If you're in the area: John James Audubon in Henderson, Kentucky

I grew up in Henderson, Kentucky, but knew very little about John James Audubon State Park in my time there. I went to its picnic shelters every summer for family reunions, church socials and class parties. I swam in the lake a couple of times. I went with my elementary school class to what was then a small museum space that didn't have much in it. My parents would say that the park was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps and what a great program the CCC was, but I didn't really understand what they meant. To me, in the 1980s, the park was the place with lots of picnic shelters, with a lake to swim in, with the museum that, from the outside, looked like a beautiful fairy tale castle, and with a carriage house or something nearby that was never open except for the bathrooms. And a golf course I had never seen (and still haven't). It was nice... but not anything I ever recommended as a must-see place to visit. 

Here we are almost 40 years later and the park has been transformed into a wonderful destination and celebration of both the work of the CCC and conservationists, with a kick-your-butt back country trail and access to a lake that I only heard about as a kid (back then, I don't think there was an open trail to it). The cabins are beautiful and I believe they are open for rentals year-round. The main lake no longer has swimming, having been restored to make it more wildlife-friendly, but I believe you can take a kayak out on it.  

The museum space inside is GREATLY expanded with artifacts and information from the life of John James Audubon and why his work led to the creation of Audubon societies all over the world. There's also regular presentations inside about the importance of wildlife conservation and the wildlife of the area. That always-closed carriage house - actually, the Tea House - is now open and serves as the park's office (and it's totally worth it to visit - the woodwork is gorgeous). And events (hikes, presentations, workshops, art fetivals and more) abound - you need to follow the park on Facebook to be able to keep up. 

The trails are amazing. There's over six miles of trails, and some will have your calves screaming because of the inclines. We didn't get to do the expanded trails along the river, which you access outside the park on Warbler Road, next to the Ohio River, but we did do the backcountry trail and I'm still hurting from it. 

The trails do NOT allow dogs except for one, near the campground. But you can take your dog on all of the roads through the park, and that's a few miles of terrific, scenic exercise. Wish they had trails along the roads to make it safer for walking along them. 

The park now has reminders about the CCC everywhere: a statue, a couple of plaques, mentions in the museum, and more. My parents' mentions of the CCC have stuck with me all the years and, after studying the CCC in high school and at my university, I became a CCC fan girl: when I travel, I immediately notice CCC-built structures in parks and public spaces, and make a point of visiting any that might be nearby as I travel. I have a photo album tribute to the CCC, noting all of the CCC-built places I've been and memorabilia I've come across. 

We went to the park over two days: the first just to hike, and the second, to spend time in the museum. If you go, be sure to take some snacks and water - there's no restaurant in the park. 

The park is easy to turn into if you are coming from Henderson, but REALLY difficult to turn into if you are coming from Evansville, Indiana. Please be really, really cautious when turning in and out of the park onto Highway 41. 

With all that said, I do have some criticisms of the park. Here is an email I sent to the park manager, the head of Kentucky State Parks, and the Friends of Audubon State Park group after my November 2023 visit: 

I visited John James Audubon State Park during my Thanksgiving holiday in Kentucky. I haven’t been there since I was a teen - more than 40 years ago. The vastly expanded museum and hiking trails, the restored lake, the quality of the groundskeeping - it was amazing. I was particularly pleased to see so much information about and tributes to the Civilian Conservation Corps - that is a legacy I always knew, because of the park and because my father always noted it when I was growing up. I have followed the park on Facebook for years and knew the park now regularly had events - guided hikes, science talks, workshops for kids - but being onsite and seeing everything for myself, firsthand, really brought home what a treasure the park is now. Kudos to everyone who has, over many years, made this possible. Well done.

However, there are some things I feel compelled to note that need to be addressed urgently.

One thing that should be simple to fix: please put closed captioning on your films on rotation in your theater. This is a very easy fix, something anyone with video editing software could do for you. I bet there are students or faculty at area universities and colleges that would be happy to make this happen for you on a volunteer basis. This would help both the hearing impaired and people who are not native English speakers to better experience the films.

I was deeply disturbed by the lack of focus - even mention - in the museum that John James Audubon enslaved people and that he dismissed and belittled the abolitionist movement. When the Audubon family lived in Henderson, Kentucky, they had enslaved people working for them in their household, and they bought and sold enslaved people. Think of the families they broke up. Think of the lives they destroyed. This is all well documented on this web page of the National Audubon Society's own web site: https://www.audubon.org/news/the-myth-john-james-audubon

Why not reproduce this web page on a series of display boards and put these up in the museum? Why not be open and honest and transparent on the very dark side of this man? You don't have to answer this question - was he a good man who did something horrific or was he a bad man who did something good? - but welcome the discussion! The answer, either way, could lead to a lot of self-examination by visitors.

The other very large hole in all that's wonderful about the park is the lack of prominent acknowledgment of the people settled in the area long before European Americans came: no statue, no information board, no anything that I could find. That's as shameful as not acknowledging Audubon's enslavement of people and his defense of slavery.

I hope that all of this is being addressed already by funders and supporters of John James Audubon State Park. In fact, if there is a fundraising campaign to make any of this happen, let me know: I'll donate to it and publicize it.

Here is the response I got. I'm pleased about the revamp, but wish, in the interim, they would just print out the web page I mentioned, as a couple of large signs, and just put them on some easels. 

Dear Ms. Cravens,

I wanted to express my gratitude for your visit to Audubon State Park during the holiday. I'm delighted that you had the opportunity to enjoy our park's trails and grounds. I will be sure to share your kind words with our grounds team. It is a priority for us to preserve and convey the unique history of the park, particularly our association with the Civilian Conservation Corps.

Thank you as well for suggesting the addition of closed captioning to our videos. I believe this is an excellent idea and being personally aware of the challenges faced by individuals with hearing impairments, I fully understand the importance of such accommodations.

I wanted to inform you that the Kentucky Department of Parks is currently working on the design for a comprehensive restoration of the Audubon Museum building. As part of this restoration, we intend to revamp the museum layout, install new display cases, and incorporate significant information and scholarly works pertaining to the entire life of John James Audubon. It is essential for us to not only celebrate Audubon's contributions to natural history and bird depictions but also acknowledge and comprehend his history as an enslaver and anti-abolitionist.

While our collection of indigenous art and artifacts is limited, we are continuously searching for items that will enrich our understanding of the area's history. Our objective is to present a comprehensive history to our guests, allowing them to interpret the information in their own way.

Once again, thank you for sharing your ideas and concerns with us.

Best regards,

David Miller
Park Manager
John James Audubon State Park

Visit New Harmony, Indiana

New Harmony is a picturesque historic town on the Wabash River in Posey County, Indiana, and if you are anywhere nearby, you absolutely should take a day to visit. I grew up in Henderson, Kentucky, and I had never been until last month, almost 40 years after moving away - embarrassing, because it's so close by! It's about 26 miles from Evansville, Indiana. It's midway between St. Louis, Missouri and Louisville, Kentucky. 

The best days to go, IMO, are Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday or Sunday - lots of businesses are closed Monday and Tuesday. Go in dry weather, because you will spend a lot of time outside. 

The town is filled with beautifully-preserved houses and buildings from the 1800s. I highly recommend renting a golf cart outside the Atheneum, the large white modern building next to the Wabash River at the edge of town, to tour the town. Get a map while you are there or download one on your phone. 

Understanding the history will help you appreciate the town even more:

New Harmony was established by the Harmony Society in 1814 and was originally known as Harmony (also called Harmonie, or New Harmony). It was a settlement for a group of German Lutherans who had separated from the official church in Württemberg and immigrated to the USA. They were nonviolent pacifists who refused to serve in the military and tried to live by George Rapp's philosophy and literal interpretations of the New Testament. The Harmonites believed Jesus Christ was coming to earth in their lifetime to help usher in a thousand-year kingdom of peace on earth. They believed that the old ways of life on earth were coming to an end and that a new perfect kingdom on earth was about to be realized. 

The Harmonites believed that people should try to make themselves "pure" and "perfect", and share things with others while willingly living in communal "harmony" (Acts 4:32-35) and practicing chastity. The Harmonites tended to view unmarried celibate life as morally superior to marriage, based on Rapp's belief that God had originally created Adam as a dual being with both male and female sexual organs. According to this view, when the female portion of Adam separated to form Eve, disharmony followed, but one could attempt to regain harmony through celibacy. Rapp often spoke of the virgin spirit or Goddess named Sophia in his writings. The Hamonites built 180 buildings in the 10 years and many are still standing today. They produced textiles, rope, barrels, tin ware, leather goods, candles, bricks, wine, whiskey and beer. Read about the Harmonites at the Harmony_Society entry on Wikipedia.

But what I am MUCH more interested is what happened after that settlement failed and was sold to Robert Owen, a social reformer and wealthy industrialist from Scotland. Owen's vision was for "a New Moral World" of happiness, enlightenment, and prosperity through education, science, technology, and communal living. Per the call of Owen inviting others to come be a part of his intentional community, in the winter of 1825–1826, the president, librarian, and several members of the Philadelphia Academy of Sciences headed west from Pittsburgh on the Ohio River to New Harmony. Academy President William Maclure, “father of American geology,” had gathered them all aboard the keelboat Philantropist [they used the French spelling]: scientists, artists, musicians, and educators, some bringing along their students, and all eager to settle in New Harmony on the Indiana frontier. Owen described it as a “Boatload of Knowledge.” 

This New Harmony was very different from the original founders: the community provided free co-educational schooling for children from infancy to adulthood half a century before the state mandated it. Town residents also established the first public library and a civic drama club. Among its prominent citizens was one of Owen's sons, Robert Dale Owen, an Indiana congressman and social reformer who sponsored legislation to create the Smithsonian Institution. It was a bold, glorious experiment in communal living with a focus on learning, on the arts and on science. But like pretty much every communal experiment in the USA, most of which were religious-based, the town failed as a utopia - in this case, because of disputes over who had power and influence and who didn't, as well as philosophic disputes. New Harmony was dissolved in 1829 and the town's parcels of land and property were returned to private use. But although Robert Owen's vision of New Harmony as an advance in social reform was not realized, the town became a scientific center of national significance, especially in the natural sciences, most notably geology. And the soul of the town continued through the work of many of its residents, including Robert Dale Owen, eldest son of Robert Owen: in 1830 he published Moral Philosophy, the first treatise in the United States to support birth control, and he returned to New Harmony in 1834.

With this history in mind, going into the Working Men's Institute - part library, part museum, part memorial to a Utopian dream - is a must.  

You should also go into any building or business that's open during your visit, like Community House No. 2, any historic church, whatever. If there is a tour of the town being offered that takes you into houses or buildings, take it! If you hear music coming from a building and the door is open, go in! 

Go into Creation Station 310 and behold the gorgeous dulcimers available for sale - and stay if the owner is playing one! He may even show you how to play one (he did with me!). Visiting Creation Station 310 was the highlight of our entire visit. 

Give yourself time for a hike or a ride on your golf cart on the trails from the open-air church to the Atheneum.  

If the Roofless Church is having a service, and it's a beautiful day, I would think that would be a worthwhile experience, regardless of your religion (or, like me, lack their of). 

I wasn't that impressed with the labyrinth, I must admit. I love the symbolism of it, but actually seeing it didn't really do anything for me. Apparently, for the original founders of the town, the Harmonists, the labyrinth symbolized the difficulties of attaining true harmony and the choices one faces in life trying to reach that goal. The labyrinth was a place of meditation for the Harmonists. Maybe if the shrubs had been full of leaves and had been higher... but I did find it interesting that the labyrinth was so important to the Harmonists, they of the Christian faith, rather than the scientifically-focused settlers who came later. 

There are also a lot of antique shops, including a record store, and some food options in beautiful settings. Christmas is a very big deal for the town. 

You can do everything in a day... but if you are looking to stay overnight, there is Harmonie State Park nearby, which has cabins, as well as some picturesque guest houses. 

The Visit New Harmony official web site has complete info on where you can stay, eat, shop, tour, etc. 

You can see all of my photos from my November 2023 visit to New Harmony here. I loved the town so much, I've been joking with my friends that it's where we should all move when we retire, to create the second attempt at a science and arts-focused learning utopia there. But... am I really joking?

Lone Rider by Elspeth Beard: pioneering motorcycle traveler

I just finished Lone Rider by Elspeth Beard. She's one of the first women to ride a motorcycle all around the world, doing so back in 1982 - 1984 and, when she finished this incredible two-year journey, she found that NO ONE CARED. No, really, no one cared: not her family, not neighbors, not friends, not motorcycle magazines, not travel magazines, not anyone. No book deal, no glowing article in the newspaper upon her return, not even an invitation by the local library back home in England to come down and do a presentation. She didn't write her book until 30 years later - it came out in 2017. I'm so glad she did write it. I really enjoyed reading it. But I remain overwhelmed at how underwhelmed everyone was back in the day about her amazing achievement. I also greatly identify with that experience of an incredible achievement or life-changing event being met with blank stares and a shrug from the people you wanted most to care about it (other than yourself).

In short, Elspeth Beard should be as famous as Ted Simon and her book should be as famous as Long Way 'Round.

Beard made this trip at a time when very few women were traveling long distances by motorcycle, even within their own countries. The out-and-out hostility she gets from daring to travel this way in the 1980s, even here in the USA, is jaw-dropping - and something I have never experienced now as a motorcycle traveler or solo traveler sans bike (and I'm so glad). The amount of sexual harassment and attempted sexual assaults she experiences in every country, including the USA, Australia, and all over India, is something that few world travelers, whether motorcyclists or humanitarians, will talk about, even though it remains a reality to this day - and it's something I have experienced as well. When I've asked travelers about it, most will say "it's not that bad" or "I know how to avoid it." I'm not sure why the denial. Fear of being defined as a victim rather than a traveler? Fear of being seen as weak? As a world traveler myself, including a humanitarian worker, I can tell you: sexual harassment is real, often happens when you least expect it and happens with disturbing regularity. I bring it up with travelers because I like tips on what to look out for and advice on how to handle certain situations, and I hope I have some helpful advice to share as well. It was refreshing to see a traveler be so open about it - and never letting it stop her from doggedly pushing on.

I admit to almost giving up on the book in the first 80 pages because I couldn't believe how she treated her ride in the USA: just something to get through as quickly as possible. The USA is an amazing country to tour by motorcycle, and was in the 1980s - it's not something new - but you would never know it by reading Beard's book. In those early pages, she also talked more about her failed relationship than anything good she might have been experiencing as a motorcycle rider, and I thought, if the entire book is this way, I'm not going to be able to get through it. The first 80 pages just weren't at all a book about an adventure motorcycle rider. But after she gets to Australia and works to get enough money to continue her travels, the book improves drastically - at least for me.

I do wish she'd talked more about how she chose her routes, how she chose where to stay, etc. - the only thing she says on this regard is that she has a Lonely Planet guide for one of the countries she's in. (FYI even in this day and age of the Internet, I'm a huge fan of those guidebooks and have frequently used them myself). She also rarely talks about how she secured her bike for the night - this is a big concern for most motorcycle travelers, and it would have been nice to have heard her advice on the subject.

The book is more about the challenges Beard faces (accidents, breakdowns, bureaucracy, extortion attempts) than the sights she sees, and there are times when I was thinking, Why are you doing this? What about any of this is enjoyable? Are you ever happy? I don't travel for endless, overwhelming challenges, though it is rather awesome to do something you've never done before or face a challenge you never expected - as long as you successfully meet the challenge. I travel to see amazing places and meet interesting people and be somewhere different than what I know every day, and I like reading travel books to get ideas of places to see when I travel. Her book is rather light in terms of describing awe-inspiring moments (an exception is her account of trekking through the Himalayas) or places you might want to visit if you are in the same places she was. But, still, I really enjoyed reading how she problem-solved, I deeply admire her persistence, and I am inspired by her determination. I don't want to spoil anything in the book - part of the enjoyment is reading about the challenges that come up and how she addressed them, over and over and over. But I will say that the challenges are intense, beyond the capabilities of most motorcycle riders I've ever known - and beyond what I could deal with. I really cannot gush enough about how Beard handles a myriad of dire circumstances. She doesn't seem to think it's any big deal that she keeps overcoming these challenges, nor that she built her own panniers or that she constantly repaired her own bike on the fly - I read those accounts and thought, geesh, you are Wonder Woman on a motorcycle and you don't know it. I'm not sure her book will inspire many people to take up motorcycle travel - the constant difficulties she experienced make it sound like a fight to survive every day, and it's not like that for all travelers now - at least it doesn't have to be. But she's not exaggerating: in the 1980s, this is what she experienced, and her abilities to overcome those challenges are nothing short of amazing.

Also, I am not a fan of bare bones budget travel, and I could never sleep and eat in the conditions Beard did for weeks and weeks at a time. I love camping, including rough camping - but I don't want to do it because I can't afford a safe place and I'll be in a place where there's a very likely chance local people will walk up in the night and mess with my bike, or me. I love budget hotels, even when I have money for something more fancy, but not if they are crawling with roaches or pockmarked with peepholes. I don't want to be on the verge of starvation while traveling because I can't afford a decent meal. So, again, as you read her book, know that this is how she traveled, but you don't have to travel this way in order to see the world - even by motorcycle, though you are going to need more money that she had if you don't want to regularly experience the conditions she did.

I have no mechanical abilities and can only just-barely-assist in changing a tire - I could never do it myself. I can't fix wiring or an oil leak or build my own panniers. Beard did all this - and more. That's why Elspeth Beard was able to ride across India - and it's why I can't and won't. And that's okay!  I fancy myself a motorcycle adventure rider - but nothing on the level of Elspeth Beard. I've ridden more than 40,000 miles / more than 63,000 km, the vast majority of it done touring, but just in the USA and Canada (I'm planning on seeing Baja, California, Mexico next year). I've never done the kind of riding Beard has done in severely under-developed countries, nor could I, and I know that and am okay with it. And I bring this up for anyone who wants to be an adventure motorcycle rider and is just getting started, because you might read the book and think, oh, no, I can't do that, therefore, I'm not going to travel around by motorcycle. Times have changed and you don't have to ride in the conditions Beard did to see some amazing, even remote places and experience the thrill of adventure motorcycle riding. I could never manage to ride across India - but I did ride up the Cassiar Highway to the Yukon, I've ridden gravel and dirt roads to remote ghost towns few have heard of, I've camped rough in beautiful, remote places throughout North America. I think I could manage some Eastern European countries on my own bike - I loved my long trip there on the back of my husband's bike back in 2008. Just know as you read Beard's book that this is extreme motorcycle touring, and if you haven't ridden since you were 16 like Beard, and know you could never do many of these roads, that's okay - you still have options for amazing, exotic, challenging adventure motorcycle travel.

Despite my complaint about it while reading the first 80 pages, I ended up really liking that she shared so much about her intimate relationships - I've found most people are not emotionless drones, even motorcycle travelers, though it's very difficult to get world travelers, with or without motorcycles, to open up about this at times. I found it refreshing to hear a traveler talk about love on the road - and the aftermath. It's something to consider if you are going to invest in a lot of time away from home.

And note: I will never have legs long enough to be able to take a photo on my bike so I can look as cool as Elspeth Beard.

One thing I've wondered: is Dave Calderwood, who was then editor of Bike magazine, still alive and still an asshole, or dead, or alive and profoundly apologetic for being an asshole? When Beard was looking for sponsorship and advice for her trip, she wrote his magazine, among others, and he wrote a mocking letter with the sole intent of humiliating her. You can read the letter here.

I hope Elspeth Beard finally gets the recognition and admiration she deserves. And I'm so grateful she shared her adventure at last. I would very much like to be as tenacious as she is.

So, if Elspeth Beard isn't the first woman to go around the world on her own motorcycle, who is? It's probably Anne France Dautheville, French journalist and writer. In 1973 at the age of 28, she rode around the world on a Kawasaki 125. Both of her books, in French only, are out of print (I will totally buy into a crowdfunding effort to translate them into English and publish them!).

One more thing: Beard visited Gunung Leuser National Park in Indonesia during her travels and mentioned an NGO working in this area addressing the huge problem of Indonesians abducting baby orangutans and then wanting to get rid of them when they grow older and are so much harder to care for. Her account of this visit is a good example of transire benefaciendo: "to travel along while doing good" - she didn't attempt to work at the NGO as a volunteer (which would have been illegal), but she did elevate its work through her book, even many years later. And that's how I know about it - and now you do too.

Warsaw, Poland

I moved my blog about my fabulous trip to Warsaw, Poland to my web site, and added some background re: how the trip came about.

Jayne Visits Chornobyl (Chernobyl)

Thou shalt not freak out over my trip to Chornobyl, nor how I spell it:

First, let's dispel some myths re: Chornobyl (spelling is based on how Ukranians pronounce it, rather than Chernobyl). Because some of your comments ("Oh, Jayne, please stay safe!") have me much more worried than my trip to the exclusion zone:

The town of Chornobyl is still inhabited. There are houses there. There are people there. It's quite a nice little village, actually. Approximately 3,000 people work in the area on various projects, such as the construction of the New Safe Confinement, the ongoing decommissioning of the reactors, and assessment and monitoring of the conditions in the zone. Employees can live in the 30 km exclusion zone - in Chornobyl - but not within the 10 km exclusion zone. Some work "4-3" shifts (four days on, three off), whilst others work 15 days on, 15 off. Other workers commute into the Zone daily from outside of it.

What isn't in Chornobyl: children. The people that live in Chornobyl are not allowed to have children there. More on that later.

"Chornobyl" is the same word as a local Ukrainian name for wormwood, though alternative etymology holds that it is a combination of the words chornyi (чорний, black) and byllia (билля, grass blades or stalks), hence it would literally mean black grass or black stalks.

Chornobyl was NOT the residence of the power plant workers nor the industries that supported those workers at the time of the accident - restaurants, dry cleaners, movie theaters, bars, hair salons, etc. That was Pripyat, a city much larger than Chornobyl, and built specifically for the Chornobyl workers and their families. It was ultra-modern, with all the latest everything for the time. It's Pripyat that is the ghost city now, with all the decaying streets and buildings, that you see in photos and videos.

After the explosion at Reactor No. 4, the remaining three reactors at the power plant continued to operate. They are now in the process of decommissioning those reactors, which actually takes several years - there's no "off" switch. The first stage of decommissioning is the removal of the highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel, which is placed in deep water cooling ponds. However, storage facilities for this are not suitable for long-term containment, so, officially, the place is NOT fully decommissioned. And all this is said here in this blog to explain why the place still looks like a working nuclear power plant, with offices and plant workers all around. (and it's the constant lack of places to safely store highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel that keeps me from embracing nuclear energy as a viable energy option, along with the human potential for stupidity).

The remains of Reactor No. 4 will remain radioactive for 1000 years.

It was Sweden's search for the source of radioactivity at a Swedish nuclear power plant that led to the first hint of a serious nuclear problem in what was then the Western Soviet Union. They figured it out and, so, the Soviets had to come clean and tell all.

Contamination from the Chornobyl disaster was not evenly spread across the surrounding countryside or the nearby regions, but scattered irregularly depending on weather conditions. Some mushrooms as well as wild animals which eat them, e.g. wild boars hunted in Germany and deer in Austria, may have levels which are not considered safe for human consumption - while the same in Southern Ukraine are fine.

Invertebrate populations (including bumblebees, butterflies, grasshoppers, dragonflies, and spiders) has significantly decreased in the area. Currently, most radioactivity around Chornobyl is located in the top layer of soil, where many invertebrates live or lay their eggs. The reduced abundance of invertebrates can have negative implications for the entire ecosystem surrounding Chornobyl. However, the "giant" fish you see near the plant aren't so large because of radiation - they are that large because of their diet.

One of the main mechanisms by which radiation contamination was passed to humans was through the ingestion of milk from contaminated cows.

The issue of long-term effects of the Chornobyl disaster on people is an ongoing debate. There's little pre-disaster data to rely on - how many people had thyroid cancer before the plant was built? How many birth defects were there before the plant was built? Without that kind of data, it's really hard to say what the radiation, for sure, has caused in humans and animals, beyond the immediate injuries and deaths of first responders. Lack of funds, an infrastructure with little or no experience in chronic disease epidemiology, and extremely poor communication (record-keeping, information sharing, etc.) hamper efforts to effectively study this.

In Belarus, Yury Bandazhevsky, a scientist who questioned the official reporting regarding Chornobyl's consequences, was imprisoned from 2001 to 2005 for "corruption." Bandazhevsky and some human rights groups allege his imprisonment was a reprisal for his publication of reports critical of the official research being conducted into the after-effects of the Chornobyl incident.

After Ukrainian Independence in the early 90s, funding for the policing and protection of the Zone was initially limited, resulting in lots of returnees - samosely - and other illegal intrusion. But they have it under better control now.

A Geiger counter measures both radioactive particles and waves in the air around it. Most of the radiation in Chornobyl now is transported via particles that can easily be blocked by clothing. The other types of radiation that exist as waves can move straight through a wall. A Geiger counter expresses the amount of radiation, from both particles and waves, in a unit called Sieverts, per hour of exposure. I receive about .15 microSieverts (μSv) of radiation during my breakfast time in Kyiv. And that's around what YOU had this morning as well. Maybe more.

Here are some basic numbers to use as a guide:

10 μSv – The average total radiation you received by the end of today

40 μSv – The radiation you receive by taking a flight from New York to L.A.

100 μSv – The radiation you receive during a dental x-ray

3,000 μSv – Radiation dose from a mammogram

3,600 μSv – Average radiation a US citizen receives in a year from all sources

50,000 μSv – Maximum allowable yearly occupational dose (USA)

100,000 μSv – Lowest yearly dose likely linked to increased cancer risk

2,000,000 μSv – Severe radiation poisoning (sometimes fatal)

A new steel containment structure named the New Safe Confinement (NSC) is being built to replace the aging and hastily-built sarcophagus that currently protects Reactor No. 4. That's what a lot of the workers at the plant are doing now - working on this giant dome. Behave, or you will be encased in it. Just kidding. Maybe.

The most radiation I was exposed to on this visit, at once, was 9 μSv, for at least some, and maybe most, of the 45 minutes we were standing right outside the plant. In one hour, I supposedly got what I normally get in a day, in terms of radiation - and it's still not as much as I get on a long plane ride - I say supposedly, because my counter was usually at 3.5 while we were at the nuclear disaster site. In Pripyat, I checked my Geiger counter constantly (yes, I rented one) and we were between .5 and 3.5 μSv the whole time. But upon visiting the Duga-3 radar, readings were at 4 and 5 μSv, and stayed there for the next 2 hours, all through lunch. Not sure why they were so much more there. Yet, even so, at the end of the day, I still had less exposure to radiation all day than you received during your last dental x-ray.

To limit exposure to radiation, even though radiation levels are low, workers in the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone are limited in the number of days per week or weeks per month they stay in Chornobyl.

So, why not let children back into Chornobyl? Why not let people back into Pripyat and the many villages that have been evacuated in the exclusion zone? Because of so many, many hotspots (where radiation levels spike), because the items that were left behind - clothes, furniture, books, everything - are still radioactive, because of the lack of information about health risks for people, especially children, regarding elevated, constant, long-term radiation exposure - we just do not know what having the effects of having a dental x-ray EVERY day would be.

Finally, you are not allowed to freak out about my trip to Chornobyl until you've read this web site.

Would I move to Chornobyl? No. There's no movie theater there. Would I suggest you go to Chornobyl, even if you want to get pregnant someday? Absolutely. Would I suggest you go if you ARE pregnant? No - just as doctors don't like doing x-rays on pregnant women.

So, are we good?

Good.

Let's talk about my trip to Chornobyl:

On Saturday, September 20, I awoke to a positively GORGEOUS Kyiv day. It was cool, but not at all cold. A visit out on the balcony and I was back in the bedroom changing my clothes from a long warm undershirt to a long sleeve oh-so-light shirt, with a t-shirt over it. The SoloEast web site said that long sleeves, long pants and shoes - not sandals - were mandatory, so I had planned ahead. I brought a sweater just in case, but it stayed in my bag the whole time.

When I booked this trip more than two weeks ago, I was gambling on the weather. But looking at all the forecasts, I had a feeling this might very well be the last dry, clear weekend. I was SO right. I wanted this particular weekend because I knew my former host here would be out of town - and I really like spending free weekends with her.

Why did I choose Solo East? They had great reviews, they were mentioned in Lonely Planet, and they were the company that Top Gear used when the boys went to Chernobyl - and Stefan and I had watched that very episode earlier this year. How could I not? I'll say right up front: they were terrific. I'll also say, right up front: next time, when Stefan is here with me, we're paying big bucks for a private tour. I'm losing my patience with other tourists.

I headed out the door at 8 a.m. and walked the less than 2 km (about a mile) to the McDonald's in Maidan, and found Tom, a co-worker, having breakfast. I had invited him and a few other co-workers to sign up for the tour with me, but only Tom took me up on it. Took us to find the tour organizer - he was quite nondescript. I got called "number 1", because I was the first to sign up on the tour, so I was first on all lists for the rest of the day, actually. A few other people from our company turned up - not sure when they booked, but we don't really hang, so they stuck together, and I got to do my own thing. Which was what I wanted. Other people on the tour: interactive game designers, an MBA student, an Australian on that epic international trip all Australians do, an Irish guy obviously making the trip of a lifetime, and a really annoying guy I'm going to skip talking about for now.

We headed out on time, though one guy - from the USA, of course - forgot his passport, so he had to be driven back to his apartment to get it and then catch up to us on the road. He, and all of the people from my company, forgot to bring snacks as well - both Lonely Planet and the SoloEast web site say to bring a snack, as lunch is REALLY late. I was getting annoyed now - I started to feel like there was a large group on our trip not taking this trip seriously. It was a school field trip: WOOT!

I took this trip seriously. I take all trips seriously. I'm not an emotionally-distant, snobby aid worker that does touristy things just because I'm bored and hungover. Visiting historical sites is serious business for me. It's not a joke. As for being a "disaster tourist" as someone called it - it's not that l seek out sites of disasters - like Pompeii and Mt. St. Helen's and Chornobyl - it's that I seek out places of SIGNIFICANCE - maybe because of tragedy, maybe because of triumph. Hence why I've also been to the pyramids and Karnak in France AND Egypt and so many USA historical sites.

I am happy in all the photos touring the area. But please understand: the trip was, in many ways, quite sad. There were times I had no words - I just stared. What made me saddest was how people were lied to about the accident. Everyone lied to everybody. And the consequences of those lies are so far-reaching.

We were in a large mini-bus, very comfy, and the drive is surprisingly quick - but, then again, I like road trips. I liked looking out at the Ukrainian countryside and the suburbs and villages on the way. I half watched the view and half watched what was on the screen above the center of the front of the van: two horrific cheesy music videos that were shot at Chornobyl, and a documentary called The Battle of Chernobyl. Before it started, our guide, Anastasia, said the video was sensationalist and we shouldn't be alarmed because everything was presented in a very overly dramatic manner. But watching, I didn't think much was overly-dramatic - the video very accurately helps you understand just how close Western Europe came to nuclear annihilation. And it came SO close. And it also helps you understand just what the first responders did - and what they sacrificed - for all of mankind. For you. Those are people that truly deserve to hear, "Thank you for your service. Thank you for my life. Thank you for the future of the planet." I had done a lot of research beforehand - I knew how much things had changed in almost 30 years since the accident, so the video didn't freak me out, in the sense of, "Turn this bus around, I ain't goin'!" But I can totally see someone doing that after watching the video and not understanding what the site is *now*. I asked our guide later if, indeed, people had panicked over the video and, indeed, they had - a couple of people have seen it and changed their minds about going.

And I'd like to say "Soviet problem", regarding the mistakes and the lies, but the owner of Fukushima did the same damn thing - lied about the damage, lied about the risks, lied about the containment. I just don't trust humans. I trust nuclear energy only if aliens manage it.

There is a very strict checkpoint at the entrance to the checkpoint to enter the 30 km exclusion zone. Passports are rechecked against a list that the guard has. Our guide says that there have been cases where the guards have turned a group back - because something didn't quite match up between a passport and the list, because someone wasn't dressed properly, because someone behaved badly (NO PHOTOS). I could hear what she was saying underneath those stories: please follow directions, please don't ruin it for everyone.

If you have decided to dress one way for the drive and another for a tour, this is where you change clothes. Also, USE THE BATHROOM AT THIS CHECKPOINT. It's your last opportunity to use a toilet before lunch. Otherwise, you'll be using a bush. Watch out for the hot spots!

And speaking of Geiger counters - yes, I rented one from the company. Because… GEEK GIRL! Come on, it's a GEIGER COUNTER. It was the best toy EVER. I was the only one that rented such. Anastasia had one as well, of course.

Once you enter the 30 km exclusion zone, most cars on the road disappear. Even though Chornobyl, as noted earlier, is inhabited, it's a village. You are on mostly empty roads, with forests all around. That's your only indication for a while that's something different here - there are few cars, and the roads look fantastic, from lack of use.

Once you enter the 10 km exclusion zone, things get even more deserted. Most houses are gone. Cars are VERY rare. There are two more checkpoints beyond the first one, but because our guide is so trusted, we didn't have to get off the bus and present passports again. But she said that does happen sometimes.

And… well, I'm not going to do a play-by-play of the tour. I have a lot of commentary in my photos about what we did, what we saw, etc. That's your play-by-play.

I will say that myself and other passengers harassed poor Tom for forgetting his camera - in fact, I'm still harassing him about it. He has a decent camera on his smart phone, so he got some good photos. And he took photos of me, whenever I asked, which was sweet of him - and that included the very best photo of my in the last five years.

Also, Anastasia thought Tom and I were brother and sister - literally. So we kept making jokes the whole time about how mom always liked me better, how I always got the best Christmas presents, etc.

I will also say that the dogs and cats in Chornobyl broke my heart. All of the dogs and cats n the area were killed in the 1980s after the accident, for fear that they would take radiation with them outside the area. All animals in the area were killed, actually - cows, chickens, horses. The dogs and cats there now have wandered in from the surrounding villages, or been brought in by thoughtless residents. There were no strays seen around Pripyat, thankfully - that would have made me insane.

And one of the many reasons I want to do a private tour next time is because one of the tourists convinced everyone that it was a better idea to go to the Duga-3 radar than to climb the 16 stories to the top of the Pripyat hotel, to get a rooftop view of the city. I wanted to do the latter. But the lazy, hungover members of our group didn't. I let it go… but I'm still bitter.

Another reason other tourists annoyed me - they didn't realize that they weren't the only ones that wanted a particular photo, or that someone might want a photo where they had decided to stand and hang out. One guy not only asked others to take photos of him - which is FINE - he wanted you to redo the photo SEVERAL times. Dude, if you are that obsessed about how you are supposed to look in your photos, HIRE SOMEONE TO GO WITH YOU AS A PHOTOGRAPHER.

And yet ANOTHER reason tourists annoy me: temperature. There was one woman that complained about being cold every time we were outside. It was a GORGEOUS sunny day, and it was NOT cold. The Australian woman had stripped down to her thin, short-sleeved t-shirt, and most people had no jackets on outside. She stood in the sun, wrapped in her coat, shivering. Which wasn't the problem. It was her insistence that the van have the heat on. On the way back, I had to demand it get turned off. I was ready to say I was going to get car sick if it wasn't turned off, if that's what it took.

And then there was the woman who, I swear, asked the DUMBEST questions and make ridiculous comments. I don't even know where to begin...

Private tour next time. For sure.

Wow. I sound like I didn't enjoy the trip. I did. I did a remarkable job of finding ways to stay away from everyone else when we were off the bus and therefore I really enjoyed the trip, truly.

So, yes, I totally fan-girled over Anastasia being the guide for the Top Gear guys. I wanted to ask her a million questions, but limited myself to just a few:

Were they all nice?

Yes.

But you didn't know they were famous?

No. I have never seen the show. I understand it is about cars. I don't like car shows.

Have you seen their show that they did here in Ukraine?

No.

So you may be on TV and you don't even know it.

(grins nervously)

So, I know you say they were all nice. Even the really, really tall, big guy, fat around the middle?

Yes.

And the short guy was also nice?

Yes.

Who was the nicest?

The tall guy with the long hair.

James May?

Yes. He was very nice, very considerate, and asked a lot of questions

And I left her alone after that, for fear I would sound creepy.

Except for at the Chornobyl Nuclear Plant and various hot spots, my Geiger counter was always below 2. Until we started towards the Duga-3 radar. After that, it hit 4, then 5, then a little over 5, and stayed there. It was still there when we arrived at one of the exit checkpoints, and I had to give the Geiger Counter back. I never did get a chance to ask why.

Lunch didn't happen until after 4. But that was fine as I, of course, had BROUGHT SNACKS. Also, lunch was worth the wait - as usual, it was a great meal. Because - UKRAINE. All of the food is brought in from outside the zone, FYI. Surprisingly, the only gift shop is a small display case inside the restaurant. I bought two key chains.

You go through two radiation checkpoints on your way out. The first checkpoint has a machine that, supposedly, is very sensitive, and WILL reveal if you were an idiot and picked up something. I asked Anastasia if she'd ever witnessed the machine go off. Indeed, she had - because someone had something they had picked up, which they then have to leave. Or, in one case, because they thought a photo in a scooper of a bulldozer was a great idea - a bulldozer used to help clean up right after the accident. She said he went back to Kyiv without his pants, as they could not be decontaminated. And he was Russian.

And… everyone slept as we drove back to town, except me. I looked out the window and thought about the day. Midway back, we passed a large group of motorcycle riders, none on Harleys, that were taking a break from a group ride. The riders looked so happy on this beautiful day. Oh, to have joined them…

I cannot believe I forgot to listen to the Great Atomic Power while touring Chornobyl. Alt country FAIL. I have three different versions of it on my iPod! (Uncle Tupelo, Southern Culture on the Skids and, of course, the Louvin Brothers).

And… that's it, really. Far more details in the descriptions that go with my photos. I beg you to please read the descriptions that go with the photos. Please? Start with the first photo. Not all have descriptions yet, but they will. Soon. Otherwise, they're just images, pretty colors, a few seconds of your time... and they're worth more than a few seconds.

And if you ask me a question that is answered in the photo descriptions or in the above narrative, like, "But weren't you worried about all the radiation?! And why are there people living there?!" I'm not answering you.

Coyote NO

So, two weeks to go. And then I'm done. I'm done with this amazing adventure. I will leave Ukraine.

I feel the way I have only on a motorcycle or camping somewhere with my husband these past few years.... yes, Ukraine is as good as motorcycle riding and camping. HIGH PRAISE INDEED.

I am the luckiest girl alive - at least I have been for August and September. I can't believe I got this amazing gift of a job. Out of no where. Just landed right in my lap. As did my first job with this organization - it all started with an email, out of no where, in 2000. I still can't believe it. I feel like I'm going to wake up and it's going to be July and I'm going to be in Forest Grove and wondering what in the hell I'm going to do with my life. Actually, I always wonder what in the hell I'm going to do with my life. But now, with money in the bank and a solid, RECENT work experience, I'm not as worried about not knowing.

Do I worry about afterwards? Yes. But that's for another blog.

Me to a co-worker: "Oh, where are you going so early in the morning?"

Co-worker: "I'm going to some meeting about gender blah blahs blah mainstreaming women ta ta ta dee dee dee."

No, really that was our conversation. The development/humanitarian jargon gets to even us - especially before we've had several cups of coffee.

Two important things I've learned on this job:
"Help me to do this" means "Do this for me, please."
and
"I'll be brief" means "I"m going to talk for 20 minutes, even though I only have 3 minutes allotted."

Also, I tried to kill my boss with roses on his birthday. Sorry!

An important thing I've learned for after work: Beer from kiosk near apartment: excellent. Cheese from the kiosk near apartment: oy vey. Nothing but cheese from Good Wine for rest of my time in Kyiv!

Saturday, Sept. 13, the couple with whom I stayed my first four weeks threw a party for me with incredible food - overflowing with fresh Ukrainian vegetables and added bonus, American store-bought salsa and homemade corn muffins! - lots of yummy things to drink, and a mix of friends and co-workers. I'm so sorry I didn't run around getting photos - not of the people, not of me debuting my fabulous Ukraine blouse, only of the food before everyone arrived. That's a huge regret. Because the evening was so special. And there were most of the people that have been special to me in Ukraine there, all together, in one room. I can't believe I didn't take photos. But I was just having this amazing time. I was sooooo happy.

I found out that some particularly hard partiers went on afterwards to Coyote Ugly, a new bar in Kyiv next to Good Wine. No. And can I just say how ticked off I am that most Ukrainians are having an introduction to the word coyote through this almost-a-titty bar instead of MY COMPANY?!?

The next night, one of the head honchos at work threw a dinner party at her apartment for just the visiting staff from other countries that work in our immediate office. Except for her, all of us are on short-term contracts of just a few months. Her apartment is near the Presidential office, on the same street as the Lutheran church, and just a 15 minute walk from my apartment. I am right on the edge of the most beautiful neighborhood in Ukraine, truly. It's just too lovely for words. As is her apartment. Wow. And afterwards, we washed dishes - very important people washed dishes.

Food and transportation are so cheap here in Kyiv. Accommodations are not. Hotels are more expensive than probably anywhere I've ever been. Apartment rents are through the roof. A lot of people own apartments here, in the city center, that they rent out to foreigners and other temporary stay folks, while they themselves live over on the other side of the river, where it's FAR cheaper. If I were staying here longer, I would have gotten a cheaper place, but I love being within easy walking distance of work and anything I want to see. There's no reason not to fully enjoy my nine weeks here - this isn't like other posts where I have to be constantly on alert for security reasons, where it's mandatory that I take a company car to get somewhere.

Kyiv. It's a beautiful city, in landscape and spirit. I love this city. I love this city as much as any European city I've ever been to. It is so easy to feel at home here. It's easy to get around the immediate downtown. It's not a super friendly town, but it's not rude - Kyiv folks do their jobs and save the overt friendliness for the people they love. The food is just... it's all that. The biggest challenge of being here is the language, particularly how it's written. I do a better job of listening and hearing things I understand than I do every trying to read anything. I was so spoiled my first four weeks here, no question, regarding getting around - by living with someone fluent in Russian and who can get by in Ukrainian and who can read everything.

Kyiv is a short flight from so many places - Prague, Istanbul, cities in Poland. Easy to get a flight here from Amsterdam. I really can't recommend this place highly enough as a tourist destination. Best time to come, IMO - late August or early September, when the weather isn't stupid hot but it's still warm enough sit outside (and if it's not, they'll bring you a blanket. I'm not kidding.), and there's fresh fruit and veggies being sold on the streets EVERYWHERE. And buy Lonely Planet Ukraine - it really does have all you need re: getting around and being here, including a list of companies that rent apartments. More on LP later in this blog...

It has cooled off quite a lot - from temps of around 76F / 26C the week before to 66F / 19C on Monday, Sept. 15, and the temps stayed there all week and weekend. And then it gets even colder the next week. That's a problem only when it comes to my clothes - I'll be alternating between the same two sweaters every day my last week here. I have been so lucky with the weather here - I cannot complain. Rained just one day. It was only horrible the first week - so hot I thought I would melt, especially with an office mate that hates air conditioning. I don't want an office that's frigid on a hot day, but I do want an office where I'm not sweating while I'm typing, and my computer isn't about to explode from the heat.

I'm busy at work - busier than I was expecting these most recent two weeks. I thought I had just one more project to do, and then I worried that I wouldn't have anything else to do. But SEVERAL things have just cropped up. I'm slammed. Which is absolutely fine. I LOVE this work. I love it. I could write communications strategies every day for the rest of my life. I could. I love doing it. I'm good at it. No, really, I am.

Not that I don't have bad days. I do, sometimes. Well, just two, so far.

It's so bizarre: I've netted probably 30 more followers on my professional Twitter account. But my personal account, the one associated with this blog, the fun one, about travel and, well, fun? I've netted none. For every one follower I've gained, I've lost one. I just knew I'd have 450 followers on my personal account by the time I left Ukraine. I was WRONG. Meanwhile, I've got more followers on the professional Twitter account than some of the agencies I work with!

One Sunday, my former host and a co-worker and I traveled by bus to the neighborhood near the Central Botanical Gardens (bus 14), to visit an Austrian woman who finds Ukrainian artists with paintings, sculptures or folk art she likes, and then she sells such out of her house. She's an artist herself as well. She is who discovered this guy's work that I love so much - though I just found out she's never met him! She gets his things through someone else. She lives in a gorgeous house, in an area with spectacular views of Kyiv down below, in a quarter with a lot of diplomats who have their own grand homes. Nice places, lemme tell ya… my friend found her via the Kyiv Expats Facebook group, which is a really great group for finding places to live, things to do - even jobs.

I've had three health issues while in Kyiv… so far. I hope it's all I have: first was the ankle swelling following my flights, and then at the end of every work day. That's gone away almost entirely - a few times at the end of the day, I see some slight swelling around the right ankle, though I'm not sure anyone else would notice it, and it's always gone by the time I go to bed. Second was that dang UTI. And third has been heartburn. I have chronic acid reflux. It's one of the legacy's from my Dad's side of the family (the other is a love of musical theatre - go figure). I thought I had brought more than enough Zantac and antacid tablets to get me through not just Ukraine, but Germany as well. But with more than two weeks to go, I see that I have just a week's worth of pills left - I had taken two a day many more times than I had realized. I knew I could keep that horrible pain under control - but didn't realize just how many meds I needed for such. It's very hard to get antacid meds in Germany - even if something is over the counter, they will give you just a few doses and a long lecture about going to see a doctor. I'll be asking a co-worker to go to a pharmacy with me next week, to see what I might be able to get over the counter.

So, long ago, per my blog about my Saturday with the IDPs, I wrote a report about that visit and sent it to a person I work with, a specialist regarding internally-displaced people (refugee is a term reserved for people not in their home countries). He forwarded it to someone, who never responded - never said, "Oh, we'll get right on this" or "We know all about this already - thanks for the update", etc. Silence. Nothing. It really ticked me off. So I sent it to another program that is a part of our overall agency. And the rep got back to me immediately, said they knew about it, wrote some comments that showed she TOTALLY knew which group I was talking about, etc. It just reminded me yet again: some people understand how to work, some people don't. Some people think of themselves as part of an organization, of something bigger, and some people just love their little fiefdom and don't want anyone messing with it. I have encountered both kinds of people in every kind of organization, even for-profits. I work really hard to think of all staff as integrated and worthy of respect and being informed. And when I'm sitting there hearing someone from another department nit pick my work, I look for legitimate, constructive criticism to use - and also think, yeah, sister, but did it ever occur to you that you can comment on what I'm doing because I share it, but you never share a damn thing about what you're doing with anyone outside your department?

Harumph.

So, I mentioned Lonely Planet Ukraine earlier. I bought it just before I left the states, and it has been terrific. It was written before the latest Maidan revolution, before Yanukovych was thrown out of office, but there are hints here and there that such a thing is coming. There's this paragraph from one section of the book I found quite telling:

"The 'ethnic' schism between western and eastern Ukraine has been under the spotlight since the Orange Revolution, when there were brief but serious fears the county might split. With Russian immigration into Ukrainian territory from the last 17th century, some Russian Ukrainians still feel their allegiance lies more with Moscow than with Kyiv... Ukrainian nationalists refuse to see an east-west split as a solution to the country's ethnic strife. Through the cause of countless problems, the divisions are neither as clear-cut nor as intractable as some politicians like to suggest."

Remember - the above paragraph was written BEFORE Maidan, BEFORE Russia invaded Eastern Ukraine (they say they haven't invaded - Russian soldiers there are on vacation, choosing to spend their free time fighting in Ukraine. Um… yeah). It's the first thing I've read about tensions BEFORE those events.

A country that does not address unity issues - and I don't mean forcing people to be unified, I mean getting buy-in from all residents about what it means to be a part of the country - is doomed. You see it in Spain, you see it in the UK, you see it in Belgium, you see it in Turkey… how many more times will we see it? I'm shocked re: Scotland, by the way - I think the vote to stay in the UK was economics and the head talking, not identity and the heart. And sometimes, economics is your best argument to get a region to stay.

Speaking of unity problems… "in Lviv, on Ukraine's western edge, near the border with Poland, displaced people from the Donbass region in the east and the southern peninsula of Crimea seem to be around every corner. They are staying in hotels and private apartments and in tourist chalets and sanatoria in the nearby Carpathian Mountains… In Lviv, which has a reputation as a stronghold of Ukrainian national identity, the arrival of Russian-speaking skhidnyaky (from skhid, Ukrainian for "east") is having social repercussions disproportionate to the actual number of people arriving. With men from western Ukraine fighting and dying in the east in the battle against Russian-backed separatist rebels, some locals resent their presence. At the same time, some activists working with refugees in Lviv argue that the recent arrivals are helping to dismantle Ukrainians' stereotypes about each other." Credit.

Mark my words: ethnic and cultural divisions are second only to corruption as being the primary challenge for Ukraine. How will these be addressed by ALL sides? Will these be addressed? Stay tuned...

I've put a link to all of my personal and professional blogs that relate to my time in Ukraine here. It's part of my ongoing quest to answer the question, "But what is it like to work in aid and development overseas?"

And speaking of being an aid and development worker overseas... this was brought to my attention:

“And what will become of Jean-Philippe? Will prolonged separation cause their hearts to grow fonder? Or will she find comfort in the arms of the mysterious, brooding Jonathon Langstrom? Will she take a job at HQ? Or will she continue to answer the humanitarian call from a dusty refugee camp on the border of Somalia?” Who knew there was aid worker fanfic? I wrote a blog back in 2010 about a new ABC show that was going to focus on the lives and loves of aid workers (it was canceled VERY quickly) and someone this week sent me this link, which has that gem of a quote on the page. It's actually a satire. And I totally want to read it...

Off to Chornobyl!

My new apartment & past the halfway point

More than halfway done with my time in Kyiv... five weeks down, four to go.

I've moved! I now live right off Klovskiy Uzviz - I also work on Klovskiy Uzviz, and it takes less than 10 minutes to walk to work (no more taking a car). I live around the corner from theУкраїна Футбол Інтернешнл (Ukraine Football International). I'm not sure what they do... I'm sure they were quite busy in 2012... My apartment building is up on a hill and is blocked from the busy road by one or two other apartment buildings, and the other side of my building is a big huge hill, so, unless my immediate neighbors are loud or there's someone playing tunes loudly in a car below, it's quiet here.

Officially, I live in the Lypky neighborhood, but the rest of Lypky is quite upscale, and while I'm in a primo location for both work and Good Wine, my apartment complex, made up of four or five buildings, isn't nearly as well-kept as the rest of Lypky. My hosts for my first four weeks here in Kyiv, who helped me find this place, were stunned at the amount of trash here and there in the walk from the street.

I can see Good Wine from my balcony! And I can walk there in less time than to work! As I mentioned in an earlier blog, Good Wine is a bit like Whole Foods except, with the local currency so weak against the dollar, way cheaper, and it's without the attitude of Whole Paycheck. Actually, it's more of an upscale wine and liquor shop that has a gourmet grocery store in the back. My first trip on my own, I bought three bottles of wine, bread, cheese, olives, and sun dried tomatoes for me, and a bottle of Maker's Mark for either a gift to someone or for any get together I might have, and altogether, I'm ashamed to say, I spent more than a month's rent for this apartment. But it's worth it. There is a money exchange inside the store, for me to exchange the last of my dollars that I brought. Except for bread, I'll buy all other grocery items during my stay here in Kyiv from the regular grocery that is without gourmet cheeses and women in full make up and wearing 4 inch heals.

I like the apartment so far, for the week I've been here. It's a one bedroom, with a very large living room - probably has the same square footage as my apartment in Bad Godesberg. The balcony is wonderful - I don't spend much time on it, but I spend a lot of time with the door open to it, letting in the fresh air and sunshine.

I played hard and refused to pay more than two weeks at a time for the next six weeks - actually, my host's husband played hard ball with the landlord for me. I'm glad we were tough, because the second night, the lock to my front door broke. I had come home from shopping, I unlocked the door, went inside, and then tried to lock the door. It just turned and turned, without the bolts moving. The landlord had to schlep here from about 90 minutes away to replace the entire lock. I think my host and her husband were tough with him on the phone, because he was VERY apologetic and kept saying, "Call me ANYTIME you have a problem!" As in, YOU, please, call me, not that tough woman and her husband. He also replaced the mattress this week, so I was able to move from the couch in my living room to the bedroom at last.

I miss being spoiled by my hosts' cooking, and their cat, but I'm also really happy to be in my own space. It's nice not to have to put on pants in order to walk from the bedroom to the bathroom. It's also nice to play my own iTunes, although my hosts had excellent taste in music. It's perfect weather so far - no need for the air conditioner (easy to operate) or the heat (I have no idea…). There's a massive tree outside of my balcony that blocks the view from any nearby apartments into mine. I love the feeling of privacy here.

One, maybe two of the stove burners work. I don't drink the water out of the tap, though it's fine for dish washing and teeth brushing - I have a big bottle of water I use for cooking, and I think I'll need about a bottle a week to get by. There's plenty of dishes, cookware and utensils, and even a wine opener. But no wooden spoons or a spatula (will buy that this weekend - otherwise cooking is very difficult). And no bottle opener. I looked all over the Internet for tricks to open beer, but everything was "show off" videos - no "Here's how you do it" videos. Finally, I found a tool left by my host to try to fix the front door - it works very well. I also tried to open a beer bottle with a spoon, just to see if I could - and I did. And I celebrated all over social media.

Exploring and cleaning my new apartment, I've found more than five hryvnia in coins, and two packages of condoms. Oh, the stories this apartment could tell... it's going to find me so boring...

The money situation is a bit dicey in Ukraine. My credit union won't allow my ATM card to work in Ukraine - they told me it would be cancelled anywhere I tried. They said my credit card would work, but what they didn't remind me of when I called was that my credit card was expiring at the end of August. ARGH. Good thing I brought a lot of cash with me, and have a friend who is happy to convert USA dollars for me that Stefan transfers to her account electronically. The local currency grows weaker and weaker against the dollar, and it's REALLY hurting my Ukrainian co-workers that are paid in such. They have families to support, and this city is growing more and more expensive. Also, Ukrainian banks are now severely limiting the amount of dollars one can withdraw. I'll be fine... but I worry about my friends here.

Saturday, Aug. 30, my former host rented a car for the weekend. I joined her and an American friend of hers that lives here, and we went to a section of town where there are three or four Asian grocery stores, so they could get tofu and various kinds of sauces and noodles. Unfortunately, there was no restaurant in the immediate area, so we schlepped back closer to the center of Kyiv for Korean food. We got lost a lot, and, therefore, I got to see a lot of Kyiv I don't think I ever would have otherwise. We circled the massive "Monument to the courage, faithfulness and heroism of the Mothers," which someone called "statue of mothers of soldiers", though I couldn't find it called that anywhere else. Sorry, I didn't get a photo. I believe it was near Solomens'ka Ploscha. I'm horrible with remembering place names here.

Speaking of statues, just as Lonely Planet Ukraine said, you can see that big Motherland Monument/Rodina-Mat all over Kiev. From what I understand, Ukrainians aren't fond of it.

And still speaking of statues, the following Sunday, I was honored to be invited by my former host to drive North with her and her husband to Korosten (Ко́ростень), her husband's home town - which has a lot of statues in the city park (all relatively new). It's an historic city and a large railway node in the Zhytomyr Oblast (province) northeast of Kyiv. It takes about two hours to get there from Kyiv by car with no traffic. During World War II, Korosten was occupied by the German Army from August 1941 to nearly the end of 1943, and saw some horrific battles. It's less than 100 miles (156.3 KM) from Chernobyl, and after the nuclear disaster there, the area around the city was declared a zone of a voluntary evacuation.

On the third Saturday of September, Korosten holds the International potato pancakes festival. I feel that, this year, I should be Queen of the 2014 Korosten Potato Pancake Festival. Because I LOVE me some potato pancakes… obviously…

I liked the city a lot. The roads were particularly impressive - is that because I've been to Albania, and everything is impressive after Albania? I think the highlight of Korosten, other than a cooked goose by my former host's mother-in-law, is a visit to "The Rock" Military Museum, a Soviet underground bunker/command post built into medieval Drevlyane caves. One online site said it is within 2 meters of concrete, 18 meters of monolith granite and 20 meters of soil. Construction began in 1928 and ended in 1937. All of the work was held in strict confidence - so much that, at some point after the war, people forgot about it. I'm not sure when the bunker was rediscovered, but it took a while for the village to figure out exactly what it was. The museum has a Gas Masks Museum in one room that includes a gas mask for a horse made during First World War, a gas mask for a cow, and a children's mask. Many artifacts in the room are from the time of Chernobyl Disaster.

According to my former hosts, the museum is rarely open. Online, I found information that says it's closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. We were there on a Sunday. If you plan on going, I suggest calling to make absolutely sure it's going to be open (if you don't speak the local languages, get your hotel to do it for you).

It was fascinating to visit this bunker and compare it to the Cold War bunker in Germany, the Regierungsbunker, built as the emergency seat of the German federal government in case a nuclear war started. I visited that one in 2006 or 2007. They are both so representative of their eras, both in architecture and purpose. The Regierungsbunker, BTW, had everything inside not only to survive a nuclear war, but also for the parliament and all federal personnel needed to keep the government working in the event of nuclear war. The Korosten is a fascinating piece of history, but I warn you: the Regierungsbunker is almost too much to deal with - it's just too real - you realize just how close we all came to blowing up all of humanity (although, I fear we're getting that close again).

So, I've now been outside of the Kyiv city limits, and into the true countryside of Ukraine, two times, as well as through a few Kyiv suburbs. I've been in a tiny village and a small city. Yes, sissy, I have, indeed, pee'd in forest in Ukraine as well. My impression of Ukraine thus far: how in the hell did Romania get into the EU and not Ukraine? Oh, I could just go off so right now… Ukraine feels like so much of the rest of Europe, sometimes even like Spain, but with this slightly Asian flavor… and while, yes, like many countries of Eastern Europe, Ukranians need to seriously rethink their attitudes about trash and stray dogs, this country is way more advanced than Romania. I'm sorry, Romania. I realize this will cancel all future dinner invitations, if my previous blog about your country didn't before.

Okay, back to Chernobyl. You are completely freaked out that I mentioned that. I found this guidance for people living and working for extended periods with their families and children in those areas contaminated by the fallout from the Chernobyl accident:

It should be noted that neither Kiev nor Minsk lie within any of these zones, and living in either of these cities means that doses and risks are considerably less than those stated in the preceding two paragraphs. Indeed the additional radiation doses are much smaller than the differences in the natural background doses between some parts of Europe, e.g. between the U.K. and Finland, and even the northern part of Italy compared with the south… Inhabitants and workers in Kiev and Minsk need take no special precautions about radiation exposure or commercially available foodstuffs, although some ‘wild’ foods found on the ‘black market’ can sometimes exceed the state imposed restrictions.

A note about work: There's a guy here in Ukraine that I worked with back in Afghanistan. (He's not from Ukraine, BTW). He's been working here in Ukraine before: back in the 1980s, he helped with programs to resettle the Tatars in Crimea. And now, here he is, helping with programs to support the Tatars that have fled Crimea.

Some random thoughts - more to get me in trouble:

A lot of the music on the radio here in Kyiv, heard because I used drivers to get to work for four weeks, is re-recordings of American and British pop songs. You don't hear ABBA singing - you hear someone else singing ABBA songs. You don't hear the Cranberries - you hear a really bad cover of the Cranberries. It's all very over-produced, all electronic. It's rare that I hear the original version of any song in English. I thought I heard one recently: "Those Were the Days, My Friend." But it turns out that old pop song in the USA is, in fact, a remake of a Russian romance, song "Dorogoi dlinnoyu" ("Дорогой длинною", lit. "By the long road"), with words by the poet Konstantin Podrevskii.

One of the many surreal moments I've had here was walking around Kyiv one Saturday and seeing about half a dozen Bandidos having coffee at the outdoor part of a cafe. I almost tripped on the sidewalk right then and there. After we passed them, we started passing their motorcycles parked on the street, and one of my friends said, "Wow, look t the motorcycles, Jayne!" and I'm mumbling "Just keep walking, just keep walking…"

I haven't heard anything from friends against the Russian language being used here in Ukraine. Certainly, everyone wants the spelling on maps and in reports to be the Ukrainian spelling. But people speak Russian freely all around me, they listen to Russian-language songs... most people here don't hate Russia, per se - they hate Putin and all who support or appease him. At least that's my impression.

Hearing a Ukrainian here in my office back from vacation in Barcelona, complain about how people there don't speak English, and how poor the customer service is there… it was THE moment of irony for my time in Kyiv, truly. Especially after, just the week before, I had shared this with some friends:

You know what the local staff at my INGO here in Ukraine, and EVERY HR person worldwide that works for this organization, needs? A week of customer service training at McDonald's. I am not even kidding. I hate McDonald's pay practices, I hate that they tore down a historic house in my home town, I hate that they make girls take the girly Happy Meals instead of the ones with the race cars, but these people NEED that kind of intensive customer service training. Badly. Geesh.

But one of those Ukrainian visitors to Spain brought me Mantecado de Yema (Egg Yolk Crumble Cake). MMMmmmmm. All is forgiven...

I have to admit that I'm not all that fond of the very, very center of Kyiv. It's so chaotic. Step out of the city center and you come to more calm, and much more beautiful streets, cafes that don't feel like they cater mostly to tourists, etc. It's ex-pat central - I've heard a couple of British, Australian, New Zealand or North American accents on the street when I'm walking there. There's even a TGI Fridays in that part of town. Pro tip: don't get a taxi anywhere near TGI Fridays, or anywhere near it. Instead, walk a block or two away, towards your ultimate designation, and then try. It will be half the price.

I've been using Hotspot Shield to both protect myself whilst in Ukraine and to watch The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. So many online channels are blocked outside the US, so the only way to watch them is to use a Virtual Private Network (VPN) to make those sites think you are accessing them from the USA. VPNs also help protect your data - excellent to use when you are using Internet access from, say, a coffee shop. I learned about VPN from the TechSoup forum. I wasn't always using it from my host's apartment, and that meant I got a few emails from various services I use saying, "Someone tried to login to your account from Ukraine. Was it you?" YUP! I also admit to using a combination of utorrent.com and http://eztv.it/  to violate various copyright laws...

Everyone has discount cards here - for restaurants and grocery stores. People pull out their wallets not just to pay, but also to show whatever discount card is required. I thought we had a lot in the USA - I was wrong. If you move here, pro tip: get discount cards for everything.

I always pack earplugs and an eye mask for any trip - I have a good supply of both from when airlines used to care about customers and give them things to make their flight more pleasant. The earplugs have been well-used - I could not sleep without them. And then, one night while I was still at my friend's apartment, I tried to turn off the wall light switch before bed time - and the light would not go out. I stood there, thinking, did I do something wrong? Is there another switch somewhere that I'm supposed to turn off? I finally figured out it was broken. As my host's husband wasn't home or was asleep or something - I don't remember which - and both she and I are scared of electricity, I had to sleep with the light on all night. Thanks goodness I had that eye mask! And several drinks before bedtime.

Found this during a search for something else on the Internet, and laughed and laughed:

Perhaps the most scathing (and ridiculous) attack on this popular Nicktoon came in 2012, when the Ukrainian National Expert Commission for Protecting Public Morality argued that SpongeBob not only “promoted homosexuality” but was part of a “large-scale experiment” designed to transform the nation’s youth into “criminals and perverts.”

A co-worker gets upset when the big boss raises his voice. I just take it as excitement. I have had to comfort her twice. He's a man of action - get it done! I don't think he's not being mean. Either that, or he hates me and I've completely misinterpreted every exchange we've ever had. Which is possible... sometimes my "I don't care just fire me if you don't like me" attitude that I adopted in 1996 is not a good thing. But I'm sad to report that he'll be leaving sooner than me - he was interim, just like me, but I thought he was staying longer. His permanent replacement arrives at the end of the month. I'm super sad. I ADORE him. He came out of retirement for this job, and he's treated it with the utmost urgency - he's never, ever acted like a part-timer.

As I rant and write all this here, I must note that I regularly miss terribly two of my friends that I lost this year - Anne Marino and Michael DeLong. I know how much they would delight in my crazy stories and observations. I know what hilarious commentary they would offer on such. There would be quirky text messages and drunken Skype calls. Even in Ukraine, their loss weighs so heavily on my heart and mind. I imagine myself sitting in a cafe in San Francisco with Anne after this trip is done, or in a cafe with Michael… but neither of those things will happen.

And, of course, I miss my grandmother terribly.

Here are two articles I found fascinating and recommend if you want to understand what's going on:

Russia is already invading ukraine
Very good article from The Atlantic (IMO - all opinions are relative)

With war under way in Ukraine, Russians don’t like what little they learn. "As the Ukraine-Russia conflict enters its sixth month, there are signs from inside Russia that the nation’s nerves are beginning to fray."

I've put a link to all of my personal and professional blogs that relate to my time in Ukraine here. It's part of my ongoing quest to answer the question, "But what is it like to work in aid and development overseas?"

My first week in Kyiv / Kiev, Ukraine

When I started compiling this blog, it was Sunday morning, and I listened to lovely church bells outside as I began writing... now it's 11 p.m. on a Sunday night, my hosts have gone to bed, even the cat, and I'm tipsy from Ukrainian beer.

Before I continue, a reminder: this is a personal blog, full of personal reflections and opinions. It's not a piece of journalism. My observations will not necessarily be someone else's. How I interpret what I see won't be how someone standing right next to me might see it. I make no claims here to being impartial. I hope I come from a place of honesty and sincerity in my observations. This isn't about being "right" or "wrong" - it's opinion. It's my perspective. Only mine.

So... the big news is... I survived my first week of work in Kyiv! More than that: I survived the first time I have had a daily five-day-a-week 9-5 job outside of my home since 2007 (okay, technically, Kabul was a 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. six-day-a-week job). I wasn't sure I could adjust after not doing this for so long - but I think I'm okay! One week down, 7 more weeks to go...

One thing I had totally forgotten: the vital importance of having food ready to offer visitors to my office. Peanuts and cookies are now at the ready (the former played a key role in getting the big boss into my office to give me feedback on a report). I've telecommuted for way too long. Why doesn't the Open University MSc have the importance of food on your desk as an aid worker as part of the curriculum?!

I also really miss being barefoot for the majority of the work day. Again: I've telecommuted for way too long. I am barefoot, under my desk, but then I have to put my shoes on whenever I go out of the office. I'm also elevating my feet on a box of office supplies under my desk - my boney ankles returned completely today, and I want to keep it that way.

Thank you, everyone, for reading and responding to my dispatches from Kyiv - you've helped make this first week very easy for me, emotionally. I cried twice a week my first eight weeks in Kabul, feeling so lonely. Between your messages and staying with my friend instead of at a hotel or in an apartment by myself, I've been just dandy. Plus, you know, being able to walk outside - that helps! Please keep commenting - it means so much.

My security briefing for work was two minutes. TWO. It was 90 minutes in Kabul. The Kyiv security briefing was basically what you say to someone that's never been to a big city before: don't flash your money, don't use ATMs except inside banks, don't walk alone at night, etc. It was like he was reading from any Lonely Planet book from the section called "Safety." I'm not complaining. And I don't have to call in to security every night and say, "Hi, I'm alive, I wasn't kidnapped on my way home. Thanks." Don't tell my mother that, because she'd probably prefer I do that.

It may not seem like it from my posts, but I'm taking this job VERY seriously. I have 8 weeks to help. Now 7. I'm not here for just the pay, and I'm not here primarily as a tourist - I'm here because I care and because I've trained for this all my life. Don't blow it, Jayne. Don't blow it. If that means working Sundays, as I did today, so be it. Ukraine, and international development agency I am supporting, I'm here for YOU.

There are times when I feel like I am "playing" international development worker. Like this is just some kind of game or theatre. Similar to when my niece makes us all sit around a table at my sister's house in Henderson, Kentucky so she can play waitress. At some point, someone's going to walk into my office or look across at me in an important meeting and say, "YOU ARE A FRAUD! QUIT WITH THE PLAY ACTING ALREADY! GET OUT!"

FYI, I would never do that to my niece.

Most of my job is writing and researching so far - just like in Kabul. But there are a LOT more word "mine fields." There are things I'm not allowed to say, like "crisis." That word has a connotation that is accurate, but makes large world powers get angry, because of its legal ramifications. I had no idea it had legal ramifications. So I say things like "difficult and urgent situations." That kind of phrasing usually doesn't make politicians take off shoes and beat them on tables. This article came across my desk this week as I was working and I laughed and laughed and laughed - oh, the word games I have to play! And that are played with me!

I cannot tell you how wonderful it is to have a co-worker that was in Afghanistan for a year and a half, until just two months ago, and is from Barcelona. We have bonded like nobody's business. She's my touchstone, she's my sound wall… thank you, Aid Work Jesus/Mohammed/Buddha/Athena, for this woman. She came in my office the other day holding a draft of my report in her hand and said, sounding like Charo, "No, no, you cannot do this. This is crazy." Not as in, You cannot write this. But, instead, They cannot possibly expect you to write this. Of course, given my luck, she'll turn on me in two weeks and become my professional enemy. For no particular reason - sometimes, it just happens. Competition when there's no need to be competitive. Anyway, she's giving me an update on life there now for aid workers. And I have to say - I had it WAY better in 2007 than now. I can't believe I'm saying that. But now, it's MUCH more restricted regarding movement. MUCH more. Oy veh - so glad I'm not there now, though I miss my Afghan colleagues and think of them oh-so-often.

My host for where I'm living, who is American and I've known for about a decade, lives downtown, a few metro stops away from Maydan (the big square where all the protests happen), but somehow, her street is oh-so-quiet. If I have trouble sleeping at night - and I did my first week - it's not because of noise - it's because of my ongoing jet lag struggles. This really is a fantastic apartment - two bedrooms, but small, yet it's laid out in such a way, with two small balconies, that the three humans living here can stay out of each other's way for hours. And when the TV is blasting, it's just white noise to me: I don't understand the language, so it's just background noise, like a distant car engine. Doesn't bother me at all.

But, of course, the cat here RULES US ALL.

I've been looking for apartments to rent for September, closer to work, and they are all SO fancy. Now, my host negotiates for me at markets and restaurants and with drivers - must I give that up?! Maybe I'll stay here the whole time. She's offered. We'll see.

Socially - or, at least, non-work-related-activities, in my first week:

Thursday, most of the new staff here at my workplace went out to dinner at La Veranda, within walking distance of our office. Work was NEVER discussed. Not once. It was... well, just about as wonderful as something can be. Everyone I'm working with that's from outside Ukraine, even the big boss, with ONE exception, is here short term, for just 2-4 months. It's a really wonderful way to work - we're SO FOCUSED. Get 'er done! But it also means there's a big emphasis on getting along, on being nice to each other, at least so far. I dig it. I did this so much.

Friday night, I met up with my host and her friends at a Brazilian meat palace near where she lives (had to cut my time at the after-work BBQ short - no one told me there was going to be a BBQ!). It was very good, and it felt so awesome to be SOCIAL… but since someone asked: sorry Ukraine, Kentucky has you SO beat when it comes to BBQ… Still, it was a VERY good meal, with a particularly impressive veggie bar. I must, must visit again.

Saturday, we traveled via the metro, which is the deepest in the world. Strangely, I was okay on the way down the deep, deep, deep, long escalator, though incredibly nervous as I wend down down down down... but on the way up, with my back to the long drop, I was fighting a panic attack. I was trying not to cry or hyperventilate. I couldn't look up, I certainly couldn't look back, I felt like I could fall backwards any moment and tumble all the way down the 47 million stories to the bottom, so I looked down at the stairs and rambled. Oh, how I rambled. Thankfully, my host was patient and understanding and I made it out without dying.

Yes, I'm not worried about the Russians invading - I'm worried about the escalators. And all the people texting whilst driving.

We walked to Maydan, the International Square, where I watched volunteers - young, old, middle aged - clean up trash, tires, bricks, you name it. Here's an even better article about it. I know diehard Ukrainian nationalists, people that make plans on how to get to the front and fight the Russians, and even these passionate nationalists say the people in the square now are NOT Maydan revolutionaries - they're drunks. I felt the same way about the Oregon Occupy movement - it devolved there, and in many cities, into messy, shameful nonsense I wanted nothing to do with. The international press has been LAZY in reporting about these last folks in the square. The true Maydan protesters have moved on: they are doing amazing things to support soldiers wounded on the front, for instance - they are not living in tents in the square anymore.

It was a fascinating site, nonetheless. Other than some burning tires, things were oh-so-quiet, and oh-so-winding down. At one point, it started raining, hard. It put all of the fires out. It drove a lot of folks out of the square. Even nature says: hey, it's time to move on - demonstrating is easy, it's time to get busy making things happen to realize the dreams of your revolution. Welcome to the hard part.

I also saw Zoliti Vorota (look it up). Interesting history, and fun to see all the brides walking around trying to get the perfect photo.

My host said all the drink stands everywhere around us in the heart of the city sold Kvass, a fermented drink made from black or regular rye bread that looked like a dark beer, but that's classified as a non-alcoholic (the alcohol content is typically less than 1.2%.), and that she thinks it vile, and people either love it or hate it. So I bought some, took a sip, and... I liked it. I had been jonesing for a Coke bad - something I haven't had in more than a year and, before that break down, hadn't drank in more than two years. I was just about to weaken and get one when I drank the Kvass. I am all about the Kvass now. I teased her mercilessly afterwords: I'm more Ukrainian than you are, neener, neener, neener.

We ran some errands, hooked up with a friend of hers, and whilst they discussed various things in Russian and Ukrainian, I ate baked trout with oranges and mushrooms baked right in the trout, and finally began to read my Lonely Planet guide to the country. I apologize for not taking a photo of my gorgeous meal. It was AWESOME. When the waitress brought it, my host said, "Oh, I forgot to tell you, here, they keep the fish head on." And I said, "I am from freakin' Kentucky, you think I haven't seen this before?"

Sunday, we went grocery shopping, something that is not possible in Germany (everything except restaurants are closed in Germany on Sunday). Funny: one of the veggie sellers thought I was German. That's fine!

Until Saturday, I had not taken one photo since arriving Sunday. Not one. Of course, it's not like I could share any with you immediately anyway, since I left my camera chord at home... luckily, my host has something that can read the memory card of my camera. I have now taken photos - but I haven't downloaded them yet, so I can post them online. I will my next weekend, I promise.

So, that's my first week in Ukraine. WHEW!

Here's the outside-of-work activities of one of my co-workers: in his SPARE time, he creates documentaries about people and music in which he is interested, primarily regarding Ukraine, and shares his archival footage of Ukrainian folk and jazz performers. I share two very short videos here so that you can get an idea of what he does. I know so many aid workers that do amazing things in their spare time, usually having to do with the arts. These short videos are about Renata Bogdanska / Рената Богданська, an amazing Ukrainian woman that lived during the war and went on to become the first lady of Poland.
The Ukrainian Dimension (21:22)
The Polish Dimension (17:14)

In the course of my first week of work, I've been sad to learn how deep the corruption problems are in Ukraine. I hate corruption. I hate it. I hate greed. It's what's ruining Afghanistan more than ANYTHING - more than the Taliban or similar groups. Transparency International ranks Ukraine at 144 out of 177 countries, on par with Nigeria and the Central African Republic, and 16 rungs lower than Russia. That makes me cray cray.

Some of you are worried about me being here. You worry about a certain country being stupid and wanting to reclaim parts of the country - and maybe all of it - as its own. If you are one of those people, go read this entire article. Or, if you don't have time, then go to the page, and use your find function on your browser and look for "Putin has a theory of American power," and read just the last nine paragraphs of the article. I always try to understand the mentality of the "other" side, and this was REALLY helpful.

Still too much for you to read? Then read this is an article from CNN. It tries to put what could happen re: Russia and Ukraine into very simple terms. Policy wonks will scoff at it, but if you just want to kinda sorta get a grasp of it all, it's a really good read.

One of the things that international agencies are going to have to address here in Ukraine eventually - and I hope it's sooner rather than later - is reconciliation. Say that word now here and local people will just laugh at you, or bite your head off. "Too soon." But eventually, it's what's got to happen, or there's just continued violence and thousands, even millions, of deaths. Reconciliation is an ongoing process. It's the toughest of processes. It's harder than anything else except for getting rid of corruption, in my opinion. I found this article as I was researching for work, and it absolutely blew my mind. I've read it in full twice. It does not offer a road map, or suggested steps, or anything like that - rather, it articulates why reconciliation is so dang hard, and what those in charge of and engaged in reconciliation processes MUST understand or their work is for naught. I think it's brilliant. I think it applies to situations in the USA.

I don't know if, this second week or coming weeks, I will blog quite so much. I suspect that, if you are overwhelmed by my blogs so far, you should fear not - the newness of my situation will wear off soon, and I'll settle down soon and not write so much.

Photos soon, I promise!

Still no word on how Max the Cat is handling my absence...