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 |

Oleg, center, with a stuffed bear on his head. He made it his personal mission to get me plastered. And he succeeded. He also invited me to butcher a pig with him at his dacha.

I’ve been hiding in my bedroom for about five minutes, standing over my bed with my head out the open window, and I’m inhaling and exhaling deeply, doing everything I can not to get sick from all the vodka I’ve drank during the past hour.

Then, from the other room, a heavily accented voice beckons. “Kree-ees,” it says, drawing it out in the middle.

I take one last deep breath, give myself a light slap to the face and then walk to the other room.

It’s Ira’s 23rd birthday, and her entire family has come over to the apartment I share with her and her boyfriend, my very good friend Igor, to celebrate.

Birthdays in Ukrainian culture are a very big deal. It’s typical to host a large dinner for family and close friends on the day of your birthday. And it’s important not to have empty space on the table during those dinners.

So for the past three days Ira and her friends, Ira, Ira and Tanya, have been baking, cooking, preparing elaborate mayonnaise salads and decorating the living room. They’ve also accumulated a table’s worth of booze. Every sort, from champagne to cognac, is represented.

The birthday dinner itself follows a strict formula. First, the dinner must be held on the actual day, or after, but never before. Once at the dinner, no one dishes up before everything is laid out, and no one drinks until everyone is present and ready to begin. A toast to the person whose birthday it is sets everything in motion.

On Monday night it’s Ira’s uncle Oleg who starts.

“Let’s drink,” he says, standing and raising his shot glass. The rest of us follow accordingly. “To Ira, my beautiful and wonderful niece on her birthday! May you have a long and prosperous life.”

Everyone throws back their glass of vodka, and we’re off to the races.

Plates are passed around, with the women scooping enormous helpings of everything onto them for the men. Discussions begin, with topics running the gamut from gossip to politics. The latter is one that I try to tread lightly on, because it has the power to ignite a firestorm amongst Ukrainians. And over the course of the next hour there are more than a dozen toasts, to the honored guest and just about everything else.

“I would like to make a toast to love!” Ira’s aunt cries out. So we all stand, clink our glasses and toss one back.

A few minutes later Ira’s father announces, “To the lovely couple – Ira and Igor!” Another shot down the hatch.

Not long after someone else shouts, “To women!” And everyone drinks again.

There’s a toast for men, another for Ukraine, one for friendship between Ukraine and America. There’s even one for me, for making it through the past two years. “It must have been difficult for you living with all of us,” someone jokes. All the while Oleg is watching my glass to be sure I’m drinking the shots in full. When I try to get away with just drinking half he calls me out.

“It’s bad luck to drink only half after a toast,” he explains. “Finish that now and let’s get you another.”

It’s after that next one that I escape to the toilet and then to my room. I need some air, and I need to stand up. I need to focus myself, because this thing’s not close to over.

But what I really need is to purge all this booze, drink some water and sleep. It’s a Monday night, and I have English lessons at 8 a.m. the next morning. Oleg, though, won’t let that happen. He’s made it his personal mission to fuck me up.

Somehow, sometime during my five minutes away, he’s acquired a new bottle of vodka. How the wretched thing materialized is beyond me

“Chris, you see?” he says, flicking his finger against the raised bottle of Nemiroff, his wedding ring clinking the glass. “This is just for you and me. For new friends!”

“Oleg,” I say, slowly shaking my head. “I don’t know. I just– ”

“No excuses. Only drinking,” he tells me, with a flick to his neck. “C’mon!”

Now I have no choice but to continue. His father, Ira’s grandfather, has sat me down on the sofa and is now holding my shot glass in front of my face, waiting for me to take it from him.

“You’re young and strong,” he tells me. “Everything will be OK.”

But after more than a dozen shots, I’m not sure if I believe him.

I finally get Oleg to let me take a break, but only after Ira’s aunt goes to bat for me, explaining to her husband in a rather patronizing manner that I’m American and I shouldn’t be held to Ukrainian standards.

“They can’t drink like us in America,” she says.

For the next several minutes I consume as much mashed potatoes, salad and bread as I can, in order to soak up some of the alcohol, careful not to overindulge for fear of becoming ill.

Living here for more than two years, you’d think I’d have learned all the tricks to surviving the Ukrainian birthday dinner. During Peace Corps training we’re even warned about it and taught ways to say no to alcohol. They tell us we’ll need to say “no” forcefully and at least three times for people to comprehend that we really don’t want or need anymore, or that we should think of a medical excuse.

But that’s just stupid. And the latter only works if you’ve not been drinking from the start. The former, well, sometimes you do want to partake, have fun and be lively. It’s not that I can’t take more than three shots, it’s that I don’t fare so well taking more than that in a span of just 10 or 15 minutes.

Three shots into the new bottle, I cut myself off, informing Oleg that it is now impossible for me to drink anymore without paying dearly for doing so. When he asks me what that means exactly, I make a vomiting gesture.

Tossing his head back in laughter while simultaneously patting me on the back, he finally gets it.

Thirty minutes and two pieces of cake later, Oleg and everyone else are gone. Igor and Ira do their best to convince me that going to a nightclub called Fresh is a great idea, but I make it no further than the courtyard in front of our building before I feel nauseous. Forget dancing, the simple act of watching someone dance might incite vomiting.

So I make my way back inside, stumble on my pants as I take them off to climb in bed, and hit the sack.

The next morning Igor and I bump into each other in the hallway. We leave for work at the same time.

“How are you feeling?” He asks.

“Terrible,” I say. “How about you?”

“Like a Brontosaurus Rex,” he tells me. “I think we drank a lot of vodka.”

Posted in Artemovsk, Culture, Encounters, Food, Holidays, Life, Peace Corps, Russian, Travel, Ukraine |

The documentary film, “Шахта №8″, translated as “Pit No. 8″, released in 2011, provides insight into the harsh lives of people living in the Donbass region.

If you speak Russian, watch this film. If you don’t speak Russian, watch parts of it to get an idea of what the Donbass region of Eastern Ukraine is like. Illegal coal mines, called “kopanki,” abound, and many people live beggarly lives.

Below is a six-minute trailer with English subtitles to help better understand the film.

Posted in Culture, Donetsk, History, Life, Russian, Soviet Union, Ukraine |

Being a foreigner gets me a lot of shouts and hollers from people on the street, from people I know or who recognize me as well as from passers-by who might hear me speaking English to a friend or on the phone.

Students of the school I work at, other kids and even grown men like to shout out the few English words they know when they see me. “Shit! Muzzer Focker!” they often say. A long, drug out “Heeelllooo” is another common one. I’ve even heard someone yell just “pizza!”

Every once in a while I receive rather unwelcoming calls, such as the one a friend of mine and I were on the receiving end of in Kiev last week. “Fuck you, Yankee! Go to America!” The guy shouting it actually had fairly good pronunciation as well as a strong delivery. I thanked him and continued on down the street.

I get a whole hell of a lot of “I love you” calls, too. It’s usually young women throwing those out, and only after they’ve walked far enough past me that they can’t be recognized.

This is all part of living in a foreign land. I accept that. And, actually, I might even miss those shouts someday, being recognized. With my Close of Service conference beginning tomorrow, the clock is running out on my Peace Corps days. But I won’t be heading home afterward; I’ll be joining my girlfriend in Shanghai, China. There, I imagine the cat calls will continue. I wonder what they’ll sound like.

Posted in Artemovsk, Culture, Encounters, Kiev, Life, Travel, 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 |

Too cool for school. I mean that quite literally. With the temperature hovering around -24 degrees Celsius (-10 degrees Fahrenheit) this morning, most schools cancelled lessons all together. My school, however, thought they’d give it a shot and see how many students would show up.

In my first lesson of the day, usually a rowdy bunch of 28 12-year-olds, just 5 girls showed up. The teacher I work with was running around like a mad woman trying to figure out where everyone was while also dealing with parents of children calling her mobile to explain that they were keeping they’re kids home from school today. “It’s too cold to be outside today,” my partner teacher explained. “And some of the students live on the edge of town and would have to walk in.” (What’s funny was the number of phone calls from mothers worried their boys would catch their death if they were to go outside. Contrastingly, only a few mothers called to explain they were keeping their daughters home. And like I said, the students that did brave the weather to come to class were, in fact, all girls. I’m seriously beginning to question who’s tougher in Ukraine.)

Proof to the severity of this eastern European cold snap can be found with a quick scan of the international news. A Reuters story published yesterday reported that already 30 people have died in the past week. Most of those were homeless people, but still. I tried running some errands yesterday afternoon, but quickly gave in, turned back and went home when my snot and mustache froze just five minutes after stepping outside.

Being from the Pacific Northwest, I’m not used to this type of weather. We get rain, fog, and at worst maybe some sleet. But the temperature rarely drops below freezing, except for maybe a few times and during the night. Having spent the previous winter in Ukraine, though, you’d think I’d be prepared. But nothing prepares you for this extreme chill.

I’m home now, curled up in a blanket a few feet from my radiator. This is where I plan to stay for the remainder of the day. Maybe this afternoon I’ll make some mulled wine. Here’s to hoping it warms up soon.

Posted in Artemovsk, Culture, Donetsk, It's Cold!, Life, School, Teaching, Ukraine |

Nescafe 3 in 1 TURBO, for when you need a little something extra.

Before March of 2010 I’d never drunk instant coffee, never even had a taste. Sure, I’d had the cheap stuff. Folgers was a mainstay in my suburban childhood home. The garage was lined with the empty cans. My father used them to store nuts, bolts, nails and screws. As I got older, about high school age, I developed a taste for slightly better coffee, although I should say that it was my younger brother at age 10 who first asked for a French press for his birthday. It was rare for us then to drink coffee before school, but on the weekends we’d open a fresh bag of beans, grind them down for the press and enjoy a pitch black cup with our eggs and bacon.

By the time I entered college I was drinking two cups a day, sometimes more. Coffee was a necessary evil. Luckily, living in Portland, it was easy to get my hands on the really good stuff. I was a regular at Stumptown’s S.E. Division location, and from time to time I’d make it into the S.W. 3rd shop. My love affair with it continued a few years later when I moved downtown and got a job at Oregon Business Magazine. The office on S.W. Broadway wasn’t far from the Ace Hotel location, where I spent many a lunch hour sipping freshly pressed Hair Bender and preparing for interviews.

My palate used to quality java, I panicked when I arrived in Ukraine almost two years ago to begin my Peace Corps service and found my only coffee options to be Nescafe and Jacobs Original or 3 in 1. I knew that any coffee sold in small, one-serving packets at the check-out counter would never compare to the organic, dark-roasted grinds I had back home.

But you’d be surprised how well your palate adapts when your choices are shit and shit. Now, every morning with my two eggs over easy on toast, I drink a tall mug of it – and without cringing.

That said, there have been care packages from my parents over the past couple years that came with some of Portland’s finest coffee. And when they do, I make it last, saving it for those slow, heavy-eyed mornings when the snow drifts come up to my knees  and the thermometer reads just 10 degrees.

Posted in Culture, Food, Life, Peace Corps, Portland, Travel, 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 |