Since I moved from Chernigov to Razdol’noye I have been trying to use all of the vegetables I buy at the bazaar with some moderately tasty successes. The care package from home with all of the spices really helped too. Every time I come to work with new foods with “weird” spices, Lenara is always interested to try them. This got us talking several weeks ago when she said that she had never eaten Mexican food. I asked for some taco seasoning in my package, and Mom, Dad, and El went above and beyond to send me an actual Ortega taco dinner kit complete with hard shells, soft shells, seasoning, taco sauce, and fake cheese sauce. So, this past Friday night I got together with Erin (the other PC Volunteer in my town) and we made a taco dinner and invited Lenara and two of Erin’s friends (teachers at the local school). Lenara was so funny on Friday afternoon when she did a Google Image search for Mexican food and quizzed me about the different photos. Erin and I went shopping at lunch to get what we needed. Challenge #1: no one seems to know what an avocado is even though the Russian word is “avocado”. Challenge #2: you can buy potato chips, but NOT corn chips. You can get them in bigger cities, but not here. Challenge #3: once you buy a slab of beef, the butcher does not have a meat grinder! How to you make tacos with beef that isn’t ground? I had 3 people trying to help us find a grinder and one guy took my meat to a friend in a restaurant, to no avail. Lenara to the rescue, had her brother come to the library on his bike, take the meat home to grind it and bring it back to us. At dinnertime, everyone waited for me to explain the process as I laughed when I had to give the step by step taco building lesson. “Everybody grab a shell, then put some meat on it, then put cheese and veggies on it and eat carefully because the stuff will start to fall out of the other end.” Well, everything was a huge hit. In addition to the tacos, I made some refried beans, and we had homemade salsa with Erin’s chips. Sadly, we could not find any avocados in this town without a few days notice. We scrapped the plans for guacamole and Erin did a great job at making baked chips out of flour. Everyone at least got the idea.
I may have mentioned that I had come up with my first community project that I wanted to develop. When I lived in Chernigov I participated in a community clean-up day that was organized by some of the volunteers in my group. It was a great project that seemed relatively easy to put together. I was able to get two meetings with the mayor and it turned out that a community group had actually already had a clean-up day planned and instead of me doing my own, I was asked to get involved with theirs and then (half-jokingly invited to drink beer with the mayor afterwards). I showed up to the park at 8:00am on Saturday and sure enough there were about 30 people who had come armed with rakes, shovels, brooms, hoes, and other heavy duty gardening instruments to trim trees and cut back brush in the park near my apartment. They had also arranged for a dump truck to come and collect all of the garbage and cleared brush. Three hours later, the dump truck was full and the park was remarkably cleaner than when we arrived. Lenara came with her camera and notebook in hand as she is writing an article for the local newspaper about the project and Erin’s and my involvement. At the end we took a group photo for the paper and as I was thinking I would just head home, the mayor came and grabbed me and reiterated his invitation to drink beer with him. Of course I said yes.
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| Mayor, me, and Valery from English Club. |
We walked into the closest discotheque and 7 of us (mayor, me, Erin, Lenara, Sergey, Stas, and Sergey) sat at a table. Before we knew it, they brought a case of beer, 4 plates of potato chips and 2 plates of dried fish to snack on. Now, the key to speaking to me in Russian is to speak slow, use small words, and basically talk to me like I am 5 years old. Some people are good with these instructions, while others would prefer to speak louder and get a blank stare from me, eventually turning to Lenara to translate. Also, many people here at least took English in high school and can usually speak a few words or more. Well, three beers later I found out that Stas owns the discotheque (and is very interested in the projects I am working on). He also owns a grocery store in town, so, of course, I ordered 3 avocados and asked him to call when they arrive (should be Tuesday- better late than never, right?). Sergey is the mayor’s assistant and I was invited to his apartment on Sunday for lunch. My networking skills are improving!
After beers with the mayor, I went to sauna again with Oleg, where more and more people are welcoming me into the group. I still cannot keep up with most of the discussions that go on there because they speak too fast, but I did hear a lot of discussion about my working on the park clean-up. Then, one man who owns a different grocery in town- said that from now on he wants me to be his guest every week at the sauna and that he will pay for me every week! I was told by Peace Corps to spend time networking and building personal relationships since the people in the community are my key to getting projects done. I would say I am feeling pretty good about my community integration. I was also thinking that this is probably one of the pros to living in a small town. If I lived in a big city, I think I might be meeting less new people, but here you are likely to see the same people frequently and just stopping to say “hi” to someone on the street goes a long way.
On Sunday, I did my regular routine where I go shopping at the bazaar and then come home and cook for the afternoon. Today, I only prepped the food I would cook later. At 11am I went to the apartment of Sergey, the man who invited Erin and I for lunch. Erin called to say she could not make it, but I went alone. I have written in the past about several excellent Ukrainian foods and golubsy is one of them. Basically a mixture of rice, meat, and vegetables wrapped in a cabbage leaf and then steamed in tomato broth. Universally loved, Sergey said that his wife and son were out of town and that his mother is cooking for him during this time and that she had just sent over some golubsy and if we wanted to eat them with him we were welcomed to. It turned out to be a really fun lunch for me. Sergey is about my age and has offered for me to come to use his internet at any time. The food was as good as it could have been. Golubsy, cucumbers, bread, sausage, then cookies and ice cream with fresh shaved chocolate on top for dessert. We watched the Travel Channel and actually had some funny and meaningful conversation…as well as getting to know someone in the mayor’s office in addition to the mayor! Then I went home and cooked and wrote my blog. Yeah, I had a pretty good weekend, and I am looking forward to being interviewed for the newspaper tomorrow about my future cleaning plans. Now, I just need to figure out how to convert my networking successes into revenue for the library. Small victories, large challenges.
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