Birthday Fireworks

We walk past Renat Ahkmetov’s home/hotel every time we walk to and from the bus stop. It feels like we are in a different world. According to Money magazine, at a net worth of 2.6 billion USD, he is the sixth richest man in Europe. He owns a lot of land, mines, factories, hotels, soccer teams, etc in the area.

Yesterday evening, as we were walking home we were forced to cross the road to avoid a huge amount of pipes, welded to aim upright and at slight angles. We noticed a lot of wires and technology around the pipes that we weren’t accustomed to. We assumed it was some sort of fireworks fusing set-up, but it was nothing like what we have been used to with our small family fireworks displays at home.

Later in the evening, we heard some loud bangs as we were sitting in the living room. We ran outside and saw about half the faculty and their families standing outside the building watching a very impressive fireworks show. I overheard the rector say, jokingly, to one of the professors, “that was half-a-year’s salary for someone at DCU.” Personally, I don’t think that all of the $2,000 annual salary of a professor would have put on half of the show.

I read (on the Internet) that Ahkmatov’s birthday was on Wednesday and I suppose this was part of the celebration. Not that there are a lot of people like him in the area, but still the chasm between those with and those without is quite wide here in Ukraine.

Dave

Greenhouse Progress

We are making progress with the greenhouse project. We have made a rough business plan and will receive the grant on Wednesday. It has been difficult to determine what type of vision DCU has for this project. We visited a couple of greenhouse operations around Donetsk, where the structures were for sale. They were all quite cheap, yet also very rusty and in need of repairs (as well as disassembly and transport). The question has always been should we buy one of these, as the project is an experiment and could fail, or should we use new materials and be forced to make more of a commitment? We have chosen the latter.

I don’t have any experience with greenhouses, but researching has been fun. It has been a real learning experience for me already, and I am sure that will continue as the construction begins. Fortunately a couple from Wyoming has been doing quite a bit of consulting and is coming to help with construction. They bought their tickets and will be here from October 11 through November 8. We hope to have most of the supplies on-site by then. That will probably prove to be a difficult task, as finding things is not always so easy here. It is nice to be moving forward.

Dave

Financial Situation

Financially, things at DCU aren’t going so well. The flow of money here is always up and down, and some people seem to be accustomed to talking about the “financial crisis” as if it’s an ordinary, everyday thing. But it’s still a heavy thing. Faculty and staff haven’t been paid salaries in three months. That’s not a completely unusual thing, either. But it really makes me think about the lives people are living and compare myself to them. In the U.S. if even two weeks went by with no paycheck from my employer I would definitely explore my options for another job. Concern for my financial security would dwarf all other factors, even if I enjoyed my job and strongly supported the institutions mission or work. And I don’t even have kids to support. Most of the staff and faculty here do. And yet they stay at DCU, having faith that their needs will be supplied through some way or another. Many of the staff members could easily find a job in the city that paid a more regular salary, but they stay here. And its true that throughout Ukraine ever since the fall of the Soviet Union, wages have been sparse and sporadic in many sectors, not just at DCU. But as the economy develops, salaries in other areas of employment become more regular, although that hasn’t been the case at DCU. Those who work at the university don’t receive a high salary in the first place, so few have reserves for when salaries stop. I honestly don’t know how people continue to put food on the table. Last week DCU gave each employee 10 cans of MCC meat and distributed clothing from the most recent humanitarian aid shipment, all of which was gratefully received. As families stretch cans of meat for as long as they can, I feel guilty as I tromp back to campus with my full bags of groceries and prepare meals as usual. Even though I’m not making much money working for MCC in Ukraine, I know that I’ll always have more than I need here. And I keep asking myself, if I had no salary for three months, would I stay at DCU? Everyone who works at DCU is an example to me, by simply choosing to continue working here at a place where they're doing God's work. They are living their faith by believing God will supply their needs, whether they receive a salary or not.

Laura

Picking Tomatoes

Today I picked some tomatoes. Around 260 or 270lbs had already been picked and canned by the cafeteria staff (while we were gone) so this was the first significant tomato harvest performed by me. This morning I picked about 40lbs of very nice tomatoes for canning purposes. I am pleased that the garden is producing good produce.

I was uncertain whether the cafeteria people would want the other 25lbs that I had picked. The tomatoes were covered with spots, sunburn, and bug holes. Laura and I have been cutting off the bad spots and eating them in salads for the last few weeks but we haven’t been able to keep up with the bad ones that the garden seems to want to produce. I couldn’t let them go to waste so I asked the cafeteria people if they would have a use for them.

When I brought them the second load, I was pleasantly surprised the first were already sorted, cleaned, sliced, and simmering in a large pot on the stovetop. They were preparing them for today’s lunch. I don’t know why I was thinking that they would be picky, but for some reason I had worried that they wouldn’t want them. It is so great to see them using the produce directly from the garden. And the ugly stuff at that.

Dave

First Prayer Group

Dave and I have stepped beyond our comfort zone this fall and agreed to host a DCU prayer group in our apartment. At the beginning of the school year, every student signs up for a prayer group, led by a faculty or staff member. Everyone meets one evening a week for the whole school year to pray, have some sort of devotion or spiritual content, and socialize. Dave and I actually aren’t completely sticking our necks out by signing up for a group, because we’re co-leading the group with our friend and co-worker, John White, who speaks Russian quite well. That’s where we feel our leading skills are lacking a bit. So we’re providing our apartment, the snacks and the entertainment (Dave really wants to teach everyone Rook). John and students will provide the devotional part. So it might not seem too hard, but we were still a bit nervous when people began to arrive yesterday evening. We didn’t understand everything when students introduced themselves, learned a few things about Ukrainian etiquette (the concept of “help yourselves” seems to be somewhat foreign, especially to the male gender), and stumbled our way through descriptions of the friends and family pictured in our photo album. But we pulled it off and I hope they had fun. And hopefully our 10 students will come back next week.

Laura

Readjusting

Laura and I have been back in Donetsk for a little over a week now and we finally seem to be getting back into the routine again. Just like the first time we came here it has been a difficult adjustment for us, but it has been different this time around.

First of all, the sense of adventure that carried us through our first few months has worn off, making us a bit less excited about all of the things that aren’t quite as easy here as they are at home. It isn’t as easy to take the little things, such as long, smelly bus rides and sporadic periods of time with warm water, with a grain of salt. Those first few days back Laura and I found ourselves saying, “Oh yeah, now I remember” a lot. Looking at it another way, it should have been easier to come back because we already knew what we were coming back to, but this was not really the case. Knowing the situation and expectations, has, however, helped us to adjust a lot more quickly this time.

I think that MCC’s mandatory two-week orientation is a very necessary thing in preparing people to plug in to positions in a wide variety of cultural settings. At orientation we were forced to think about how things will be (or how we really have no idea how things will be). This time, we did not have any sort of a buffer between our time with family and our time here. While that didn’t have to be a problem, I found myself wishing I had prepared a bit for coming back. The problem was that I wanted to enjoy my time at home and sort of forget about how things are back here for a little bit. This caused me to neglect some of the tasks I had planned to complete while at home. I had wanted to set up meetings with several people at home who could’ve been very helpful resources for my project. They could have been very good sounding boards since they have a lot of experience with projects like mine. And I kick myself for not being more deliberate, but there is not a lot I can do about it now.

So now, we seem to be back into our routines. Laura is keeping busy preparing/teaching a couple of English classes and I am moving forward with the greenhouse and garden. We start attending language lessons again tomorrow and we will see how that goes. Life seems to be going on as normally as it can be for us here.

Dave