A Peace Corps learning adventure in the Ukraine

May 27, 2007

Dear All,

It’s been a while since my last letter – two weeks, I think – and for most of that time I was traveling to and from my permanent post to visit my partner organization and meet my new host family. As you all know, I will be living in Lviv for the next two years, beginning June 21. This was my first solo trip in Ukraine. I traveled via marshrutka (van-sized bus), Metro (Kyiv subway) and train and it was interesting to say the least. The marshrutkas are a wonderful Ukrainian phenomenon (and there are versions of them in other parts of the world) – they have a specific destination and route but will stop anywhere to pick you up and will drop you exactly where you want. You can catch one at a bus stop or wave it down anywhere along its route. They are comfortable in that the long-haul marshrutkas are not crowded as there is no one standing in the aisle, and they stay cooler than buses and trains because more windows open and there are multiple roof hatches. However, the space available for your legs is quite short – shorter than a single sitting space in coach on American Airlines!

Kyiv metro is another story altogether. It is packed like a can of sardines. Taking an overnight case on one was a real trip. Not only is is crowded with little space for even a small suitcase, but you also have to worry about pickpockets – especially in the central area. I have my survival techniques fully operational and had nothing stolen. A colleague was not so lucky. For some reason he decided it was safer to take all of his electronics and cash with him rather than trust them with his host family in Chernihiv (don’t understand that one). The pickpockets were so smooth, he never noticed them open his backpack (on his back) and take his computer. He also never noticed them getting into his bag and snatching all of his cash – about $500. This truly was a stupid move on his part. We were warned up the wazzu not to take stuff like that on the Metro, and he did it anyway. Oh well.

Then there is traveling by train, which I happen to like doing. I was a single in a coupe with four other bunks – and my trip was an overnighter.

The trip out was interesting because my coupe-mates were two older men who planned to drink vodka and beer the entire trip and wanted the compartment to themselves as they were embarrassed to drink in front of me (thankfully).

So they found me another bunk in another compartment with another woman (doctor from Kharkiv) and we all were much more comfortable with the arrangement. They had a grand time drink and singing, and I had a good conversation and a more secure sleeping arrangements. For my trip home I had my coupe to myself for the first several hours, which had me thinking I wouldn’t have to deal with the same scenario as the trip out. About 10:00pm however, three guys moved in. Not a problem, however, as they did not plan to drink, and the situation felt safe.

I arrived in Kyiv at 6:ooam ready to catch the metro to PC Headquarters only to learn the metro stop at the train station was closed. People were not happy, and I didn’t want to hang with a crowd that was surly and hot (more on the temperature next). So I splurged, caught a taxi and spend the day in the air conditioned PC office.

While I was gone the weather turned very hot. In fact we reached over 100 degrees and set records all over the country. Let me tell you, it was miserable. For the last 30 years I have not had to experience temperature like that unless by choice. Almost nothing here is air conditioned, so there was no place to hide until the weather turned – which it still has not. We are praying for rain tonight, and hoping the temperature will cool.

For those of you who know about the cycles of culture shock, I can say I have hit a major dip of pretty impressive amplitude. Yesterday I found myself daydreaming about sitting beneath the sun umbrella on the houseboat roofdeck watching the boats on the lake and the seaplanes landing on the water wishing I was there and missing home very much. As I thought about I realized I was dealing with adjustment and culture shock. After all, I have lots to look forward to (and I am looking forward to it very much). In three weeks I will finish training and leave this intense schedule behind me. I will move to an amazing City and have an opportunity to plunge right into its most impressive aspects. I have excellent connections, and I like the people I will work with. My new family is great (really) and fascinating. What’s not to be happy about?

Living somewhere where you don’t speak the language well, where the food and living conditions are different than your norm, where you live by someone else’s schedule – and one that is mighty intense to boot. Collectively we all are feeling like we don’t have any control over our lives anymore and there is no where to go to have an environment we do know – can’t have it at work, can’t have it at trainings and we can’t have it at home. At least that is how it feels. We are one cranky group, some of whom break into tears at the smallest provocation. And these are the folks over 50! You know, those of us with experience with this stuff. One of my colleagues is a former professor from California who has lived overseas several times.

Even he is dealing with the C.S. again, and it caught him completely by surprise. One day the language learning is great, and I am able to improvise in the moment. The next day I can’t remember our first lessons on greetings. Oh well, I trust it all will work out in the end!

I write to you about this not because I have changed my mind about my choice to join PC and want to come home. No, not in the least. I am so pleased I made this choice and even though I am nervous as heck about relocating again and learning to work and live with a new group of people in a new environment, and am not looking forward to carting all of my luggage all the way across this country, finding a new place to live in a new location - I CAN’T WAIT to do it. I am writing because I find the entire experience fascinating. I know just enough theory (thank you OSR) to give me the framework I need to understand that this feeling comes and goes, and that helps me deal with the difficult moments, remain enthusiastic and not loose sight of the big picture. And it absolutely doesn’t hurt that I have been posted to a wonderful site and have great potential in the work I’ll be doing. I could be having the experience of some of my colleagues who have been posted to places they don’t like and partnered with organizations that have no relationship to their skills or their interests.

I have been told to expect more dips in the cycle – after I relocate, about mid-way through service and then at the end as I prepare to leave Ukraine.

I guess it comes with the territory!

Some of the benefits of living in Lviv that my colleagues will not have – besides the amazing history, art and architecture: wonderful coffee houses with exquisite pastries, the likelyhood of a washing machine – AND internet in my home! Public transportation is pretty funky, but Lviv is a walking city anyway! And then there is the proximity to the Carpathian Mountains

(and thank goodness Lviv has hills), Poland, Romania and Slovakia…. So I think I can put the culture shock thing into perspective.

For my colleagues out there interested in this sort of thing – I have finished one of my community projects and will complete the other within two weeks. The first was co-designing and hosting a conversation about ‘volunteering’ with a local NGO. My Ukrainian colleague and I designed the conversation to move through large and small group activity, bringing information from the smaller conversation groups back to the whole. She absolutely wanted a conversation format and not a lecture AND she wanted the experience to be interactive. She spoke only Russian and I my little bit of Ukrainian so we worked with translators. She thought it worked out very well (which was good to hear) and I thought it did too. My first experience in designing dialogue in another culture! And my thanks to all of you who send me ideas for icebreakers.

My second project is about exploring cross-sector (government, business, civic/NGO) collaboration; this in a country which until recently had only one sector! The design team is half Ukrainian and half Peace Corps, and we are designing to always put the Ukrainians in the lead. Two design team meetings down and one more to go before our networking event, which is scheduled for Saturday. We have some good people involved from all the sectors – included city and regional government, the chamber of commerce and some well established and forward-thinking NGOs. They are enthusiastic because they say the concept is new to Ukraine and they hope to be the first to explore what cross-sector collaboration would look like in this country.

We are using an Appreciative Inquiry (AI) concept base – telling a story

about Chernihiv that focuses on what works well. The idea evolved through

dialogue, so its development felt very organic – and the Ukrainians could see the process of its development. It is, in fact, the single idea that rallied their interests. Funny how AI can do that!

Thanks, guys, for all of your emails. It really is nice to get a note from home – even a short one.

More next week.

Love to you all. Linda

May 17, 2007

Dear All,

Wanted you to know as soon as possible - I have my permanent posting, and it is Lviv! I am stoked! I can't believe I got this. Not only is Lviv a lovely city ala Vienna and Prague - it still has almost all of its Hapsburg and Baroque architecture, is close to the Carpathain Mountains AND has a coffee culture! And the substance underlying it all is my partner organization. It seems they are into NGO networking and capacity building AND want to branch into the arts. This is amazing, and feel free to imagine with a very broad and very silly grin stretching across my face.

Am in Lviv now staying briefly with my new host family - he is an academic; she is an artist - and they have four children, with another due at any time. Her mother was/is an abstract textile artist who has shown in Paris & Prague but never was allowed out of the then Soviet country to attend the exhibits. Her work is quite nice. Their house is lovely and old, with timber beams and a winding, creaky wood staircase. They have maintained the integrity of the place while still making it an arts home.

I found this internet cafe walking up and down the picturesque hilly cobblestoned streets of my neighborhood. Don't have much time as I need to get home to meet my new partners.

More later, but probably not until next week when I return to Chernihiv.

Linda

May 6, 2007

Dear All,

Another week and another collection of stories to share…

First on the list is the visit to my host family’s village, which is a forty minute bus ride west from Chernihiv. I was there last Tuesday; the entire family had gathered in the village to plant potatoes in the family plots.

The village is lovely, yet I know it must be a hard place to live in the winter time because of limited access in & out of town and limited opportunities to buy fresh produce locally. In the village a lot of living is off the land.

My family’s place is about 100 years old and seems to be a traditional Ukrainian village floorplan: one large room with multiple beds, one large common room with a very large fireplace/stove/central heating units, a vestibule with ladder access to an upper hayloft and a newer, small kitchen with running water, a working gas stove and a non-working refrigerator used for storage. There is no indoor bathroom. The only heat in the home comes from the massive fireplace/cooking area that also features several sleeping platforms. There are heavy, padded doors to both the new and old kitchens from the vestibule but no door between the old kitchen/common room and the sleeping room.

Since I have expressed an interest in traditional Ukrainian arts & crafts, my host-mom took me to the homes of two much older women (babuciya/babuciyh). Entering their homes one immediately sees a lot of needlecraft on very practical items. Most common are embroidered and crocheted bed linen: pillow cases, sheets & coverlets as well as tapestry-style wall hangings behind every bed. It all is quite colorful and as a rule, the hand work is exceptional. Also numerous were embroidered and cross-stiched ‘paintings.’ I have seen these items several times now, and they are mind-blowingly intricate. In the really fine work, one can stand a few feet away from the picture and not know it was needle work – it looks like a painting…

I didn’t see the traditional costumes of one woman because she had lost the key to the wardrobe where they were stored. I think it interesting they were behind lock & key, which speaks to their value to her. I have seen many of the multiple layers of traditional costume – skirt, blouse, apron, vest, sash, outer coat and head wrap. And I was given two more rushniki (long tablerunner type pieces that usually are draped over/around icons or photos.) Once I get to my permanent site, I will figure out how to send some photos.

My family’s village home is painted a brillant blue and, at the time, was surrounded by blooming cherry trees. It, along with other family homes, sits near a very large pond – quite picturesque. However, as I said above, I don’t think this picturesque quality would hold up to the very cold winters up here. I can’t image spending a long winter in a small village in a cold cottage with no central heat and no fresh food. I’ll know soon if that is going to be in my future.

Next on the list is my first experience with Ukrainian birthday parties, which also was my second experience with Ukrainian vodka and toasting and singing and story telling. My host-mom turned 46 Friday, and she hosted a big family dinner. In Ukraine it is traditional for the birthday girl/guy to host and give presents, so there was no gift-giving to her. Food on the table: a brined river fish in oil, beet salad (see below), sausage and salo (pig fat), cheese, tomato/cucumber/parsley salad, cotleta (ground meat patties), caviar buterbrod (open faced sandwiches), potato salad, boiled potatoes, a sea weed salad in vinegar, and sliced cucumber. Dessert was an amazing coffee/chocolate buttercream tort. And there was vodka, wine, juice and non-alcoholic beer (for me). Lots of toasting and singing and eating – it all lasted about four hours. One of my host-daughters drank quite a bit of vodka and suddenly started speak fairly fluent English. I was surprised because she always has been hesitant to speak. Turns out she was intimated by the grammar and didn’t want to speak if she couldn’t do it right. Once she relaxed with the vodka, the words flowed. Pretty amazing and a good lesson for me about ‘lightening up’ and just talking to Ukrainians.

Third on the list is the progression of my training project. It is quite interesting and involves City administration, the Chamber ofCommerce, some small entrepreneurial businesses and a City agency who partners with lots of NGOS. We are hoping to help them learn how to create networking opportunities so all can learn more about each other and hopefully find new partnerships/collaborations. Since all Peace Corps projects are about sustainability, we are not the planners or hosts; rather we are facilitating the design team group in the development of their goals and the design and implementation of their first event – supporting them as they develop their collaborative muscles while simultaneously learning themselves about the value in collaborating with each other. It seems the Peace Corps is hot about the idea; now, not only do we have to balance the power dynamics of the design team, but we also must stay aware of Peace Corps interest.

Fourth is an interesting episode of culture-shock. Many of you know that while I enjoy movies, I don’t go to movie theaters a lot. That was Sandy’s thing. The other evening I played a movie on my computer and found myself being nostalgic for watching films in a movie house. The experience on the computer just did not feel right – there was no big screen; no one else was sitting around me; I didn’t have popcorn; no one was coughing or sneezing; and no one to tell how run-down the theater has gotten or how much noise is coming from the neighboring ‘shoe box’ – none of the ambience. This is really odd given I don’t care if I go to movies once a week or once a year.

The whole experience was depressing and I found myself being nostalgic for something that really was not all that important to me. Interesting! Glad I have all of that culture shock theory to fall back on! (FYI, I was better the next day and have watched several movies on the computer since w/o feeling homesick. It just was that initial shock of difference coupled with a VERY LONG day.)

Fifth on my list is the weather. I want to go on record as saying I will never complain about Seattle weather again. Its not that the weather here is bad; it’s just that it is unpredictable. Yesterday we had near-freezing temperatures, and today is warm and in the 60s. I understand I am pretty far north, and that winter does last a bit longer up here - And it doesn’t help watching the news and seeing the warm temperatures in the Crimea. But I have had enough cold weather and would like to experience some consistently balmy temperatures.

Finally, I thought I would tell you a bit about my Peace Corps group (Community Development & Business Education) and give you a glimpse of a day in the life of a Peace Corps volunteer in training.

We are a mix of older and younger, with an age range probably spanning 22/23 to 60. Roughly ¼ of the group is over 50. We come from all over the country with several from Seattle/Puget Sound, several from the Bay area and the rest from Southern California, Colorodo, Illinois, Arkansas, Washington DC, New York, etc. In contrast to Ukrainians, it is easy to see how individually focused and driven we are as a culture. And as a rule, we simply don’t understand why we can’t go where we want and do what we want all of the time. It is VERY interesting watching our Ukrainian training staff interact with this, especially from the older folks who as a rule are competent professionals used to using initiative. Sometimes some of the American actions feel especially rude: as a group we are loud, speak over each other, interrupt each other and compete at every opportunity – even in interpersonal interactions. In contrast, Ukrainians feel much more gracious.

A Day in the Life - Friday:

Woke around 6:30am to bright sunshine, made coffee and ate breakfast

(today, kasha & sausages; yesterday, eggs & bread & cheese; the day before, an omlette)

8:15am – out the door and down the lift for a 5-minute walk to my

‘classroom,’ which is another apartment in a neighboring block (of apartments – not our city blocks)

8:30am sharp – begin language class. Usually it starts when I step over

the threshold and say good morning/how are you in Ukrainian. Today we will have a field trip to the Post Office to practice language and get acquainted with the system. If you can imagine 15 Americans converging on two Ukrainian postal clerks who speak mostly Russain – all of us directed to practice in Ukrainian asking for things we ultimately will not buy. Hmmmm, I would have felt sorry for the clerks if we hadn’t been such good entertainment for everyone there at the time! Language class lasts until noon or 1:00pm – it depends.

One hour for lunch, if I am lucky. Usually I have to catch the bus to the

city centre for the afternoon sessions, so must get something from a store (yogurt, nuts, meat-filled baked rolls, etc.). And my host-mom almost always has given me fruit to munch on during the day. If it is a Tuesday or Thursday, I will have my daypack with my computer. Not only is this heavy, but it is a pain-in-the neck to take on the bus. Usually there barely is enough room for me, much less a backpack. If it is a Monday, Wednesday or Friday, odds are I have appointments/meeting lined up for the afternoon.

Today, I have a long afternoon session with Peace Corps staff on safety.

They cover a range of issues including how to prevent theft & assault as well as what to do if I am a victim. Today’s topic is sexual assault, so we get to watch a movie and listen to a lecture of-sorts. It all ends with us testing the fire extinguishers we will be given at our permanent sites. So the entire group of 30 file out behind our site, light fires and then put them out with the extinguisher. (Obviously there are different fire codes

here.) This session does not end on time, and I now am late for a 4:00pm meeting about my community project.

The 4:00pm meeting starts at 4:30pm instead. We gather at The Two Geese,

an upscale Ukrainian food café/cafeteria. Actually the food is pretty good, and it is one place in town that accommodates a group of five around a table. It is papered with photos of movie stars, and you can tell they are trying hard to be cool.

At six, I run to the store to get a birthday card for my host-mom as her

party is tonight. I get home around 6:15, and everyone is waiting for me.

The table is set and all of the guests have arrived but me; they include: my host family (with two daughters), boyfriends, a cousin and her daughter.

The party lasts until 10:30pm. For the first time (although I know it won’t be the last), I am asked about how much money people make in the U.S., how much a home costs, how much food items cost, etc. And they want to know what we eat – especially, do we eat calo (pig fat)…

This Monday members of the group meet one-on-one with the country director for our site visit interviews. This is our opportunity to lobby for the part of the country we most want for our permanent post. The following week we will learn where we go. And there are only six weeks left in training!

New food experiences this week include:

1. A beet/mayonaisse/fish molded salad: okay, and I’d be fine if I never had it again (which is not likely…) FYI, we have been advised not to eat a lot of the river fish as they come from the northern part of the Dnieper River, which is adjacent to Chernobyl…

2. Caviar: still don’t like it

3. A homemade, fresh-from-the-village, slightly sweetened yogurt/creamy cheese thing that is to-die-for. It is served mixed with raisins and nuts.

4. Homemade sour cream and fresh milk

5. Fresh eggs

Things I miss:

Except for the movie incident (above), this week I have been too busy to miss much of anything – except all of you, of course!

Next time I will tell you about life in a Soviet-era block or apartment house.More next week!

Linda

PS. To those of you who have asked/commented – someone here just received a package marked “Personal goods,” and it came through unopened and in good shape.