what he asked, just a little more delicately). He knew I’d had some previous experience with Ukrainians that hadn’t, shall we say, left me with the best of impressions. As I recalled for him the events of last summer that led to my acceptance of the job here, I realized I had, in fact, seen myself as seeking work in Russia eventually, as I was more familiar and enamored with places like St. Petersburg and Moscow. But now I see Ukraine is very much the right place for me. It’s different enough from Russia and Moldova to provide me with ample learning opportunity about history and culture, yet still has enough familiarity that I don’t feel I’ve gone through a whole new round of culture shock. The national language is similar enough (heck, at least it’s in the same language family!) that I am not completely lost. In fact, I’ve decided to take some Ukrainian lessons, which won’t be nearly as hard as Moldovan lessons would have been for me.
Kiev, too, feels very right for me. I always lived in a city, and although it was a great learning experience to live in a village, I have to admit, I’m a city-girl. I love the arts and cultural opportunities a city of 4 million offers, from ballet to opera, to newly-released films, to art exhibitions and museums. I enjoy the facilities and services available in the city – from regularly available heat, electricity and running water, to public transport, an abundance of shops, and off-season produce (ah, my beloved lettuce!).
The Chornobyl Program keeps me in touch with the way of life I saw and experienced in Moldova, though, the one I don’t want to ever forget. Just 2 hours from Kiev, one of my colleagues, Igor, lives in a city of 70,000 people, in a home without running water or natural gas. It’s not by choice; his part of the city has never been connected with the public utility lines. They heat their home with the kind of wood-burning stove I’ve seen in museums, located in the corner of one room which transfers heat through tile walls to the rest of the small house. Well, actually, as he describes it, when he sleeps, his head is plenty warm, but his feet, farthest from the “heating wall” are frozen. And I hadn’t even thought about you cook without a gas stove until he invited me to dinner one night, and it suddenly occurred to me that everything had been cooked over a wood-burning stove. It’s a totally different kind of cooking! How do you regulate the temperature? How long does a dish take to cook? How do you simmer one pot when another should be boiling? Once again, I realized how utterly incompetent I would be in that environment.
I talked to Igor about keys the other day. He works in three different offices, each with its own set of multiple keys, and his pockets are heavy with them. But he doesn’t have, or need, a key for his home. How cool is that?
Anka in Kyiv 