Links and books

I added a couple new links to the sidebar. I am very excited about RPCV podcast, which has interesting discussions with Returned Peace Corps Volunteers about their time in PC. You can download the podcast, but I recommend listening and watching the stream from the website itself so you can see the photos they are talking about.

The other new link is for PAUCI, the Polish-Ukrainian Cooperation Foundation. I recently started volunteering with them, and am doing mostly proofreading so far (English version of the website, project proposals, and reports). They are a nice group of people, and I really like the work they do. I’m looking forward to being involved with them in the coming months. By the way, the organization used to be called the Poland-America-Ukraine Cooperation Initiative, but when the U.S. stopped funding the project, they re-organized into a new Foundation. It just infuriates me that so much international aid from the U.S. is being withdrawn from great projects like this one and redirected to Bush’s mess in the Middle East!

The books I’ve read lately are: Bury Me Standing, by Isabel Fonseca (about the Roma, or Gypsies – fascinating!); I Wonder as I Wander, by Langston Hughes (his autobiography of travels in the 1930’s to Haiti, Cuba, the Soviet Union, Soviet Central Asia, and Spain – one of the best books I’ve ever read); Tooth and Nail, by Ian Rankin; Bones and Silence, by Reginald Hill; and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, by John Berendt.

Hi from Ivano-Frankovsk

We arrived in Ivano-Frankivsk last evening. It is lovely! I had heard it is a very “European” city, and I see what they mean. We walked along a quaint cobblestone pedestrian street last night, brightly lit with holiday lights. This morning we took a nice stroll around the town center, and there is a beautiful town square just like we saw in Poland (which makes sense when you remember that this part of Ukraine used to be part of Poland!).

This part of Ukraine is definitely more attuned to Westerners – the train station in Lviv had signs in both Ukrainian and English, which they don’t even do in the capital Kyiv! The hotel we stayed in last night in I-F was as nice as any American hotel (the elevator was even an OTIS). Igor and I were both floored to see the breakfast buffet (included in the price of the room) – scrambled eggs, cereal, sausages, oatmeal, you ask for it! Of course, if wouldn’t be Ukraine if there wasn’t also cabbage salad for breakfast, but for once I got to eat things that make sense to me as breakfast foods.

We leave in a few minutes to travel another 2 hours up into the Carpathian mountains to a lodge, where we’ll spend the next 2 days. I’m sorry we have such little time in Ivano-Frankivsk, but I doubt it’s our last trip here.

Chornobyl dioramas and rumors

We spent 3 days this week in Korosten for the end-of-year CRDP retreat, with all of our regional coordinators, representatives from partner organizations, and a representative from the the Ukrainian Ministry of Emergencies. We had our meetings at the Korosten Center for Social-Psychological Rehabilitation. In the lobby was a fantastic display of dioramas created by local school children, with scenes of the Chornobyl station, the abandoned town of Pripyat, and some beautiful depictions of village life. The intricacy and handiwork is incredible.

Monday night, after a long day of meetings, we all headed out dinner. One guy had a chance to check the news on the internet before dinner, and read a report that a wall on the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant had collapsed, releasing a bunch of radioactive dust into the air. The report advised to keep children indoors. No official government statement had been made. My first thought was “Shit, what an idiot I am to be living in this place, so close to this disaster waiting to happen.” We all had a stressful thirty minutes or so, wondering what was really going on. I couldn’t have been with a better group of people, though – top experts and ministry officials whose work is focused on mitigating the effects of the Chornobyl catastrophe. Within a short time our colleagues were in contact with numerous officials, both at the station and in the town of Slavutych, where all the station workers live, and we were assured that it was all a rumor, nothing had happened. We all relaxed, sighed with relief, and then the jokes started – it must be a coping mechanism, joking about horribly frightening things. I couldn’t quite lose the feeling though that I’m playing with fire here. I like Ukraine, I’d like to stay here for a long time to come, but I’d like to live farther away from Chornobyl!

I will have my first trip to Western Ukraine over the next five days. Igor and I are going to Lviv to a 2-day conference on volunteerism, coordinated by Caritas of Ukraine (that website is only in Ukrainian, and looks like it hasn’t been updated since 2004, so if you are interested, here is the site of Caritas International, the parent organization). Igor and I will make a presentation about the role of volunteerism in the recovery and development of Chornobyl-affected communities. I’m hoping we’ll have a chance to see some of the city of Lvov, as I’ve heard it’s a beautiful place with a very different style and “feel” from other Ukrainian cities.

After the conference, we head a couple hours south to the city of Ivano-Frankivsk, where Igor attended university. He loves the city, and everyone I have ever heard talk about it has only great things to say about it. I’ve been wanting to visit it for over a year now, and am finally getting the chance! We’ll stay just one night in I-F, then head a couple hours up into the Carpathian mountains, to a lodge/resort for a long weekend. I’ve seen photos of the area, and they are breathtaking – I can’t wait! The weather forecast is calling for -20C (-4F), which I’m not very excited about, but as long as it’s not storming, we are hoping to go on some excurions in the mountains.

Orthodox Christmas is January 7, so not too many people here celebrate December 25 as a holiday. The UN offices will be closed on Monday, but Igor’s center in Korosten isn’t closed. He’s taking the day off on Monday, but has to be back to work on Tuesday, 26 December. So, we’ll spend Christmas Eve and part of Christmas Day in the mountains, then take the overnight train back to Kyiv on the 25th. I’m looking forward to seeing new places, to some quiet days in a beautiful place, far from the big city.

I wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Day trip with the Lowe’s

I spent yesterday with my buddy Blane Lowe and his family. Blane is on a six-month consulting mission with UNDP/Ukraine as an Avian Influenza Expert (aka “bird flu”). His family is here this week visiting him – wife Julie, daughter Aleisha and son Miles. Blane wanted them to see more than just Kyiv, and his wife was very interested in visiting the Korsoten China factory store, so we arranged a day trip to Korosten with some special sites along the way.

Our first stop was about 30 minutes north of Kyiv at the huge lake locally called the “Kyiv Sea.” This artifical lake was created when the Dnipr River was dammed, flooding hundreds of square acres over a 2-year period. Several villages were, unfortunately, in the area to be flooded, and the residents were all re-located to other towns. A cemetery was also flooded over, and since the graves were not relocated, we were told that caskets started surfacing at one point. Yuck.

The lake grew so big that it actually affected the climate in and around Kyiv, changing it into a more humid and damp environment. The change was so significant and undesirable that it was under discussion to drain the lake and return the area to dry landscape. Then the Chornobyl accident occured, and now the silt on the lake bottom is so contaminated that it would be more dangerous to expose that soil to the air and release all that trapped radiation into the atmosphere over Kyiv.

Our next stop was at the checkpoint to the Exclusion Zone. We drove through a little “bubble” of the Zone, an area not originally evacuated and closed. In fact, this area was originally developed and populated with re-settlers from inside the Exclusion Zone. Huge amounts of money were put into infrastructure, building apartments and other buildings, and creating new towns for dislocated peoples. In 1989, it was determined that the area was actually extremely contaminated and unsafe for human habitation, and all the new residents were re-located again to other parts of Ukraine. Because there are communities on both sides of this “bubble” of closed territory, some traffic is allowed to pass through the area, as long as you do not stop or get out of your car during the 10-15 minutes it takes to drive through the area. Most of the area seems just like other rural areas of Ukraine, and if it weren’t for the check-points going in and out of it, you wouldn’t really think anything special about this area. And then you drive through an abandonded town. Crumbling buildings peek out at you from behind trees and bushes. A decrepit multi-story apartment building, a school, a post office that still has the sign on it. As always when I go through these places, I am overwhelmed by the sadness of the place. The emptiness, the heartache, the lost hopes and dreams, the lives disrupted again and again.

Just a few kilometers from that piece of the Exclusion Zone we drove through a partially evacuated village. Literally right across the street from, or even right next to, an evacuated home or apartment building is a non-evacuated home or apartment building. We couldn’t make rhyme or reason of why one building was labeled contaminated, and why right next door, or across the street, was safe. Blane said the practice sounds suprisingly similar to what the Ukrainian health officials claim is their plan for the next Avian Influenza outbreak. Instead of culling whole flocks of birds (as they did last year during the AI outbreak), they claim they can separate out and slaughter only those birds that are contaminated within a village or flock, and they won’t need to cull all the birds in an area. Blane doesn’t think the plan sounds very realistic.

We continued our drive to Korosten and stopped at two other sites along the way, to see some monuments, including WWII truck dedicated to an unknown soldier/driver.

In Korosten, we went to the school where Igor’s mother is librarian. Igor had arranged a short meeting for Blane and his family with a club of students, ranging from about 9-10 years to 16-17 years old. The school’s English teacher facilitated the meeting, encouraging her students to ask questions of the American teenagers. Everyone was pretty shy, but Blane’s son Miles soon warmed up when he was asked about the kind of music he likes and what his favorite hobbies are. I’m not sure many of the school kids understood what he was saying, but every now and then the teacher would translate into Ukrainian, and I helped a couple times translating into Russian. Blane showed them on a map of the U.S. where their home state of Colorado is, and told them a bit about his work in Ukraine. He wowed the class with a few Ukrainian phrases he’s picked up.

From the school we went to the Korosten Center for Social-Psychological Rehabilitation, where Igor works as a psychologist. Blane had a brief meeting with the Director, and Igor gave a nice tour of the facility, describing the physical, psychological and social therapy he and his colleagues conduct there.

We then went to the Korosten China Factory store, a must-see on any trip to Korosten. The factory has been in operation since 1904, and claims it’s china is sold across the former Soviet Union and Europe. The inventory in the factory store changes regularly, based on whatever is in excess or going out of production. I bought a beautiful tea set with hand-painted tulips on the six cups, teapot, sugar bowl and milk vase, and delicate vines painted on the saucers – for $20! The prices on most items there are ridiculously low, although they do have some extraordinary works of porcelin art, with prices to match.

Thursday was the shortest day of the year, and by 5:00 pm it was as dark as midnight. We headed back to Kyiv, everyone tired and full of impressions. It was the only day during the quick visit Blane’s family made to Ukraine for them to see part of the country outside of Kyiv, and their only opportunity to interact, however briefly, with Ukrainian school kids. I think it was a worthwhile visit.

UN Youth Summit

This week was the UN Youth Summit 2006, with the theme “Development of Volunteerism and Social Partnership in Ukraine”. UNVs participated in several events throughout the four-day summit, which brought 150 high school and university students from all over Ukraine to a conference center just outside Kyiv.

I participated in the plenary session “Development of Volunteerism in Ukraine”, which was part of the opening events, which were held on December 5, International Volunteer Day. Seven of us UNVs participated in the plenary session, and three of us were asked to make presentations – Mietek, Igor and me. I get extremely nervous when making presentations in Russian, but not long ago I made an early New Year’s resolution to work on overcoming my apprehension, so I reluctantly agreed to prepare a short speech.

When we arrived at the venue, Anna (our UNV Country Office program assistant, who had organized our participation in the summit) said some of the local media would like to interview a couple of UNVs. I HATE media interviews, I get even more nervous than I do during public presentations, and you put that camera in front of me and I get so afraid of saying something stupid and/or wrong. I tried to “disappear”, but Anna hunted me down and said she wanted me to do an interview. First, the reporter talked to Igor for about 5 minutes. Then she turned to me. I tried to convince her to interview Mietek, who is a natural public speaker and who comes alive with a microphone in front of him. “No,” she smiled at me. “We interviewed a man already, so it would be nice to interview a woman.” I couldn’t get out of it. I didn’t die, but I sure did want to. I understood almost everything that she said to me, with only one quick sideways glance to Anna for clarification of a word. I rambled a bit, and must have said something comprehensible as they got enough material for a quick clip on the evening news. It was weird to see and hear myself on TV – what an accent I have! The next day, I joked with my colleagues that I sound so great in my own head – no accent, everything perfectly conjugated, and sentences beautifully constructed. What happens between my brain and my mouth?

I called Anya in Tvarditsa that evening because the TV interview that day reminded me of the last TV interview I did in Russian – after our Swearing-In Ceremony in November 2004. I could hardly remember how to say my own name then, I was so nervous! Anya and I had a good laugh, remembering that day. We chatted a bit longer, and I was glad to hear that everyone is doing well in Tvarditsa. They have a new Peace Corps Volunteer living with them, and it sounds like they are getting along well.

I participated in a round table about volunteerism on the final day of the conference with Anna and a couple other volunteer “activists.” The discussion started very slowly, but bit by bit, more people trickled into our room and the conversation got livelier and livelier. I was asked to compare and contrast volunteerism in the U.S. and Ukraine, which I thought was a pretty big topic to tackle. I always find it difficult to talk in such generalizations – “volunteerism in American is…, and in Ukraine it is….” – so I used instead an example from a conversation we’d had in the car on the way to the conference center. Anna had told me that her sister had offered to help (to volunteer with) the conference planning committee. The organizers said Yes! They would love to have a volunteer to help with the preparations. When the young woman arrived at their office, the staff was totally unprepared for her, had no work identified for her to do, and spent about an hour discussing and debating what exactly they could give her to do. In the end, they asked her to make a few phone calls. She left that afternoon disappointed, discouraged, and definitely not planning to return. Anna felt this was an example of the Ukrainian “management” style of not wanting to actually delegate anything to anyone else. There is a mentality, she said, that it is easier to do it yourself than to explain it to someone else. Personally, I think there is also a distrust of others, and a fear that a subordinate might actually do something better than you. There is also a widespread inability to plan and prepare in advance. For our discussion, I suggested that an organization should consider their volunteers as they would any other staff, meaning you should recruit, interview, manage and reward volunteers, just as you would for any other staff position. True, your volunteers don’t get a salary, but this led to a good discussion of how you can reward your volunteers (free internet usage at the office, participation in seminars and conferences, tea and cookies, certificates, and other ideas).

The conversation went off on a variety of tangents, some controversial and all very interesting. In the end, no one wanted to end the discussion and the conference organizers were begging us to stop talking so the next session could begin! I wrapped up with an analogy – the volunteerism movement in Ukraine is like our round table, starting slowly, with a few people, but becoming energetic and fun and hard to stop!

A Family Weekend

Last weekend was a lot of fun. Friday I went to Pub Night at the Canadian Embassy with a small group of non-Canadians. Blane and I (Americans) had been invited a few months ago with Wesley and Shelley (Canadians). Blane has since gone to the bi-weekly event regularly, both with and without Wesley. He’s enough of a regular now that he served as our “in” for access this week. Hana (Czech) and Cathinka (Norwegian) joined us. Cathinka is a new UNV who just arrived 2 weeks ago to work with the UNDP Coordination Team. Hana is a UNV working with UNAIDS. We had a very good time, and it was nice to have the opportunity to socialize with Cathinka and get to know her better. She and Hana left at a reasonable time, but Blane and I decided to hang out a bit longer with the gang. That was all fine and good, but going to the after-party at some guy’s apartment really wasn’t the smartest decision I made that night, and I got home sometime after 2 am, having had more than my fair share of beer throughout the evening.

It wouldn’t have been such a bad thing if I hadn’t been planning to get up early to take the bus to Korosten and spend the weekend with Igor and his family. I finally made it out of Kyiv about an hour and half later than I had planned, and was fighting nausea the entire 2 1/2 hour bus ride. But, I made it to Korosten in tact, and the comfortable, pleasant atmosphere with his family helped me forgot my hangover.

As usual, we had a fabulous and huge meal – a late lunch or early dinner, I’m not sure which, but it was definitely enough to fill us up until the next day. I had brought everyone presents from the U.S., which I gave to them after we ate. It was fun to see them get excited over “something from America”. I also brought a bag of mixed Hershey’s chocolates, which included peanut butter cups. We’ve had numerous conversations over their dinner table about the differences between American and Ukrainian cuisine, and Igor always mentions his experience with “that horrible American peanut butter.” I haven’t met too many non-Americans who like peanut butter, and I know that it is especially not loved in Eastern Europe, it’s just not a flavor that suits the palate here. But I thought the combination of chocolate and peanut butter might make a better impression – no such luck. Actually, his brother-in-law actually seemed to like it, at least he ate several of them, but everyone else politely passed on seconds. They did enjoy the other kinds of chocolate in the bag, though, which made me happy. I also gave Igor’s mom and sister small bottles of scented body lotion, which they just went gaga over! I hadn’t expected them to be so thrilled with lotion, but apparently it was the right gift.

Igor and I stopped by his grandparents’ house Saturday evening to visit a bit, which was the first time I’d had an extended conversation with his grandpa. What an interesting man! And what a life he has lived. His mother died when he was very young, and then his father, a musician, was labeled “enemy of the state” and deported to Siberia. Grandpa was left an orphan, living on the streets throughout most of his childhood. As a teenager during World War II, he fought as a partisan. After the war, he was not recognized by the Soviet Union as a veteran or given any other special status or recognition because he was the son of an enemy of the state. He could never get regular work, and thus had a fascinating and varied “career” – working at different times as a musician (playing the trumpet), a blacksmith, and various positions with the railroad, among other things. I was also surprised to hear that he had been drafted into the Soviet Army, and I asked Igor about it later. How could the son of an enemy of the state be drafted into the army? As Igor ironically put it, so many people were “repressed” during Soviet times that if they excluded relatives of enemies of the state, there wouldn’t have been anyone to serve in the Red Army. But it was only after the break-up of the Soviet Union when he received veteran status, including special recognition for his work as a partisan during the Second World War. He is one of the few senior citizens I have met who not only does not miss Soviet times at all, he was glad to see the Soviet Union collapse and the Russians go.

One of Grandpa Pashinskiy’s first questions to me was what do Americans think of Ukraine and Ukrainians. I hesitated for a moment, not sure if I should say this or not, but then said that I honestly think most Americans still don’t understand that Ukraine is not Russia. To my relief, he wasn’t defensive about this but instead it sparked an interesting conversation about how some Ukrainians themselves don’t seem to recognize that they are different countries and different cultures.

Sunday was the party for Igor’s grandma’s 80th birthday. I had brought a gift and some chocolates for her, but Igor still needed to get his present, so we got up early on Sunday and walked to the shopping district. He wanted to give her something special, something she would never buy for herself – an assortment of exotic fruits. He had seen a coconut in a grocery store for the first time ever in Korosten, and that inspired his idea to buy a variety of “exotic” imported fruits. We had fun picking them out at the farmer’s market and the grocery store – a fresh pineapple, kiwi, oranges, mango, bananas and of course a coconut. We also bought a bouquet of flowers as we walked home. I wanted to make a fruit salad right away, but Igor suggested we put the whole fruits into a basket and present it that way, and it looked very pretty.

Igor’s grandparents live behind his parents, so as soon as we had the basket ready we rushed over there, where everyone else had already gathered – his parents, Nina and Ivan; his sister Oksana, her husband Vladimir, and their 14-year old son Denis; his Aunt Maria, and his paternal grandparents. I had met everyone on previous visits, except for Aunt Maria. Igor’s mom introduced me to her right away as “Igor’s-girlfriend-Anya-we-hope-she-will-be-our-daughter-in-law”. Igor and I looked at each other, equally surprised, and we both started to laugh. No pressure!

We had an incredibly huge and delicious meal, with lots of toasts to Grandma and lots of questions to me. One particularly amusing question, I thought, was when Grandpa Pashinskiy asked me if Canada was like an oblast or an autonomous republic, like the Autonomous Republic of Crimea within Ukraine. I tried hard not to smile as I explained that Canada is a separate country, like Russia is to Ukraine. Everyone asked numerous times when my Dad would be coming to visit, they are all very anxious to meet him. I said I had invited him to Ukraine for New Year’s, but Dad said he prefers to go someplace warm and sunny for the holidays instead. I can’t blame him!

When it came time for dessert, Igor and I presented the big basket of beautiful exotic fruit, and then we set to chopping it all up for a yummy fruit salad. I brought out the American chocolates I had brought, which included dark chocolate, chocolates with caramel filling, and mint chocolate. I had forgotten that mint chocolate doesn’t exist here, and it was the first time any of them had tried it. Igor didn’t care for it at all, which I just can’t understand – I love mint chocolate! And it’s such a common flavor for us in the U.S. Funny how something seemingly so typical and un-unusual can be exotic and even bizarre in another country! Once again, Vladimir (Igor’s brother-in-law) showed himself to be the more adventurous, and he liked the mint chocolate (as well as the cake).

The party was still going strong when it was time for me to head to the bus station for the trip back to Kyiv. Igor and I collected my things, I said good-bye to everyone, and we started walking up the street. Igor joked that his family seems to have us married off already, and I wondered aloud if they would invite us to the wedding.

It was a very lovely weekend, and I enjoy his family very much. There was a touch of the bittersweet for me, though, as I thought of the family I have lost this year. I would like very much to tell my mom and grandma about the nice people who are accepting me into their family.

In the news

Two articles were posted this week on the UNV/Ukraine website – one about my presentations in the U.S. and the other about some work Igor and I did with youth groups in October.

In the first draft Ukrainian translation of the article about the U.S. presentations, “meetings with over 100 university students” ended up as “meetings at over 100 universities.” That would have been quite a speaking tour!

Oh, and cool, the US article got posted onto the UNDP website too!