"P Score": Language, and other challenges spanning 7 time zones: Not All Bucket Lists Are Created Equal

Before I came to Ukraine, I have admitted that I knew very little of the country that would host me for the next couple of years. Like many people my age, one of the things I do remember was the Chernobyl Disaster in April of 1986. I have learned much more about the disaster from living here and thought if I could do it safely, I might like to see the site. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that it was on my “bucket list”, but just as I did not want to visit Denver without stopping by Columbine High School, I did think that Chernobyl was something I would be interested to see before I leave.

When I had been in country for about 3 weeks, we made our first field trip to the city of Kiev. Every training group had to make the journey and it was a day of learning and exploring a city that we would become very familiar with. We had things we were obligated to do, like getting acquainted with the train station and locating the Peace Corps office but, after our introduction we were each allowed to choose a way to spend the afternoon. I chose to visit the Chernobyl Museum. It was my first museum in Ukraine and, although I shouldn’t have been surprised, there was literally zero English on any of the exhibit cards. There were no working English audio guides the day we visited and most details were lost on me. To put it mildly, the Chernobyl Museum in Kiev did not satisfy my curiosity to get answers to questions of exactly what happened and what the long term effects have been. Over the past 2 years I travelled around Ukraine a bit and saw cities like Odessa and L’viv. Chernobyl is about 2 hours north of Kiev (just 18km from the Belarus border) and not really convenient to any other place that I would travel. I came through Kiev this week and had a couple of spare days to fill while I was there so I asked a couple of friends if they would like to join me. I signed us up and requested to rent a Geiger counter. The tour was US$150 and you can ONLY go with a tour (you can’t just show up and wander yourself around the reactor). All of the tour companies seem to cost about the same and offer pretty much the same tour. I went yesterday.

The tour started at 9am with a 2 hour bus ride to the district of Chernobyl. Sadly, the DVD player was not working in our bus, so we missed the standard video presentation. We arrived first to the 30km Exclusion Zone checkpoint. We were told that photos were forbidden at the checkpoint and had to exit the bus to have our passports inspected. Once the bus got waved through, our guide began giving us some statistics about the population that refused to relocate after the accident. There are still 200 people who live permanently within 30km of Chernobyl and have continued their self-sustained life within its borders. As we drove through that Zone you can start to see buildings that had been abandoned and are now considerably overgrown.

Our first stop was a kindergarten that was abandoned and left as is. It was our first experience at feeling the sense of urgency that the people must have felt when being evacuated on those days back in 1986. It was also the first time I played with the Geiger counter. We were taken into the school which, for the most part, just looked like any abandoned building. There were some dolls and other toys associated with children strewn about the small building. Eventually, I assume the government will prohibit entry into the school for safety reasons- but I also suspect this is quite a while off. As I stood on the porch on this rainy morning the guide showed me how the water that channels from the roof and runs off in a stream is actually collecting radiation from the roof and if you hold the Geiger counter near the water it starts to tick like crazy. This was my reality check that we were getting close to ground zero. After a few minutes we were on our way, stopping at a collection of vehicles and robots that had been used in the cleanup and recover efforts. I was surprised at how much business and governmental administration activity actually goes on in this area today. I expected it to be a ghost town, but on the contrary, there were offices and even a café in full working order in the 30km Zone- surely to cater to the tour groups. Next we continued on to the 10km Exclusion Zone. Although I do not recall the guide saying anything about it, I am pretty sure that there are zero full-time residents of this Zone. This was our first view of Reactor #4 that actually had the meltdown that fateful evening in 1986. We got out of the van and could take pictures of the complex before moving in for a closer look. He gave us a lot of information about timeframes regarding the activities in Chernobyl as well as the current projects going on there. With no way to curb the radiation, Reactor #4 was encased in cement to cut down on elevated radiation levels, however, the “sarcophagus” (as it is called) is now starting to deteriorate and a corporation has set up a site next to ground zero to construct a massive enclosure that they are expected to install in 2015 as a dome over the current cement block which will hopefully hold until technology advances to its next plateau. We then drove on to the town of Pripyat which was the town most immediately affected by the disaster. When people speak of “Chernobyl”, they are referring to the power plant in the Chernobyl District, but I am not aware of any people who actually lived in the town called “Chernobyl”. It was Pripyat that was turned into a ghost town overnight that typifies the urgency we started to feel in the kindergarten. We drove to the town- so close you could see the power plant from the overpass for our tour where residents viewed the unfolding events on that fateful night. Basically, they were witnessing a nuclear reactor meltdown spewing a radioactive cloud and being told by their government that everything was under control. The Chernobyl power plant was started in 1970 and the town of Pripyat was started around then too to accommodate the workers at the plant and their families. As we stood in the town square, other than the overgrowth, not only did we see a lot of similarities between what we were looking at and the towns we live in in Ukraine, but ironically, because they had only been in use for about 16 years when they were abandoned- some of the qualities of the buildings were actually better than those in the towns we live in! It was a very strange dichotomy. For example some of the tile work on the building facades have stood the test of time better than the tiles on my own building in Razdol’noye. I thought that I understood that due to varying states of stability, the government has prohibited entry to buildings. I am not sure if there are specific ones that are OK vs. others that are still allowed, but we were able to wander through the Palace of Culture as well as a high school, both of which showed major evidence of looting at some point in the past 25 years. It was interesting enough to see the remnants of a Soviet era school which included propaganda posters and many wall hangings of Lenin. The two most visually striking things for me in Pripyat were a pile of hundreds of gasmasks in the school and the amusement park. During Soviet times the school kids had gasmasks that they would do drills with in case of emergency- each of them fully functional. However, at some point it was determined that the filters were needed elsewhere which prompted the removal of the filters and discarding of the masks into a pile in a school room. So, they weren’t actually emergency-used masks, but a pile of gasmasks is a little creepy no matter how or where you look at it. In 1986, the disaster occurred just days before the biggest holiday week in the country (Labor Day and Victory Day). For the upcoming occasion, a brand new amusement park was put up in town. It included the iconic Ferris wheel as well as other obligatory park rides. As the disaster happened just days before the holidays, the park saw only minimal usage and was then left to decay with the rest of the town. Our guide was not too good about making sure the whole group was together before he started speaking- resulting in a lot of missed information on my part. As we walked (or trudged as it were since they do not plow the streets of Pripyat) through the amusement park the Geiger counter was showing interesting things. Mainly, that radiation levels seem to be quite inconsistent. Most of the readings were nowhere near unsafe ranges, however, we did find (or more technically were shown) some “hot spots”. I knew that moss patches were to be avoided and when we got close to them we tested near them with expected elevated results. As we walked along, our guide pointed to a manhole cover and urged those of us with Geiger counters to test it. We did, and the levels spiked to dangerous levels. As we backed just feet away from the cover, levels returned to normal. This showed me that these inconsistencies are what would make life returning to this town very unlikely- you just can’t tell where you could walk without problems and where you would be receiving unhealthy doses of radiation. After about 2 hours we made our way back to the bus and headed to lunch which was included in the price of the tour. During lunch I experienced one of the single most ironic moments of the past two years. The lunch was a standard set 4-course meal. It started with a plate of small bites- half a boiled egg, some pickles, some sliced meat and cheese, and a chunk of some sort of fish. Now, when we arrived in country 2 years back, the doctors told us that because of Chernobyl we would be playing it safe by avoiding all fish and mushrooms. That is not to say that all fish and mushrooms in this country are contaminated, but since Ukrainians fish in tributaries of larger rivers and forage for mushrooms in unspecified areas. Therefore we, as American visitors, have no concept of the purity- and further since some volunteers would be placed in sites closer to Chernobyl than others, it was best just to avoid them to avoid the conversation of trying to find out the exact source of the foods. And, for the most part I have. After our second course of soup came the main course plates. Mashed Potatoes, some- what appeared to be stewed beef, and a fried cutlet of some kind. Just like airplane food, I complain about it, but I eat it. Unless it is inedible, I usually eat it. I work around the plate and eventually get to the cutlet, which are usually made from chicken. I put the bite in my mouth and swallow. The taste is remarkably unremarkable. Not bad, but really just no taste at all. I use my fork to pick around to confirm my poultry suspicions only to strike a piece of skin. Fish skin! Yes, I have completely avoided fish in all forms for the entirety of the last two years, only to consume fish inside the 10km Exclusion Zone of Chernobyl! That, right there is irony.

After lunch we made our way back through the checkpoints. On the way out we could see some large dirt mounds with signs emblazoned with the universal symbol of radioactivity. It was explained that at some point between then and now the government had begun to execute a plan to bury the towns that were most affected by the disaster creating holes, bulldozing the houses, covering them up with the dirt, sticking a “radioactive” sign on the site and moving on. They also did this for much of what is known as “the red forest” which was the 1 square mile of woods/forest of trees adjacent to the plant that received enough radiation to turn the foliage red. There are only a few trees still standing from that time (although I am not sure how they were missed). At our checkpoint stops on the way out we were made to stop at a radiation detector to determine if we had picked up enough radiation (i.e. having picked up some radioactive moss on our shoes) to require decontamination proceedings. None of us did and we had an uneventful ride back to Kiev center…where the Geiger counter indicated levels similar to those in Pripyat.

Many of the volunteers have expressed some interest in visiting Chernobyl before they leave, while most Ukrainians say they would never want to visit. Although both groups express an interest in seeing the photos. As I write this and reflect on my visit there, I conclude that I am glad that I made the decision to go, however I do recognize the money making motives of the companies that take you there. They know what people want to do and see and they show you, but I wish there was more historical information about what exactly happened. I have read the story about how the disaster was the result of a scheduled test of the emergency shutdown systems, but I suppose that most people just want to see the important points and not really be bothered by the details. I just wish they gave me enough details to decide that I could have done with less information.