The Borderland Chronicles

Greetings! Or, rather, Nǐ Hǎo.

I can hardly believe it, but I’ve successfully completed my service as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ukraine. As of one week ago today, I am an RPCV, or what those of us who’ve finished service call a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer. (In PC there are a lot of acronyms.) I’m still able to vividly recall my first day, hours in Ukraine as a trainee more than two years ago, after being whisked from Boryspol airport to a quiet sanatorium in the small town of Desna outside Chernigov, like it was yesterday. Now I’m here in Shanghai, China with all that in the past. Wild.

Honestly, I still haven’t processed it all. Two years, while sounding like a long time, in reality passes like a train in the night. I think it’s going to take some time before I’m really able to sit down and figure out what it all meant and means to me, as well as how the whole experience influenced my life. Right now I feel as though I’m merely on vacation. Any day now I’ll be returning to my home in Artemovsk, right?

Fortunately – and unfortunately – no, I won’t be returning there. Yes, leaving Ukraine was bittersweet. I had some great times, but I experienced some extremely trying ones, too. I’d say Ukraine and I had a love-hate relationship. There were certainly times during the past years when I felt lower than ever before, but there were also times when I felt extremely proud, appreciated and as though I was a contributor to the development of the country. It was, at risk of sounding extremely cliche, an incredibly enriching, fulfilling and invaluable experience.

I’ll forever remember my time in Ukraine, especially a select few things. Visiting the Chernobyl exclusion zone was a fascinating look into a post-apocalyptic world. Traveling around the southern coast of Crimea with my girlfriend and swimming in the Black Sea among the many jellyfish and thonged Ukrainians was a wonderful getaway. Celebrating holidays with my Ukrainian friends and colleagues over incountable bottles of vodka and samagon was always an interesting cultural experience. These memories and many others I’ll forever cherish.

Now I’ve begun the next chapter. Let’s call it the China chapter. I’ve been in Shanghai one week now, and I can happily tell you that I’m enjoying it immensely. It’s not only wonderful to finally be living with my girlfriend of three years, but it’s incredibly fascinating to be living and working in the People’s Republic of China. If all goes according to plan, we’ll be living here at least a year, teaching, photographing and writing.

So far, deprived of a vast variety of food during my 27 months in Ukraine, I’ve eaten an array of cultural dishes from all around the world here in Shanghai. I’ve huffed down a delicious Reuban with a pale ale that put Ukrainian beer to shame, I’ve chugged 2-for-1 margaritas and fed my face with fish tacos and I’ve devoured an enormous amount of Chinese street food, including meat-filled dumplings, fried octopus and assorted vegetables and strange fruits. Since arriving I’ve been in a state of pure foodie bliss.

I’ve also seen more smiles in one week on the street than I did in during all of last year. The Chinese are incredibly friendly people. I’ve already made pals with the woman who sells produce down our lane, the guy who works at Toby Good Eats, a quaint food kiosk across the street, and a very talented cobbler who I bought a gorgeous pair of shoes from this afternoon. (The cobbler and I strolled down the street arm in arm in the rain discussing his learning to make shoes as a child in a leather factory operated by his father.)

So I’m off to a good start here in China and I’m looking forward to what’s still to come. But I’ll never forget the good times I had in Ukraine, the friendships made, the vodka shared, the borsch eaten, nor will I forget the many trials and tribulations. It’ll all forever be with me.

Consider this my last blog post here at The Borderland Chronicles. In the not-so-distant future I hope to start a separate blog for my adventures in China, as well as a new personal website highlighting my written and photographed work. If you’ve enjoyed this blog over the past two years, keep your eyes peeled for these news sites soon to come. I’ll post links on Twitter and Facebook once they’re up and running.

Posted in Artemovsk, Chernobyl, Crimea, Culture, Donetsk, Food, History, Journalism, Kiev, Life, Lvov, Odesa, Peace Corps, Public Transportation, Russian, Soviet Union, Trains, Travel, Ukraine |

Three weekends ago I was invited by Vladimir Berezin, a local environmental journalist and editor of Konstantinovka’s Province Newspaper, to speak to other regional journalists about the importance of incorporating digital storytelling and social media into their work, as well as environmental journalism in America.

The group of about 15, comprised of journalists from Konstantinovka, Kramatorsk, Donetsk, Makeevka, Dobrpolya and other cities, were a great audience, listening attentively as I spoke about writing for the web and utilizing Twitter. And they hung in there with me when I started in with what little I knew about environmental journalism, which really amounted to what I deemed to be some of the biggest stories of the past few years and how they were covered.

It got interesting during the second hour of my time there. After opening the floor up to questions, we began discussing how best to cover the many environmental issues facing the region – trash, mine waste, water contamination.

Of course, it’s impossible to discuss such a thing without also bringing politics into the mix, since everything here seems to be intertwined. And so another thirty minutes or so was spent talking about media rights in Ukraine, which took a big hit in January when the Constitutional Court of Ukraine passed a law banning the disclosure of information about public officials without their consent, and the government’s crackdown on free speech.

Anyway, I met a lot of good people that day who do good work and who are genuinely interested in making a difference in their community. Working as a journalist here – at any level – isn’t easy. I hope what I had to say inspired them to continue their work.

Posted in Donetsk, Journalism, Media, Politics, Russian, Technology, Ukraine |

Last October, as a fall 2011 Glimpse Correspondent for Glimpse.Org, I spent a weekend with six coal miners in the eastern Ukrainian mining town of Torez. The plan was to get an idea of their lives and then to write a piece that would provide the outside world with a glimpse into their lives. While in Torez that weekend we discussed everything from work and moonshine to family and the future. The result, published earlier this month, was a 4,000-or-so-word story illustrating the mining culture that’s existed in the area for decades and highlighting the future of the illegal mines, called “kopanki,” and what their disappearance would mean for the Torez community.

You can read the story over at Matador Abroad or Glimpse. You can also view my photos of the mine and the miners on Flickr.

Posted in Culture, Encounters, History, Journalism, Life, Media, Politics, Soviet Union, Travel, Ukraine |

Back in October I visited a group of coal miners in the eastern Ukrainian city of Torez who work at one of the area’s illicit coal mines, called “kopanki” in Russian.

These are photographs from that trip. The music is a 1951 song by Vladimir Bunchikov, titled “An Old Miner” (“Старинная шахтерская”).

You can see more of the photos in larger sizes over at Flickr.

Posted in Culture, Journalism, Life, Media, Ukraine |

A ‘stiliaga’ – the Soviet Union hipster of the 1940s and 50s.

I came across two very interesting articles this week pertaining to elements of Ukraine’s past and present culture.

The first, “A foreign affair: On the great Ukrainian bride hunt,” published in Harper’s Magazine, follows a man who goes undercover to learn more about the men that come to Ukraine in search of women to wed.

The second, “The Western Brand: The socio-cultural revolution of soviet mods against boring clothes, music and behavior in the USSR,” from The Ukrainian Week, explores the subculture of the stiliagi, a group of young, fashion-forward, progressive-minded individuals in the 1940s and 50s who copied the lifestyles of young people in the west.

I recommend checking out both.

Posted in Culture, History, Journalism, Kiev, Life, Russia, Soviet Union, Ukraine |

Crossing of the Dnieper. (Переправа через Днепр).

Political commissar. Stalingrad. (Политрук. Сталинград.)

Monument to the civilians killed by the Nazis. Kiev Region. (Памятник мирным жителям убитым фашистами. Киевская область.)

The photographer, Arkady Shaykhet.

Born September 9, 1898, in Nikolayev, Ukraine, Arkady Shaykhet grew up to be one of the most famous Soviet photojournalists and photographers of the 20th century. His photographs of The Great Patriotic War (WWII), including the series Two Views of Kiev, at the time were known as ‘artistic reportage.’

As a staff photographer for the Soviet magazine Ogonyok (Light), his photos were often used as cover art. In 1926, along with a friend, he started Soviet Photo. Beginning in 1930, he worked as a freelance photographer for USSR in Construction. The magazine was known for its progressive style, which included full-page photos and even fold-out pages. Each issue, published in Russian, English, French, German and Spanish, was an elaborate artistic creation. The magazine’s main role, though, was to inform readers outside the Soviet Union of the construction going on within it, and to portray the country as an emerging superpower.

Over the years Shaykhet’s images have been shown in galleries from Moscow to New York City. He died in Moscow, aged 59, on November 18, 1957.

You can see more of Skaykhet’s photographs here and here.

Posted in Art, Culture, History, Journalism, Kiev, Life, Russia, Russian, Soviet Union, Ukraine |

I was recently contacted by Matador Network to put together a photo essay that represented the eastern Ukrainian region that I’ve called home for the past two years.

Beautiful rubble of rural Ukraine was the result. And while you’ve seen many of the 20 photos here on The Borderland Chronicles, there might just be a few that’ll be new to you.

While you’re there, check out the other pieces I’ve published with Matador.

Posted in Artemovsk, Culture, Donetsk, Environment, Food, History, Holidays, Journalism, Konstantinovka, Life, Media, Peace Corps, Travel, Ukraine |

It’s been five days since Ukraine celebrated Christmas on January 7, but I thought this story in The Local East Village, an NYU Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute project in collaboration with the New York Times, was interesting enough to post here.

The story about a small Ukrainian shop in the New York City area once known as Little Ukraine does a good job of sharing what Christmas is to Ukrainians while providing a glimpse into the life of an immigrant who migrated to the U.S.

Here’s a snippet:

Andrew Ilnicki, the store’s 50-year-old manager, spoke as customers shopped for smoked meats, breads, borscht mixes, pierogi, and jellied pigs’ feet. “On Christmas Eve,” he said, meaning Jan. 6, “people serve non-meat food, which can be dairy; a lot of fish; and kutya, which is a pearled wheat with poppy seeds.”

“You can make kutya richer with honey and walnuts and raisins,” he said, describing one of 12 dishes that make up a traditional Ukrainian Christmas Eve supper. “On Christmas, there will be hams. They’re very popular with people. We cure them, smoke them, bake them and sell them.”

As Mr. Ilnicki spoke, the store’s owner, Julian Baczynsky, looked on with a paternalistic smile. Mr. Baczynsky was a displaced person in a German labor camp before he migrated to New York in 1949, one of tens of thousands of Slavic immigrants to do so after World War II.

“I worked for a farmer in Germany,” he recalled, adding that he has a degree from a German college and has learned to speak seven languages. He described himself with a grin as “just a young fellow – 88 and a half years old.”

Mr. Baczynsky opened his now iconic market in 1970, after closing a store he ran on Avenue B in 1955. It has since drawn visits from a multitude of locals and dignitaries ranging from the first President of Ukraine to Ray Kelly, the city’s police commissioner.

You can read the full story over at The Local East Village.

Posted in Culture, Food, Holidays, Journalism, Life, Media, Ukraine |

This fascinating short documentary by Maisie Crow explores the lives of survivors of the Chernobyl disaster and the workers still dismantling the plant today, in the city of Slavutych.

Posted in Chernobyl, Culture, Environment, History, Journalism, Life, Media, Russian, Soviet Union, Ukraine |

I spent nearly two hours this afternoon going through the incredible multimedia project created by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty to commemorate the fall of the Soviet Union.

“The Fall – Twenty Years After the Collapse of the U.S.S.R.,” looks back on the momentous event and the developments leading up to it with video interviews, photographs and an interactive timeline and map.

Each of the stories told by the people who lived under Communism – the miner who was arrested by the KGB for predicting a mining accident; the villagers who lived through the 1932-33 Holodomor under Stalin’s rule; the men who escaped to Finland only to be arrested, sent back and put in a mental hospital – are fascinating glimpses into an oppressive society.

If you have any interest whatsoever in this part of the world, I highly recommend checking this out.

Here it is: http://ussrfall.com/

Posted in Chernobyl, Culture, Donetsk, Food, History, Journalism, Kiev, Life, Media, Politics, Protests, Recent reads, Russia, Russian, Soviet Union, Ukraine |