At site

Wow.

I wish I could throw out a better opener, a real hook to draw you in, bring you into my world, help you see this crazy world through my eyes. But Wow really does is, encompassing all of my shock and wonder and amazement and acclimation and even then further Wowing, a certain unwillingness to truly believe that this is my live. This is where I now live.

A little over a week ago, I left the gentle confines of Natalia and my training village for Kiev to attend the Peace Corps swearing-in ceremony. The whole social structure of the event was sort of strange. The past 3 months, I have gotten to know very (very) well a small group of 10 people. Meanwhile, there we 60 plus other volunteers also getting to know another small subset of the Peace Corps Volunteer population. So here we were, running into to each other again after 3 months apart, having in common this shared experience but barely remembering each other’s names. It was sort of like the first day of camp your second summer, except everyone has lost 10 pounds and now speaks a foreign language.

The first event of the three day ceremony was, in many ways, the most important. Site Placement. They first announced, in a large group, to what region everyone was headed. Lo and behold, Region number one, Jeremy Borovitz was the first name to pop out on the list.

Soon afterwards my new best friend, life coach, and regional manager, Iryna, handed me an envelope. Boryaka. Cherkaska Oblast.

Inside the envelope was a few basic facts that were going to define my life for the next two years. Boryaka. 600 people. Boryaka. I will be working in a school. Boryaka. Three plus hours from Kiev, pretty close in Peace Corps time. Boryaka. A small village, a new adventure, a future home.

The next day, I met my counterpart, my partner in crime (or the prevention thereof, to be more accurate) for the forseeable future. I knew she was sitting somewhere in the lobby, wearing a name tag, Tamila Demchuk. I was awkwardly peering at the right chests of excessive quantities of middle aged Ukranian women. If they hadn’t understood my purpose, I was borderline committing a crime.

I din’t find her in the lobby, but we soon met up in the auditorium. Tamila was a short woman with a simple stature and a nice smile. She seemed quiet, but very nice. Then again, I reminded myself, she lives in a small village and is right now in the big city. To be honest, I didn’t know what to think. My mixture of wonder and excitement left me even more confused.

Nearly all of my friends were placed much farther away from Kiev than I was. Rachel in particular was vocal about her upcoming 18 hour train ride. I, on the other hand, had a smooth 2 and a half hour bus ride. Only later did I find out that the bus didn’t quite take us all the way there. But then again, not many buses do make it all the way to Boryaka.

Tamila’s husband, Michailivna, which is somehow shortened to Kolya, met us at the bus stop. Although it wasn’t so much a bus stop as just where they decided to stop the car on the road, upon which seeing it Tamila yelled at the bus driver to stop the bus. Maybe she isn’t so quiet after all.

Kolya is a broad shouldered and barrel chested beast of a man, a man who exudes brute strength from waking up every morning at 6 to work his land. He reminded me of an ancient Cossack, a brave man, a strong man, an honorable man. Of course I hoped he did not also contain the Cossack gene that slaughtered Jews, but I tried to sidetrack those thoughts for the sake of making a better impression.

Kolya came to pick me up with Vassil, his good friend and another teacher at the school. Vassil is a strange sort of fellow with an even stranger sense of humor. At the same time, his warmth is classic for this small town. The day after I arrived, the U.S. was paying Slovenia in a World Cup Soccer Match. He had the channel showing the game, so he invited me to his house to watch it. His whole family sat down next to me in the cramped room, spending time with the new American. I taught his son some english, his daughter showed me her pet rabbit, and his wife informed me she was a Ukranian teacher at the school. 24 hours in and I had already found a language tutor.

Tamila and Kolya have two children, Petya and Tanya. Petya is 22 years old and lives at home, having finished university about a year ago. His is quiet like his mother but harbors some of the same brute confidence as his father. Like his parents, he is a teacher at the local school, primarily of woodworking, shop class, and whatever they can drum up for him. In the coincidence of the century, his favorite computer game is “Heroes of Might and Magic,” aka the reason that I would stay up until 3 am on a school night as a child. He has the complete set, and claims that the 4th edition is the best. I, personally, am a purist, always holding a special place for number 2 in my heart. We most often play together Heroes 3, as a sort of compromise.

Their daughter, Tonya, is the english speaker in the family, having just completed her third year at University. Of course, she is in Houston, Texas for the summer, so I am left without an english chat mate. Since she studies English and Spanish in school, she is certainly in the right place. By the way, her mother hasn’t heard from her in a week. If anyone runs into her please ask her to call, or to send an email at the least.

This week we celebrated Petya’s 22nd birthday. I bought him a box of chocolates. The whole family came over----Tamila’s parents, Ivan and Babushka (i can’t remember her real name, and she told me to just call her Babushka), both of whom have constant smiles on their faces. I guess thats what happens when you live through the forced starvation, World War II, communism, and the orange revolution. I’m tired just thinking about it. Tamila’s brother, Anatolya, was there, with his son, Kolya, Kolya’s wife Olena and daughter Ira, and Olha, Anatolya’s precocious 14 year old daughter.

Tamila cooked enough food to feed an army. I was seated next to her mother, whom I guess considered me a soldier on the front lines. She hopped food on my plate, and I had to warn her that I did not eat meat or crab. So instead she hopped on extra servings of everything in site, fish, beets, cucumbers, bread, fish, potatoes, borscht, bread, potatoes, salads with lots of mayonnaise, cheese, potatoes, bread, fish. We were still eating the leftovers for every meal a full three days afterwards.

One of the running jokes in town is that everyone has a daughter or a sister or a cousin of the marrying age (anywhere from 17-25) who they want to set me up with. I average about 3 on a normal day, and there were at least that many made about me and Tanya at the birthday dinner. I have learned not to take these overtures too seriously, however, even when mothers drop food at my house with their daughter’s numbers tucked inside a jar of strawberries.

Jokes are a part of Ukranian culture, and are especially prevalent in village life. Kolya himself loves to douse me with an anecdote at the rate of one for every hour we spend together, sometimes about Ukranians and Americans and French and Jews but other times about mentality, about life, about love. They all end with a laugh and a lesson, an element of joviality and an element of truth.

Part of my assignment in my first few weeks as a Peace Corps volunteer is entitled “community mapping.” While, of course, part of this assignment involves the drawing of an actual map, the more important aspect is the development of relationships in your community and beyond. The luckiest part about my assignment is that Kolya and Tamila are incredibly eager to “show me off.” I told them I wanted to meet everybody, and I am meeting everybody: the local mayor, the local cop, the local priest, the local businessmen, the local everybody, all locals, all friendly, all friends.

This week we went to the center of my region, a small town about 20 km away of about 6 or 7 thousand called Lisianka (you may even be able to find it on a map). We met here with all the movers and shakers of the region, a hodge podge of lifelong bureaucrats and political appointees all of whom love their country, their region, their people, their homes.

The best meeting we had that day was with the President of the local city council. He is a young, handsome Ukranian in his late 30’s, eloquent, smart, honest. We went in to talk for five minutes and stayed for 35, covering a range of topics from Ukranian mentality to Ukranian history to World War II to Jews. He was remarkably forthright, especially based on my expectations. There used to be Jews here. There used to be alot of Jews here. Now? You can count them on one finger.

After this meeting, Kolya and I talked a lot about Jews in the region. Boryaka itself used to be 30% to 40% Jewish. The synagogues used to be in the center, one where a store now stands and the other in an empty block of concrete that has gone unused for half a century. I am living in a country dripping with Jewish History, the stories of Sholom Aleichem (a prolific Yiddish writer) dripping from every corner. Living in my village has made me even more nostalgic for the shtetl life I never knew. I have so far milked a cow, cut grass with a long scythe known as a Kossak, collected grain, and said the Sabbath morning prayers. I have drawn water from the well, pooped while squatting, talked about the meaning of tolerance in a foreign tongue, and said the prayer for the dead on the concrete blocks where a synagogue once stood. In short, I am building a Ukranian life, an American life, a Jewish life, a new life.

Peace Corps’ favorite word for new volunteers in their first few months is “community integration.” another vague term in an organization that feeds off of vagueness. It means getting to know your new home, getting to know the people, getting to know yourself in a new place and figuring out how to live right, how to give right, how to make everything all right.

My life is becoming an anecdote, a mixture of wisdom and humor, a place to learn and a place to love. I may have no running water and I may have to squat to poop. But I am making new friends and creating new boundaries and kicking challenges that come my way smack in the tuchus.

Wow. This is where I live. Wow. This is the life I am building for myself. Wow. These are my next two years, flashing before my eyes.

Wow. And now the work begins.