Saturday March 21st
I was under the impression Friday was my last day teaching before Spring Break, but the Administration decided that morning to have the usual Monday classes on Saturday since we missed two weeks for quarantine and we still haven’t caught up. I finished the Barack Obama book Dreams from my Father book, which I highly recommend, and stayed up late Friday night so I could return it to Marnie when I would see her next in Lugansk.
My classes went rather well Saturday despite feeling a little groggy, but I know the students didn’t want to be there so I tried to be as energetic as possible to motivate them. In Eighth form the students shared their postcards they made about Whitehall and then we began to write our own definitions for the vocabulary words in the next section, an activity that sounds a lot harder than you think for nonnative speakers of any language.
In ninth grade the students we split up in pairs and each group was assigned a region in the US, for example New England or the Midwest, and had to present the states included in the region, history, climate, geography, and economy and teach the rest of the students. It went rather well though in my more advanced class almost eight kids out of fourteen didn’t show up, which made me give everyone who came a perfect score for the day. I later saw some of the absent pupils in the hall and again they used to the trite excuse of going to the doctor, so after break I’m going to explain to them that next time I will get their home phone numbers from the office and then call their parents and explain in Russian that I am concerned for the students’ health considering how often they visit the doctor. If this doesn’t work, I’ll just continue to give them all zeros. Fortunately, I haven’t had a reason to be strict yet with my students as I’ve had no problems, but it won’t take long before they see me switch modes and to understand how serious I am.
In fifth form we continued to learn about animals and though they were very rambunctious, the class was fun and I was able to teach them the famed long named Hawaiin fish nuah-nuah-nuka-nuka-a-poo-a-hah. That was probably the highlight of the week at school though watching children dressed as elves goosestepping during a school concert was both surreal and sublime.
Zarya 0 – Metalurg 1
After teaching, I ran home to grab my bag and then jumped on a bus to Lugansk. While doing so, I realized fifty percent of the time I am a little more than fifty percent certain I am on the right bus to the right town. By the time I got about eighty miles south two hours later, the climate jumped probably fifteen degrees so I decided to walk to the stadium from the bus station which took about a half an hour. It was almost like being back in the states during a football game at IU with tailgating and the likes, though the only food was sunflower seeds. I quickly met up with Seth, Marnie, Olya, and Adam. Marnie and I were not checked for our backpacks which had clothes and toiletries for staying at Seth’s but they everyone who purchased a beer that comes in plastic bottles cut off so the cap could not be screwed back on and the bottle heaved at some poor chap. I thought this was very interesting since I had my Leatherman pocket knife on me and wasn’t frisked luckily.
The weather was fantastic, the beer was good, and since I know very little about football (soccer) I really enjoyed myself while my friends explained the basic rules. We lost one to zero but it was still fun and the ticket cost four dollars, though as Olya explained two years ago they cost ten cents a piece, so imagine how upset the fans would be for the percent increase. Olya meets with the English Club at the Lugansk Library and speaks perfect English. Every time a fan or group of fans started to yell and heckle, she would put her head down and laugh and refused to translate their words saying only that they were stupid and dirty phrases. Whatever it was, I knew it was probably funny by the way it sounded and how the fellow spectators responded.
After the game, al the fans simple storm the street lighting off fireworks and blocking the cars, buses, and trollies, a celebration I thought would be reserved for an actual victory. Once more, we went to the Schwarma stand, which is like a Middle Eastern burrito, and to add to the list of people I’ve met there from Iraq, Jordan, and Syria, we met a couple born in Pakistan but based out of Malaysia studying biology in English at one of the Lugansk Universities.
After the schwarma, we went to the Chelsea Pub restaurant across the street to sit and talk and have a snack, which turned out to be pistachios since they were fresh out of ice cream. While we were there, we heard a man speaking English in a heavy southern drawl and quickly realized he was on a date with a Ukrainian woman with a translator present, which sadly enough probably means he was going through one of many companies that helps Westerners find wives in Ukraine and then obtain the proper documents to take them back to their country. He heard us speak English and had a quick conversation with him though the whole ordeal still seamed very shady and awkward. At least it was reassuring to know that he’s been coming to Ukraine for years yet we speak better Russian after three months of training and six months total in country.
Peace Corps Perception
I often admit in my writing and in my conversation that sometimes my life here is very far from my first expectations of Peace Corps service. Ukraine on one hand looks much like life in America, with fashion, restaurants, designer clothes, and technology; however, this is very deceiving since the everyday customs, rituals, and culture overall is very different which I think tricks people into thinking they are back in the States. This causes them to let down their guard some which can either get them in trouble or put them in danger. I think this deception would make adjusting to a new country more difficult than going to a new country where everything is completely different, like villages in Sub-Saharan Africa or Southeast Asia, because there are not fragments of your old life in America tricking you into thinking you are somewhere else.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
A story about a goose
Next fall when you see geese heading south for the winter flying along in "V" formation, you might be interested in knowing what science has discovered about why they fly that way. It has been learned that as each bird flaps its wings, it creates an uplift for the bird immediately following. By flying in a "V" formation, the whole flock adds at least 71% greater flying range than if each bird flew on its own. People who share common direction and a sense of community can get where they are going quicker and easier, because they are traveling on the thrust on one another.
Whenever a goose falls out of formation, it suddenly feels the drag and resistance of trying to go it alone, and quickly gets into formation to take advantage of the lifting power of the bird immediately in front. If we have as much sense as a goose, we will stay information with those who are headed the same way we are going.
When the lead goose gets tired, he rotates back in the wing and another goose flies point. It pays to take turns doing hard jobs.
The geese honk from behind to encourage those up front to keep up their speed. An encouraging work goes a long way.
Finally, when a goose gets sick, or is wounded by a gun shot and falls out, two geese fall out of formation, and follow him down to help and protect him. They stay with him until he is either able to fly or until he is dead, and they launch out on their own or with another formation to catch up with the group. If we have the sense of a goose, we will stand by each other like that.
Author Unknown
Whenever a goose falls out of formation, it suddenly feels the drag and resistance of trying to go it alone, and quickly gets into formation to take advantage of the lifting power of the bird immediately in front. If we have as much sense as a goose, we will stay information with those who are headed the same way we are going.
When the lead goose gets tired, he rotates back in the wing and another goose flies point. It pays to take turns doing hard jobs.
The geese honk from behind to encourage those up front to keep up their speed. An encouraging work goes a long way.
Finally, when a goose gets sick, or is wounded by a gun shot and falls out, two geese fall out of formation, and follow him down to help and protect him. They stay with him until he is either able to fly or until he is dead, and they launch out on their own or with another formation to catch up with the group. If we have the sense of a goose, we will stand by each other like that.
Author Unknown
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Care package info
For people interested in sending a care package or a letter, here is my address in Russian, though I’m not sure if your computer will support the text.
Алан Гоуч
Петровского, 7
Беловодск
92800
Луганская Область
Украина
If this works, you can either copy by hand or print out a label or something by copying and pasting the text into a word document.
For backup, here is my address in English
Alan Gough
Petrovsky, 7
Belovodsk
92800
Lugansk Oblast
Ukraine
My parents tried to send a package via UPS and customs were a big problem. There is a Ukrainian run company called MEEST that has offices all across the States and I believe there website is meest.net. This company has received the best reviews from PCVs here in Ukraine for the quality of care and inexpensiveness (and sending food isn’t a problem unlike UPS). If there isn’t an office near you I believe you can send a package to them and they will forward it. You can contact them to know exactly what and how much to send, how much it will cost, and how long it will take.
As far as letters go, they will arrive here in about a month and I believe you only need a ninety cent stamp.
Ps. Most people know me as Alan since Keith has several problems translating into the Cyrillic alphabet as well as Russian and Ukrainian vocab.
If the text does not show up, email me.
Алан Гоуч
Петровского, 7
Беловодск
92800
Луганская Область
Украина
If this works, you can either copy by hand or print out a label or something by copying and pasting the text into a word document.
For backup, here is my address in English
Alan Gough
Petrovsky, 7
Belovodsk
92800
Lugansk Oblast
Ukraine
My parents tried to send a package via UPS and customs were a big problem. There is a Ukrainian run company called MEEST that has offices all across the States and I believe there website is meest.net. This company has received the best reviews from PCVs here in Ukraine for the quality of care and inexpensiveness (and sending food isn’t a problem unlike UPS). If there isn’t an office near you I believe you can send a package to them and they will forward it. You can contact them to know exactly what and how much to send, how much it will cost, and how long it will take.
As far as letters go, they will arrive here in about a month and I believe you only need a ninety cent stamp.
Ps. Most people know me as Alan since Keith has several problems translating into the Cyrillic alphabet as well as Russian and Ukrainian vocab.
If the text does not show up, email me.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Happy Belated International Women's Day
I was unable to obtain internet access in time to post my blog about IWD, but you can read now if interested on the holiday last Saturday.
______________________________
March 8th is International Women’s Day, a holiday and day of celebration that I was unaware of until I stumbled off an airplane in Kyiv five months ago. Although International Women’s Day is often seen as being rooted in Socialist or Communist societies, Russia and the former Soviet republics are not alone in celebrating this holiday as demonstrations have been held in the United States, India, Austria, China, Cameroon, and nations of every size and culture, from East to West.
Historically, the holiday can be seen as a mass dissent against the social, political, and mostly the economical inequalities of the sexes, which explains the day’s significance in socialist regimes. Women have demonstrated for workers’ rights across the globe for the last ninety nine years to shed light on not only horrid working conditions, but also domestic abuse and maltreatment.
Today in Ukraine, and many other countries where International Women’s Day is an official holiday designated by the government, the holiday has shed its political connotations and can be seen in a similar light as Mother’s Day. Political groups still meet to discuss the advancement of women and history is dictated in schools, administrative meetings - both local and national, and on the television.
Ukrainian society is still seen as patriarchal, though a Ukrainian proverb explains, “The man is a head, but the woman is a neck. The man looks where the neck turns.” Under the Soviet Union, more than ninety percent of households were unable to sustain on a single income, forcing women into the dangerous and unsupportive factories while continuing to maintain house and home.
The most common way to celebrate in Ukraine is the giving of small gifts, such as flowers, chocolate, and small gifts to all women in the family, neighbors, and sometimes coworkers as well. Odd numbers of flowers are presented to women, as even numbers are given only for funerals. The color of the flowers are also very important; yellow signifies a farewell; red indicates a victory and is often used on days of military remembrance; and white is a symbol of innocence.
So for those who were unaware of the holiday, like me, surprise your mother, sister, daughter, or coworker with a small gift this year. They’ll greatly appreciate the gesture and you can share a very important part of Ukrainian culture with those in America.
Quotes I enjoy:
"When I think of talking, it is of course with a woman. For talking at its best being an inspiration, it wants a corresponding divine quality of receptiveness, and where will you find this but in a woman ?"
- Oliver Wendell Holmes .
“I’m just a person trapped inside a woman's body."
- Elaine Boosler .
Further Reading (educate yourself, find more information!)
Fanny Wright – Scottish American activist who attacked the clergy believing organized religion to be the basis for inequality of the sexes. Most known for her “utopian” plantations in which the owners and slaves practiced miscegenation, the solution Wright believed would bring an end to chattel slavery.
Sojourner Truth – Born into slavery before the turn of the 19th Century, Truth fought to give herself a voice in a world where all women were white and all blacks were male. As she did not fit into the standard mold of 19th Century Femininity, Truth once publicly bared her breasts when a man questioned her womanliness. She strongly opposed the 14th Amendment, demanding the word “man” be removed and opposed Frederick Douglas who argued black men should vote even if black women could not.
Abbey Kelley – A Massachusetts born Quaker, Kelley dedicated her life to changing the way white society treated blacks. However, her white skin did not protect her from phrases such as “nigger bitch” which were heaved often by the very people she tried to educate. Inspired by William Lloyd Garrison and the American Anti-Slavery Society, Kelley was banished by her church for her independent travels through New England where she spoke to the commoner about the immorality of slavery.
The Anti Slavery Convention of American, where Kelley presented her ideals, was the first ever female organized political meeting in America, more than a decade before Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the famous meeting in Seneca Falls. Believing white women should vote before black men, both Stanton and Susan B Anthony prioritized women’s suffrage over abolition and greatly opposed Kelley’s commentary on abolition at any means.
______________________________
March 8th is International Women’s Day, a holiday and day of celebration that I was unaware of until I stumbled off an airplane in Kyiv five months ago. Although International Women’s Day is often seen as being rooted in Socialist or Communist societies, Russia and the former Soviet republics are not alone in celebrating this holiday as demonstrations have been held in the United States, India, Austria, China, Cameroon, and nations of every size and culture, from East to West.
Historically, the holiday can be seen as a mass dissent against the social, political, and mostly the economical inequalities of the sexes, which explains the day’s significance in socialist regimes. Women have demonstrated for workers’ rights across the globe for the last ninety nine years to shed light on not only horrid working conditions, but also domestic abuse and maltreatment.
Today in Ukraine, and many other countries where International Women’s Day is an official holiday designated by the government, the holiday has shed its political connotations and can be seen in a similar light as Mother’s Day. Political groups still meet to discuss the advancement of women and history is dictated in schools, administrative meetings - both local and national, and on the television.
Ukrainian society is still seen as patriarchal, though a Ukrainian proverb explains, “The man is a head, but the woman is a neck. The man looks where the neck turns.” Under the Soviet Union, more than ninety percent of households were unable to sustain on a single income, forcing women into the dangerous and unsupportive factories while continuing to maintain house and home.
The most common way to celebrate in Ukraine is the giving of small gifts, such as flowers, chocolate, and small gifts to all women in the family, neighbors, and sometimes coworkers as well. Odd numbers of flowers are presented to women, as even numbers are given only for funerals. The color of the flowers are also very important; yellow signifies a farewell; red indicates a victory and is often used on days of military remembrance; and white is a symbol of innocence.
So for those who were unaware of the holiday, like me, surprise your mother, sister, daughter, or coworker with a small gift this year. They’ll greatly appreciate the gesture and you can share a very important part of Ukrainian culture with those in America.
Quotes I enjoy:
"When I think of talking, it is of course with a woman. For talking at its best being an inspiration, it wants a corresponding divine quality of receptiveness, and where will you find this but in a woman ?"
- Oliver Wendell Holmes .
“I’m just a person trapped inside a woman's body."
- Elaine Boosler .
Further Reading (educate yourself, find more information!)
Fanny Wright – Scottish American activist who attacked the clergy believing organized religion to be the basis for inequality of the sexes. Most known for her “utopian” plantations in which the owners and slaves practiced miscegenation, the solution Wright believed would bring an end to chattel slavery.
Sojourner Truth – Born into slavery before the turn of the 19th Century, Truth fought to give herself a voice in a world where all women were white and all blacks were male. As she did not fit into the standard mold of 19th Century Femininity, Truth once publicly bared her breasts when a man questioned her womanliness. She strongly opposed the 14th Amendment, demanding the word “man” be removed and opposed Frederick Douglas who argued black men should vote even if black women could not.
Abbey Kelley – A Massachusetts born Quaker, Kelley dedicated her life to changing the way white society treated blacks. However, her white skin did not protect her from phrases such as “nigger bitch” which were heaved often by the very people she tried to educate. Inspired by William Lloyd Garrison and the American Anti-Slavery Society, Kelley was banished by her church for her independent travels through New England where she spoke to the commoner about the immorality of slavery.
The Anti Slavery Convention of American, where Kelley presented her ideals, was the first ever female organized political meeting in America, more than a decade before Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the famous meeting in Seneca Falls. Believing white women should vote before black men, both Stanton and Susan B Anthony prioritized women’s suffrage over abolition and greatly opposed Kelley’s commentary on abolition at any means.
Monday, March 3, 2008
Article in the New York Times criticizing the Peace Corps
The following article was written by a former volunteer, recruiter, and country director for Cameroon. I'm interested to hear your responses regarding his stance on the immaturity and lacking skills of Peace Corps Volunteers.
______________________________________________
January 9, 2008 Op-Ed Contributor Too Many Innocents Abroad
By ROBERT L. STRAUSS Antananarivo, Madagascar
THE Peace Corps recently began a laudable initiative to increase the number of volunteers who are 50 and older. As the Peace Corps’ country director in Cameroon from 2002 until last February, I observed how many older volunteers brought something to their service that most young volunteers could not: extensive professional and life experience and the ability to mentor younger volunteers.
However, even if the Peace Corps reaches its goal of having 15 percent of its volunteers over 50, the overwhelming majority will remain recently minted college graduates. And too often these young volunteers lack the maturity and professional experience to be effective development workers in the 21st century.
This wasn’t the case in 1961 when the Peace Corps sent its first volunteers overseas. Back then, enthusiastic young Americans offered something that many newly independent nations counted in double and even single digits: college graduates. But today, those same nations have millions of well-educated citizens of their own desperately in need of work. So it’s much less clear what inexperienced Americans have to offer.
The Peace Corps has long shipped out well-meaning young people possessing little more than good intentions and a college diploma. What the agency should begin doing is recruiting only the best of recent graduates — as the top professional schools do — and only those older people whose skills and personal characteristics are a solid fit for the needs of the host country.
The Peace Corps has resisted doing this for fear that it would cause the number of volunteers to plummet. The name of the game has been getting volunteers into the field, qualified or not.
In Cameroon, we had many volunteers sent to serve in the agriculture program whose only experience was puttering around in their mom and dad’s backyard during high school. I wrote to our headquarters in Washington to ask if anyone had considered how an American farmer would feel if a fresh-out-of-college Cameroonian with a liberal arts degree who had occasionally visited Grandma’s cassava plot were sent to Iowa to consult on pig-raising techniques learned in a three-month crash course. I’m pretty sure the American farmer would see it as a publicity stunt and a bunch of hooey, but I never heard back from headquarters.
For the Peace Corps, the number of volunteers has always trumped the quality of their work, perhaps because the agency fears that an objective assessment of its impact would reveal that while volunteers generate good will for the United States, they do little or nothing to actually aid development in poor countries. The agency has no comprehensive system for self-evaluation, but rather relies heavily on personal anecdote to demonstrate its worth.
Every few years, the agency polls its volunteers, but in my experience it does not systematically ask the people it is supposedly helping what they think the volunteers have achieved. This is a clear indication of how the Peace Corps neglects its customers; as long as the volunteers are enjoying themselves, it doesn’t matter whether they improve the quality of life in the host countries. Any well-run organization must know what its customers want and then deliver the goods, but this is something the Peace Corps has never learned.
This lack of organizational introspection allows the agency to continue sending, for example, unqualified volunteers to teach English when nearly every developing country could easily find high-caliber English teachers among its own population. Even after Cameroonian teachers and education officials ranked English instruction as their lowest priority (after help with computer literacy, math and science, for example), headquarters in Washington continued to send trainees with little or no classroom experience to teach English in Cameroonian schools. One volunteer told me that the only possible reason he could think of for having been selected was that he was a native English speaker.
The Peace Corps was born during the glory days of the early Kennedy administration. Since then, its leaders and many of the more than 190,000 volunteers who have served have mythologized the agency into something that can never be questioned or improved. The result is an organization that finds itself less and less able to provide what the people of developing countries need — at a time when the United States has never had a greater need for their good will.
Robert L. Strauss has been a Peace Corps volunteer, recruiter and country director. He now heads a management consulting company.
______________________________________________
January 9, 2008 Op-Ed Contributor Too Many Innocents Abroad
By ROBERT L. STRAUSS Antananarivo, Madagascar
THE Peace Corps recently began a laudable initiative to increase the number of volunteers who are 50 and older. As the Peace Corps’ country director in Cameroon from 2002 until last February, I observed how many older volunteers brought something to their service that most young volunteers could not: extensive professional and life experience and the ability to mentor younger volunteers.
However, even if the Peace Corps reaches its goal of having 15 percent of its volunteers over 50, the overwhelming majority will remain recently minted college graduates. And too often these young volunteers lack the maturity and professional experience to be effective development workers in the 21st century.
This wasn’t the case in 1961 when the Peace Corps sent its first volunteers overseas. Back then, enthusiastic young Americans offered something that many newly independent nations counted in double and even single digits: college graduates. But today, those same nations have millions of well-educated citizens of their own desperately in need of work. So it’s much less clear what inexperienced Americans have to offer.
The Peace Corps has long shipped out well-meaning young people possessing little more than good intentions and a college diploma. What the agency should begin doing is recruiting only the best of recent graduates — as the top professional schools do — and only those older people whose skills and personal characteristics are a solid fit for the needs of the host country.
The Peace Corps has resisted doing this for fear that it would cause the number of volunteers to plummet. The name of the game has been getting volunteers into the field, qualified or not.
In Cameroon, we had many volunteers sent to serve in the agriculture program whose only experience was puttering around in their mom and dad’s backyard during high school. I wrote to our headquarters in Washington to ask if anyone had considered how an American farmer would feel if a fresh-out-of-college Cameroonian with a liberal arts degree who had occasionally visited Grandma’s cassava plot were sent to Iowa to consult on pig-raising techniques learned in a three-month crash course. I’m pretty sure the American farmer would see it as a publicity stunt and a bunch of hooey, but I never heard back from headquarters.
For the Peace Corps, the number of volunteers has always trumped the quality of their work, perhaps because the agency fears that an objective assessment of its impact would reveal that while volunteers generate good will for the United States, they do little or nothing to actually aid development in poor countries. The agency has no comprehensive system for self-evaluation, but rather relies heavily on personal anecdote to demonstrate its worth.
Every few years, the agency polls its volunteers, but in my experience it does not systematically ask the people it is supposedly helping what they think the volunteers have achieved. This is a clear indication of how the Peace Corps neglects its customers; as long as the volunteers are enjoying themselves, it doesn’t matter whether they improve the quality of life in the host countries. Any well-run organization must know what its customers want and then deliver the goods, but this is something the Peace Corps has never learned.
This lack of organizational introspection allows the agency to continue sending, for example, unqualified volunteers to teach English when nearly every developing country could easily find high-caliber English teachers among its own population. Even after Cameroonian teachers and education officials ranked English instruction as their lowest priority (after help with computer literacy, math and science, for example), headquarters in Washington continued to send trainees with little or no classroom experience to teach English in Cameroonian schools. One volunteer told me that the only possible reason he could think of for having been selected was that he was a native English speaker.
The Peace Corps was born during the glory days of the early Kennedy administration. Since then, its leaders and many of the more than 190,000 volunteers who have served have mythologized the agency into something that can never be questioned or improved. The result is an organization that finds itself less and less able to provide what the people of developing countries need — at a time when the United States has never had a greater need for their good will.
Robert L. Strauss has been a Peace Corps volunteer, recruiter and country director. He now heads a management consulting company.
A Day in the Life of a Ukraine PCV
The most important thing to remember is service for every volunteer is very different, due to schools, communities, housing; therefore, I can only shed light on my experiences.
On any given school day, my routine can more or less be summed up by the following:
I am pretty lucky since my earliest classes start at eight o’clock and I live only a five minute walk from my school, the Belovodsk Gymnasium. I admit the first thing I do when I wake up is check the e-mails on my cell phone; reading messages from friends and family is the greatest motivation to remember what I am doing and why I am here and provides the motivation I need.
Although cooking is one of my hobbies, breakfast is usually simple, consisting of, in any combination, eggs, bread, pourage, fruit, yogurt, or muesli. I don’t eat lunch at school so I have to make sure I have enough fuel to teach anywhere from two to five lessons on given days.
Showering is a hassle since I do not have a short, rather my bathtub and a large yogurt cup I use rinse. Filling the bathtub would be a very long, expensive, and ultimately wasteful process, so I full out shower about two days a week (a number that would have frightened me in America, but here I don’t mind).
I teach at the Gymnasium in my town, which is the larger of the two public schools. There are almost eight hundred students from grades first through eleventh and over seventy teachers, six of which instruct English.
I teach 5th through 9th grade, though Ukrainians say form. Each class begins with the students standing to welcome the teacher and in the younger form students often sing melodies, such as “Good morning, good morning, good morning to you, good morning, good morning, we are glad to see you.” Teaching English as a foreign language is a challenge, but I try to think what interested me in Russian class and what helps me best to study and absorb new words and grammar, which works sometimes.
As I walk through the hallways, the students always yell, “Good morning, Mr. Alan,” even if it is two o’clock in the afternoon. I use my middle name Alan, because Keith is difficult to pronounce since the Cyrillic alphabet has no “TH” sound – they would say Keet, which in Russian is whale. The students are easily motivated by competition so I often try to think of activities that involve points and teams. They have fifteen seconds to think of a team name, some of the highlights so far have included Manchester United vs. Chelsea, Four Guys and a Girl vs Team Forever, and Team Smile vs Team Sad Face.
On Mondays and Fridays I have Russian tutoring with the school’s veteran Russian teacher who does not know one word of English. Often times I think, “If I understand what she was saying to me during tutoring, I wouldn’t need it.” Learning Russian is very difficult and continuing to study without explanations in English is even more of a challenge but I try!
Often times if I didn’t hear Ukrainian or Russian being spoken in the halls, I would think it to be a hallway in America when I walk past students. Their clothes appear as though they were just ordered out of a Gap or Hot Topic catalog, they play with the cellphones, and the younger students play tag and other games.
I have English club twice a week with the students who are not in my classes, because I want to give them all a chance to practice the language in a free and open way with a native speaker. We have played and sang “No Woman, No Cry” by Bob Marley, done mock interviews, and played Scattergories. UNO is also a very good game to practice with younger students because you can practice numbers, colors, verbs of motion like to go and to go back, and extra things like skip, take, and draw (I say this because it helped me with my Russian when I taught it to my host family with no English used).
My time after school is spent divided doing several things. I often watch one or two programs on the British Travel Channel, play my guitar, study Russian, and then I lesson plan. The text books in Ukraine are often out of date, therefore I make extra resources in hopes to make the content and activities more interesting. Making the materials takes the majority of my time and I draw pictures and write texts on the clean side of inexpensive wall paper quite often. I also have internet access at my school, which is slow and often unreliable, but I am very lucky to be able to research content and lesson ideas to make class more fun and effective.
After school, students participate in a variety of activities that take place at the sport school, music school, house of creativity, and house of culture. Most students can play an instrument or sing and football (soccer) is the most popular sport here (Almost nobody watches American Football). School is over by two o’clock, but students often have three to four extra hours of activities after school in addition to their homework and as you can see they have many responsibilities. After that, there is a computer game club in my town called Victory where students play Medal of Honor and Counterstrike.
After four months total of living with two different Ukrainian families, I now live in my own apartment fit with gas heat, a refrigerator, running water, and an indoor toilet. Compared to Peace Corps in more remote locations like villages in Africa and Southeast Asia, I am living the life!
There are no supermarkets or large stores in my town, only small stores that resemble convenient stores; however, customers have to point and ask for all the things they wish to purchase which are located behind the counter. This makes shopping somewhat difficult and it takes quite some time, so usually I go several times a week to buy only a few things at once.
If you have any questions, comments, or want to know more about a certain topic or theme I discussed, please just ask and I will tell you more!
______________________________
The ideas and opinions expressed in this journal belong solely to its writer and do not in any way represent the beliefs of Peace Corps or Peace Corps Ukraine.
On any given school day, my routine can more or less be summed up by the following:
I am pretty lucky since my earliest classes start at eight o’clock and I live only a five minute walk from my school, the Belovodsk Gymnasium. I admit the first thing I do when I wake up is check the e-mails on my cell phone; reading messages from friends and family is the greatest motivation to remember what I am doing and why I am here and provides the motivation I need.
Although cooking is one of my hobbies, breakfast is usually simple, consisting of, in any combination, eggs, bread, pourage, fruit, yogurt, or muesli. I don’t eat lunch at school so I have to make sure I have enough fuel to teach anywhere from two to five lessons on given days.
Showering is a hassle since I do not have a short, rather my bathtub and a large yogurt cup I use rinse. Filling the bathtub would be a very long, expensive, and ultimately wasteful process, so I full out shower about two days a week (a number that would have frightened me in America, but here I don’t mind).
I teach at the Gymnasium in my town, which is the larger of the two public schools. There are almost eight hundred students from grades first through eleventh and over seventy teachers, six of which instruct English.
I teach 5th through 9th grade, though Ukrainians say form. Each class begins with the students standing to welcome the teacher and in the younger form students often sing melodies, such as “Good morning, good morning, good morning to you, good morning, good morning, we are glad to see you.” Teaching English as a foreign language is a challenge, but I try to think what interested me in Russian class and what helps me best to study and absorb new words and grammar, which works sometimes.
As I walk through the hallways, the students always yell, “Good morning, Mr. Alan,” even if it is two o’clock in the afternoon. I use my middle name Alan, because Keith is difficult to pronounce since the Cyrillic alphabet has no “TH” sound – they would say Keet, which in Russian is whale. The students are easily motivated by competition so I often try to think of activities that involve points and teams. They have fifteen seconds to think of a team name, some of the highlights so far have included Manchester United vs. Chelsea, Four Guys and a Girl vs Team Forever, and Team Smile vs Team Sad Face.
On Mondays and Fridays I have Russian tutoring with the school’s veteran Russian teacher who does not know one word of English. Often times I think, “If I understand what she was saying to me during tutoring, I wouldn’t need it.” Learning Russian is very difficult and continuing to study without explanations in English is even more of a challenge but I try!
Often times if I didn’t hear Ukrainian or Russian being spoken in the halls, I would think it to be a hallway in America when I walk past students. Their clothes appear as though they were just ordered out of a Gap or Hot Topic catalog, they play with the cellphones, and the younger students play tag and other games.
I have English club twice a week with the students who are not in my classes, because I want to give them all a chance to practice the language in a free and open way with a native speaker. We have played and sang “No Woman, No Cry” by Bob Marley, done mock interviews, and played Scattergories. UNO is also a very good game to practice with younger students because you can practice numbers, colors, verbs of motion like to go and to go back, and extra things like skip, take, and draw (I say this because it helped me with my Russian when I taught it to my host family with no English used).
My time after school is spent divided doing several things. I often watch one or two programs on the British Travel Channel, play my guitar, study Russian, and then I lesson plan. The text books in Ukraine are often out of date, therefore I make extra resources in hopes to make the content and activities more interesting. Making the materials takes the majority of my time and I draw pictures and write texts on the clean side of inexpensive wall paper quite often. I also have internet access at my school, which is slow and often unreliable, but I am very lucky to be able to research content and lesson ideas to make class more fun and effective.
After school, students participate in a variety of activities that take place at the sport school, music school, house of creativity, and house of culture. Most students can play an instrument or sing and football (soccer) is the most popular sport here (Almost nobody watches American Football). School is over by two o’clock, but students often have three to four extra hours of activities after school in addition to their homework and as you can see they have many responsibilities. After that, there is a computer game club in my town called Victory where students play Medal of Honor and Counterstrike.
After four months total of living with two different Ukrainian families, I now live in my own apartment fit with gas heat, a refrigerator, running water, and an indoor toilet. Compared to Peace Corps in more remote locations like villages in Africa and Southeast Asia, I am living the life!
There are no supermarkets or large stores in my town, only small stores that resemble convenient stores; however, customers have to point and ask for all the things they wish to purchase which are located behind the counter. This makes shopping somewhat difficult and it takes quite some time, so usually I go several times a week to buy only a few things at once.
If you have any questions, comments, or want to know more about a certain topic or theme I discussed, please just ask and I will tell you more!
______________________________
The ideas and opinions expressed in this journal belong solely to its writer and do not in any way represent the beliefs of Peace Corps or Peace Corps Ukraine.
A historical perspective of my new homeland
Ukraine – A historical perspective
So what do we really know about Ukraine? Before I left I did not know much, which was an exciting factor of this venture. Chernobyl, the Soviet purges, and Ukrainian Cossacks were about all I could tell you about. So let’s review together.
First, “The” Ukraine – Everybody says this and I’m not quite sure why. I said it before I came here, but I urge you to drop the “the”. It makes Ukraine sound more like a region of Russian rather than a sovereign nation.
The city of Kyiv is older than Moscow and the Kyivan Rus civilization, formed over 1,000 years ago, is the heart of East Slavic culture. In the ninth century, the Scandinavian Prince Oleg captured Kyiv, killings its leaders and proclaimed the region to be the land of the Rus, whose name later contributed to the moniker Russia. They built fortresses on the Dnipro River (Dnieper) to protect invasions from invading nomads. Thus, the seeds were sown for a grand civilization. Kyiv later served as a uniting center for the previously disconnecting Slavic tribes to band together to protect their land. Just before the turn of the eleventh century, Christianity was introduced to improve ties with the Byzantine Empire as well as older Western nations. Prince Vladimir heaved the pagan icons into the Dnipro and then inhabitants were baptized in the freezing river water.
Most of the developed regions of Kyiv were destroyed during the Mongol invasions of the twelfth century, led by the grandson of Genghis Khan, allowing the Tartars to rule for almost an entire century. Kyivan Rus was subsequently divided into three regions, Galicia, Volynia, and Muscovy – later Poland, Lithuania, and Russia. The Mongols assimilated with the Rus in the lands of modern Ukraine, which were tested by additional invasions by Turks, Poles, and Lithuanians in the years to come. The city of Kyiv received slight autonomy by the Lithuanian throne, lasting almost four hundred years. The 16th century found the rise of the Zaporozhyan Cossacks, a group whose origins can be traced to the escaped Ukrainian serf class who later formed the center of military and political organization of Ukraine to strike at the heart of the oppressive feudal system. Cossack is a Turkish word which means “free man” and it is one of many national symbols today.
The Cossacks developed the independent state of Zaporizhya Sich, an interesting mix of democratic ideals and militaristic influence. They were known for their unmatchable skills in horsemanship and their physical appearance, easily described as a long moustache, a shaved head with a single lock of hair, and often an earring. In attempt to receive assistance against Polish Expansionism, one of the Cossack leaders signed a treaty in the 17th Century with Russia, who instead incorporated Ukraine into its already vast empire. The Cossacks later even elicited the help of Sweden to help fight off Peter the Great, though the Swedish armies were crushed and the Cossack land soon become a voiceless province within Russia.
Anti-imperial sentiment grew in the mid 19th Century with the works of poet Taras Schevchenko, whose face can be seen in monuments in almost every school and on statues in most towns in Ukraine. The amount of pride and honor toward Schevchenko is truly unmatched and it is often said that that one can find a copy of his text Kobzar next to the Bible in every home. His words were quoted in Ukrainian by Bill Clinton during a trip to Ukraine; “Fight and you shall win.” Taras’ punishment for writing such provoking words included forced labor in Siberia and later prohibition from ever returning to Ukraine. To counter the roused Ukrainians, Tsarist Russia banned not only his writings, but also the use of the Ukrainian language, which is the official language of Ukraine today. “There is something appealing about a nation whose greatest hero is a poet and a painter,” stated Linda Hodges about the lionized Schevchenko.
Following the Bolshevik Revolution and abdication of the Russian throne by Nicholas II and later execution of the Romanov Dynasty, Ukraine failed to grasp the reigns of its own independence, switching regimes nearly eighteen times in three years. One of the most difficult concepts for Americans to understand about Ukrainian history, and Central and Eastern Europe history for that matter, is the frequent acquisition of land leading to drawing and redrawing of borders, especially in the North and West of Ukraine.
A popular joke among Ukrainians living in the Carpathians involves an old man who declares “I was born in the Hapsburg Empire, went to school in Czechoslovakia, served in the Hungarian army, and was confined to the gulag prisons in the Soviet Union, and now live in Independent Ukraine.” “Wow, you sure have traveled a lot,” says another man, to which the old man responds with, “Oh no, I have never left my village.”
After two centuries of domination, Ukraine received another brief taste of freedom in 1918 following the Great War (WWI) until 1922 when the government was forced to cede to the Soviet Union, again incorporating the Eastern Ukrainian lands while Poland annexed the West.
The purges in the Soviet Union started by Lenin were carried on with fervor in the 1930s with the rule of Stalin, and though no person was safe from condemnation as a party traitor and consequent execution or forced labor in the gulags, Ukrainians and Cossacks were ruthlessly targeted due to their rebellious history. The Cossacks cherished freedom and independence, rising from the ashes of the feudal system to obtain their own farmable land, and the grain and crops harvested were a symbol of their independence. This greatly complicated the collectivization of land in the 1930s, causing Stalin to increase the grain quota exported from Ukraine to the Soviet Union, causing a massive shortage of food. Stalin’s response was to organize mass roadblocks to punish the Cossacks for their resistance and any attempt to obtain crops for personal consumption was punishable by execution. The exact number of deaths during the Soviet constructed famine is uncertain but most historians conclude an estimated seven million people died in only fifteen months, with 25,000 dying every day and a third of the total number of casualties being children. Like many other things, discussing the famine during the reign of the Soviet Union was a crime and Ukraine did not formally acknowledge the event until 1998 with the National Day of Remembrance of the Famine Victims, which falls on the fourth Saturday of November.
After the invasion of Nazi Germany, Ukraine suffered one of the highest losses in population percentages during the war (Russia lost over twenty million and China nearly fifteen million during WWII – The Great Patriotic War). Eight million Ukrainians perished during the war, including nearly 1.5 million Jews. Initially, the Nazis were met with cheers; Ukrainians believed the Germans to be their liberators, yet they soon realized their error. Sadly, many Ukrainians served as guards in various camps including Treblinka. Sobibor, and Belzic. However, anti-fascist uprisings and guerilla attacks forced the Germans to ponder why the Ukrainians fought so voraciously to protect their dictator. “They would learn the hard way a lesson that all too many aggressors overlook: that a people will fight not for their dictators, but for their homes and families.”
The greatest atrocity took place in a ravine outside of Kyiv named Baby Yar where more than 30,000 Jews were murdered by German SS in only two days, September 29th and 30th, 1941 and the later addition of 70,000 more bodies to the mass grave turned Baby Yar into the symbol of the Jewish Holocaust in Ukraine. A famous Ukrainian film director once stated, “The fate of humankind is decided in the Ukrainian fields and villages, in fire and flame, on our misfortune. So ill-fated is our land. So miserable is our lot.” Much like the unfortunate position of Poland sandwiched between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, Ukraine’s geography has weaved tragedy in the fabric of its history.
Mass imprisoning of Ukrainians and Ukrainian Jews came in the 1950s before the death of Stalin in 1953 and later in the following decades, which were not rectified until the release of many prisoners as late as the 1980s.
The Chernobyl disaster on April 26th, 1986 was a manifestation of the crumbling Soviet Union, officially causing the deaths of over ten thousand, with millions since suffering from the fallout, more than a million being children. Lina Kostenko, a Ukrainian poet, stated “a radiation meter was no good for measuring the devastation of the soul.” Denying the scale of the cataclysmic event, the Soviet Union faced a rebirth of Ukrainian insurgency, which led to the declaration of independence on August 24th, 1991. Scrambling to forge a new government in the newly obtained wave of freedom, the first years were plagued with crime, abuse of administrative power, and inflation.
The Orange Revolution in 2004 brought a peaceful rally of Ukrainians to Independence Square to support of Victor Yushenko, the current president of Ukraine, to oppose the rigged election that declared the then Prime Minister Yanukovych to be the winner of the presidential election. Ukraine is now a republic that blends presidential and parliamentary governments.
Additional Information
-Ukraine is comprised of twenty four oblasts, and the Autonomous Region of Crimea in the South.
-Ukraine is the second largest country in Europe after Russia.
-The population is roughly 46,490,400 people (fifth largest in Europe).
-Ukraine borders Russia, Belarus, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Moldova.
-Orthodox Christianity is the prevailing religion with Catholics predominantly residing in the West and Muslim populations in the South.
- Ukraine is almost at a 99% literacy rate
-
Ukraine is one of Europe’s largest energy consumers in Europe guzzling twice as much unrenewable energy sources as Germany, though I think it not fair to compare a teenager country to such a developed, profitable nation as Germany. In addition, eleven new nuclear power plants are currently set to be built within the next twenty years.
Cultural Observations
People would be sorely mistaken to simply lump Ukrainian culture with that of its big brother Slavic Russia and simply being east doesn’t mean the people are any less Ukrainian. I have observed an interesting dichotomy in the pride of my host family out in Lugansk Oblast that includes pride for their Russian heritage yet their dedication to their homeland Ukraine. Ukrainian is heavily spoken though I am only fifty kilometers from Russia and Serjic, a mix of the two languages can be heard just about anywhere in my town. However, I cannot begin to fathom the difference in culture and lifestyle between villages in the East and West. The East is known as being as the industrial center due to Soviet influence, and cities including Lugansk, Donetsk, and Dnipropetrovsk are influential mining centers, often referred to as the Donbas region.
I apologize if this read like a term paper, but once I started writing I got back into the swing of college history papers. I hope you enjoyed reading and learned something new. For my next updatel, which will be a while don’t worry, I’ll try to focus on where I left with culture.
For further reading:
“Execution by Hunger: The Hidden Holocaust” Dolot, Miron. 1987
“”The Ukrainians: Unexpected Nation” Wilson, Andrew.
“Ukrainian’s Forbidden History” Graham Smith and Rob Perks
For Fiction-
“Everything is Illuminated” - I think I’m the only PCV here who HASN’T read this book.
If anyone has any questions or topics they’d like to hear about just send me an e-mail or respond and I will try my hardest to answer. Also, if you read the articles I sent about the former country director of Peace Corps Cameroon or the man who circumnavigated the world with only manpower, I’d love to hear your thoughts and reactions.
Best wishes and let me know how you and all your loved ones are if and when you get the chance.
“True glory consists of doing what deserves to be written and writing was deserves to be read.”-
“We have it in our power to begin the world over again.” – Thomas Paine
“May the fire in my eyes light the way for me.” – E.Town Concrete
Keith
So what do we really know about Ukraine? Before I left I did not know much, which was an exciting factor of this venture. Chernobyl, the Soviet purges, and Ukrainian Cossacks were about all I could tell you about. So let’s review together.
First, “The” Ukraine – Everybody says this and I’m not quite sure why. I said it before I came here, but I urge you to drop the “the”. It makes Ukraine sound more like a region of Russian rather than a sovereign nation.
The city of Kyiv is older than Moscow and the Kyivan Rus civilization, formed over 1,000 years ago, is the heart of East Slavic culture. In the ninth century, the Scandinavian Prince Oleg captured Kyiv, killings its leaders and proclaimed the region to be the land of the Rus, whose name later contributed to the moniker Russia. They built fortresses on the Dnipro River (Dnieper) to protect invasions from invading nomads. Thus, the seeds were sown for a grand civilization. Kyiv later served as a uniting center for the previously disconnecting Slavic tribes to band together to protect their land. Just before the turn of the eleventh century, Christianity was introduced to improve ties with the Byzantine Empire as well as older Western nations. Prince Vladimir heaved the pagan icons into the Dnipro and then inhabitants were baptized in the freezing river water.
Most of the developed regions of Kyiv were destroyed during the Mongol invasions of the twelfth century, led by the grandson of Genghis Khan, allowing the Tartars to rule for almost an entire century. Kyivan Rus was subsequently divided into three regions, Galicia, Volynia, and Muscovy – later Poland, Lithuania, and Russia. The Mongols assimilated with the Rus in the lands of modern Ukraine, which were tested by additional invasions by Turks, Poles, and Lithuanians in the years to come. The city of Kyiv received slight autonomy by the Lithuanian throne, lasting almost four hundred years. The 16th century found the rise of the Zaporozhyan Cossacks, a group whose origins can be traced to the escaped Ukrainian serf class who later formed the center of military and political organization of Ukraine to strike at the heart of the oppressive feudal system. Cossack is a Turkish word which means “free man” and it is one of many national symbols today.
The Cossacks developed the independent state of Zaporizhya Sich, an interesting mix of democratic ideals and militaristic influence. They were known for their unmatchable skills in horsemanship and their physical appearance, easily described as a long moustache, a shaved head with a single lock of hair, and often an earring. In attempt to receive assistance against Polish Expansionism, one of the Cossack leaders signed a treaty in the 17th Century with Russia, who instead incorporated Ukraine into its already vast empire. The Cossacks later even elicited the help of Sweden to help fight off Peter the Great, though the Swedish armies were crushed and the Cossack land soon become a voiceless province within Russia.
Anti-imperial sentiment grew in the mid 19th Century with the works of poet Taras Schevchenko, whose face can be seen in monuments in almost every school and on statues in most towns in Ukraine. The amount of pride and honor toward Schevchenko is truly unmatched and it is often said that that one can find a copy of his text Kobzar next to the Bible in every home. His words were quoted in Ukrainian by Bill Clinton during a trip to Ukraine; “Fight and you shall win.” Taras’ punishment for writing such provoking words included forced labor in Siberia and later prohibition from ever returning to Ukraine. To counter the roused Ukrainians, Tsarist Russia banned not only his writings, but also the use of the Ukrainian language, which is the official language of Ukraine today. “There is something appealing about a nation whose greatest hero is a poet and a painter,” stated Linda Hodges about the lionized Schevchenko.
Following the Bolshevik Revolution and abdication of the Russian throne by Nicholas II and later execution of the Romanov Dynasty, Ukraine failed to grasp the reigns of its own independence, switching regimes nearly eighteen times in three years. One of the most difficult concepts for Americans to understand about Ukrainian history, and Central and Eastern Europe history for that matter, is the frequent acquisition of land leading to drawing and redrawing of borders, especially in the North and West of Ukraine.
A popular joke among Ukrainians living in the Carpathians involves an old man who declares “I was born in the Hapsburg Empire, went to school in Czechoslovakia, served in the Hungarian army, and was confined to the gulag prisons in the Soviet Union, and now live in Independent Ukraine.” “Wow, you sure have traveled a lot,” says another man, to which the old man responds with, “Oh no, I have never left my village.”
After two centuries of domination, Ukraine received another brief taste of freedom in 1918 following the Great War (WWI) until 1922 when the government was forced to cede to the Soviet Union, again incorporating the Eastern Ukrainian lands while Poland annexed the West.
The purges in the Soviet Union started by Lenin were carried on with fervor in the 1930s with the rule of Stalin, and though no person was safe from condemnation as a party traitor and consequent execution or forced labor in the gulags, Ukrainians and Cossacks were ruthlessly targeted due to their rebellious history. The Cossacks cherished freedom and independence, rising from the ashes of the feudal system to obtain their own farmable land, and the grain and crops harvested were a symbol of their independence. This greatly complicated the collectivization of land in the 1930s, causing Stalin to increase the grain quota exported from Ukraine to the Soviet Union, causing a massive shortage of food. Stalin’s response was to organize mass roadblocks to punish the Cossacks for their resistance and any attempt to obtain crops for personal consumption was punishable by execution. The exact number of deaths during the Soviet constructed famine is uncertain but most historians conclude an estimated seven million people died in only fifteen months, with 25,000 dying every day and a third of the total number of casualties being children. Like many other things, discussing the famine during the reign of the Soviet Union was a crime and Ukraine did not formally acknowledge the event until 1998 with the National Day of Remembrance of the Famine Victims, which falls on the fourth Saturday of November.
After the invasion of Nazi Germany, Ukraine suffered one of the highest losses in population percentages during the war (Russia lost over twenty million and China nearly fifteen million during WWII – The Great Patriotic War). Eight million Ukrainians perished during the war, including nearly 1.5 million Jews. Initially, the Nazis were met with cheers; Ukrainians believed the Germans to be their liberators, yet they soon realized their error. Sadly, many Ukrainians served as guards in various camps including Treblinka. Sobibor, and Belzic. However, anti-fascist uprisings and guerilla attacks forced the Germans to ponder why the Ukrainians fought so voraciously to protect their dictator. “They would learn the hard way a lesson that all too many aggressors overlook: that a people will fight not for their dictators, but for their homes and families.”
The greatest atrocity took place in a ravine outside of Kyiv named Baby Yar where more than 30,000 Jews were murdered by German SS in only two days, September 29th and 30th, 1941 and the later addition of 70,000 more bodies to the mass grave turned Baby Yar into the symbol of the Jewish Holocaust in Ukraine. A famous Ukrainian film director once stated, “The fate of humankind is decided in the Ukrainian fields and villages, in fire and flame, on our misfortune. So ill-fated is our land. So miserable is our lot.” Much like the unfortunate position of Poland sandwiched between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, Ukraine’s geography has weaved tragedy in the fabric of its history.
Mass imprisoning of Ukrainians and Ukrainian Jews came in the 1950s before the death of Stalin in 1953 and later in the following decades, which were not rectified until the release of many prisoners as late as the 1980s.
The Chernobyl disaster on April 26th, 1986 was a manifestation of the crumbling Soviet Union, officially causing the deaths of over ten thousand, with millions since suffering from the fallout, more than a million being children. Lina Kostenko, a Ukrainian poet, stated “a radiation meter was no good for measuring the devastation of the soul.” Denying the scale of the cataclysmic event, the Soviet Union faced a rebirth of Ukrainian insurgency, which led to the declaration of independence on August 24th, 1991. Scrambling to forge a new government in the newly obtained wave of freedom, the first years were plagued with crime, abuse of administrative power, and inflation.
The Orange Revolution in 2004 brought a peaceful rally of Ukrainians to Independence Square to support of Victor Yushenko, the current president of Ukraine, to oppose the rigged election that declared the then Prime Minister Yanukovych to be the winner of the presidential election. Ukraine is now a republic that blends presidential and parliamentary governments.
Additional Information
-Ukraine is comprised of twenty four oblasts, and the Autonomous Region of Crimea in the South.
-Ukraine is the second largest country in Europe after Russia.
-The population is roughly 46,490,400 people (fifth largest in Europe).
-Ukraine borders Russia, Belarus, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Moldova.
-Orthodox Christianity is the prevailing religion with Catholics predominantly residing in the West and Muslim populations in the South.
- Ukraine is almost at a 99% literacy rate
-
Ukraine is one of Europe’s largest energy consumers in Europe guzzling twice as much unrenewable energy sources as Germany, though I think it not fair to compare a teenager country to such a developed, profitable nation as Germany. In addition, eleven new nuclear power plants are currently set to be built within the next twenty years.
Cultural Observations
People would be sorely mistaken to simply lump Ukrainian culture with that of its big brother Slavic Russia and simply being east doesn’t mean the people are any less Ukrainian. I have observed an interesting dichotomy in the pride of my host family out in Lugansk Oblast that includes pride for their Russian heritage yet their dedication to their homeland Ukraine. Ukrainian is heavily spoken though I am only fifty kilometers from Russia and Serjic, a mix of the two languages can be heard just about anywhere in my town. However, I cannot begin to fathom the difference in culture and lifestyle between villages in the East and West. The East is known as being as the industrial center due to Soviet influence, and cities including Lugansk, Donetsk, and Dnipropetrovsk are influential mining centers, often referred to as the Donbas region.
I apologize if this read like a term paper, but once I started writing I got back into the swing of college history papers. I hope you enjoyed reading and learned something new. For my next updatel, which will be a while don’t worry, I’ll try to focus on where I left with culture.
For further reading:
“Execution by Hunger: The Hidden Holocaust” Dolot, Miron. 1987
“”The Ukrainians: Unexpected Nation” Wilson, Andrew.
“Ukrainian’s Forbidden History” Graham Smith and Rob Perks
For Fiction-
“Everything is Illuminated” - I think I’m the only PCV here who HASN’T read this book.
If anyone has any questions or topics they’d like to hear about just send me an e-mail or respond and I will try my hardest to answer. Also, if you read the articles I sent about the former country director of Peace Corps Cameroon or the man who circumnavigated the world with only manpower, I’d love to hear your thoughts and reactions.
Best wishes and let me know how you and all your loved ones are if and when you get the chance.
“True glory consists of doing what deserves to be written and writing was deserves to be read.”-
“We have it in our power to begin the world over again.” – Thomas Paine
“May the fire in my eyes light the way for me.” – E.Town Concrete
Keith
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