Donetsk Retreat

We hosted an informal gathering of fellow MCCers this weekend in Donetsk. After gathering in Zaporozhye for the official MCC retreat in February, we thought those based in Zaporozhye should have a "get-away" weekend, so we decided to have a "Donetsk Retreat." The weather was cloudy most of the weekend, but that didn't deter us from enjoying a cookout Saturday evening on the DCU grounds. (above photo) The rest of the time was spent relaxing, and we enjoyed dinner at a pretty authentic Mexican restaurant yesterday evening. Pictured in photo, clockwise from left: Doug, Amy, Katie, Andrew, Laura, Liz.

Clockwise from left: Liz, Dave, Doug, Katie and Amy

Russian Engineering

In recent evenings, I have been working through Solzhenitsyn’s novel entitled The First Circle. Even though I have regularly found myself falling asleep reading, I have found the book to be fantastic. It is about a group of intellectual prisoners that were put into “special camps” during Stalin’s time. I have not finished, but thus far it documents their struggles to build a voice scrambler (or copy an American model) and their worries (or lack thereof) about being gotten rid of. It is quite interesting to read Solzhenitsyn’s interpretation of what transpired.

Today at language lesson, we were talking to Marina (our teacher) about the book and her impressions. She talked about how difficult it has been for Russian society to maintain itself when many of the elite intellectuals were exiled and killed during Stalin’s time. She feels that music and literature have suffered the most and she hopes it is turning around. She has been trying to enlighten us as we (I) have been in the dark on most cultural issues. She has a very interesting, and seemingly informed point of view.

Being the son of an excavator/farmer, I am a bit more interested in machinery than in music and literature (I apologize in advance if the following paragraphs bore those of you who don’t have similar interests). Today I was astonished to see a Caterpillar excavator on tracks. It was the first modern piece of machinery that I have seen. I have seen countless excavators on rubber tires that seem to be circa 1970. Most of the backhoes look like 1970 International tractors retro-fitted with a blade and clankity old backhoe. And I have been told that they are new.

I have talked to several people and I am starting to put it together that Russian engineering was really done a disservice by Stalin’s special camps and purges (from an American point-of-view, a lack of competition probably hurt a lot as well). For example, I have been frantically searching for a rotary tiller and have come to the hypothesis that such an item does not exist here. Everything is done by hand because “labor is cheap.” It is a new point of view for me as my dad was very successful in convincing me that efficiency is everything. As I work to convince people at DCU that efficiency is a good thing, I am sure that my equilibrium may tilt in the other direction… I spent an hour and a half making a shovel handle today and another hour fixing another handle yesterday. Tools here also leave something to be desired, but I will leave that topic for later (possibly it will be even more boring).

-Dave

Clean Clothes

Saturday morning, a staff member and I removed several small trees and their root balls using the DCU tractor. I was showed how to drive the tractor and I must admit that it is strange. I may write more about that later, when I have figured out the purpose of some of the things I was instructed to do when I was starting the machine. Anyway, I found myself quite dirty by the noon hour.

That was when I was scheduled to go chainsaw shopping in the city. David Hoehner (a fellow North American) had agreed to take me and translate. He has been here for a few years and knows the language and culture far better than I do. I asked him if I should change clothes before we went. He said that after doing yard work, a few times he has run to a store and forgotten to change out of his dirty clothes, many people gave him strange looks. He also said that when plumbers and other workers have worked on his apartment, they come to work in nice clothes, change clothes in the bathroom, work on their task, and change back into their nice clothes before going back into the street.

DCU is located near a brewery and I have noticed that many people who are walking there are carrying gym bags. I always wondered what was in them and now I know. I guess if I want to fit in, I am going to have to start carrying a spare set of clothes in a gym bag.

-Dave

Planting Tulips

Spring seems to be here (finally) in Donetsk, and we are very happy about it. So is Yana, a fellow English teacher. She loves to garden and plant flowers, and has big plans for improving the looks of DCU's campus, now that she has a few people (Dave and I) who share her enthusiasm for being outside and are willing to help. Our first planting project took place Friday afternoon, a not very springy and rather cold day. We had cleared it with the powers that be to plant tulip bulbs in front of the administration building, and, on the advice of some friends, Yana was determined to do it that day. The ground proved to be quite cold, but thawed, so we proceeded. Although the location we chose will be a great place for many people to see all our beautiful tulips, it was also a great place to be scrutinized by everyone. The administration building is where all classes are held and all offices are housed, so we had a building full of onlookers, and just about as much advice. Yana warned us ahead of time that everyone would stop and tell us how to plant our tulips, but probably no one would volunteer to help, and her prediction came true. But the funny part was that as people came up to us and told us this and that, Yana, who usually translates whatever is being said, instead talked to us in English about how she knew it would be this way. Thus, all the helpful suggestions, not understood by us and ignored by Yana, went unheeded. It was truly a cultural learning experience. And we ended up having a good time, just the three of us. Now hopefully our tulips will grow!

-Laura

Garden Tillers

The rector is in the US for a few weeks for a DCU fundraising tour. Before he left, he gave me the thumbs-up to purchase a garden tiller for the campus. It had seemed as though I had been chasing my tail for the last several months, so this was a huge step forward for me. Our initial plan was to try and find an industrial-quality, rear-tine tiller. I had seen a lot of front-tine tillers (even some with Honda engines) in my wanderings in Ukrainian tool stores, but never one that seemed very heavy-duty. When Berny Wiens (Canadian ag. Consultant) was here last weekend, he told us how a tiller that would mount on the back of the campus’ 25-horsepower tractor would be a much better fit for the project this year as well as for potential expansions. So we have shifted our search to that.

As I mentioned above, I had never seen a rear-tine tiller here and I thought I was simply not looking in the right places. Yesterday we set out searching for a tractor-mounted tiller and I realized such tools might not be sold here. In North America, such accessories can’t be purchased on every corner, but they are by no means difficult to find. Google “tractor rotary tiller” and you’ll get over 16,000 matches. We searched the “agriculture base” in the area and everyone seemed to think that no such thing existed. They seemed to think that a plow and field cultivator would serve our purposes. Let me just mention here that, like the machinery they were selling, these places were probably reminiscent of the rural mid-west in the 1950’s (even though I wouldn’t really know from personal experience).

The maintenance worker who was driving me around and helping me talk to the salespeople seemed to want to settle for buying a $300, home-made, 2-bottom plow that our tractor was supposedly able to pull. I was starting to agree with him. It was quite frustrating and I went to talk to Danic (Russian for Daniel) about the dilemma. He is the director of public relations here and has an agriculture background (he is also very helpful). Even though he had never heard of or seen a tractor-mounted rotary tiller, it really interested him and he typed the Russian translation in Google Ukraine (I did not know such a site existed). We found little, but he seems determined to find one in more agricultural central or western Ukraine. I hope that we will find success quickly, because planting time is rapidly approaching.

-Dave

Weekend with Berny

Last Sunday night Berny Wiens, an agriculture consultant from Canada, came to visit us here at DCU and give advice about our potential agriculture projects. In the two weeks leading up to the meeting, I was quite nervous that he was going to come, be here for fifteen minutes, see it all, and wonder why he had made the four-hour trip from Zaporozhye.

He was scheduled to do his consulting Monday morning and leave by 2 in the afternoon and I was quite surprised that we still had things to talk about and that we will have to continue our conversation by email. Berny has a large, commercial-type garden at home and he was able to analyze the planned locations and crops. We talked about what would be a good plan for the first as well as the locations that would allow the easiest expansion.

I had hoped to plant around an acre this year, and Berny was on board with that. After showing my plan to Laura, we decided to downsize to a little over a half acre (around 25,000 square feet) with room for expansion if the spring weather and student workers lend themselves. I guess she wants me to keep my sanity or something. I just hope that some of my plants actually survive the summer.

-Dave