Well, my regional manager was slow in getting back to me with what needed to be edited in the article. My regional manager is a great guy, so don't get the wrong impression of him, but I think this was low on his list of priorities to deal with.
Frustrated, I simply cut out everything that could be controversial, made the article a bit more praising of Ukraine and sent it to him, asking him to read it and just give me a yes or no.
The e-mail was also recieved by my regional manager's boss, who gets copies of all correspondance. The boss got back to me because my regional manager was on vacation, and was more than willing to work with me to get the article read and possibly approved.
I got a call the next day. The article had gone up one more level, to the Deputy Country Director. It came down to: a few spellings needed to get fixed (apparently there is a right way to transliterate cyrillic) but on the whole they would let it pass with reservation. The reservation was this: they didn't want any of the negative descriptions printed. It was also made known that I should really consider these reservations.
What I was told was this: "Ukrainians know that the water is bad. They don't need to be told that. And they don't want you telling Americans that. I would not go to America and tell Americans what was wrong with their cities."
Most of the article talked about incongruities in Ukraine: the fact that you can't drink the water, but you can buy a mobile phone; the fact that there are piles of uncollected trash outside of the buildings, but the insides of the apartments are pristine. Basically, Peace Corps wanted me to leave in the mobile phones and pristine apartments, take out the trash and undrinkable water. I thought some of the descriptions--which were not opinions, but simply facts--should stay.
Now, I am thankful that they worked with me on this, because they could have just rejected it again. And I respect the line they walk, and I have nothing but praise for both my regional manager and his boss, who worked with me on getting the language right so that the descriptions could stay intact, but the overall portrait wasn't a negative one.
Would I liked to have just printed what I originally wrote? Sure. But I respect cultural sensitivity, and the fact that I need to have it if I am to be succesful these next two years. I also understand that people probably don't appreciate an Ameican coming for a few months and then saying negative things about the country, whether those things are true or not.
In any case, the article was approved and I sent it to my editor yesterday.
My regional manager is happy (thankfully, he doesn't feel like I went over his head), Peace Corps is happy, I'm happy, and my editor at the magazine is happy.
Although it was pointed out to my by Peace Corps that maybe I should stick to my job as a teacher and leave the writing until I was no longer with Peace Corps...