Wrapping up with number 200

Well, our time in Ukraine has come and gone. This will probably be my last blog from Donetsk. How nice to end on such a nice round number. We leave town on the train on Sunday and leave Kiev crazy-early on Tuesday morning. The last weeks have been peppered with invitations for meals and good-byes with so many people who have cumulatively added up to our life here these past years. And this "good-bye schedule" has been turned up a notch these last days. We still have two more days of this, so I can't really wrap it up, but I don't think that I will be able to find much time to update again from here out.

In the course of these gatherings, the questions always come up: are we "ready to leave and are we leaving "in general" or "forever." I want to respond with an emphatic "No, I'm not ready to leave" or "No, not for good" but it is hard for me. In all honesty I am pretty much ready to start the next chapter in life and therefore I am ready to leave by default. And these good-byes have been especially difficult because we don't know if/when we will be coming back to see these people again. We would like to come back, but with 3-4 years of study in the immediate future and without a specific trip date in mind it is difficult to say anything for certain.

But to not respond with one of these "emphatic responses" seems to belittle the experience; to say it wasn't great and we didn't appreciate these people and the part of their lives they have shown us. And that isn't the case at all. We have been stretched in ways that we never knew we would bend. To say it has all been great and enjoyable would be stretching the truth in that same way. But overall it has been, as I find myself oftentimes saying in Russian, a "miraculous experience" (somehow it doesn't sound as cheese as it does in English).

I have gotten to meet and talk with people whose stories I had only read about in North America. Through these conversations these stories and heroes became real to me. I have grown from the faith and values of the many people I have worked/traveled/played with in ways I will never really be able to put my finger on. I have felt like I have been on a MCC scholarship these past years and I could summarize the education I have received in a long, boring blog (maybe I already have).

Have I had a positive effect on these people? I hope so, probably not as much as they have affected me, but nonetheless I think that I have been honest, flexible, and willing to help in any way I have been able. I have tried to be both real and optimistic, even if this was oftentimes a struggle. And I have provided them with plenty of laughs, with my "ease of speaking/lack of attentiveness to grammar" combo.

The optimist in me wants to say that I/we will be back. This would help to emphasize the many "thank you's" that I find myself saying. We both hope to come back, one option might be to teach at the Summer English Intensive that Laura has spent so much time and effort planning. And maybe come early or stay late and help out with some camps for the Good Shepherd kids. So, I guess the only question really is when.

Dave

Training

I met the Prytup family today. Pavel is going to spend 50% time at Good Shepherd and 50% time with the MCC Income Generation projects. Betsy is going to spend 50% time at Good Shpeherd and 50% time at home with their two small children.

I printed some documents to help in the discussion, especially in regards to the income generation responsibilities and have also had some time for informal discussion. Talking to them, even though they have a lot of epxerience in this part of the world (Pavel grew up in the USSR and former-USSR and they have visited many times in the past years) and are also more qualified to do what I have been trying to do these past years (Pavel has a Masters in International development and Betsy worked in a children's home in Ohio), reminds me a lot of what it was like for me almost three years ago.

Countless questions were swimming around in my head.. What was I going to DO for three years here? Who are these people and will I ever get to know any of them? What's the difference between all the different types of Baptists here? What is Orthodoxy? How will I work with these people and would my job description evolve? And also little things like will our electronic items work on 220-volt curent? Would we have to buy all our water? And the list went on and on.

And now, here we are getting ready to go home and here are these people in shoes similar to the ones we were in not that long ago. And they have questions too. Questions about things I mostly take for granted. How many of these questions have I really found answers accurate enough to give them a decent response, and how many un-understood things have I just grown accustomed to not knowing the answer to or the reason for?

I remember the people I appreciated the most in those first weeks/months. I won't name names, but they were the ones patient enough to answer my oftentimes ridiculous-seeming questions, empathetic enough to realize I woundn't understand everything at once so simple answers were necessary (even if they didn't always give the entire picture), and honest enough to say "I have no idea" when that was clearly or even not so clearly the case.

Helping these new people in their transition will probably be a great way to process and bring closure to my own time here. And I hope that I will be as patient, empathetic, and honest enough to follow the examples of those who I so greatly appreciated about three years ago. I probably won't, but maybe these new coworkers will be forgiving. I'll probably learn more from them than they will from me. And they only have to put up with me for a week-and-a-half. Unfortunately, sometimes it will be in large doses. Poor newcomers.

Dave

Moving Day

Yesterday we were able to move all our furniture from our apartment on the fourth floor to an apartment in Makeevka, not far from Good Shepherd, where the Prytups are going to live. It was a full day that turned out to be a bit more than I had personally bargained for.

Of course our building doesn't have an elevator, and I won't complain about that. Seven flights of stairs is not too difficult when there are six kids who are just starting work for the day and are also looking to show each other how tough they are and how fast they can move things out the front door. The trouble came when we arrived at the other apartment building, or shortly thereafter. These coworkers will live on the eighth floor of a 9-storey building. All such buildings were built standard with elevators, small but functional.

We took up the first three loads via elevator and all was going well. Andre arrived at the first floor, the door opened and the light went out in the elevator-car. Fortunately the door remained open (for the rest of the afternoon) so he could get out and the lights in the corridor were also still on. We began to take the bigger items (that wouldn't have fit in the elevator anyway) up the stairs, while one of the locals went to call someone and "see if he could get it turned on again."

This is where the story gets strange (at least in my opinion). Apparently there is an "operator" for each block of elevators, whose job it is to monitor the electric meters and shut off the elevators if they are getting used "too much." Fortunate for whoever pays the electric bill, this person was on his/her game yesterday and shut it down just in time. I was also told that it was also possible that someone from the building called the operator to "inform" on us. Why someone would do this, I don't know. And why the operator would shut it off, also a mystery. I guess that if this is the person's job and he/she has the power then he/she is more than happy to use it every once in a while.

We were told that the operator would turn the elevator back on shortly and most people wanted to wait it out. I am not sure what sort of past experiences those who preferred to wait have had, but apparently their understanding of the word "shortly" is not the same as the meaning that I have come to these past years here.

A couple of us continued the carrying and I also began to investigate this idea of an "elevator operator." One of the guys there had moved into his apartment 25 years ago and told me that these elevators were not "cargo elevators" (like the ones that were standard in 16-floor apartments) and therefore were not to be used "so often." We never even got close to the 325 kg. maximum, but apparently it is more a problem of the elevator being forced to repeatedly do what it was made to do or something. Anyway, way back when, when this guy was moving he had tracked down the operator and given her a little money to keep the elevator on. I wished he knew where to find the operator yesterday and "grease his/her palm."

We finished our 20 or so trips up the seemingly endless number of flights of stairs and as we left I checked--the elevator door was still open with the light off. For all I know it's still that way today; at least I can "feel the burn" in my arms, back and legs.

Dave

End of Term Preparation

Today I started to work on my “End of Term Report” for MCC and I read “A Re-entry Manual” for overseas workers. With a little over one month left, I guess it’s time. The last months have flown by and I am sure this next one will go even quicker.

We were supposed to start this process back in May, when we participated in our last annual retreat. At that time we gave little reflections and had meetings with the area directors, but it just didn’t feel right. How can one reflect on the whole time when there are still three months left to go? I wasn’t ready for such activities; it seemed too early. After that local people began asking “when are you leaving?” as the first question after the standard greetings. Again, I just wasn’t ready.

After having taken the Crimea trip (the topic of the previous entry), I have started to feel like I am ready to think about leaving. I still want to be here until that last day, but I realize that leaving is a process and needs to be done over time so we can have closure with as many activities and people as possible.

So, what does the schedule for the next month look like? Laura will be finishing out her English intensive responsibilities by July 29. Sometime during that time we will also pack up our two suitcases each and move out of our apartment. From then until the end we will be living in a house of some friends of ours who will be on vacation. We will head to Zaporozhye on the 30^th for a picnic/farewell that afternoon; also spending the 31^st there for “end of term” evaluations with our country representative. After we return to Donetsk we will move our furniture and home furnishings to an apartment in Makeevka where the new MCC workers will live. They will arrive in country on the 4^th and in Makeevka a few days later. We will do as much of the moving in process as we can before they get here to help them with their transition. I will do some traveling and have some meetings with the new Income Generation worker, and we will leave Donetsk (by train) on August 19^th. We will spend a day in Kiev and fly out at 6:30am on August 21^st. It’s coming fast.

So, that’s it in a nutshell. I hope there will be more reflections to come.

Dave

Crimea Trip

Crimea seems to be the place where everyone in the Former Soviet Union goes “to relax” on vacation. It is the southernmost peninsula in Ukraine, and is an “autonomous republic.” I am not sure what that means exactly, but I have heard it has to do with the fact that many residents are ethnic Russians and would rather not be associated with Ukraine. I won’t get into politics—that isn’t something I know much about—but after having been to Crimea, I can understand why the land has been fought over by so many nations and peoples in the past. Crimea is incredibly beautiful.

I traveled there on July second for a meeting with partners at a correctional facility where MCC has financed the construction of a greenhouse. After the meeting, I met up with two educators and 10 kids from Good Shepherd for a week of relaxing and seeing some of the Crimean sites. We traveled to Laspi, a small resort community between the cities of Sevastopol and Yalta. It is situated on a sliver of pebble beaches sandwiched between some mountains and the sea. I have heard it referred to as the “most beautiful place in Crimea” and, from my limited exposure to the area, I would not argue.

We set up our four tents on the beach and slept there six nights. During the days, we spent some time at the beach; the water was clear, blue and very deep in places quite near shore. There was nice variety, a couple of days there were some strong waves to play in and a couple of days it was almost completely calm. It was a pebble beach, which meant it was sometimes painful to bare feet, but there were a lot of boulders not far from shore that a sand beach probably wouldn’t have. We swam out to these boulders and had great fun jumping/diving into the sea.

We also tried to take at least one excursion each day to different interesting places in the area. Sometimes getting the kids to travel to these places was like pulling teeth, but they were usually glad they came. These places seemed like a different world when compared with industrial Makeevka.

As the pictures indicate, we visited the ancient cave cities of Mangup and Eski-Kermen, which supposedly date back over 6,000 years. There were over 200 caves in each of these communities and we made it a point to enter as many as possible. It was fun to speculate who lived there, when and what each room was for. There were oftentimes great views from the windows; the cities were situated on some pretty tall cliffs.

We climbed a 1,600-foot mountain—called Kush-Kaya—that was directly behind our campsite on the beach. There, as the last picture suggests, we experienced some unbelievable views. Some of us could have stayed up there for hours, but a couple of the teenaged boys have attention spans similar to my own when I was that age… we were there about 15 minutes.

Our daily devotions were taken from Galatians 5 and Colossians 3 and the topic was “building and strengthening (the Christian) community.” We talked about how much emphasis Paul placed on ththis topic and how sometimes we get caught up in individualism and forget those around us. These times of discussion and reflection were a highlight for me and, by the end of the week, many of the kids opened up enough to participate in some community-building activities.

The combination of the location, the devotional sessions, and some great conversations with the kids made the week in Crimea one of the highlights of my time in Ukraine. I was hoping this would be the case, as it was kind of the last big hurrah before starting to do the end-of-term stuff here. I am very thankful for the time, it was a real blessing.

Dave

Shakthar-Dynamo

Shakthar, the Donetsk soccer team, played Kiev Dynamo on Sunday night and I thought this would be a great opportunity for some of Laura’s English intensive people to see a different side of Ukrainian culture. These are the two best teams in Ukraine and there is a deep rivalry between them. I bought 21 tickets (at $0.60 a piece you can’t go wrong) and found a crowd to go. Due to some people backing out at the last minute, a crowd of 17 foreigners headed to town to chant “Shakthar Champion” with the locals.

We took a trolley bus into the center (8km) and then a tram to the stadium (2km). I had already gone to a game with two of them last year and they were wise to my ways… they warned the others to “stick close to Dave” because “sometimes he doesn’t look back.” Fortunately for them I’m not as serious about soccer as baseball back home; sometimes I have almost lost Laura because I “needed” to see the first pitch. Luckily we all stayed together and all got into the stadium almost on time.

The game was as intense as it was billed; it was a sellout crowd of around 30,000 mostly-rowdy fans. We sat in about the worst seats in the house (but I’m not complaining, they were worth every penny of the price) and were only one section over from the Kiev fan club. This was an interesting location, the rivalry encouraged both sets of fans to hold nothing back. They clearly demonstrated that they all had vast repertoires of rude words and gestures for to yell at and show the others when necessary (which just happened to be all the time). Many in the group recognized some of the gestures but, fortunately for them, they didn’t understand most of what was being said. Not that my vocabulary is vast in the “four-letter word” category but spending time with kids has helped it to develop some. Being the only person in the group who lives here, I was the “expert” the group turned to for answers. Fortunately for me, I only got asked if we were “safe” three times and, wisely or naïvely, I always answered “of course.”

The game ended up being a 1-1 tie and both teams put on a good show. It was pretty even but if I had to voice my opinion I would say Kiev was the better team. I hope, for my own safety, that no one from Donetsk reads this heresy.

The real adventure started after the game. It seemed that taking the large group home would take more thought than I had originally planned. We started out at the bus station where the vans leave from (usually quite regularly). Using my deductive reasoning, the fact that there were around 200+ people in front of us and we only saw one van in the 20+ minutes we waited, I estimated that we would have to wait approximately all night to get home. We walked to the trolley bus stop and waited another 20+ minutes. As far ass I could tell, no busses were running. I made some calls and found that, at 11pm on a Sunday night, my van driver friends are either busy and/or sleeping. We found a crew of taxis willing to take us home and weren’t too badly ripped off for the trip home. Fortunately there were no complainers in the group… although I probably deserved at least one or two for my poor planning. It was an adventure the group will probably remember.

Dave

Hiking Trip

The electric trains here are great. I can’t believe it has taken me almost three years to realize that. Even though they take a long time to get from point A to point B, they are clean, cheap, and the large windows provide great views. I wish I had learned about them earlier, I would have taken guests on them… it is a great way to see the countryside.

A few weeks ago, 11 kids and educators from Good Shepherd and I took an “electrichka” to Izyum to embark on a 6-day hiking trip along the Donetz river. It was a beautiful hike with plenty of great views, nice places to camp, and opportunities for swimming. It was approximately 25 miles, which we hiked in 3.5 days, and we ended up in picturesque Slavanagorsk. It is the rather-famous location of an Orthodox monastery in the hills of eastern Ukraine. We also had a couple of days where we stayed at our campsite and hung out. It was great.

Some of the kids didn’t think that hiking was necessarily “rest and relaxation” but nonetheless it was a great way to tire them out a bit. We carried our own food and supplies, so the backpacks were a bit heavy, especially the first couple of days. We only hiked near 2 villages along the way, so sometimes finding bread and water (we didn’t have the nice water filters hikers at home have) were a bit difficult. But it was great to get out in the countryside a bit and escape the noise and daily routine.

The last night brought thunderstorms and the following day we were soaked as we waited for the electrichka to take us home. It was a little uncomfortable, but good that it happened on the last day.

Dave