Yesterday, Ukranians voted in their parliamentary elections. We tend to ignore those in America, as big as we are for the top-dog, winner-take-all presidential election.
What no one outside of Ukraine seems to realize (nor, it seems a lot of people in Ukraine), is that yesterday was the most important vote since the creation of an independent Ukraine.
I used to think Ukraine was on the right track, that 25 years from now I could come back and see an entirely different place: a full-fledged transparent democracy, an attack-dog fourth estate of journalism and a first-world economy and infrastructure.
Instead, politically and economically, it’s been backsliding. And yesterday’s vote, far more than the results of the Orange Revolution, will determine the direction of the future.
The Orange Revoution could have been a watershed moment, but it failed.
Let me explain. After the Orange Revolution, Yushchenko had a huge popular mandate and it seemed he could have done anything.
What he did was appoint fiery, populist Yulia Tymoshenko as Prime Minister and chocolate-magnate Petro Poroshenko as the Head of the National Security and Defense Council and then went off on a world tour of awards and photo-ops. The thing was, Poroshenko wanted to be Prime Minister.
Two factions in the government formed around these two and Tymoshenko went on to make a lot of mistakes. She scared off international investors by starting to reprivitize businesses sold off to cronies under former president Kuchma (although, admittedly, the resale prices turned out to be several hundred times what they were originally sold for), GDP growth dropped from 12% to 4%, and inflation brought up the prices of food and gasoline. Harkening back to communist days, Tymoshenko put a price cap on gasoline, which caused shortages before the cap was lifted and I watched my marshrutka ride to Kyiv jump from 12 hrivna to 17.
The rising prices alone started people grumbling.
Some good was being done, because you can’t change everything in a day: a lot of tax loopholes were closed and government revenue was increasing. Also, American trade sanctions against Ukraine were dropped and the west finally recognized Ukraine as having a market economy. But while things were going well with the west, Yushchenko was doing it at the expense of relations with Russia, something started by appointing Tymoshenko in the first place.
In Ukraine, the governmental infighting grew worse, as Poroshenko bypassed Tymoshenko repeatedly to get access to the president, and Tymoshenko started a sophisticated attack campaign against him.
In September of last year, it came to a head and Yushchenko decided to solve the infighting by firing his entire Cabinet of Ministers, including Prime Minister Tymoshenko. That’s right. He fired the whole executive branch.
In Tymoshenko’s place, Yushchenko appointed Yuri Yekanurov, a rather more laid back politician from the east. The problem was that Yushchenko couldn’t get Yekanurov appointed by parliament. So what did he do? He turned to Yanukovych-his rival during the Orange Revolution and the man he denounced as corrupt. Yanukovych agreed, but only if Yushchenko agreed to three things:
1) Amnesty to those who committed election related crimes in the 2004 campaign
2) Support for a bill to give immunity to local elected officials
3) A pledge not to attempt to change the constitutional reforms passed in December 2004.
Yushchenko agreed and Yekanurov was confirmed.
Let’s back up a step. Yushchenko, who was supported by millions in a peaceful political revolution aimed at stopping corruption, agreed to welcome. Not only was all the documented corruption of the election that sparked the Orange Revolution going to go unpunished, but the immunity already awarded to members of parliament (you heard that right: members of Ukranian parliament are protected from criminal prosecution) would now extend to locally elected officials. That means if you are in the mafia and get yourself elected mayor of some small Ukranian town, the law can never touch you. This is why, in yesterday’s election, the ballots were more than three feet long. Everyone is trying to get a local position, and, unlike at the national level where everything is now closely monitored for corruption, election corruption at the local level is still rampant.
This bill should obviously be struck down by the Supreme Court of Ukraine, but several seats on it are unfilled and the Parliament hasn’t convened a quorum to appoint new ones. So currently there is no judicial oversight on bills passed by parliament. And parliament is mostly controlled by Oligarchs and the mafia.
Although many Ukranians felt sold out by Yushchenko, most take corruption in stride. Poltava has been declared the most corrupt city in Ukraine. It’s mayor, who owns almost all the major businesses in the city, decided to run for parliament and won. He could not legally hold both positions, but didn’t want to give up his mayorship, so he told the city council not to convene while he is in parliament, meaning no vote can be cast to appoint a new mayor, meaning Poltava, a city of over a million, has no mayor while he is in parliament. I asked my friend Sasha what she thought about her hometown of Poltava being considered the must corrupt. She said that was untrue. I rattled off the above facts. “Yeah, but it’s not the most,” she said. “They’re all like that.”
And we haven’t even gotten to point three. During the revolution, in order to get a revote, Yushchenko agreed to “constitutional reforms” that would pass most of the president’s powers to the Prime Minister, and that the Prime Minister would be appointed by parliament, not by the President. This reform was started years prior by Kuchma, who could legally no longer be president, but wanted to retain powers by being appointed Prime Minister. Kuchma is effectively out of the game, but the one year window built into the agreement that would allow Yushchenko power when he took office is over. His Presidency is pretty much window dressing and to get his Prime Minister confirmed he had to agree not to challenge the very thing that stripped his power. He now only nominally controls the military (but the Orange Revolution proved that no one really knows who controls the military) and has an advisory role in government.
Being President in Ukraine no longer matters. What matters is being Prime Minister.
Theoretically, though, Yushchenko shouldn’t even be president. Parliament, after the natural gas fiasco with Russia, voted to dismiss his government, including him. What happened was that Russia, pissed at Ukraine, tripled its prices for natural gas. Yushchenko balked and Russia turned off the tap in one of its coldest winters in a century. Under European pressure Russia finally negotiated with Yushchenko, but what resulted is a shady deal where a company, whose owners are unknown because it’s registered in Switzerland, buys gas from Russia, mixes it with gas from Kazakhstan and resells it to Ukraine at a higher price, but still lower than the prices Russia demanded. Someone was making money while more than 50 people died due to the cold. Yushchenko refuses to say who the owners of the company are.
When Yushchenko got back from Kazakhstan to find out Parliament had dismissed him, he said the vote was unconstitutional and refused to recognize it. Currently, his government is still operating.
In Ukraine, there was a lot of talk that the country was going to collapse.
And now we get to why yesterday’s election was so important: due to the new laws put into place during the Orange Revolution compromise, whichever party or bloc has the most votes gets to appoint the Prime Minister and therefore creates the new government. The party does not need a majority, it simply needs to get the most votes. So a party that gets 9% of the vote while every other party receives 8% or less would be the ruling party and appoint the Prime Minister.
Considering that there are at least 11 major parties campaigning and a number of minor ones, it could be that the next leader of Ukraine will be appointed with single digit support of the people. Ironically, one of the main contenders is Yannokovich’s party, the Party of Regions. A little over a year ago, Yanokovich was considered evil incarnate, a representation of all the post-soviet corruption that ate at Ukraine like a cancer. Now, at least two of my Ukranian friends support him, reactionary votes, they say, to Yushchenko, who let them down. The rest of my friends are split between Yushchenko’s bloc and Tymoshenko’s bloc.
There really is no telling who is going to control Ukraine, but they’re counting the votes as I type this. Whoever wins is going to have a lot of power for the next four years, and never have to worry about being persecuted.
When I was here for the Orange Revolution, I thought I was here for a moment in history. Something that would be looked back upon and remembered as the turning point. Everyone else felt that way, too.
A little over a year later, though, it’s politics as usual.
Monday, March 27, 2006
Saturday, March 25, 2006
Ukraine: No One in My Arms
For whom I’m with, for all I do, when the dark comes there is no one in my arms.
I’ve been sleeping by myself for the past two years and yet suddenly, in these past two weeks, when I close the door and flip the latch, I feel very, very alone. I call up friends and go out to shoot pool, shoot the shit, and yet still come back to an empty apartment. Every night I go to sleep with space against my sternum where I know there should be warmth.
And it’s not for lack of options. It’s for lack of viable ones. I have not met a single girl lately that I didn’t feel with surety would fall for me if we started dating. I want no more heaviness, no more broken hearts.
My relationship with Robynne, wonderful as it was, fucked me up. In it’s aftermath, six months of my life disappeared. I feel like one day I just sort of woke up, realized I’d spent half a year in hazy sadness and then got on with my life. But since then I’ve been unwilling to risk going through that unless it’s going to go somewhere, unless, honestly, it’s got a real shot at leading to marriage. If I play now, I play for keeps.
So much of life is timing. I believe that. You can love someone with all your heart and they you and if one or both of you is not in the right spot in your lives, it’s never going to work. I am not at the right spot in my life. My life right now feels like one of momentum and transition and I would regret not riding it to the end, but it’s a life that, for the moment, no one can ride with me. Maybe if I met the one, I would change my mind, but at the moment I have not done so, just a lot of great girls with whom it would one day have to end.
Love is a river. A fast moving, coursing river. I sit on the banks and watch the river. Sometimes I’ll let my feet dangle in it, gripping tightly to the grass so as not to be sucked in, but I don’t want to swim in it. Because here’s the thing about the river: you don’t know where it will take you. It could be someplace amazing, some magical land of sweetness and light, or you could be washed ashore on some rocky unknown coast, bones broken and needing six months to heal.
One day I’ll plunge head long, but the timing’s not right. I have what I have: dangling feet, brisk moments of cool relief from the scorch of loneliness, but that’s all I have. And I know it’s because of the choices I’ve made and the life I lead and I accept that.
But lately, just lately, for whom I’ve been with and for all I’ve done, when the dark has come I’ve lain alone and felt with depressing clarity that there is no one in my arms.
I’ve been sleeping by myself for the past two years and yet suddenly, in these past two weeks, when I close the door and flip the latch, I feel very, very alone. I call up friends and go out to shoot pool, shoot the shit, and yet still come back to an empty apartment. Every night I go to sleep with space against my sternum where I know there should be warmth.
And it’s not for lack of options. It’s for lack of viable ones. I have not met a single girl lately that I didn’t feel with surety would fall for me if we started dating. I want no more heaviness, no more broken hearts.
My relationship with Robynne, wonderful as it was, fucked me up. In it’s aftermath, six months of my life disappeared. I feel like one day I just sort of woke up, realized I’d spent half a year in hazy sadness and then got on with my life. But since then I’ve been unwilling to risk going through that unless it’s going to go somewhere, unless, honestly, it’s got a real shot at leading to marriage. If I play now, I play for keeps.
So much of life is timing. I believe that. You can love someone with all your heart and they you and if one or both of you is not in the right spot in your lives, it’s never going to work. I am not at the right spot in my life. My life right now feels like one of momentum and transition and I would regret not riding it to the end, but it’s a life that, for the moment, no one can ride with me. Maybe if I met the one, I would change my mind, but at the moment I have not done so, just a lot of great girls with whom it would one day have to end.
Love is a river. A fast moving, coursing river. I sit on the banks and watch the river. Sometimes I’ll let my feet dangle in it, gripping tightly to the grass so as not to be sucked in, but I don’t want to swim in it. Because here’s the thing about the river: you don’t know where it will take you. It could be someplace amazing, some magical land of sweetness and light, or you could be washed ashore on some rocky unknown coast, bones broken and needing six months to heal.
One day I’ll plunge head long, but the timing’s not right. I have what I have: dangling feet, brisk moments of cool relief from the scorch of loneliness, but that’s all I have. And I know it’s because of the choices I’ve made and the life I lead and I accept that.
But lately, just lately, for whom I’ve been with and for all I’ve done, when the dark has come I’ve lain alone and felt with depressing clarity that there is no one in my arms.
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
Ukraine: The Winter that is Still Here
I got all my tax info. All told, including the readjustment allowance that's been accruing and which I won't see until December, I made $3,286 last year. And that's gross earnings. As soon as I take the standard deduction, I'm in the negative. That would be good if they had witheld Federal tax, but they didn't. Normally I look forward to tax season with masochistic glee, using all the deductions and benefits being a teacher, a student and owning your own business will provide and always ending up with a fat return. Last year, though, I didn't even make enough to have to file a return.
So I threw it in the trash.
***
I'm currently coaching the 1st place winners from 9th, 10th and 11th grade six hours a day for next week's National Olympiad. Yes, the same three students, all day long. Apparently my coordinator thinks burning them out before the competition is the wisest thing to do. Almost every second I'm not teaching them is spent prepping for the next day, because that's a lot of material to teach and it has to be done in such a way that they don't get bored and start rebelling.
Here's distraction for you: the 10th grader missed yesterday's class because she was sick. Today, this rather well-formed sixteen year-old girl came to class gothed-out in a choker, low-cut skin-tight top, skirt that came to just below her ass and knee high boots. That was not what was distracting me, though. What was distracting me was the near-permanant blob of yellowish-green snot in her left nostril. She would noisily suck this back and swallow it every few minutes and I could almost feel the nastiness sliding down my throat. I twice asked if she needed to leave to blow her nose, but she said she was okay. It wasn't her I was worried about.
***
Lastly, today I was looking at some video shot while we were building the climbing wall; I want to put together a little promo video to get kids to the weekend climbing/healthy lifestyle sessions that start next week.
In the video, while people are drilling and twisting nuts and attaching holds, it's lightly snowing.
Right now, outside, while I type this, it's lightly snowing.
That video was shot six months ago.
WHAT THE FUCK KIND OF PLACE HAS SNOW FOR HALF THE FUCKING YEAR?!?
Had to get that off my chest. Spring is coming, despite the snow, I can feel it. It comes above freezing every afternoon. But it was just surprising to see that video because it feels like we built the wall so long ago, and I realized while seeing it that, no, that wasn't last winter. That's this winter. The winter that is still here.
So I threw it in the trash.
***
I'm currently coaching the 1st place winners from 9th, 10th and 11th grade six hours a day for next week's National Olympiad. Yes, the same three students, all day long. Apparently my coordinator thinks burning them out before the competition is the wisest thing to do. Almost every second I'm not teaching them is spent prepping for the next day, because that's a lot of material to teach and it has to be done in such a way that they don't get bored and start rebelling.
Here's distraction for you: the 10th grader missed yesterday's class because she was sick. Today, this rather well-formed sixteen year-old girl came to class gothed-out in a choker, low-cut skin-tight top, skirt that came to just below her ass and knee high boots. That was not what was distracting me, though. What was distracting me was the near-permanant blob of yellowish-green snot in her left nostril. She would noisily suck this back and swallow it every few minutes and I could almost feel the nastiness sliding down my throat. I twice asked if she needed to leave to blow her nose, but she said she was okay. It wasn't her I was worried about.
***
Lastly, today I was looking at some video shot while we were building the climbing wall; I want to put together a little promo video to get kids to the weekend climbing/healthy lifestyle sessions that start next week.
In the video, while people are drilling and twisting nuts and attaching holds, it's lightly snowing.
Right now, outside, while I type this, it's lightly snowing.
That video was shot six months ago.
WHAT THE FUCK KIND OF PLACE HAS SNOW FOR HALF THE FUCKING YEAR?!?
Had to get that off my chest. Spring is coming, despite the snow, I can feel it. It comes above freezing every afternoon. But it was just surprising to see that video because it feels like we built the wall so long ago, and I realized while seeing it that, no, that wasn't last winter. That's this winter. The winter that is still here.
Monday, March 20, 2006
Ukraine: The Weekend (Pics)
Went to Kyiv this weekend.
Got in around 11 AM and did almost nothing for the next seven hours but work on the bike grant proposal. Every time I had a draft done I’d take it to someone in Peace Corps for a read through and then write another draft based on their comments. This was punctuated by many friendly interruptions in the Peace Corps office because, unbeknownst to me it was Saint Patrick’s Day and there was a party brewing.
After I couldn’t possibly change another comma, I emailed in the grant proposal, put a hard copy outside the responsible person’s door (it was now after office hours) and went out into the brisk night air with a few other volunteers to see what trouble we could find.
A cop found us: heard us speaking English and tried to extort money after we showed him our demanded passports, telling us we needed to show him a customs ticket that we didn’t have. He was a little surprised to hear us reply in Russian, and was even more surprised when Sean, who speaks near-perfect Russian, spun out an extremely intricate story about us having crossed into the country from Hungary, hence never passing through customs and getting this ticket. The cop finally let us go and ignored Sean’s proffered hand, walking up grumpily into the night.
We were told the party would be at Golden Gate, an Irish pub, and where else to celebrate Saint Patrick’s day? But turned out that everyone else in the city thought that as well, and they were no longer letting anyone in. On the mobiles and we found out that the other volunteers had gone to O’ Brian’s instead, Kyiv’s other Irish pub. Yes Kyiv has two.
Santa Sophia in the evening fog. We passed it while walking to the pub and I had to take a picture
There, we were told it was a 50 hrivna cover. Three out of four of us balked and the assenter, Sean, wanted to do a little pre-party in the street to save some money, so we walked to buy him a beer and us vodka before we parted ways. Normally my luck holds strong in such regards, but in this case it was Sean’s. He went back while we went to the metro and it turns out the bouncer was not at the door. He walked in for free. Must be the luck of the Irish.
Except Sean is Jewish.
Yes, I do suppose their could be Irish Jews. Nitpickers.
Inside O'Briens, with the bouncer who wouldn't let us pass without paying 50 hrivnas
Anyway, this left me back at the hotel with two girls and a bottle of vodka to kill between us.
That, my friends, is the luck of the Cubans.
NOTE: I am not saying I had a hot, drunken threesome at the hotel. I’m just implying it.
Actually, we just stayed up until three AM talking about race relations, which is a good topic for an African-American, an Iranian-American and a Cuban-American to get into.
I’m not sure whose luck that is.
Onward: the next morning was also spent at the computer, this time getting all the handouts ready for the Across Ukraine run meeting, which went really well. The night was more interesting, as it was one of dancing with old women under the streets of Kyiv and fist fights with fire twirlers.
We were walking on Krechatic when a guy started a fire twirling act. I went to pull out my video camera, realized it wasn’t in my bag, and was frantically searching for it when Jon said he remembered seeing it back at Peace Corps office. Sean offered to accompany me there and on the way back, camera now safely with me, we ran into Kyiv’s weekly senior citizen dance party (no, it's not really called that), which takes place Friday and Saturday night in an underground crossing.
The Senior Citizen Dance Party
A tradition for forever, a small band (that night it was an accordion player, a tambarine player and three female singers) will put out a hat to collect for donations and then start to play. To their music, a group of people with a median age of 65 begins twirling around in ballroom steps.
Sean nudged me while I was filming and asked if he should ask an old lady to dance.
There just happened to be one watching just five feet from us.
“Yeah, go ask her,” I said, nodding.
“Think she’ll say yes?”
“Of course.”
He went over, and she said no.
When he came back, dejected, I said, “Try picking one already dancing,” motioning at two 60 year-old women twirling with each other.
“Let’s pimp this together,” he said. Those who know Sean will know this is an exact quote.
So I stashed my camera, took off my jacket and followed him onto the floor. The shorter of the two ended up in my arms, head at my sternum and pressing herself sexually-close against me. This wasn’t any ballroom dance I knew, but some pattern of Soviet steps that changed every eight counts. It’s a little awkward to dance with a sextegenarian’s knees between yours and trying to pick up a new set of steps every few seconds. Still, it was fun, and we parted at the end of the song.
I was just picking up my jacket when the same old lady grabbed my arm, pulling me back onto the dance floor for the fast song that had just started. Everyone was bouncing around in a step-step hop that never changed, meaning I could ignore my feet and have fun bouncing around with this old woman who had more energy than I did, spinning herself as our shoulders see-sawed to the rhythm and the whole crowd rotated in one big circle under the streets of Kyiv.
It was damn cool.
We got back to the fire twirler and the friends we left behind to find the fire twirler sitting against a wall and the crowd gone. This is second-hand from those who witnessed it, but apparently while the fire twirler was twirling his fire, a drunk guy had jokingly acted like he was stealing the hat that had been set out to collect money. He had dropped hat, spilling the bills and change. The drunk, embarrassed, pushed the money into a pile but didn’t put it back into the hat, which the angered fire twirler then commanded him to do.
The drunk guy yelled back and the-ahem-fiery confrontation could have ended there when the drunk guy’s friends grabbed him and pulled him into the crowd. Only the fire twirler ran into the crowd after him, fists flying. It was his two fists against eight, though, as he soon found that the drunk guy’s four friends repeatedly punching him. He was on the ground getting kicked when the crowd pulled the friends off the fire-twirler, letting him escape back into the open space encircled by the crowd. In revenge, the fire twirler picked up the bottle of flammable liquid that he had used in his act and hurled it at the friends. I’m a little hazy what happened from there, but I think the cops became a part of it, and we only arrived to a quiet aftermath.
And that wasn’t the end of the night, although it was decidedly more sedate from there as we went to a tiny, smokey club that has live music and spent a couple hours listening to an orgasmically good jazz band.
The jazz band
And that was the weekend.
Oh, wait, there was also the following morning: walking in on Sean and Mike’s Brokeback Mountain moment and also walking through the massive political rally that is central Kyiv.
Sean and Mike
Just a small section of the hundreds of political tents set up
A paradoy that included Putin
Not sure which was the worst example of tawdry exhibitionism.
But that’s another story.
Got in around 11 AM and did almost nothing for the next seven hours but work on the bike grant proposal. Every time I had a draft done I’d take it to someone in Peace Corps for a read through and then write another draft based on their comments. This was punctuated by many friendly interruptions in the Peace Corps office because, unbeknownst to me it was Saint Patrick’s Day and there was a party brewing.
After I couldn’t possibly change another comma, I emailed in the grant proposal, put a hard copy outside the responsible person’s door (it was now after office hours) and went out into the brisk night air with a few other volunteers to see what trouble we could find.
A cop found us: heard us speaking English and tried to extort money after we showed him our demanded passports, telling us we needed to show him a customs ticket that we didn’t have. He was a little surprised to hear us reply in Russian, and was even more surprised when Sean, who speaks near-perfect Russian, spun out an extremely intricate story about us having crossed into the country from Hungary, hence never passing through customs and getting this ticket. The cop finally let us go and ignored Sean’s proffered hand, walking up grumpily into the night.
We were told the party would be at Golden Gate, an Irish pub, and where else to celebrate Saint Patrick’s day? But turned out that everyone else in the city thought that as well, and they were no longer letting anyone in. On the mobiles and we found out that the other volunteers had gone to O’ Brian’s instead, Kyiv’s other Irish pub. Yes Kyiv has two.
Santa Sophia in the evening fog. We passed it while walking to the pub and I had to take a picture
There, we were told it was a 50 hrivna cover. Three out of four of us balked and the assenter, Sean, wanted to do a little pre-party in the street to save some money, so we walked to buy him a beer and us vodka before we parted ways. Normally my luck holds strong in such regards, but in this case it was Sean’s. He went back while we went to the metro and it turns out the bouncer was not at the door. He walked in for free. Must be the luck of the Irish.
Except Sean is Jewish.
Yes, I do suppose their could be Irish Jews. Nitpickers.
Inside O'Briens, with the bouncer who wouldn't let us pass without paying 50 hrivnas
Anyway, this left me back at the hotel with two girls and a bottle of vodka to kill between us.
That, my friends, is the luck of the Cubans.
NOTE: I am not saying I had a hot, drunken threesome at the hotel. I’m just implying it.
Actually, we just stayed up until three AM talking about race relations, which is a good topic for an African-American, an Iranian-American and a Cuban-American to get into.
I’m not sure whose luck that is.
Onward: the next morning was also spent at the computer, this time getting all the handouts ready for the Across Ukraine run meeting, which went really well. The night was more interesting, as it was one of dancing with old women under the streets of Kyiv and fist fights with fire twirlers.
We were walking on Krechatic when a guy started a fire twirling act. I went to pull out my video camera, realized it wasn’t in my bag, and was frantically searching for it when Jon said he remembered seeing it back at Peace Corps office. Sean offered to accompany me there and on the way back, camera now safely with me, we ran into Kyiv’s weekly senior citizen dance party (no, it's not really called that), which takes place Friday and Saturday night in an underground crossing.
The Senior Citizen Dance Party
A tradition for forever, a small band (that night it was an accordion player, a tambarine player and three female singers) will put out a hat to collect for donations and then start to play. To their music, a group of people with a median age of 65 begins twirling around in ballroom steps.
Sean nudged me while I was filming and asked if he should ask an old lady to dance.
There just happened to be one watching just five feet from us.
“Yeah, go ask her,” I said, nodding.
“Think she’ll say yes?”
“Of course.”
He went over, and she said no.
When he came back, dejected, I said, “Try picking one already dancing,” motioning at two 60 year-old women twirling with each other.
“Let’s pimp this together,” he said. Those who know Sean will know this is an exact quote.
So I stashed my camera, took off my jacket and followed him onto the floor. The shorter of the two ended up in my arms, head at my sternum and pressing herself sexually-close against me. This wasn’t any ballroom dance I knew, but some pattern of Soviet steps that changed every eight counts. It’s a little awkward to dance with a sextegenarian’s knees between yours and trying to pick up a new set of steps every few seconds. Still, it was fun, and we parted at the end of the song.
I was just picking up my jacket when the same old lady grabbed my arm, pulling me back onto the dance floor for the fast song that had just started. Everyone was bouncing around in a step-step hop that never changed, meaning I could ignore my feet and have fun bouncing around with this old woman who had more energy than I did, spinning herself as our shoulders see-sawed to the rhythm and the whole crowd rotated in one big circle under the streets of Kyiv.
It was damn cool.
We got back to the fire twirler and the friends we left behind to find the fire twirler sitting against a wall and the crowd gone. This is second-hand from those who witnessed it, but apparently while the fire twirler was twirling his fire, a drunk guy had jokingly acted like he was stealing the hat that had been set out to collect money. He had dropped hat, spilling the bills and change. The drunk, embarrassed, pushed the money into a pile but didn’t put it back into the hat, which the angered fire twirler then commanded him to do.
The drunk guy yelled back and the-ahem-fiery confrontation could have ended there when the drunk guy’s friends grabbed him and pulled him into the crowd. Only the fire twirler ran into the crowd after him, fists flying. It was his two fists against eight, though, as he soon found that the drunk guy’s four friends repeatedly punching him. He was on the ground getting kicked when the crowd pulled the friends off the fire-twirler, letting him escape back into the open space encircled by the crowd. In revenge, the fire twirler picked up the bottle of flammable liquid that he had used in his act and hurled it at the friends. I’m a little hazy what happened from there, but I think the cops became a part of it, and we only arrived to a quiet aftermath.
And that wasn’t the end of the night, although it was decidedly more sedate from there as we went to a tiny, smokey club that has live music and spent a couple hours listening to an orgasmically good jazz band.
The jazz band
And that was the weekend.
Oh, wait, there was also the following morning: walking in on Sean and Mike’s Brokeback Mountain moment and also walking through the massive political rally that is central Kyiv.
Sean and Mike
Just a small section of the hundreds of political tents set up
A paradoy that included Putin
Not sure which was the worst example of tawdry exhibitionism.
But that’s another story.
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
Ukraine: Where the Water Went
Ukraine Life Lesson Number 3,469: Never put off to tomorrow what you can do today, because there may not be any water tomorrow.
NOTE: I would like to point out that the word "tomorrow" was originally "to" and "morrow", "morrow" meaning "morning". Thanks to the mashing together ("together" is also a mashing, this time of "to" and "gather") of those two words into ("into" is another mashing) this word ("another" is an-other mashing), I now have to put the preposition "to" in front of "tomorrow" beacause my English forebearers were too lazy to enunciate. Using it seems redundant and sounds akward, but unfortunately it is the only current way to be gramatically correct.
NOTE: That diatribe came from someone who routinely uses "S'up" and "y'all".
Anyway.
Yeah, no water and no one knows for how long, hence the pile of dishes in the kitchen. I suppose I could pull out the stored water and wash them in a tub, but who are we kidding here? My tolerance for foulness will easily outlast the water shutoff. Still, should have washed them yesterday instead of watching a bootleg copy of Battlestar Gallacitca. And possibly should have taken a shower, too.
I don't know exactly what happened to the water, because it's shut off city wide and apparently the city feels that information about cause and duration of a shut off should be a closely-guarded one.
I know where it went, though: into the streets. Actually, the water in the streets is the result of two days with above-freezing temperatures (although they drop back to freezing at night). Still, people only start clearing the sidewalks when the temperature comes above freezing, hacking away at the several-feet thick sheet of ice that's been accreting all winter, exposing the layers of trash that have accumulated all winter (people litter, snow covers, people litter, snow covers, and on and on), but none of that matters because for the first time in months I'm walking on terra firma and this is the herald of the spring to come!
Due to a lack of drainage system, this does mean that the melting snow forms deep and wide puddles everywhere. Hmm. Puddles doesn't quite really describe what we're dealing with here, but the English language doesn't have anything halfway between puddle and pond, although these bodies of water would qualify as being just that. Perhaps if our forebearers had spent more time making up new words instead of mashing the old ones together, we could have filled in this obvious lexical gap.
Some of these whatevers are so dirty and slushy that they are sneakily disguised as asphalt if you're not paying attention. After stepping into one of those freezing whatevers to mid-calf last year while wearing my slacks and on the way to teach class, I have been on my guard.
That was Ukranian Life Lesson Number 468.
NOTE: I would like to point out that the word "tomorrow" was originally "to" and "morrow", "morrow" meaning "morning". Thanks to the mashing together ("together" is also a mashing, this time of "to" and "gather") of those two words into ("into" is another mashing) this word ("another" is an-other mashing), I now have to put the preposition "to" in front of "tomorrow" beacause my English forebearers were too lazy to enunciate. Using it seems redundant and sounds akward, but unfortunately it is the only current way to be gramatically correct.
NOTE: That diatribe came from someone who routinely uses "S'up" and "y'all".
Anyway.
Yeah, no water and no one knows for how long, hence the pile of dishes in the kitchen. I suppose I could pull out the stored water and wash them in a tub, but who are we kidding here? My tolerance for foulness will easily outlast the water shutoff. Still, should have washed them yesterday instead of watching a bootleg copy of Battlestar Gallacitca. And possibly should have taken a shower, too.
I don't know exactly what happened to the water, because it's shut off city wide and apparently the city feels that information about cause and duration of a shut off should be a closely-guarded one.
I know where it went, though: into the streets. Actually, the water in the streets is the result of two days with above-freezing temperatures (although they drop back to freezing at night). Still, people only start clearing the sidewalks when the temperature comes above freezing, hacking away at the several-feet thick sheet of ice that's been accreting all winter, exposing the layers of trash that have accumulated all winter (people litter, snow covers, people litter, snow covers, and on and on), but none of that matters because for the first time in months I'm walking on terra firma and this is the herald of the spring to come!
Due to a lack of drainage system, this does mean that the melting snow forms deep and wide puddles everywhere. Hmm. Puddles doesn't quite really describe what we're dealing with here, but the English language doesn't have anything halfway between puddle and pond, although these bodies of water would qualify as being just that. Perhaps if our forebearers had spent more time making up new words instead of mashing the old ones together, we could have filled in this obvious lexical gap.
Some of these whatevers are so dirty and slushy that they are sneakily disguised as asphalt if you're not paying attention. After stepping into one of those freezing whatevers to mid-calf last year while wearing my slacks and on the way to teach class, I have been on my guard.
That was Ukranian Life Lesson Number 468.
Sunday, March 12, 2006
Ukraine: How to Make Things Work
It should be noted that all the projects Jon and I have going on are done through a language barrier. Kolia (head of Polissya) and Tolic (head of ACET) have only rudimentry English skills, so all of our conversations are in Russian (although Kolia, to his credit, will speak in English when he can).
Sometimes this is frustrating, as was my last meeting with Kolia when I was just having a bad language day and so was he, but we had to hammer out details on a grant that is due on Friday. In particularly, we had to choose whether to go a for-profit or non-profit route on the bike project. He didn't want to do for-profit because he didn't want to get hit with taxes and other things, but doing a non-profit grant would mean commiting to doing a substance abuse project with the bikes and he's already proven himself leary of working with kids. He said he'd think about it and in the meantime the grant clock was running out.
Jon and I had another good meeting with Tolic yesterday, and to any random observers (and there are many since we do these in a cafe) it must seem an odd sight: Jon and I speak English to each other, but Jon speaks Ukranian to Tolic, I speak Russian to Tolic and Tolic has to constantly shift between Russian and Ukranian with both of us (and just as often forgets and speaks the wrong language). Tolic is completely on board with any project we bring him and was excited about working with Polissya on the bike project. They are already set to work together on the wall project, which will have 10 kids climbing while 10 are listening to a presentation on HIV/AIDS and Drug prevention from ACET and then the groups will switch (I need to start giving these projects names).
Since I've been the go-between for the two groups and have been doing it through a language barrier (as much Russian as I like to think I know, it's still not easy to discuss a detailed project in it; I can do it, it's just not easy) I decided it was best to get both into a room to hammer out all the final details.
As it happened, I had forgotten my cell phone at the library and when Tolic called it for me to find out where it was, Diana, who was giving a presentation there, picked it up. She offered to bring it to the cafe and then came along to the meeting.
While Jon was having fun climbing on the wall, I was ready to kill things. Peace Corps had decided for me that, in lieu of a profit/loss statement and a business plan, non-profit was the way to go. In fact, the profit group never even reviewed my grant (I submitted it to both to cover my bases). The non-profit side was full of holes. It looked like what it was: Polissya recieving money to buy bikes and ACET doing a seminar here and there. The goals weren't clear cut because Polissya didn't want to do more than give bike tours and I couldn't get them to commit to more.
I walked in the room ready to let Tolic and Kolia come up with a workable solution when Kolia said they were going the profit route--except he hadn't had time to write a business plan. It meant I had five days to completely rewrite a grant that had never been reviewed with a business plan Kolia had not yet written.
Add to that a lack of sleep and the fact that I hadn't eaten all day (I had to teach Saturday morning because we had a holiday on Wednesday and had woken up too late to eat breakfast and went to the Tolic meeting right after), and if I don't eat I get really pissy.
I left the room in a bit of a huff to make some phone calls to Peace Corps. I wasn't sure if it was even feasible to switch to the profit grant at this point. Luckily, I did not get a hold of anyone at Peace Corps who could give me information: it was a Saturday.
I went back in and told the entire situation to Diana and said "We have no time, I can't get a hold of anyone, have them figure out a way to do it non-profit."
Then I sat and things worked. Diana knows everything about my projects because it's all I talk about nowadays. In fast-paced Russian the three of them talked and argued for nearly the next hour while I sat there and rarely said a word. Diana, in other words, was me and did a better job of being me than I could.
By the end, the solution they worked out was this: ACET would train Polissya how to do their seminars (capacity building required by the grant); Polissya would conduct the seminars DURING the bike tours at rest stops (making the bikes a draw and intergral to the substance abuse segment required by the grant); ACET would donate materials for these trainings as well as pamphlets for the kids as an in-kind; Polissya would then conduct peer-to-peer trainings for the kids so that the kids could begin to take over the ACET side of the wall project, meaning that kids would teach kids about drugs and AIDS and then they could all climb together (peer-to-peer is very popular in the grants nowadays; sometimes you have to move with the trends to get the money).
The grant was suddenly workable, and all it took was removing myself from the situation.
Apparently the best thing I can do for Ukraine is make myself obsolete.
That's not a bad thing: with eight months to go, that is the base philosophy of everything I'm doing.
Anyway, post food, sleep and the meeting, I'm feeling a lot better.
Sometimes this is frustrating, as was my last meeting with Kolia when I was just having a bad language day and so was he, but we had to hammer out details on a grant that is due on Friday. In particularly, we had to choose whether to go a for-profit or non-profit route on the bike project. He didn't want to do for-profit because he didn't want to get hit with taxes and other things, but doing a non-profit grant would mean commiting to doing a substance abuse project with the bikes and he's already proven himself leary of working with kids. He said he'd think about it and in the meantime the grant clock was running out.
Jon and I had another good meeting with Tolic yesterday, and to any random observers (and there are many since we do these in a cafe) it must seem an odd sight: Jon and I speak English to each other, but Jon speaks Ukranian to Tolic, I speak Russian to Tolic and Tolic has to constantly shift between Russian and Ukranian with both of us (and just as often forgets and speaks the wrong language). Tolic is completely on board with any project we bring him and was excited about working with Polissya on the bike project. They are already set to work together on the wall project, which will have 10 kids climbing while 10 are listening to a presentation on HIV/AIDS and Drug prevention from ACET and then the groups will switch (I need to start giving these projects names).
Since I've been the go-between for the two groups and have been doing it through a language barrier (as much Russian as I like to think I know, it's still not easy to discuss a detailed project in it; I can do it, it's just not easy) I decided it was best to get both into a room to hammer out all the final details.
As it happened, I had forgotten my cell phone at the library and when Tolic called it for me to find out where it was, Diana, who was giving a presentation there, picked it up. She offered to bring it to the cafe and then came along to the meeting.
While Jon was having fun climbing on the wall, I was ready to kill things. Peace Corps had decided for me that, in lieu of a profit/loss statement and a business plan, non-profit was the way to go. In fact, the profit group never even reviewed my grant (I submitted it to both to cover my bases). The non-profit side was full of holes. It looked like what it was: Polissya recieving money to buy bikes and ACET doing a seminar here and there. The goals weren't clear cut because Polissya didn't want to do more than give bike tours and I couldn't get them to commit to more.
I walked in the room ready to let Tolic and Kolia come up with a workable solution when Kolia said they were going the profit route--except he hadn't had time to write a business plan. It meant I had five days to completely rewrite a grant that had never been reviewed with a business plan Kolia had not yet written.
Add to that a lack of sleep and the fact that I hadn't eaten all day (I had to teach Saturday morning because we had a holiday on Wednesday and had woken up too late to eat breakfast and went to the Tolic meeting right after), and if I don't eat I get really pissy.
I left the room in a bit of a huff to make some phone calls to Peace Corps. I wasn't sure if it was even feasible to switch to the profit grant at this point. Luckily, I did not get a hold of anyone at Peace Corps who could give me information: it was a Saturday.
I went back in and told the entire situation to Diana and said "We have no time, I can't get a hold of anyone, have them figure out a way to do it non-profit."
Then I sat and things worked. Diana knows everything about my projects because it's all I talk about nowadays. In fast-paced Russian the three of them talked and argued for nearly the next hour while I sat there and rarely said a word. Diana, in other words, was me and did a better job of being me than I could.
By the end, the solution they worked out was this: ACET would train Polissya how to do their seminars (capacity building required by the grant); Polissya would conduct the seminars DURING the bike tours at rest stops (making the bikes a draw and intergral to the substance abuse segment required by the grant); ACET would donate materials for these trainings as well as pamphlets for the kids as an in-kind; Polissya would then conduct peer-to-peer trainings for the kids so that the kids could begin to take over the ACET side of the wall project, meaning that kids would teach kids about drugs and AIDS and then they could all climb together (peer-to-peer is very popular in the grants nowadays; sometimes you have to move with the trends to get the money).
The grant was suddenly workable, and all it took was removing myself from the situation.
Apparently the best thing I can do for Ukraine is make myself obsolete.
That's not a bad thing: with eight months to go, that is the base philosophy of everything I'm doing.
Anyway, post food, sleep and the meeting, I'm feeling a lot better.
Monday, March 06, 2006
Ukraine: Cross-Country Skiing and Mass Graves (Pics)
My friend Irina popped my cherry on cross-country skiing today.
I had hoped to spend a lot of this winter doing cross-country skiing. Instead the coldest temperatures Ukraine had seen in nearly a century came with no snow. It has been snowing heavily lately, but Irina and I couldn’t make our schedules match up.
Winter is fast running out, with it coming up to 0 every afternoon, turning the streets muddy before they refreeze into a sheet of ice every night. Ironically, I wanted winter to hold out just a little longer so I could try out cross country skiing.
But that’s done now, so winter go away.
When we were finally able to go, Irina handed me a 40 year-old pair of what looked like bowling shoes. They were two sizes too big and laces of these shoes had been broken, causing the previous user to skip holes in order to lace them up, meaning they were even looser than the two-sizes would normally allow for. I felt not only awkward wearing them, but I was a little confused by the two inch hunk of leather jutting forward from each toe, making them the sort of shoes drunk clowns would wear if they went bowling (and why do you never see clowns bowling, anyway? Are they too good for it? Is it not funny enough? What’s the deal?).
The skis, which were only about 20 years old, clamped down onto the leather bits.
The shoes
The skis
Off we went, from her house. Snow had been falling steadily for almost four days, leaving about six inches of fresh powder. Fresh powder is good if you’re downhill skiing, but a trail-breaking endeavor if you’re cross-country skiing, especially if it’s your first time. I kept my skis lined up in the two tracks Irina was carving in the snow, gliding over her hard work.
It was actually a lot of fun and not nearly as difficult as I thought it would be. A couple times I got my skis crossed trying to turn, but otherwise was able to stick to the simple, albeit full-body, motion needed to keep going forward.
I once learned from an infomercial (for an exercises machine that mimicked cross-country skiing) that it’s the best aerobic workout on the planet. At the time, this felt very true. It’s especially true if you’ve been climbing on, say, Saturday and then went to a club and danced for four hours that night and then, say, got up six hours later to go climbing with Jon on Sunday, and when you climb with Jon you find that he and you turn into idiot masochists who try to do the hardest conceivable challenges in an effort to prove your manhood and then, say, because you could only squeeze in skiing that morning, wake up 6:45 AM after staying up late watching Brokeback Mountain, which made you feel like crying but you didn’t because you’re a man, and it also slightly confused you because suddenly you wondered if you had latent homosexual feelings for Jon, and so then you had to do 100 push-ups and drink three shots of vodka to prove your manhood to yourself. And then you went cross-country skiing.
It certainly felt like the best aerobic workout on the planet.
Me skiing
And that was all true for me except for the bits after Brokeback Mountain. Except, perhaps, the latent homosexual feelings bit. It’s hard to tell, them being latent and all.
Anyway.
Back to me skiing with a hot Ukrainian girl.
We skied across the interstate (I’m not kidding) and into the woods. This is all about ten miles outside of Zhytomyr, near Irina’s village, the name of which I can’t remember.
Irina skiing across the interstate
The woods were gorgeous, the naked tree limbs frosted with snow. At times, a gust of wind would come up, sending down tiny snowfalls into the quiet. We skied through the forest for a long time, then came upon several areas without trees that were fenced off with low, wooden fencing.
Irina skiing ahead of me
Now for the sobering part.
Irina hadn’t told me about these, hadn’t even really meant to show me, but they were beside the path. I saw at least four of these fenced off areas, but I’m told there’s many more. A granite obelisk standing in the woods about ten feet back from the path tells in Russian that these areas are mass graves which hold thousands (no actual number, just that word: thousands) of soldiers, officers and citizens who bravely died protecting the Soviet Union from the fascists.
The obelisk. You can see one of the mounds to the right.
At least that’s what it says.
“They can write anything they want to write,” said Irina. She told me who was buried in those mass graves: Jews.
I’ve been told the Holocaust started here, in the Zhytomyrska Oblast. If what I’m told is true, the first set of mass Jewish executions happened in the town 30 miles south of Zhytomyr, Berdichiv. A once-thriving city with a majority Jewish population, 40,000 of the 60,000 people living in Berdichiv were shot by invading Germans and buried in mass graves outside the city.
And here is where the Jews of Zhytomyr and the surrounding area were buried. We looked at the mounds, but didn’t go near them.
“The older people, they say the ground used to breathe here,” said Irina. And of course it would: methane from the decomposing bodies would have seeped and bubbled to the surface. The mounds were later covered in sand, Irina went on, sand that was now covered by snow. When she was a child, her class would come to these graves and remove the leaves and twigs that had fallen onto the sand. This had been really unpleasant, she said, because of the bones they’d end up touching.
Another grave. You can see the fencing through the trees.
Bones? I knew that the Germans had realized a need to cover these killings, which is why the began the concentration camps and the crematoriums. During the war, captured Soviet soldiers had been forced to dig up most of the early mass graves and burn the bodies. The memorial to the 120,000 Jews killed at Baba Yar in Kyiv, for example, sits on earthen mounds full of ashes but empty of bones. I knew Berdichiv had been overlooked, and that under its earth still lay the bones of thousands of Jews. What I had been told, though, was that it was the only such mass grave left over from the Holocaust.
Bones, said Irina. Many Jews had swallowed jewelry to hide it from the Germans. After the war, Ukrainians had dug up the graves looking for the jewelry that that Jews had swallowed. I forgive them for it: Ukraine had just been recovering from the famine Stalin had imposed and World War I before that when the German war machine tore through Ukraine on its drive towards Moscow, leaving the country in ruins and half the male population dead. Anti-Semitism in Ukraine aside (and there’s plenty of it), I think there were motivations of survival in the desecration.
But, understandable or not, the digging had churned up bones which now no longer lay just in the earth, but in the sand Irina and her classmates had to pick clean every year.
I slowly digested all this before we started skiing again, slowly gliding off into the falling snow that floated down, covering the sand and yet still failing to cover the sins…
I had hoped to spend a lot of this winter doing cross-country skiing. Instead the coldest temperatures Ukraine had seen in nearly a century came with no snow. It has been snowing heavily lately, but Irina and I couldn’t make our schedules match up.
Winter is fast running out, with it coming up to 0 every afternoon, turning the streets muddy before they refreeze into a sheet of ice every night. Ironically, I wanted winter to hold out just a little longer so I could try out cross country skiing.
But that’s done now, so winter go away.
When we were finally able to go, Irina handed me a 40 year-old pair of what looked like bowling shoes. They were two sizes too big and laces of these shoes had been broken, causing the previous user to skip holes in order to lace them up, meaning they were even looser than the two-sizes would normally allow for. I felt not only awkward wearing them, but I was a little confused by the two inch hunk of leather jutting forward from each toe, making them the sort of shoes drunk clowns would wear if they went bowling (and why do you never see clowns bowling, anyway? Are they too good for it? Is it not funny enough? What’s the deal?).
The skis, which were only about 20 years old, clamped down onto the leather bits.
The shoes
The skis
Off we went, from her house. Snow had been falling steadily for almost four days, leaving about six inches of fresh powder. Fresh powder is good if you’re downhill skiing, but a trail-breaking endeavor if you’re cross-country skiing, especially if it’s your first time. I kept my skis lined up in the two tracks Irina was carving in the snow, gliding over her hard work.
It was actually a lot of fun and not nearly as difficult as I thought it would be. A couple times I got my skis crossed trying to turn, but otherwise was able to stick to the simple, albeit full-body, motion needed to keep going forward.
I once learned from an infomercial (for an exercises machine that mimicked cross-country skiing) that it’s the best aerobic workout on the planet. At the time, this felt very true. It’s especially true if you’ve been climbing on, say, Saturday and then went to a club and danced for four hours that night and then, say, got up six hours later to go climbing with Jon on Sunday, and when you climb with Jon you find that he and you turn into idiot masochists who try to do the hardest conceivable challenges in an effort to prove your manhood and then, say, because you could only squeeze in skiing that morning, wake up 6:45 AM after staying up late watching Brokeback Mountain, which made you feel like crying but you didn’t because you’re a man, and it also slightly confused you because suddenly you wondered if you had latent homosexual feelings for Jon, and so then you had to do 100 push-ups and drink three shots of vodka to prove your manhood to yourself. And then you went cross-country skiing.
It certainly felt like the best aerobic workout on the planet.
Me skiing
And that was all true for me except for the bits after Brokeback Mountain. Except, perhaps, the latent homosexual feelings bit. It’s hard to tell, them being latent and all.
Anyway.
Back to me skiing with a hot Ukrainian girl.
We skied across the interstate (I’m not kidding) and into the woods. This is all about ten miles outside of Zhytomyr, near Irina’s village, the name of which I can’t remember.
Irina skiing across the interstate
The woods were gorgeous, the naked tree limbs frosted with snow. At times, a gust of wind would come up, sending down tiny snowfalls into the quiet. We skied through the forest for a long time, then came upon several areas without trees that were fenced off with low, wooden fencing.
Irina skiing ahead of me
Now for the sobering part.
Irina hadn’t told me about these, hadn’t even really meant to show me, but they were beside the path. I saw at least four of these fenced off areas, but I’m told there’s many more. A granite obelisk standing in the woods about ten feet back from the path tells in Russian that these areas are mass graves which hold thousands (no actual number, just that word: thousands) of soldiers, officers and citizens who bravely died protecting the Soviet Union from the fascists.
The obelisk. You can see one of the mounds to the right.
At least that’s what it says.
“They can write anything they want to write,” said Irina. She told me who was buried in those mass graves: Jews.
I’ve been told the Holocaust started here, in the Zhytomyrska Oblast. If what I’m told is true, the first set of mass Jewish executions happened in the town 30 miles south of Zhytomyr, Berdichiv. A once-thriving city with a majority Jewish population, 40,000 of the 60,000 people living in Berdichiv were shot by invading Germans and buried in mass graves outside the city.
And here is where the Jews of Zhytomyr and the surrounding area were buried. We looked at the mounds, but didn’t go near them.
“The older people, they say the ground used to breathe here,” said Irina. And of course it would: methane from the decomposing bodies would have seeped and bubbled to the surface. The mounds were later covered in sand, Irina went on, sand that was now covered by snow. When she was a child, her class would come to these graves and remove the leaves and twigs that had fallen onto the sand. This had been really unpleasant, she said, because of the bones they’d end up touching.
Another grave. You can see the fencing through the trees.
Bones? I knew that the Germans had realized a need to cover these killings, which is why the began the concentration camps and the crematoriums. During the war, captured Soviet soldiers had been forced to dig up most of the early mass graves and burn the bodies. The memorial to the 120,000 Jews killed at Baba Yar in Kyiv, for example, sits on earthen mounds full of ashes but empty of bones. I knew Berdichiv had been overlooked, and that under its earth still lay the bones of thousands of Jews. What I had been told, though, was that it was the only such mass grave left over from the Holocaust.
Bones, said Irina. Many Jews had swallowed jewelry to hide it from the Germans. After the war, Ukrainians had dug up the graves looking for the jewelry that that Jews had swallowed. I forgive them for it: Ukraine had just been recovering from the famine Stalin had imposed and World War I before that when the German war machine tore through Ukraine on its drive towards Moscow, leaving the country in ruins and half the male population dead. Anti-Semitism in Ukraine aside (and there’s plenty of it), I think there were motivations of survival in the desecration.
But, understandable or not, the digging had churned up bones which now no longer lay just in the earth, but in the sand Irina and her classmates had to pick clean every year.
I slowly digested all this before we started skiing again, slowly gliding off into the falling snow that floated down, covering the sand and yet still failing to cover the sins…
Saturday, March 04, 2006
Misc: Equality Ride
"Scheduled to take place in the spring of 2006, the Equality Ride will take 25–30 young adults on a seven-week bus tour to confront numerous religious and/or military colleges that ban the enrollment of GLBT students. At each stop along the journey the members of the Equality Ride will present a powerful case for GLBT equality. Visit www.equalityride.com for more information."
My friend Kayla Bonewell is participating in this ride and is even graduating a year later to do it. While I don't agree with the message (she and I have already discussed that), I will always love and support her, so:
Here is her blog:
Check it out as she takes this journey.
I love you, Kayla. Stay safe.
My friend Kayla Bonewell is participating in this ride and is even graduating a year later to do it. While I don't agree with the message (she and I have already discussed that), I will always love and support her, so:
Here is her blog:
Soulforce's Equality Ride
Check it out as she takes this journey.
I love you, Kayla. Stay safe.
Thursday, March 02, 2006
Ukraine: Daniel is a Dumb Ass (Pics)
This is really the kind of stuff that happens in a Mr. Bean movie. Unless you are me, in which case it happens fairly regularly.
So I had some sandwhiches grilling in the oven and I was reading in my bedroom when I heard fire-ish noises. I ignored them at first because my kolunka, when on, sounds like a inferno in mineshaft and looks like the afterburner of an F-16. But then I remembered that my kolunka wasn't on.
As I neared the kitchen to investigate, I started to smell something burning and when I quickly turned the corner I saw that my countertop was on fire. A few ineffectial puffs of air from my mouth later, I dumped the residual pasta out of a pot, filled it with water and doused the counter, adding a few bits of macaroni to the mess.
Examining the aftermath, I was perplexed by how the only source of fire, the oven, could possibly set the countertop on fire. Ruling out spontaneous combustion, I finally hit upon the most probable cause, and here is the Mr. Bean moment.
Having lit the oven, I probably tossed the match used to do so at the ashtray that normally recieves them. It must have missed and somehow didn't go out. While I was in my bedroom, this lit match must have set fire to the tablecloth on top of the counter, which must have set off the boxes of matches sitting on it, which must have burned a hole through the plastic bottle of cooking oil, spilling the oil and, well, you can see where it went from there.
The cloth needed to be replaced anyway and the carbon scoring is nothing some scrubbing can't get out. Possibly the worst victim is the jar of peanut butter, which began hemorging its contents.
I am such a dumb ass.
In other news, that night, the Green Party of Ukraine (not affiliated with the American one) had a huge concert/rally in the same square Tymyshenko had hers. Watching them put up the scafolding on my way to work, I wondered if it wasn't the same workers erecting the same scafolding a week later for a different political party.
We're told to stay away from political rallies, but it's a little hard when you can hear the concert from your window and look out to see more than a thousand people having a great time. Many of those people probably didn't care about politics and instead came to see Verka Serdyuchka, the male singer who does his act dressed up as a flamboyant middle-aged Ukranian woman. He has a string of hit songs, one of which can be heard on the Ukraine video (haven't seen it? Click on the "video" link on the right of the page) when everyone is doing the ring dance near the beginning (the title says "they have traditional dances").
After hearing the crowd going nuts for an hour and a half I finally decided to go collect my camera and see some of it. NOT because I support any political parties, but who am I to pass up a free Verka Serdychka concert OUTSIDE MY WINDOW?
Here's some of the crowd:
And here is Miss Serdychka herself:
Those pictures were taken off my video camera while she was singing "Na Lyobov", one of her latest. There's barely a still shot on there because I was getting buffeted by the dancing crowd; it was like being in a many-hundreds mosh pit. But that's how much flamboyant transexual performers singing songs with traditional melodies and modern beats are loved by Ukranians.
I don't claim to understand it either.
But her music is really catchy.
And lastly, Karl Beck, the director of Peace Corps, came to visit me yesterday. For no particular reason, I was told. Just an informal visit, I was told. This made me nervous. If I'm in trouble, that's one thing. The director of Peace Corps coming to see me and only me for no reason sent off alarms. "What stupid things have I done lately?" went through my head at least twice. I knew he was visiting other volunteers in the country: I got a panicked phone call from a friend north of Kyiv that Beck was visiting her a few days before me. "Why was he coming? Who did he want to see? What did he want?" she asked. I could only tell her that I didn't know, either. This is how paranoid we are: we operate without any direct supervision, and so the concept of bosses makes up nervous.
It turned out to be no big deal. He watched one of my seminars and talked to my teachers for the last twenty minutes of it, answering their questions about Peace Corps. He talked to my coordinator and the director of the institute, outlining Peace Corps new extention in Youth Development, and then he came to see the climbing wall. My coordinator and my teachers lavished praise on me, which was nice. Perhaps they also feared I was in trouble.
Beck is a fascinating guy, having worked in a number of countries and done some really important things in his life, not the least of which was coordinating placement of all the Cuban refugees from the Murial boat lift. Despite this, though, we only made polite chat in the car on the way to the wall (he has a car and a driver).
Ironically, as proud as I was to show off the wall when we got there, he just kind of nodded and then asked to see the inside of the house that Polissya uses for meetings and stowing gear. The house is almost 100 years old and he was particularly interested in seeing how they had plastered the ceilings. So as much as I had planned to talk about all our future projects, his interest in architecture trumped my interest in climbing. He did thank me before he left: he said he's been to 10 institutes in the past five years and had never seen a seminar. He also said it's also the first time he's seen a climbing wall, meaning he had two firsts that day and appreciated it.
So that was pretty cool.
Karl Beck and I. I do clean up, don't I? That is what I wear to work everyday, which no one believes because they only see me in street clothes. This is because I have a tendency to change into comfortable clothes as soon as possible.
So I had some sandwhiches grilling in the oven and I was reading in my bedroom when I heard fire-ish noises. I ignored them at first because my kolunka, when on, sounds like a inferno in mineshaft and looks like the afterburner of an F-16. But then I remembered that my kolunka wasn't on.
As I neared the kitchen to investigate, I started to smell something burning and when I quickly turned the corner I saw that my countertop was on fire. A few ineffectial puffs of air from my mouth later, I dumped the residual pasta out of a pot, filled it with water and doused the counter, adding a few bits of macaroni to the mess.
Examining the aftermath, I was perplexed by how the only source of fire, the oven, could possibly set the countertop on fire. Ruling out spontaneous combustion, I finally hit upon the most probable cause, and here is the Mr. Bean moment.
Having lit the oven, I probably tossed the match used to do so at the ashtray that normally recieves them. It must have missed and somehow didn't go out. While I was in my bedroom, this lit match must have set fire to the tablecloth on top of the counter, which must have set off the boxes of matches sitting on it, which must have burned a hole through the plastic bottle of cooking oil, spilling the oil and, well, you can see where it went from there.
The cloth needed to be replaced anyway and the carbon scoring is nothing some scrubbing can't get out. Possibly the worst victim is the jar of peanut butter, which began hemorging its contents.
I am such a dumb ass.
In other news, that night, the Green Party of Ukraine (not affiliated with the American one) had a huge concert/rally in the same square Tymyshenko had hers. Watching them put up the scafolding on my way to work, I wondered if it wasn't the same workers erecting the same scafolding a week later for a different political party.
We're told to stay away from political rallies, but it's a little hard when you can hear the concert from your window and look out to see more than a thousand people having a great time. Many of those people probably didn't care about politics and instead came to see Verka Serdyuchka, the male singer who does his act dressed up as a flamboyant middle-aged Ukranian woman. He has a string of hit songs, one of which can be heard on the Ukraine video (haven't seen it? Click on the "video" link on the right of the page) when everyone is doing the ring dance near the beginning (the title says "they have traditional dances").
After hearing the crowd going nuts for an hour and a half I finally decided to go collect my camera and see some of it. NOT because I support any political parties, but who am I to pass up a free Verka Serdychka concert OUTSIDE MY WINDOW?
Here's some of the crowd:
And here is Miss Serdychka herself:
Those pictures were taken off my video camera while she was singing "Na Lyobov", one of her latest. There's barely a still shot on there because I was getting buffeted by the dancing crowd; it was like being in a many-hundreds mosh pit. But that's how much flamboyant transexual performers singing songs with traditional melodies and modern beats are loved by Ukranians.
I don't claim to understand it either.
But her music is really catchy.
And lastly, Karl Beck, the director of Peace Corps, came to visit me yesterday. For no particular reason, I was told. Just an informal visit, I was told. This made me nervous. If I'm in trouble, that's one thing. The director of Peace Corps coming to see me and only me for no reason sent off alarms. "What stupid things have I done lately?" went through my head at least twice. I knew he was visiting other volunteers in the country: I got a panicked phone call from a friend north of Kyiv that Beck was visiting her a few days before me. "Why was he coming? Who did he want to see? What did he want?" she asked. I could only tell her that I didn't know, either. This is how paranoid we are: we operate without any direct supervision, and so the concept of bosses makes up nervous.
It turned out to be no big deal. He watched one of my seminars and talked to my teachers for the last twenty minutes of it, answering their questions about Peace Corps. He talked to my coordinator and the director of the institute, outlining Peace Corps new extention in Youth Development, and then he came to see the climbing wall. My coordinator and my teachers lavished praise on me, which was nice. Perhaps they also feared I was in trouble.
Beck is a fascinating guy, having worked in a number of countries and done some really important things in his life, not the least of which was coordinating placement of all the Cuban refugees from the Murial boat lift. Despite this, though, we only made polite chat in the car on the way to the wall (he has a car and a driver).
Ironically, as proud as I was to show off the wall when we got there, he just kind of nodded and then asked to see the inside of the house that Polissya uses for meetings and stowing gear. The house is almost 100 years old and he was particularly interested in seeing how they had plastered the ceilings. So as much as I had planned to talk about all our future projects, his interest in architecture trumped my interest in climbing. He did thank me before he left: he said he's been to 10 institutes in the past five years and had never seen a seminar. He also said it's also the first time he's seen a climbing wall, meaning he had two firsts that day and appreciated it.
So that was pretty cool.
Karl Beck and I. I do clean up, don't I? That is what I wear to work everyday, which no one believes because they only see me in street clothes. This is because I have a tendency to change into comfortable clothes as soon as possible.
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