Again another week has passed so quickly. Sometimes it seems like life is just passing me by while I stew in my frustration over not being able to understand and communicate effectively. I have to constantly remind myself that what I am doing is awesome and that the ability to communicate and understand will come naturally with time… but time seems to be flying. What if the time flies by and I am still fumbling with basic sentences?
The past week had its moments of gigantic hurtles and interesting moments. I don’t think I mentioned the 4th of July in my last blog. That’s because it seemed to pass by all too quickly and with little fanfare. I did make an effort to try to do something American on that day and I met up with a fellow American in Kharkiv. I was kind of excited by the adventure since it involved me going to the train station in my town solo and asking about the electrychka schedule in my poor Russian.
This is kind of how it went. I stared at the schedule for a good 10 minutes while chatting on the phone with Vicki. Then, not being able to make sense out of it, I asked at the desk about the schedule for the electrychka, at which point the woman pointed me back in the direction of the schedule that I was staring at previously. So, this time I stared at it, exaggerated my confused face, and scrunched up my lips and nose and opened my eyes really wide so as to look both lost and sad, and the woman opened her window and tried to lean out and explain it to me. I walked back over and asked when was the train that was approximately around 8 am, and then the next one. She rattled off some numbers which I wrote down in my notebook and then showed to her. Aces, I heard the times correctly. Then I went back to the schedule and realized that the reason I couldn’t make heads or tails of it was that the time that I knew previously from my journey to the children’s birthday party was a few minutes off from the schedule on the wall. Maybe it was an arrival time instead of a departure time, hard to say, but I had a plan and a solo adventure coming my way.
The plan was to meet up with Sally, another PCV, who happens to be from an area in Massachusetts no more than 40 minutes away from my parent’s house. We were practically neighbors… and the cool thing about Sally… she was in the Roller Derby in Massachusetts. (Some of you may know that I trained and tried out for the Gotham Girls Roller Derby and didn’t make the team, therefore, never realized my true potential as a bad ass. New York being one of the most competitive leagues in the country, I have to give myself a break on that). So anyhow, I set off early on Sunday and took a 2.5 hour electrychka ride on a wooden bench and rode the Kharkiv metro solo to meet up with Sally at the second largest square in the world next to Tiananmen Square. There is a gigantic statue of Lenin in the middle, a perfect place to meet. I stood in a place where Lenin pointed directly at my head, and Sally and I inevitably found each other.
Sally and I failed in our quest to find shwarma in Kharkiv, but after walking a bit and buying Sally a new camera, we bypassed the obviously American McDonald’s and found a place overlooking a river that touted pizza and beer. So, we had some pizza and beer on the 4th of July. Then we found a square with a whole bunch of army tanks in it and climbed on the tanks and took pictures. Then, since my trip home would take another 2.5 to 3 hours, I had to jet after like 3 hours in Kharkiv. I had managed to purchase an electrychka schedule before I met up with Sally, but it took me a good half hour to hour of scrutinizing it on the train home to realize that I could have left later, in fact there seemed to be electrychka regularly every 2 hours or so, all through the night and into the wee morning hours. But hey, the 2.5 hour train rides on wooden benches were kind of a full adventures in and of themself… so I wasn’t too plussed about leaving that early.
The following week proved to be really a bit stressful. The inability to communicate, understand, and be understood, seemed to have come to a head. We had a moment on Monday where it seemed like I was being cornered by my boss and my counterpart, but hard to say what was really going on. My job for the first three months is to observe, get settled, ask questions, and get to know my community. Other than that, I can think about potential projects, potential grants, but I am really just supposed to be making an effort in community integration. (Can I say, this is really hard to do in a post-Soviet community when your organization doesn’t drag you around to social gatherings after work and on the weekends? As an outsider, you kind of have to be ‘introduced’ to the community. My introduction was a wild car ride with blaring techno music where my boss pointed out important buildings my first day in town. My other introduction was when he took me to the hardware store to buy my hot water boiler and told them I was American).
The discussion that we had, and it’s hard to determine what the conversation was about since my boss generally communicates with one word at a time to me, and then says, ‘Understand’?, went a little like this. Here is a sample, conversation. ‘Amy’, pause, ‘Write’, ‘Understand’? ‘Yes, I understand ‘to write’. ‘Amy’, pause, ‘Can you write grants’? ‘Yes, I can write grants. I have written grants’. ‘Amy’, ‘Can you write grants, now?’ ‘Um, yes, I am capable of writing grants now.’ ‘Amy’, pause, ‘Write, Grants, Now’! ‘I need information to write grants’. ‘So ask’… ‘Write, Grants, Now’. ‘We need to discuss what kind of projects we want to do’. ‘So let’s discuss’… at which point he turns around and starts having a completely different conversation with someone else. Maybe some day I will understand this form of communication, but what I got out of that was ‘Amy, I want you to write grants now’.
He got frustrated while we were trying to have this conversation, as well, and said ‘We need a translator’. That was just about the only thing that we agreed upon. What did come out of the conversation, at least as I am ‘choosing’ to understand was that I don’t need to be at the office for that long each day. There isn’t internet at the office, so I can do some things, but then I need to walk the 40 minutes back to the center of town to use the internet. I can use my ‘beeline’ at home, so I can now reasonably work from home. We also had a slightly productive meeting with a translator towards the end of the week. I still felt a bit like we were communicating in circles, but at least we were communicating.
The communication foibles made for a really frustrating week. I felt really low and spent probably too much time bitching and moaning about my situation here, but with all that bitching tends to come some much needed perspective on the situation, and so it seems the bitching is a necessary process. I spoke with another volunteer on the other side of the country and we both kind of agreed that there seemed to be a kind of repetitive cycle that we were all stuck in… one day is fine, then the next day comes a lot of frustration and anger, and then the third day comes with frustration and depression and then it starts all over again. I also Skyped with a few old friends (one a former Peace Corps volunteer) in the states and it helped to hear their perspectives and get a little nudge of encouragement. I also received a few messages and phone calls of support from my friends and fellow volunteers here now, which really felt good to get a reminder that we are all kind of in this together.
I got the most encouraging message from a good friend and former co-worker who reminded me of why I am here. (Thank you, Jeanie Barnett). Essentially, a big part of the reason I am here, is to learn about a different culture and to open a window to that culture to the people back in the states. Writing is my vehicle to opening this window and sharing the richness and beauties and hardships of this different culture. The other big part of the reason I am here is to share my culture, my ideas, and my experience with the people here. I know that I have to make more of an effort to put myself out there and integrate myself into the community. That is entirely up to me, and this week, I am going to start making that a priority. It’s going to be hard, putting myself out there like that, but it will make things easier for me here. So wish me ‘fart’, I will need it. (Did you know that the word fart (фарт) in Russian means ‘luck’?
