Alexander Doroshenko

Alexander (Sasha) Doroshenko is a member of the church we attend here in Ukraine. He owns a small auto parts store and serves as a member of the board of the MCC-sponsored loan fund in our congregation. He never misses an opportunity to sing and play his guitar in church; rarely a Sunday goes by when he is in attendance and does not have a song to sing.

He is also an avid sports enthusiast, and loves hockey and soccer. He often tells me what’s happening in the NHL. Looking at him, however, I never expected boxing to be a part of his story. He looks nothing like Dolph Lundgren’s character “Ivan Drago” in Rocky IV (in my opinion the only Rocky movie worth watching).

From the ages of 13-20, Sasha was an amateur boxer in the former Soviet Union. In his own, disjointed storytelling style, he told me about living in trains, planes, and hotels for the majority of these years. He began boxing in the lowest weight category, 47 kilograms, but spent most of his career in the next class up, 51 kg. This is also where he experienced his success. In 1978, he participated in the USSR junior boxing championship in Riga, Latvia, losing the championship by decision to a Russian who would go on to become the champion of Europe. The following year, he again participated in the junior championship, this time winning the 51 kg division.

I could not get him to tell me his amateur record, but he was quick to point out that he never really liked boxing. His real love was soccer, but the region where he grew up in Western Ukraine did not have a serious coach. He became a boxer by default.

He spent his two mandatory years in the army in the sports academy, but upon release decided to hang up his gloves. He went to music school and learned to play the guitar. He joined a band and played, mainly at wedding ceremonies, while attending business school. He talks about these two degrees with a bit of pride, since he never really finished high school. He now has a grown daughter and is an active participant in our church.

Dave

Trout in the Shape of a Squirrel

Throughout my eating-out experiences in Ukraine, the one thing I have particularly enjoyed is the English menu. Many restaurants don’t have it, but some do. And when they do, they are quite likely to be a source of entertainment. It seems that almost every restaurant that we’ve visited here with an English menu hasn’t bothered to have it translated by a professional – generally it seems to be translated by any Joe who has had a little English training, or maybe has purchased a Russian/English dictionary. Thus, the translations of food items and their descriptions on the English menu are generally accurate, but sometimes quite funny. I do understand that there is a special kind of language used on a menu that we don’t usually use in everyday speech. I say fried fish, the menu says pan-seared haddock. I say garlic potatoes, the menu says fire-roasted fingerling potatoes, seasoned with tender garlic scapes. So I do want to cut the menu translators some slack. But sometimes, rather than entice us to order their food, the English menu food descriptions make us laugh, or look for the simplest, most familiar food. Some favorites we’ve encountered: crabby salad, granny’s pickled products, tunny filets, chicken with fungus, salad from sea products, and the most memorable: Trout in the Shape of a Squirrel. The trout was found on the menu at a local Chinese restaurant. Perhaps serving trout in the shape of a squirrel in Ukraine (or in China) is an especially exotic or appealing way to eat it. Maybe it has some significance. Or maybe it’s just a bad translation. Anyway, a friend of a friend was inspired by the trout and wrote a poem about it, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Little do they know: not only are those menu translators providing us Anglophones with a general idea of what we’re ordering, they’re also inspiring art.

Trout In the Shape Of A Squirrel (A Poem)

“Do I eat nuts? Do I look like I eat nuts?”
I used to slalom to and fro
To flick in the air, a silver rainbow
Where the rivers bend. The world all seemed to flow
My way. I was king of the day.
(Do I eat nuts? Do I look like I eat nuts?)
As the evening fell, my luck did end
For a friend of a restaurateur‘s best friend
Dropped a net my tail could not defend
Away. Now I sadly say:
(I eat nuts. I must eat nuts)
I'm the trout they shaped like a beast of the bough
Don’t ask me where or why or how
One gets a feel for mixed-up chow
These parsnips in the form of a cow
Giraffe cakes, kangaroo pilau
A haddock which I swear meowed
To a lemon sponge who howled ‘bow wow.’
(It is nuts. Now I bid you Ciao).

Laura

Bug in the oatmeal

Today at breakfast Dave saw two tiny, black, pointy things sticking out of his spoonful of oatmeal. Upon closer inspection, they appeared to be a pair of pinchers from a black bug. It wasn’t the small weevil-type bug that sometimes gets into oatmeal if you forget about it in the back of the cupboard. It was a fierce-looking bug. Actually it was just the pinchers from what we imagined was a fierce black bug. Thankfully, the bug was nowhere to be seen. After that, neither of us has much of an appetite for our oatmeal. But although this was a particularly gross example, this type of thing goes on frequently here – finding foreign objects that should not be in our food. Pieces of shell in the walnuts, rocks in the beans, sticks in the raisins, hulls (and apparently black bugs) in the oatmeal. When we first arrived, I bought lots of groceries, especially fresh fruit and vegetables, at the outdoor markets here. That included raisins and nuts, which are sold from various containers or bins. Either could’ve been raised, harvested and shelled or dried by the babushka selling them to you. I liked this idea of freshness and that my purchases were helping the producer directly. But after finding small sticks and rocks in the raisins I bought several times, I felt that babushka should’ve been a little more careful with her sorting, and decided to buy them in packaged, labeled and sealed bags at the grocery store. Surely these would be packaged by someone who was paid to pay attention at the factory, and thus my bag would contain only raisins and no other surprises. After my first raisin purchase, I was surprised to find that my reasoning had been faulty. I found the same sticks and rubbish in my packaged, store-bought raisins that I’d seen in my market-bought ones. Apparently quality control hadn’t branched into the raisin department yet. Or maybe they’re picking out the big rocks and sticks and just leaving the little ones. So I resigned myself to sorting the raisins before using them. It was either that or buy imported German raisins, which would entail spending my entire weekly grocery budget on just raisins.

So I’ve adjusted to the little ritual of checking certain foods before you eat them. Other foreigners have adjusted in other ways. I know of a person who brings a suitcase full of groceries back from the States whenever she’s there. Not exotic, hard-to-find-in-Ukraine things like peanut butter or brown sugar, but ordinary things like cheese and oatmeal. I admit that I found myself snickering about this in the past (Just eat it! All the Ukrainians do!) but maybe she’s had a “black bug” experience, or worse. Everyone is entitled to be comfortable with the food they eat.

I’ve decided that eating a stick, rock or bug, especially cooked, will probably not harm be a bit. I know fellow MCCers who are eating bugs on purpose in other parts of the world where that sort of thing is acceptable. And that makes me thankful that I’m in Ukraine. There might be bugs in the oatmeal or sticks in the raisins, but at least it’s not on purpose and it's culturally acceptable for me to pick them out.

Laura

Pumpkin Head

Today I realized that tomorrow is Halloween. It won’t make much difference, since Halloween doesn’t seem to be celebrated here at all. An elementary Sunday school class from Dave’s home church sent us a cute handmade jack-o-lantern wall hanging, which we promptly hung on our apartment door. That will probably be the extent of our Halloween celebration. Even if we wanted to, carving jack-o-lanterns would be difficult, since I’ve never seen an actual orange, round pumpkin as we know them back home. Most of what I use as “pumpkin” for cooking is butternut or other kinds of squash. In Russian, all winter squash, including pumpkin, is called the same thing – tikva.

But even though Halloween is not commonly celebrated here, it might have a future, thanks to Amstor, the local supermarket. Today I went to Amstor for a few things, and pumpkin was on my list. As I reached the produce section, I noticed a bin with a bunch of round, cellophane-wrapped objects, and above them a display a large sign that said “Halloween” in English. Upon further inspection, I realized that the round objects, though they were a greenish-gray mottled color, were pumpkins. And they had mean-looking, jagged-featured carved faces. Underneath the sign was an explanation of Halloween and jack-o-lanterns (translated into Russian as “pumpkin heads”). The sign, in addition to explaining the history of Halloween and the purpose of jack-o-lanterns, said Halloween was celebrated all over the world, which was an interesting statement, since if it really was celebrated here, they wouldn’t need a sign to explain the holiday and persuade customers to buy pre-carved pumpkins. Maybe its celebrated everywhere but Ukraine. Or maybe the Soviets nixed it – the bad spirit world could have been just as threatening as the good one. Anyway, after the initial “cultural moment,” I was sad to find that the carved pumpkins were the only ones to be found in the produce section, save three gigantic squashes that would, if stood on end, reach above my knee. Not good for bus travel. So I left without a pumpkin or a pumpkin head. I’d like to go back to Amstor in early November and see how many have sold.

Laura

Another Gas Crisis

Shortly after we got here, I bought a chainsaw. I did not think that this was an absolutely necessary tool for what I was supposed to be doing, but we did have some ground to clear in preparation for the garden and greenhouse projects. Some people from our churches back home had given us a little money for “personal use.” The macho part of me has always been attached to chainsaws, so I just had to convince Laura that this was what they had in mind when they had called it “personal” money.

I used the saw a bit then, and have used it several times since then to prepare wood for campfires and “shashliks,” which are the traditional Ukrainian barbeque (very tasty). But I never anticipated that others would get so much use out of it.

In the past month, people have been repeatedly borrowing it after work and on weekends to “help a babushka from church get ready for winter.” It has gotten plenty of use.

Before this, I hadn’t given it much thought, but last week I had an informative conversation with Valentina Chernova, the director at the Good Shepherd Center. We were talking about the rise in gas prices. I told her that my dad was paying about 20 percent more for propane this winter in Minnesota. She trumped that, saying that natural gas cost 147 percent more this winter than it did last winter. She said that the average pensioner receives $60-80 per month and, if winter temperatures are similar to last year’s, it will cost around $70 per month just to heat one of the small houses pensioners typically live in. Taras Dyatlik, the academic dean, told me that his in-laws have figured out that after both receiving their pensions, they will have $40 per month to live on.

I now understand why so many people are cutting wood.

Dave

Grape Season

I’ve written about the fruit in Ukraine before, but I never about the particular fruit now in season: grapes. Grapes were not a very big deal to me until I came to Ukraine. They were a salad accessory, that’s all. Here, in September and October, they are the glue, together with the standard cookies and tea, of social interaction.

Everyone who has the space has a grapevine, and about this time, they are overflowing. Because of this, we have been the lucky benefactors of several large bags of grapes. The first ones were dark blue, almost black, with a dusty haze that had been barely smudged when they were picked. They really were beautiful. And now I know where the taste for artificial grape flavoring comes from. These grapes were intensely flavored and were the perfect blend of sweet and tart – nothing like the one-dimensional, bland green or red table grapes in grocery stores at home. Since our first bag, we’ve sampled several other varieties, and I see many more at the market in all hues and shapes. Some have familiar wine names, like Muscat, and others are named after their looks – the other day someone told me about “Black Ladyfingers,” named after their elongated, pitch-black fruit.

The one thing that keeps me diligently eating more than my share of grapes every day is the fact that they have seeds. Dave is a bit of a seed snob, and would rather pass on these grapes, rather than sort and spit every mouthful. There is a seedless green variety of grapes from Turkey available at the local grocery store, but for some reason lack of seeds seems to mean lack of flavor. So when at home, I eat grapes by myself, although that’s certainly not the best way. Because it takes time to eat grapes with seeds, it can become a communal activity, like sipping tea or cracking nuts at Christmas, well-paired with a leisurely schedule and good conversation. Grape season corresponds well with birthday season among the English department staff - birthdays happen to be plentiful in the months of September and October. Olga, our resident grape supplier, never lets us down, and so we take some time to sit together, talk, eat birthday cake, and grapes.

Laura

Humanitarian aid

I've been meaning to post this picture for awhile. It's of the MCC container of material aid - canned turkey, clothing, health kits, etc. being unloaded at DCU in August. For the past several years, DCU has received a container like this one every fall, and this was the first time we happened to be around when it was unloaded. Recently each employee at DCU waited patiently in line to received a case of tushonka, (canned turkey) which was a blessing for everyone. This time of the year is always difficult financially for DCU, and since teachers haven't received their salaries for a couple months, they were especially grateful for the meat. Earlier this fall, both staff and students took their turn going through the clothing received in the shipment, also timely at the time when kids were needing back to school clothing and the season was changing. After being on the North American side of MCC's material aid projects - buying supplies for health kits and school kits, and helping with meat canning in SD and MN, it's good to be on the other side - and see it being used and appreciated by the recipients.

Laura