Perpetual Change

ukraine and a poem

First, sorry for the long delay and thank you for the encouragement. It always gets hard this time of year for me to make the 8 k trek to the next village with an internet cafe. Among other minor setbacks in the last few weeks: I have been a bit ill as have many of the boys for which I am responsible for; my sister's house burned down, though no one was hurt; and we had a blizzard with over 12 inches over night. It continued to snow for almost a week after that. The 6 new first graders also keep me very busy. But all is well: we've made forts, cars, motorcycles, and rockets of snow, even a dragon that at full length was probably 20 feet. The boys would climb on his back (he was from the blizzard before this last one and unfortunately has completely melted away, but we have a fort now that looks like a castle - broken mop buckets work great for carrying snow). We also continue to study. The rate kids can learn, if you show interest in their ability to do so, amazes me; equally amazing, is how little they learn if you don't show that interest.

Other interesting events: we were finally successful in winning the rights away from the parents for one of the boys. This may sound horrible, but in 4 years the parents have never visited their son, and yet they receive money for his care; this goes to support their bad habits (This is the normal situation, in this particular case, the parents are so far removed, I don't know where they are or what their situation is; the closest relative that at one time had contact, a godmother I believe, has asked us to not have the boy call her; he knows her number by heart though I don't think he has seen her in at least two years). The point of this rambling is that in the process the boy was amazed that his parents had his same last name (no, he didn't know his parents' names). It never occured to me how novel that might be. Here the boys live with regular contact of 30 other people amongst themselves and none of them have the same last name (except two, which is by chance, like two Smiths working together). This boys name is rare and no one in the village has it, to my knowledge. For all I know, he thought he was the only one on earth that had it (though his first name is incredibly common; in fact, another boy here has it, and so he is commonly referred to by his last name). On a tangent, villages are often composed of only a few surnames. The one where I live has a half dozen names that make up a majority of the gravestones at the church cemetary.

P.S. I want to copy a list that a returned Peace Corps volunteer sent out awhile ago; This may not be that interesting to read in hindsight, but I will include it anyway.
Days in Ukraine – 31 months
Students taught – about 500
Countries visited – 4 (saw 3 more on my way back after Peace Corps)
Host sisters – 1
Host brothers – 2
host sisters in laws and nephews - 1 of each
Ukrainian cities/towns visited – over 40; I've visited 17 of their 24 'states' called oblasts
Jars canned – about 30, but a lot were pumpkin pie mix, because I could never get the Ukrainians that were special to me to come together for a Thanksgiving dinner in my tiny apartment; so I gave them a recipe and a jar of pumpkin, sugar, and spice. I lived right down the street from the school and the director never saw my place.
Portions of holodetz (meat jello) eaten – first year 1, second year lots
Newspaper interviews – 1
Radio interviews - 1
Key note/welcoming speeches after an ambassador - 1 (from Indonesia)
Cups of coffee consumed – probably less than 100
cups of tea - more than a thousand
Trips to Kyiv – 6, I think
Girls I know named Olya – I think more than 12
Books read – maybe 10
Trips to the town disco – zero, kind of proud and ashamed of this. Only went to a disco once here, in another town. Though I recently had an invitation.
Mice killed – 1 by poison at the orphanage (another by trap last year in Czech)
Grants written – 1
Pairs of shoes I wore out – 4
Lessons made up on the spot – 3 (this is much higher for most volunteers. I did a lot of lesson "recycling")
Blog entries – 100, I think

posted by jjs @ 6:40 PM