Entry 1: The Big Departure
The days leading up to ‘the big departure’ were pretty tough. I had a lot of trouble balancing seeing and spending time with people and actually getting the administrative stuff done that I needed to get done. I think this succeeded in elevating my stress level a lot, because I knew I had to get a lot of stuff done and nothing was getting done. The biggest help was spending an afternoon with Louise wherein I brought over all the stuff that I wanted to bring and she packed it. She packed a lot of it, but now that I am settled at my family’s house in a small village in Ukraine, I have since realized that I brought way too many clothes. I’ll probably be thankfully for that later, but damn those bags were heavy.
The anxieties I was experiencing were completely normal, but that didn’t make the last days any easier. Packing with the timeframe of two years with a limit of 100 pounds hanging over your head is really daunting. Making sure that you’ve remembered to get all your administrative paperwork done so something doesn’t come back to bite you in the ass later. Making sure you are spending enough time with the people you care about, because you never know what might happen in those 2 years that you are away. It’s a lot to handle. Turns out when you get to the first day of training, you aren’t the only one freaking out. Everyone is.
I think the BEST thing I did was go a day early to DC. Yes, it gave me a chance to see my brother before I left, and I did NOT sleep that first night in DC, but the next morning, I got up early and was able to get all of the paperwork that I had been avoiding done (I think, I hope). Student loans have been deferred, state taxes have been file, Peace Corps paperwork has been filled out, bills paid, etc., etc., etc.
By a little before noon when I headed down to check-out of my room and then re-check-in with the Peace Corps group I was starting to feel like I was bristling with a bit less anxiety.
Oddly enough the first few people that I talked to as I was checking and in our ‘luggage room’ turned out to be 3 out of the 4 people who would later be my ‘cluster’ during training. A Peace Corps Cluster is a group of 5 people that you are grouped with throughout your training and throughout your term of service. This is your new family. I just thought it was kind of odd that out of the 77 people milling around, these were the people that I met first. The other odd sentiment that I was having was that I felt like I had already met or that I knew A LOT of the people that I was meeting for the first time. Also odd, but extremely refreshing was that probably a third of the volunteers were my parents age or older. Not so odd, everyone was extremely anxious and worried about the same exact stuff that I had been feeling stress over. (At least I didn’t have to sell my house before I left, car yes, but some of these people sold houses pre-departure, whoa). This was also refreshing… We were all in the same boat, and nobody had any idea what was going on.
We went on to spend the day split into 2 groups/rooms with roughly 40 volunteers in each. We discussed the Peace Corps, our anxieties and did some group bonding exercises. Peace Corps handed out money cards with 140 bucks on it to cover our incidentals, extra baggage fees, dinner, tipping to the hotel staff and bus drivers, etc. and told us to go retrieve the money now, because we probably wouldn’t have the chance to do so I in Ukraine. I met my roommate for the night, D,who was nice enough to slip me some Tryptophan since I had not slept in 2 nights. Then I hit the road and had dinner with Kelly, where she further put me at ease seeing how she went through this when she left for PC Senegal. I can’t say that I slept through the night, but I did sleep that night which is a lot better than the 2 nights of no sleep before.
Departure day I was feeling a lot better, things were falling into place and we were getting ready to go. I ducked out for a walk to grab one last bagel and coffee before leaving. I had passed a small park with a hill full of daffodils and cherry blossoms (in Georgetown) Tree Hill Park and had decided that that would be a good place to eat a bagel and drink some coffee. Got to the top, ate my bagel and decided to call my mom, because I thought she would get a kick out of the fact that a third of the new volunteers were her age or older. My mom gave me the news I think I had been waiting to hear, the news that my grandfather had died the night before. Oddly enough, I can’t explain how, but I kind of knew that it was going to happen. I knew someone was going to die the night before I left. I also knew I couldn’t get too upset over it. I just had to tell myself, that this is what he would have wanted for himself. He was miserable in the nursing home. It’s hard to think about it this way, but it really is the best thing for everyone.
The ride to the airport, and the flight in general, weren’t really noteworthy except that I shuffled a few things in my bags and managed to avoid the $150 overweight bag fee. I think it was close and she just decided to waive it. Frankfurt airport was annoying, we got off the plane and went through security only to arrive at our gate and have to go through security again. There also wasn’t a bathroom by the gate, so if you wanted to go, you had to go out and then go through security again. At least you could leave your carry-ons with someone else and not have to worry about that part of the hassle.
Once we arrived in Kiev, they loaded us all up on 2 buses and drove us 2 hours into the Chernihiv Oblast (region) for our first 2-days of training at a ‘wooded retreat’. The place where they took us was a former Soviet ‘resort’. The key-word being Soviet. I would liken it more to a summer camp, a Soviet summer camp that was probably at its prime in the 80s. Three people shared a room and I shared with the two girls in my cluster Kim and Cassie (Cassie is also from Connecticut). It was warm enough in the room, we even had hot water, but it smelled very damp and moldy. The cafeteria was always freezing. The auditorium was slightly warmer, but I use the word slight and there were mosquitoes everywhere in there. Resort this was not, but then again, this is the Peace Corps and giving us a crash course on being cold and uncomfortable was probably necessary for some people. The Peace Corps Boot Camp has begun.
My cluster consists of Kim (Bronxville, NY from Delaware), Cassie (from Shelton, CT), John (Pittsburgh, PA), and Conor (Salt Lake City, UT, he is also 6’7” tall). Our Language and Cross-Cultural Facilitator (LCF) is named Natasha, and our Technical and Cross-Cultural Facilitator (TCF) is named Sveta. Our Cluster is linked to another Cluster located in the city of Chernihiv. Our Link Cluster is part of the Senior Program made up of women primarily my parent’s age.
Family/First Impressions/Easter
After being here a little over a week, it feels like we have been here for months. When we got dropped off in our village our Mamas picked us up and we walked to our houses. We all headed off to Russian speaking houses. I was placed in the Nehai (Knee-high) family with Mama Leana, Papa Valera and their two teenage daughters Katya (19 years) and Tanya (16 years). They have a guard dog named Amour who is chained in a pen in the driveway separate from the gated entrance. I think he’s all bark and no bite, but I haven’t and probably won’t test that theory. After a week he knows my voice enough where he’ll stop barking if I tell him to ‘Knock it off!’. They also have a grey poof of a cat named Tisha.
Their house is nice. They have a sizable yard and garden in the back and my bedroom is on the ground floor with the entryway, living room and kitchen. Upstairs, I’m not really sure about. Their bedrooms are all up there, but I haven’t seen them. At the top of the stairs is a den with the TV and the computer/internet. The house only has one bathroom and it is in the basement at the bottom of a very steep flight of stairs. I go down backwards, I think it’s the only way I am going to get down without taking a spill at some point in the next three months.
Leana and Valera like gardening and it seems like they grow a lot of the vegetables and fruits that we have been eating. I’ve been eating rather well. I won’t starve anyhow here at the Nehai’s. Bread and salt are a traditional part of the Ukrainian meal. Salt is plentiful due to a shortage in the past and bread is NOT to be wasted because it is a symbol that Ukraine survived the Great Famine that was engineered by Stalin during the time that he forced farm collectivization. Three to five million Ukrainians died of starvation while surrounded by fields of wheat and stocked government storehouses. Ukraine borders were reportedly shut to prevent people from leaving during this time. Many historians believe that the famine was part of the Soviet leadership’s strategy to solve the ‘nationality’ problem with certain countries.
The Nehai’s have had six previous volunteers so mealtimes consist of a lot of different dishes that we serve ourselves. Thankfully, they haven’t been serving me big plates of food that I wouldn’t be able to eat, seeing as we were told preemptively not to waste food and to eat everything that you are served. I arrived on Good Friday and apparently in an Orthodox household Easter is celebrated from midnight on Saturday night/Sunday morning through to 5 am. So I guess I missed it, because I wasn’t invited to the church and I slept that night. That’s fine, I really needed the sleep. But from what I’ve gathered the family goes to church around midnight with a basket of samplings of the Easter feast (having a nicely presented basket is important). The priest blesses the Easter food that is presented in the basket, then the families celebrate Mass, and then go home to celebrate with a huge feast. Then they all go to sleep around 5 in the morning following the feast.
The typical contents of the Easter Basket that they present at the church is Paska (Easter Bread), Pysanky (Easter Eggs), Krashanky (Dyed Eggs – variety of colors, but there must be a red one), Eggs (hard-boiled and peeled), Salt (small amount), Butter (should be nicely shaped and decorated with cloves), Cheese (Sweet Cheese – mixture of farmer’s cheese with confectionary sugar, raisons, cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg), Horseradish, Kielbasa.
I woke around 9 on Easter and the Papa was waiting up for me. He served me a small feast of the leftovers and a glass of wine. Wine and morning coffee, an odd combination, but do I ever refuse a glass of wine? The red wine in Ukraine is typical a sweet red wine. What he laid out on the breakfast table was a HUGE amount of food. There were hard-boiled eggs, Paska (which to me tastes and has a similar consistency to French Brioche, but with raisins in it), there were some battered and pan-fried fish cakes, pan-fried sausage cakes, some blood sausage, ground pork pastries, and some mayonnaise-y salads. But the one thing I didn’t try was some kind of gelatinous chicken or pork bowl. I think they boil chicken or pork fat into a kind of soup and then let it cool into a gelatinous blob. I can’t remember the name of it, but it’s apparently a delicacy. They eat it just straight up.
We ate again as a family (minus Mama, she is a nurse and apparently had to work on Easter Sunday) with Katya’s boyfriend Yuri. So the whole spread came out again, as did the wine and a bottle of cognac and Papa made toasts while he and Yuri downed the cognac. Us girls, drank wine and certainly didn’t down it in one gulp like they were doing with the cognac. We sat around the table for awhile, and then Katya sent me upstairs to use the internet. (I should mention that Katya is studying to be an English teacher at the University so she actually speaks English really well). The rest of the day we kind of hung around the house. Then everybody dispersed and left me alone, but not before they fed me a meal by myself. (They seem to feed me a lot by myself, and I can’t quite figure out if it is because they are just busy, or if they are worried that I am hungry, or what, but I seem to eat a lot by myself).
Easter Monday is also a holiday, but not for Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs). We had four hours of intensive language study, followed by Community Mapping wherein we walked around the village and identified important buildings and where each of the other volunteers lived. Apparently in our village there are 2 larger Convenience Stores and one small one. A School (brand new building built in 2008), and Village Administration building, a Post Office, and a Medical Clinic. Starry Bilose has a population of roughly 2,500 people. The school, as we would later find out with our visit, has approximately 180 students from ages 6 through 17. The community also has two churches, one Orthodox and one Baptist.
Our village is named after the river that flows through town is and means something along the lines Old Village by the river. Apparently there have been prehistoric artifacts found in the community and the best estimate is that our village has been around since Stone Age. The community was officially created 860 years ago.
This past week was filled with intensive language consisting of 4 hours a day, Monday through Friday, then we also had Technical and Cross-Cultural training, as well as our Health day where we got another immunization and then our Health and Medical overview. Our days are very full. When I get home at night for dinner, I am usually exhausted. One night I got home around 5, I ate, and then I was fighting to stay awake at 6. I nodded off, but then forced myself to do my mandatory reading and study Russian.
We also had Technical meetings with the local school staff and local administration. We were introduced to the English teachers and the school Headmaster and the majority of the students and were taken on a tour of the school facilities. We were invited to come to the school during the school days to use the internet lab and the cafeteria. Apparently, we can eat in the cafeteria at lunch for 4 Hryvnia. After our tour, we discussed with the English teachers their needs and what we kind of projects that we could work on with the school. The students start taking English lessons in their 2nd Form (age 7). They have a state of the art language lab, an auditorium, and outside they have basketball courts and a turf soccer field as well as a playground. It’s up for discussion, but we should meet with the English teachers again some time this week to start discussing what kind of projects would be realistic for us to work on with the students seeing as their school year ends at the end of May and we are only here in Starry Bilose through mid-June.
After our visit at the school, we met with the Village Council President and introduced ourselves to him in Russian. (These were very basic introductions: My name is; I am from America, State of Connecticut, town of Windsor; I am a Peace Corps Volunteer; I am a Manager by profession). He introduced Starry Bilose and we discussed what we could contribute to the town. Apparently, the big problems that he listed off were garbage (there is a lot of litter and the community only has a garbage pick up once a month); the roads (only the main road is paved, the rest are dirt); and lack of a kindergarten. We will be planting trees and flowers at the new medical clinic on Tuesday and helping with a town wide clean-up on Saturday the 17th (Soobotnik - Earth Day). We are going to put our heads together regarding the kindergarten, we having been discussing tag-team Babushka daycare.
The Village Council President’s name is Nikolai Nehai. Apparently, he is distantly related to my family, but they aren’t sure how. Anyhow, he is an interesting character, a bit of a renegade. He got word that people were planning on building summer houses (dachas) down by the river. They were set to start building on a certain day and he got up in the middle of the night and planted a whole bunch of trees so that they were unable to build there. I think it will be interesting working with him.
We also made a trip to Chernihiv on Thursday to attend our first formal Technical session where we attend with the entire group of Community Development Volunteers. One of the Senior Volunteers, Jud, who has been here for a year already and in his former life was the Maine State Rep for AARP gave a presentation and gave us his impressions of his experience thus far and gave us some helpful tips as to how to proceed with our service once we get to sight. Communication and networking are big big big. We also had some cross-cultural discussions about our service and discussions about realistic expectations for our future projects.
After the meeting our Cluster took the opportunity to get cell phones and to take advantage of the free WiFi in McDonald’s. I got a Double Cheeseburger Menu with Fanta, which is something that I haven’t eaten in years, but damn it was good after a week of different kinds of sausage and kielbasa and hard-boiled eggs and mayonnaise based salads.
What are my first impressions after a week of training? Peace Corps is no joke. It’s tough to be thrust into a family setting where you don’t speak the language and then to start class at 9 am and get home after 6 pm when you are trying to get by in an unfamiliar language in an unfamiliar place, with unfamiliar food and stimuli. I am exhausted every night after dinner and then I have to retreat to my room and study Russian for a couple of hours, but I am loving every minute of it. It’s tough, but for me, the Peace Corps motto seems to be right on. It’s the toughest job you will ever love. I don’t regret making the decision to do this at all. I know that there will be times when I will regret it, or hate it, but when all is said and done, you pick yourself back up and get on with it. I really do believe this will be a great adventure.
