Chornobyl Museum

I attended the opening of a new photo exhibition at the Chornobyl Museum yesterday, “For Love” with photos by American photographer Kristina Brendel.

Kristina and her husband have been living part-time in Arizona and part-time in Minsk, Belarus, for over 10 years. Her photos in this exhibit were almost all shot within the Belarussian Exclusion Zone (except for a few photos of children from the Belarussian city Gomel, which the museum specifically asked her to include). The program was very nice, and included a wonderful performance by the Ukrainian folk chorus “Homin”.

An example:

I also recorded a 4-minute video of one of the chorus members reading a poem she wrote about Chornobyl, but it’s too big to post to YouTube. 😦 If I can figure that out, I’ll post it later.

3 other Americans and I went to dinner after the program with Kristina, her husband Doug and their translator Yuri. It was fascinating to hear about the way the Exclusion Zone is approached in Belarus – completely differently from in Ukraine! First and foremost, Kristina there is total denial by the Belarussian government that there is any problem associated with Chornobyl – they deny contamination and in fact, President Lukashenko has started a campaign to open up the Exclusion Zone and repopulate that territory. On the other hand, absolutely no scientific research is allowed to be conducted with the Belarussian Zone. One scientist she knows was arrested for attempting to do some research there, and remains in jail to this day.

This is quite in contrast to the approach on the Ukrainian side of the border – scientific researchers have labs within the Exclusion Zone, and as I wrote from my own trip to the Exclusion Zone; and there is absolutely no official discussion about re-populating the Zone. True, some people have moved back voluntarily, but that has been against official government policy.

Belarus is a very small country with no way to expand its borders, and I can understand that having something like one-third of its territory closed to habitation and agriculture production is problematic. But the idea of pretending that it is safe to live in those areas, and to have a plan to encourage people to move back into those areas is frightening. I hope the Belarussian people are not as naive or short-sighted as their President.

the iRack

Chornobyl reading

I am reading the book “Ablaze: The Story of the Heroes and Victims of Chernobyl“, and I can’t put it down. I’ve read quite a few books, stacks of reports, and loads of websites about the Chornobyl accident and the subsequent consequences. This is the book I wish I had found 18 months ago when I first came to Ukraine to work with the Chornobyl Recovery and Development Programme.

As it was written in 1991, I was at first quite skeptical of the accuracy of the reporting and the author’s purported claim to have gained access to previously classified documents and secret reports, especially as a foreign writer who doesn’t speak Russian. Yet he seems to have gained confidences with key players in the Chornobyl saga, as well as access to at least some of the previously unpublished materials. I don’t think this book has all the truth in it, but it is an impressive attempt to bring more of the truth to light than had been up to that time.

The blow-by-blow account of the first minutes and hours after the accident are fascinating, presenting a real human side to the men and women who heretofore were only generic “plant workers” to me. Their heroism, their ignorance, their blind faith in the System (Soviet Union) and the system (the engineering of the nuclear power plant)… it is, plain and simple, tragic.

I was very surprised to realize that I have visited many of the towns mentioned in the book. Ivankiv, less than 60 km (<40 miles) from the Chornobyl station, is one of our partner communities, but I hadn’t realized what an important role it had played in the evacuation and clean-up activities – it served as a base of operations outside the Exclusion Zone, through which many refugees passed, and from which soldiers, other workers, and supplies were dispatched to the nuclear power station.

Our regional coordinator in Ivankiv, Valentina, was in the office this week, and I mentioned to her that I am reading this book and told her some of what it says about Ivankiv. “Oh, Ann, it was such a terrible time,” she said to me. “There was a base in Ivankiv. I remember it was beautiful spring weather, and I was outside walking with my young son for hours every day for the first three days after it happened. We didn’t know, no one said it was dangerous. Outside!” She held her hand to her chest as she recalled those memories, as if the horror of it still brings her a physical pain. “Then we learned what had happened, and I took my son to Moldova.”

Sometimes I forget what my colleagues lived through, that they themselves are first-hand witnesses to the Chornobyl catastrophe.

Igor, having been just 9 at the time of the accident, mostly remembers what a great summer he had that year because he got to go a bunch of camps all over the Soviet Union. He had some great experiences, and I think it instilled in him a love of travel, but it is a bizarre twist of circumstances that he remembers that time as so much fun.

In “Ablaze”, Read mentions some of the morbid jokes that started amongst the clean-up workers. In our office, we sometimes jokingly “toast” Chornobyl; without it, none of us would be here (at CRDP). Igor and I often joke that something weird and unexplained is because of “Chornobyl”. And I always refer to a dish with mushrooms as coming with a big dose of radiation. It’s perverse, but I guess that’s what we do when we are faced with something overwhelmingly horrifying. If we focused only on what we don’t know and what we can’t change, I think we would go insane. Joking about it eases the tension, I guess.

Retro in Ukraine

The theatre tickets post seemed to catch some attention. It’s always nice to get a comment or two to know that someone’s reading my blog.

That wasn’t the first time I’ve come across Soviet-era items, though. In the center of Kyiv is a gas station on which the gas pump still shows the price in rubles.

The best use of an outdated item, though, is in the Kyiv Train Station. There is a locker room where you can store your bags in these huge lockers. You buy a token from a lady in a booth, and then put the token into the locker to get the key out and lock up your stuff. The tokens that they use are old Soviet 25-kopek coins. Brilliant! There must have been millions of those coins when the Soviet Union split.

Why a humanities degree

The OSU College of Humanities did a short profile of me in the Humanities Express newsletter.

When I was home last month, I participated in a College of Humanities 10th Annual Career Night as an alumni panelist. Despite nasty weather, a good number of undergraduate students in a variety of majors joined us at the Faculty Club. For the first hour, we panelists responded to questions from the students, sharing our experience and perspectives on the value of a humanities degree. Then we split up into “theme groups”, and spoke with small groups of students. I was in the “foreign language” group, having majored in Russian at OSU.

I talked to five or six students majoring in foreign languages, several of them with a second major in the works as well. They all seemed so nervous about what they could do with a foreign language major. One of the other alumni panelists had majored in Spanish and ended up with a career in business. She talked about how her Spanish ability had been invaluable at her first job, with a small company that had some oeprations in Latin America. Having someone with whom they communicate in their own language was a huge boost for the Latin American affiliates, she said, and the business started booming there.

It took me nearly ten years to put my Russian skills to regular use. But my Humanities skills have been invaluable from the start – critical thinking, cultural understanding, analytical skills, writing skills, communication skills. These skills seem so intangible, yet they are so very important. I, too, struggled with trying to understand what I would do with a Russian degree, and perhaps it’s an understanding that only comes with experience and context. The career path for a Humanities major is not as clear-cut as for an engineer, or a marketing major, or an architect. What once seemed like an overwhelmingly vague career trajectory now seems to me like an amazingly rich and diverse array of career opportunities.

No deficit here

It’s not uncommon to encounter a shortage of something in Ukraine. At any given moment, our office may be out of staples, or scotch tape, or batteries for the camera. At the moment, we have a shortage of working computers, which hasn’t proven to be much of a problem yet since with holidays, vacations, and school schedules, we haven’t had the full complement of full-time staff and volunteesrs (university students) in the office in a few months. These shortages, called “deficits” in the Russian vernacular, occur in many sectors of society here – negotiation problems with Russia last year threated a deficit of natural gas supplies; there’s a deficit of affordable housing in Kyiv; the store didn’t get it’s bread supply today (OK, that’s an extreme example; people would riot in the streets if there was a deficit of bread). Well, you get the picture.

Last week, I was pleasantly surprised to find a sector in no short supply of essential goods – the Ivan Franko Theatre in central Kyiv. I bought two tickets to a Russian-language production of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”. Now, I’ve bought tickets to other theatres before that are printed-up with basic generic information (as in theatre name, address, and ticket location- row, seat, etc), so I wasn’t surprised when the tickets I bought had that general information pre-printed, with the specific performance information stamped onto the ticket – date, name of the play, start time, and price. It’s a rather brilliant cost-cutting measure, if you ask me.

If you look closely at these tickets (and if you’re lucky enough to be able to read Ukrainian), you will notice that it says the “October Culture Palace”, on October Revolution street, and the tickets cost 2 rubles 40 kopeks. Now, keep in mind that the theatre has been called Ivan Franko theatre for I-don’t-know how long, the street is Instytutska, and the tickets 150 hrivnas. I’m trying to imagine how many tickets they must have printed during Soviet times.

Ukraine Promo Video

Here’s a pretty neat promotional video about Ukraine. I’m not sure why the voice-over seems to have a British accent, though.

Some accidents

Plumbing
Tuesday morning I woke up to a clogged tub. Actually, I didn’t realize right away that it was clogged, but when I did, I also realized that my two sinks (kitchen and bathroom) were not draining into the pipes, but instead were backing up into the tub. Not a pretty sight (but thank goodness the toilet was not contributing to that mess also!). I really didn’t know what to do, although my first thought was to call Igor. What exactly I expected him to do from 2.5 hours away in Korosten, I’m not exactly sure, other than worry about me. So instead of spoiling his morning too, I tried to think what I could do about it. I don’t have a plunger (although it’s now at the top of my weekend shopping list), so I decided to try pouring boiling water down the drain. The result was me pouring boiling water onto the drain, which then just joined the rest of the water in the tub. Hmmm.

I decided to call my landlady, who’s first reaction was “It’s probably clogged because you washed your cat in the tub.” First, thanks for blaming me right away and not offering any usual information. Second, no, I didn’t wash my cat in the tub. She then dug out a phone number of a plumbing service and started to dictate it to me. I was thinking, geez, how am I going to deal with this? I don’t know how to explain this stuff to a plumber, and what if they ask me technical questions that I don’t understand? Before I could express any concerns to Larisa, though, she decided it would be better if she called herself. “Your accent, you know, they might not…” I’ve encountered one or two xenophobic people here, but more often the case is that my accent somehow makes people think I can and will pay 1000 times more than normal for things. I was relieved Larisa decided to call herself, and in a couple minutes she called me back to say the plumber said he’d be there after 10 am. She suggested that I tell him that Larisa had to go out and I was just waiting in her place for the plumber, again so he might not get ideas about scamming me. As I looked around me apartment, though, at all the photos of me, my family and friends, I wondered how good a ruse that would be. She also told me that a normal fee would be between 10 and 30 hrivna ($2-$6). I promised to call her when they were done.

About 10:30 she called me again and said her husband was coming over to deal with the maintenance guy for me. I felt bad that he had to trek to my place, but certainly appreciated their willingness to help me out. He and I sat in the kitchen for a little over an hour, chit-chatting while we waited. Finally about 12:00, two men rang the bell. They were wearing special jackets for the “Pechersk service” (Pechersk being the part of Kyiv I live in), I’ve seen these jackets often on the streets of my neighborhood – streetcleaning crews, landscaping crews, sewage workers, etc. I was surprised to see city workers come to unclogged my tub! They plunged it out, and fortunately didn’t need to snake the drain, and were done in less than 5 minutes. They said bye and left, without charging even a kopek – I was so surprised! I talked to my Ukrainian teacher about on Thursday during our lesson, and she said that since residents of apartment buildings pay monthly fees for “communal services”, it is correct that they service men didn’t charge me anything, although it didn’t used to happen that way very often. Instead, a service worker would show up and hem and haw about he’d need to get this part, that part, some special tool, it would take a week or more, blah blah blah, until the resident would say “Um, is there something I could do to speed it up?”, or more directly “Is there anything I can pay to speed it up?” It got so bad, she told me, that workers wouldn’t bother with the line of bull, and residents would get right to the point up front of how much it would cost them. When the monthly fees for communal services were significantly increased not long ago by the mayor of Kyiv, citizens really started to speak out and protest – for good reason! They hadn’t received anything in return for these taxes paid. The mayor of Kyiv has vowed to crack down on these kinds of corruption and to provide residents with the services at no extra fee that their taxes are supposed to be providing for. I don’t know if my experience was indicative (I’d be curious to see how it goes if I had a much more serious problem), but I was impressed.

By the way, if you think this kind of “corruption” doesn’t happen in the U.S., think again. Someone relayed their experience to me with a plumber in the U.S. – a guy from a known company came to do some plumbing work for them. After checking out the problem, he offered to come back at night, off the clock of the company, and do the work for them. The underlying reason, I suspect, in both situations is the crappy pay the worker receives, and thus his need to earn supplemental income to support his family.

The street is falling
A few short hours after posting my “Things I like about Ukraine” post on Wednesday, I left the office and discovered this. Actually, it was looking much worse by the time I saw it, with the hole about 2/3 as wide as the street, and almost the length of a semi-truck. No one was injured in the street collapse, thank goodness, but I’m sure you can imagine the traffic nightmare that ensued for several hours. Compounding the problem was the typical Kyiv driver’s attitude that the rules are for everybody except himself – despite the blocked off road, I watched numerous cars drive right around the barrier, only to get stuck a few yards later by the massive hole in the road and all the road crew equipment. Kyiv drivers never cease to amaze me.

I’m sure the crews worked most of the night to patch the hole, and when I walked past that spot about 24 hours later, the road was open and the road solid again. This morning, however, the road was again blocked. At first I thought they might be doing some more repair work on the Wednesday spot. Nope, another big chunk of the road collapsed in, a few feet away. Then I turned the corner by my office, and saw another road crew working on the cross street. That means the roads on both sides of our office building are collapsing. I’m not feeling very secure sitting here in the office today.

Miscellany

International Women’s Day
I told you this International Women’s Day thing was serious here – the men in our office threw a little party for the women this morning, with cake, champagne and a bouquet of flowers for each of us. The men are having long and serious discussions of when they will each go to the main UNDP office to congratulate the women there. I was asked, as the only native English speaker in our office, to write a “congratulatory letter” on behalf of CRDP that will be sent to all the women in UNDP agencies, the Ukrainian Ministry of Emergencies (the Ministry responsible for all Chornobyl-related activities), donor organizations, etc etc etc. Basically, I’ve been asked to write a Hallmark card. Not my cup of tea, but I’ll do my best.

Buckeyes are everywhere
Yesterday I met with the Director of IREX Ukraine. It turns out that she did her Master’s in Russian at Ohio State, and we had a year or two that overlapped in the department. We know lots of the same people. People often say that when you get an Ivy League education, it’s not that the education is so much better than at other schools, but it’s really the network to which you gain access that is so valuable. I have to say, Ohio State’s alumni network is no shabby thing. I have met a fellow Buckeye on nearly every trip I’ve ever taken in my life.

I hate smoking
Yesterday, on my way to meet Andrea at IREX, more than half of the peolpe I saw on the street were smoking. Last year, a law was passed in Ukraine requiring that all restaurants and cafes have a no smoking section. This usually means a table or two in the corner of the room that are designated “no smoking”, but which are basically surrounded by smoking tables. Some tiny places don’t even bother, like the pizza place near my office that is really a hole in the wall, with only five or six tables total. Larger places that have two or more rooms usually designate one of them non-smoking, but it’s not particularly enforced. A new bar/restaurant opened up not long ago across the street from our office, and Mietek and I stopped by after work one evening to check it out. The front room has the bar in it, and there was a couple sitting a table smoking away. The back room had a small group, four or five people, smoking. I asked the bartender “Where is the no smoking room?” He looked at me blankly. I couldn’t tell if he didn’t understand the question or didn’t understand my accent. I turned to the waiter and asked again “Where is the no smoking room?” He pointed to the rear room, and lamely commented “But they’ve already started smoking in there.” Thanks, buddy. “You are doing a great job following the law,” I said. Blank looks from everyone. Columbus, Ohio, passed a law a year or so ago banning smoking in all public places. I gotta tell ya, it is a real treat to go out to eat in Columbus now. On my last few trips home, I visited restaurants and bars that I haven’t been to in years because I couldn’t stand the smoking. I miss that tremendously here in Kyiv, and I hardly ever go out to bars or restaurants here anymore because it just stinks, literally.

Things I like better in Ukraine
On my trip to Columbus last month, I realized several things that I like better in Ukraine.
(1) Restaurants, cafes, bars, etc. in Ukraine always have a coat tree, coat rack, or even a coat check room. This is especially handy in the winter when you are loaded down with layers and layers. Not a single restaurant I visited in Columbus had a place to hang up your coat.

(2) I like living in the land of small (or even no) tips. When a taxi driver in New York city told me that my $2 tip for the 15 minute ride from LaGuardia airpor to JFK was not enough, I started counting the minutes until I’d be back in Kyiv. Taxi drivers don’t expect tips here, and in restaurants, a 10% tip is higher than average.

(3) Public transportation is great here. Within a 1 kilometer radius of my apartment (approx. 1/2 mile), there are three metro stations, 5-6 public bus and trolleybus lines, and at least 10 or 15 different privately-run bus lines. The metro and public buses and trolleybuses cost 50 kopeks (about a dime), and privately-operated buses cost from 1 hrivna (.20 cents) to 1.75 hrivnas (.35 cents). And I love that I can walk to most places I need to get to (granted, I’m lucky that I can live in the center of town, close to work, shops, etc.).

(4) Men always open doors for women. It’s just polite.

Celebrate Women!

March 8 is International Women’s Day. Of course, those of you in the U.S. were probably not aware of this, unless you vaguely remember me mentioning it last year, and the year before…

Well, it’s a big day in this part of the world, and many many countries around the world. It’s a national holiday in Ukraine, which is super nice. This year, March 8th falls on a Thursday, so the Government of Ukraine suggested that everyone work this past Saturday, March 3, so that Friday, March 9 can also be a day off, making a lovely 4-day weekend. Pretty much everybody in Ukraine followed this suggestion, except the United Nations, the Embassy of Canada, and Kyiv International School. The Canadian thing is both good and bad luck. Good because this was the week for their bi-weekly Pub Night, which I think is now attended by more non-Canadians than Canadians. Bad because the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), one of the major donors to CRDP, wants to visit some sites and projects on Friday that their funding has supported.

As for Kyiv International School, they are actually in session on March 8th, about which I am quite happy as it means the Girl Scout Troop I volunteer with will have our regular Thursday meeting. I haven’t seen the girls for nearly a month – first, I was in the U.S., then they had a winter break. I missed their Thinking Day ceremony while I was in Columbus, and I’m looking forward to hearing all about it this week. It’s especially signficant that we will be together on International Women’s Day, when we can celebrate ourselves and all other girls and women in the world together.

Thursday is also a day I meet with my Ukrainian tutor. In December, I finished the course I was taking with two other colleagues, and decided I would prefer to work one-on-one now with a tutor. A friend recommended a Ukrainian teacher from the Shevchenko National University, and we’ve been meeting twice a week for over a month now. I love it! It’s hard, true, but I am seeing much more progress from our individualized sessions than I did from the entire course I took with my colleagues. Happily, my tutor still wants to meet on Thursday, despite the holiday.

And Igor and I will finish the day with a delicious home-cooked meal he has promised to make, followed by a night at the theatre. We have tickets to see “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, a modernized production by a famous director from Moscow. I’m looking forward to it.

So, all you guys out there – do something especially nice for the women in your lives on Thursday (and every day!).