Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Garden Produce II


Dave showing off some of the cabbage grown in the garden. The cafeteria was more than happy to buy it all from the project at a discounted price.

Garden Produce I


Dave harvesting some of the beets grown in the garden. Over 250lbs. have already been picked and there are still more out there.

Lithuania

I'm posting this entry from Klaipeda, Lithuania, where I have spent the last couple days exploring Lithuania Christian College (LCC) and spending time with my fellow MCCer and friend Robin Gingerich. I headed towards the Baltics to attend a conference/retreat in Tallinn, Estonia by invitation of some of my American friends in Donetsk and thought I should stop in Lithuania since it was kind of on the way. Ideally I would've liked to visit during July, when LCC's summer English program is in full swing, to lobserve what happens and pick up some tips for DCU's program. But since DCU's program is also in July, I settled for October. The leaves are beautiful, although it has rained quite a bit. I've also connected with Anna Detrich, who's at LCC for the year and she and Robin have shown me LCC and a little bit of Klaipeda. LCC is a unique place - a Christian liberal arts college in the midst of Eastern Europe where no such idea/institution existed before. The language of instruction is English, but I hear Russian, Lithuanian and other languages in the hallways, mixed with English. The facilities are new and very nice and I've learned a lot about the school as well as the English programs - and have a few ideas to take back to implement in DCU's English program.

I've just stopped by for a few days, this afternoon I leave for Lithuania's capital, Vilnius, where I'll spend a little time being a tourist, and then head to Tallinn.

Laura

Thursday, October 13, 2005

Heat

Fall is here and the weather and landscape are slowly becoming how we remember them when we first arrived almost a year ago in November. We’ve been reminded this week that spring and fall, the in-between seasons, can be somewhat uncomfortable indoors – in this case as we’ve waited for the heat to come on in the buildings. Most every building is heated with a boiler system - hot water in radiators. Most of the time the hot water source is a big place that services a whole section of town, so climate control within your own apartment is not up to you, nor is the date when the heat is turned on or shut off.

Across the city, the big day that the heat comes on is October 15. This year, it could’ve been a couple weeks earlier – we’ve been drinking lots of hot tea to compensate. Last night during the weekly student gathering in our apartment, prayer requests and conversation focused on staying warm despite cold buildings and keeping from getting sick. Since DCU has its own boiler system we are independent from the city and the October 15th rule. This evening I came home to a cold apartment, but stepped close enough to a radiator later in the evening to notice its warmth, then happily listened to it gurgle all during supper. We are grateful for the extra two days of heat.

It’s funny how much my attitude towards the temperature in our apartment is affected by knowing that I could do nothing to make it warmer. In Phoenix, Dave and I would see how long we could go without turning on the heat in our house – partly to be cheap and, being native Midwesterners, partly to marvel at how warm the Arizona weather really was. (You can make it until Christmas without heat in the desert!) So even though it probably wasn’t any colder in our apartment here in Donetsk than it was in our place in Phoenix, I sure resented the chill more, simply because I couldn’t do anything about it. As long as I know I can control it, I’ll sit in my apartment and shiver for as long as I feel like it. I realized that having your apartment temperature controlled by a mysterious “boiler operator” five blocks down the street is just another handy method of control if you’re living in a communist country. And in our case, living under the remnants of a communist system, the boiler man can keep the masses of shivering citizens from being warm but he can’t keep them from complaining about it.


Laura

Monday, October 10, 2005

Politics

I don’t know how much Ukraine has been in the news in U.S. during the past several weeks, but just in case you haven’t heard, there’s been a big shake-up in the government. I don’t know many details because, honestly, I don’t follow the political situation very closely. It takes quite a bit of effort to get Ukrainian news in English with our current technological capabilities, and sometimes we just don’t have the time to wait for the slow-as-molasses Internet connection to deliver the news. Anyway, apparently the president, Victor Yushenko (leader of last fall/winter’s Orange Revolution) “fired” the government. This includes lots of top leaders and the prime minister, Yulia Timoshenko. Apparently there were accusations of corruption and interfering with government work for all sorts of personal/monetary gains. The all-to-familiar story here, of shady financial deals and whatnot getting interfering with running a lawful, corruption-free society.

It’s hard to know who to believe and what exactly is going on. We, of course, hear a range of opinions. Several times a week we walk past Lenin Square in the center of the city and see banners proclaiming a “Ukraine without Yushenko,” and many of the people we rub shoulders with agree with such sentiments. This summer when there wasn’t hamburger at the store we asked our language teacher about it, and she shrugged her shoulders and replied in a sarcastic tone, “I don’t know, ask our president.” A similar finger-pointing response came up again later in a discussion about the prices of groceries in general, which have risen noticeably since we arrived last November. One positive change in bureaucracy we’ve happily noticed is the waiver of visa requirements for Americans who plan to visit Ukraine for short amounts of time. (A $150 discount incentive for those thinking about visiting …) So although the news magazines we read from the West paint a dreary picture of the “Orange Revolution gone wrong” and the old ways of corruption and cronyism taking over again, I don’t think anyone really knows what will happen. For us, it’s just wait and see.

Laura

Wednesday, October 05, 2005

Cleaning the Garage

As I have mentioned before, when workers leave Ukraine, those who remain have a free-for-all on the household items left behind. After this, there are always things that no one really wants, yet seem useful or at least too good to throw away. These items are stored in Zaporozhye, in the MCC garage.

Last weekend I went to Zaporozhye to help clean the assorted items that were piled up there. Liz, Andre and I spent the afternoon on Friday and the morning on Saturday deciding what to keep, give away, and throw away. I found that the criteria for “useful” or “too good to throw away” differ greatly from person to person.

We found a lot of things such as sets of dishes, small appliances, and bedding that we were fairly certain future workers will be interested in using. We tried to clean, sort and package these in order that workers can avoid wading through boxes of junk to find something useful.

We also found random things that workers may want to use, but would probably be put to better use in an orphanage or children’s center in the area. These things were mainly mismatched mugs, bowl, and sheets that we already had plenty of. We didn’t want to insult the recipients’ dignity by giving them things that they would turn around and throw away. I found it the distinction very difficult. Which things would we bring to the partners (as sort of humanitarian aid) and which would we put in the dumpster?

Once we got started, we found that most things that we put in the dumpster were removed by dumpster scavengers by our next trip there. Some of the stuff that we thought was totally useless was being used. I even saw some of the things we threw away on Friday, being sold at the market Saturday.


Dave