One of my fellow Peace Corps Volunteers, Wyoming, invited me to come attend a camp near her city and do an HIV/AIDS training and/or a healthy lifestyles training. I figured why not, it’s a great excuse to travel a bit and I will get my chops wet with some trainings. I would also get a chance to hang with some fellow PCVs, and I figured it couldn’t hurt to ask if Conor could go to. And it turns out, he could.
I prepared myself to buy my train ticket solo. I went on the internet and researched the trains, then picked the train that I could take. I wrote down the date, train number, time of departure and arrival, and to and from destinations. I figured, worst case scenario, I hand the lady at the train station my piece of paper and she could figure out what I was trying to say. When I got to the window, I explained that I spoke poor Russian and that I wanted to buy a ticket to Lugansk. We actually managed without the paper, but then she kept asking me questions that I didn’t initially understand, so I handed her the paper. She double-checked what we had arranged with my paper, gave me the thumbs up and I paid for the ticket. Success.
The night of travel I set my alarm for three in the morning, got up, washed my face, brushed my teeth, closed and locked the windows and called for a taxi. I got on the train no problems. Well, I got on the wrong car, but walked through until I got to my right car. My train car attendant was waiting for me, and she brought me to my compartment and unlocked it. I thought this was weird and then I discovered why, I was the first one in the compartment… and it turned out, I had the compartment to myself, all night long. Awesome, my lady at the train station hooked me up.
I got into Lugansk, and Wyoming met me at the train station. Conor and I had coordinated our train trips so that we arrived and departed within an hour of each other. So we waited for Conor, then got in a cab and headed to Wyoming’s sublet apartment that had a spare room. Yep, that’s right. Conor and I had our own room with two twin beds pushed together to form a GIGANTIC bed. This trip was turning out to be an awesome success by Ukrainian standards.
We took a shower and headed to the Fresh Café for a Caesar salad and chicken, mushroom and cheese melted-wrap-thing. And, bonus, the Fresh Café had air-conditioning. After a nice lunch, we grabbed some water and snacks at the grocery store and headed back to Wyoming’s apartment to meet the ladies that were running the camp program, Rita and Galena. They brought juicy honey dew-like melon to the meeting and we had a nice meet and greet and then parted ways to go to Caroline’s for an awesome dinner party with Haley and Walter. Caroline made fresh salsa and roasted a chicken and of course, there was beer a plenty.
The next day, Conor, Wyoming and I set off to meet up with our bus to camp. I was really excited. I haven’t been to camp in more years than I will divulge. It was going to be fun. We stopped along the route in a small town and picked up a bus load of waiting kids and headed to camp, but when got there all chaos ensued. We were approached by numerous friendly Americans from the South. Weird. And then all our kids kind of scattered. It turns out, that the Baptist Camp that we rented out for the week, was also holding a bible-study camp at the same time. Again, super weird.
This put us in kind of a funny spot. As Peace Corps Volunteers, we belong to a non-religious, non-political, government organization. We aren’t allowed to be involved in religious organizations like this, or side with any local political parties. Of course, we can pursue religion on our own if we want, but we can’t ‘work’ with a religious organization for the obvious reason that the Peace Corps can’t be seen as affiliating itself with any one religion. It sends the wrong message. Honestly, I didn’t feel comfortable with the whole situation, but we were assured that our group was separate. We had our own camp, they had theirs. We were just sharing the camp premises with them.
Well, that isn’t exactly what happened. Despite the fact that we had tents for out kids, our kids were filtered in with the other kids at the Baptist camp. They were found space in the Baptist dorms and logistically, the way the camp was set up, each dorm did activities together. They ate at the same table, they showered at the same time, they attended Bible School together. Our kids were kind of hijacked and we didn’t know who they were at this point. Our partner organization, who had organized for us to stay at the camp and had recruited the kids, had seemingly left us in the dark about the religious aspect of this camp and left us hanging in the breeze. So we apparently were there with our curriculum for mediation and healthy lifestyles and had lost our kids.
We did our best to separate ourselves from the group. It was agreed in advance that Conor and I would have our own tent, but when we got there we were asked to share space with the Baptist counselors. WTF was all I could say. But small battles were won the first day. Conor and I got our tent, Wyoming got a tent and Andrew, her translator, got his own tent. We had essentially set up our own rebel tent kingdom. Conor and I, an unmarried couple, shared a tent. Apparently, that was a HUGE sign of disrespect to the Baptists, but hey, we had not signed on for a religious camp. And we sure as hell had to separate ourselves as much as we could from that. Thus we had our own little tent haven of three.
Well, we got to do one healthy lifestyles training. The majority of the kids who attended were the kids that were kind of separate from the big group to begin with. They came to camp to do Karate, and the Karate Kids hung out as a group. They had their own dorm and roomed together, ate together and trained together. And they hated the fact that we were at a religious camp too. So at the end of the training, they seemed kind of amped about practicing some English so we asked them if they would like to have an English lesson the next day. They said sure, so we figured, they like Karate, why not do a lesson with a little bit of American slang and incorporate some Karate vocabulary.
Conor took the lead on this lesson. He clued me into a drinking game, called ‘Chop, Block, Punch, Kick’. I had never heard of it, but apparently it involved quick reflexes and would work for our kids, we just took out the drinking bit. We also taught them, ‘What’s Up?’; ‘Just chillin’; ‘Awesome’, etc. The Karate game was a smash and I think this sealed the deal with the Karate Kids. We were now considered part of their group. After the Chop game, they indulged us in a three-legged race. We used a sheet that Wyoming had pilfered from the Baptists and cut up to tie their legs together. We also did wheel-barrow races. It was fun.
Without being overly long-winded, we rebels, Conor, Me, Wyoming and Andrew had a daily mecca to the village to drink well-needed mental health stabilizing beer to deal with the stress of not being able to conduct our camp in the way that we wanted. The afternoon trips to the village store were lush with interesting people who would meander over and chat with us while we drank our beer. We also found a swimming hole, or rather a pond that smelled very pondy and duck-shitty, but it was well-needed with the heat.
The highlight of the camp was when the Karate Kids went to the head of their program and told him that they thought this religious business was fishy and that they wanted to leave the camp. They refused to stay in fact. So, he relented and over a campfire guitar sing-a-long the kids invited us to join them on a rebel camping trip. They were going to take the tents and set up camp 6 km away along the river and just be. We ended up declining due to logistics (we Americans haven’t yet been weaned off bottled water). But wouldn’t that have been awesome? I think these kids are just great and feel really proud of them for sticking up for something they believed in. Maybe next year, we can tag along for the their rebel camp.
Our group minus half of our kids left the next day with the Karate Kids. Thanks Southern Baptists for hijacking our camp, but yeah to us for standing up for ourselves. Conor and I had train tickets to return home on Sunday night so we decided to just hang in Lugansk for a few days. The highlights were a mecca to McDonald’s for cheeseburgers and air-conditioning followed by the movie Inception (it looked awesome, but it was in Ukrainian so didn’t understand much, but visually awesome, also a/c was awesome too). Multiple dinner parties with Caroline at which point we finally got to play some cribbage and thanks to Caroline’s tutelage, I understand how to play and LOVE IT! Andrew (his real name is Andrei, but he prefers Andrew when around English speakers) took us in his car to the river and we had an AMAZING day of swimming, picnicking and more cribbage!
Bottom-line, I ate very well on this trip (largely due to Caroline’s manic cooking and salsa making). Despite the snags, we ended up having a great time. We built up positive relationships with Andrew and Rita and Galena from Wyoming’s organization. We have been invited back to work with them again with assurance that if they do another camp, it will not be held at a Baptist camp. We have new friends in the Karate Kids. We all fell in love with George, Rita’s one year old son. And I got to spend quality time with Conor, Wyoming, Caroline, Haley and Walter. What a great experience.
