Tent City
Gah, I spent nearly an hour writing this post for it to only not be saved and disappear. Second time around.
The last few days of June and 4th of July week I spent in the Kosiv region of Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast in western Ukraine at Survivor Camp. If I recall correctly, this is the sixth year of Survivor, a camp open to locals and students throughout Ukraine, staffed by Peace Corps volunteers and university students. The camp has two components: English language and "survivor skills." During the camp, students have lessons in healthy lifestyles, ecology, and survivor skills while also having team-building activities and excursions.
Though it wasn't necessarily "work", Survivor is one of my favorite service experiences so far. I had the opportunity to interact with students from all over Ukraine. There was a wide spectrum of students, ages 11 to early twenties. Language ability varied, but I noticed improvement with nearly everyone as the week progressed simply because the campers were exposed to so many of "us." Also at the camp there were some returned FLEX students. FLEX is an American exchange program that allows talented, self-motivated youth with high language ability the chance to spend one year in an American high school to promote cultural exchange and encourage participants to be active leaders upon return. I enjoyed hearing about their experiences, misconceptions Americans had about them, and what they hoped to do after their studies. Hopefully I'll volunteer a bit with this program next year. Typically campers came with volunteers from their site. Unfortunately, my four campers returned back to site after the first night. I now know that they regret this, which was to be expected. I consider that I and the staff did a fair job encouraging the students not to leave but they were determined in their flight. To back up, when discussing Survivor with my campers, I shared as much information as I could though much remained a mystery about the accomodations. So when we arrived at camp to discover that it was over an hour walk into town, we had to boil our water, use a latrine, and there was no place to recharge their sacred cell phones (that their parents called every ten minutes), they were in shock and determined to get out of there as soon as possible. On top of that, there was a bad thunderstorm the first night that soaked the camp and them not being used to any real extreme weather and possibly being away from home for the first time (in my opinion) only made it worse from their point of view and habit (dirty shoes are nearly sinful, getting wet and then cold will kill you, and other Ukrainian tall tales). I won't take their departure personally, but it did spark some internal debate about the mentality of my site and its inability to accept alternative solutions or circumstances thus limiting its ability to ever evolve. I was really hoping to use these students as anchors in the coming school year for projects because they would have gained so much individually from this camp. The other campers struggled the first night too, but they learned to adapt and accept the challenges by fully participating and integrating into the group.
Our Kitchen
One of the tasks our teams had every few days was to go into town and buy enough food to feed the entire camp (up to 6o people at one time) for a few meals. At first, the food was okay and the campers weren't to happy with the quality. With time, they became more creative with preparation and there were no seconds to be had. Whenever I have downtime during a lesson, I often play "Would You Rather." A question I always ask in Ukraine is: Would you rather have free potatoes or free chocolate for a year? 8 out of 10 Ukrainians answer potatoes, which I kind of find entertaining. I mention this because whenever my team had a meeting about what was on the menu they begged for potatoes. For me, potatoes are a filler only worthy in french fry or chip form. For the students I interact with, it's such an essential part of their diets that they crave it like I crave cereal or Mac N' Cheese.
It started to get annoying how many times I had to turn around during the hike to capture the sunrise.
Ukrainian interpretation of "free range cattle", a dairy farm a few kilometers up a mountain.
Iren nicknamed this part of the trail the "Lord of the Rings Forest"
Standard Tourist Shot, thanks Ira!
Iren, Kristina, and Alexander (our guide)
Roughly halfway through the camp we had the option of going on an excursion to Pip Ivan, about a 25 kilometer hike. Pip Ivan is an observatory built by the Polish before World War II on the top of a mountain. Pip Ivan is now a ruin, filled with graffiti and broken bottles, but it offers views of much of the Carpathians. The hike was awesome, passing farms, forests, summits, cliffs, and waterfalls. Possibly due to dehydration and hunger, I was entertained by the notion that we passed the pre-war border between Czechoslovakia and Poland. Hikers that passed by greeted us in Polish, a language I miss hearing in the south. Despite some impressive falls and being soaked, all campers that came along survived the hike.
I'm glad I got to celebrate the 4th with fellow Americans. It's taken me this long to mature, as well as living in Ukraine, to be thankful that I'm an American. I've never regretted being one, but certain campaigns and our role as a superpower have made me doubt my patriotism at times. Sometime in the future I'll share some notes on "why I'm proud to be an American": the value of risk, equality in the workplace, individualism, property law...
To celebrate, the campers had American Studies classes. For meals, in the morning we had blueberry oatmeal (my only blueberries in Ukraine!- and possibly only once because I think they are only available in the mountains) with banosh, a traditional western Ukrainian corn dish. In the evening we had chili and smores. We even had fireworks!
Towards the end of camp we celebrated
Ivan Kupala, an ancient holiday that relies heavily on interpretation and locality. At Survivor the girls weaved flower wreaths that they then took down to the river. According to tradition, girls are to throw the wreath into a river and the boy who catches it in the water is then the girl's future husband. To seal the deal, later in the evening the couple jumps over a fire (there are a lot of variations though).
Survivor was a wonderful experience and hopefully I'll get to participate next year and maybe even take a greater leadership role in its planning. Currently, I'm at site for three nights frantically gathering materials from online for ABC in two weeks. This upcoming week I'll be at a language refresher sponsored by Peace Corps, hopefully clearing up my Surzhyk (Ukrainian/Russian mixture). I'm looking forward to hearing some clean Russian and sharing ideas with fellow PCVs about what works for them at their sites. I also want to renew my own language goals. I figure since I spend so much time during the school year doing individual Russian language instruction, I should come out of Peace Corps with as much fluency as I can in speaking, reading, and writing. I also want to improve my knowledge of Ukrainian and be able to speak cleanly and read Ukrainian literature, but I'll hold off on that for another month or so.
