Throughout my time here, one of the hardest things to understand and adjust to has been the reality that most people here have hardly even heard of the Internet. It’s been a complete change in mind frame to teach basic technological concepts that I completely take for granted.
Peace Corps Volunteer Christopher Mulder writes about his training in Ukraine
May 21, 2005
My community project press conference this week was carried out with hardly more than a hiccup, thanks to lots of prep and planning. Representatives from the three schools in town, the University, the Internet Club and Youth Center, along with some Peace Corps program managers and even the local news showed up for the event held in the cultural palace. The presentation included Kate, John and I explaining what the Internet is and giving some suggestions for its educational uses, along with outlining the specifics of our Internet coupon project. Our technical coordinator acting as translator and the borrowing of a digital projector from Peace Corps were crucial elements for the well-received presentation. We gave each representative a stack of informative handouts (created and translated into Ukrainian by our group) to distribute to teachers and students along with the coupons for 40 minutes of Internet time. Overall, the costs totaled ~110 dollars [ironically, the only donation we could secure was from American consultants working at a local grain factory], and the project has the potential to familiarize around 1,000 students and teachers with the Internet. It was really great to catch the story and interviews on the local news last night. My host brother Roma ran to my room to get me, yelling that I had to come see myself on T.V. After the news story, I got the thumbs up and a “????????!” from the host family (pron. molodets – well done!).
Throughout my time here, one of the hardest things to understand and adjust to has been the reality that most people here have hardly even heard of the Internet. It’s been a complete change in mind frame to teach basic technological concepts that I completely take for granted. It has been an invaluable training experience and in retrospect, I am extremely pleased with what my training group has been able to accomplish in so little time with so little resources. I feel lucky to have lots of optimism and ideas for the next 2 years.
The mailperson brought me a package from home this week with 2 large jars of Jif peanut butter (extremely rare in Ukraine) which, after some deliberation, I unfortunately concluded would be useless because of the fact that it is impossible to buy ??????? (pron. varenya - jam). Every family makes their own from garden harvests. Hoping there might be a jar hiding in the storage room in back for some strange reason, I headed out to the local stores. After a few stores and even more “did you seriously just ask me for jam?” looks, I was taken aback when the woman behind the counter asked what kind I was looking for. I was unprepared for this question and unsure about the elusive Ukrainian word for strawberry, ???????? (pron. polinitsiya), so she listed off some fruit and we settled on the one that sounded least familiar, figuring that was it. I looked around to see where she would pull out her mystery jar of fruity goodness, but all she said in return was, “??????” (pron. zavtra - tomorrow). I asked her how much I could pay her and she insisted that it be a gift (I’ve found Ukrainians to be very kind and hospitable). Sure enough, the next day I traded her and the other salespeople some of my American flag pins for a jar of homemade strawberry preserves. Now the only problem is that it’s so delicious, I don’t want to waste it all on Jif.
Also, this week is the last week in my training town! I'm leaving tomorrow for a week in the Peace Corps facility outside of Kyiv and after that is the official swearing-in ceremony in Kyiv. By the time of my next post in a week or two, I should be a full-fledged Peace Corps Volunteer! Adding to the send-off celebrations, the town’s water supply has been turned off for repairs. I would have planned ahead and washed some essential clothes, but my family didn’t mention to me until the night before that the water would be off all week. An interesting statistic – only 70% of Ukraine’s water actually reaches its intended destination due to old pipes in the country’s water system. The leaky pipes also allow for water contamination. While many people can use local wells for water, most have still filled up every container in sight to hold them over until the end of this week.
