Harvest

The great, late evenings of summer have stealthily ended and many good events have transpired since my last entry.

A few weeks back, I had the supreme fortune of being asked to be a camp counselor and teacher at "Camp Far Away Places", a summer camp for children from the rival villages of Bayanaul and Maikaiyeen. The campers, numbering around 50 or so, were broken into five different group countries: the intelligent India, the elegant Egypt, the joyous Japan, the awkward Canada and the saucy Spain (adjective added by me). My group campers came together to form the country of Spain, and I enjoyed nearly every minute of getting to know and educate them and other campers. Each day, a different country was selected to be focused upon and learned about. Campers were presented lessons in language, culture, history, art and biography. That's the skinny.

Note that the most detailed and therefore best flag is Spain's flag.

The fat gristle is that so much fun was had and so many laughs were shared and so many children were hit with dodge balls that I could not think of a more condensed period of "work" enjoyment during the rest of my service in Kazakhstan to this point.

Spain!

I must, just to balance out this lovefest, make it clear that my lesson on Canadian history was weak and boring. The topic I chose to present upon makes it clear enough: "Canada: The Quiet Revolution."

Part of our Spanish skit: Dancing. Yes, that is me on guitar and mustasche in the background.

The camp took place on a small resort with a sizeable dirt area for running and gathering. The kids would gather every morning to be led in morning exercises, and then--sometimes orderly, sometimes not--collect in front of the cafeteria, form a line and shout their team cheer. My team's--Spain's--cheer went as such:

"Spain brings the pain! Spain brings the pain! Spain brings the pain! (clap, clap, clap, clap, clap, clap) Ole!"

Each night we played a review game to make sure the kids paid attention in addition to a special evening activity. The first night, we played something called "The Big Game." This was an event where myself and two other volunteers wore capes and face paint, and placed flour in socks with which we would then swing and hit them as the kids shuttled between the review game stations. Don't worry, folks, it's safe.


Maybe, I'm no safety inspector #34. But they had fun!

There were disco clubs, and with most disco clubs, as we all know, come hordes of females that want to dance with me. I can't help it really, it's just a curse being so approachably attractive. The Peace Corps interview never really covers the subject of how one would deal with the noticeable disappointment on a 13-year old girl's face when you tell her that yes, you do have a girlfriend already.

Intense Dodgeball! These kids never played it in their lives...until now. Could you imagine?!?

Okay, I don't really feel like relaying all the details of the camp; I suggest that you check out this and this website for a thorough rundown of it all, as told by my fellow volunteers. What I wish to convey is the feeling that I had at the very end of the camp. A few of the volunteers had to catch a bus back to the city of Pavlodar, and in order to do so, had to leave a littler earlier than all the campers. We volunteers climbed onto the bus to bring us to the bus station (Kazakhstan is a bus culture), but within a minute's time, the whole thing was surrounded by the kids. After countless waves and goodbyes, one of the kids came onto the bus. A hug rung out. Then another. Then another. Before I know it, there are children crowding the door to come in and gives us all tearful hugs and broken sentences of gratitude.

"This never forget me ever," said one of my Team Spain students.

The boys, showing greater emotional restraint but still showing something, would place their hands on the windows, waiting for the opposite pane to be struck in a high five, prison visitation sort of way. In an all too Hallmark conclusion, the bus then pulled us away from the group of sobbing kids, us all waving and mouthing thank yous until the last turn ended it.

Now these types of instances are built over a long period of time. It was the work of volunteers from a few years ago, establishing the relationships with local schools and teachers so that they may trust an outsider to want to hold a camp with diverse lessons and teaching methods. It was the work of volunteers each year that had to scramble for the vast majority of the year to find financing for everything from space rental to wiffle balls. Mary Couri and Adam Henricksen, a Kaz-19 and Kaz-18 respectively, were up to the task this year and did an amazing job. They worked hard and it showed. It was so, so good.

The actual ride back home to Pavlodar was not so pleasant, as there were multiple delays, no tickets left and the whole trip, which usually takes roughly three hours, took about eight. The following photo sums up just about any Peace Corps volunteer's experience with taxi drivers. In this photo, Scott (a fellow volunteer that only speaks Kazakh) is trying to talk to the taxi driver. The taxi driver suggests a price of roughly $100. I notice this as a problem, so start talking to him in Russian. I get him down to $70, but that's still crazy. In the end, we got a much better deal with a much better driver, but the game of "Who's Gonna Talk and in what Language?" is always fun.

Bartering.

Met a Phillies fan during the long wait. After explaining to him how cool I though his hat was, we became friends. Then, he whispered to me that he had a headache, which in real-life Russian translates to "I have a massive hangover and need to drink beer posthaste, so could you be nice and give me 100 tenge?"

When I returned to my office in Pavlodar, I took a step out onto the balcony for a pensive moment of looking out the window. We all have those. Anyway, I look down on the ground before our window that is housing our newly planted anti-vodka rip session garden (vodka session: when a couple of people pool their pocket change together, buy a bottle of vodka, a few plastic cups, and sit down in the middle of the day to get very drunk and end up cursing endlessly). I look with greater detail and I find that there are about four used syringes and broken vodka bottles scattered on the ground.

This, as I calmly put it, is balance.

HARVEST


My friends, I want to talk to you about the potato.

The potato is a tuberous vegetable crop that can provide someone with fine daily values of vitamins C, potassium, riboflavin, zinc, phosphorous, iron, folate, magnessium and thiamin. Despite common belief, these nutrients are not concentrated in the potatoe's skin, as at least 50 percent of all dietary goodness can be found in the potato itself. They can also protect you against colon cancer and improve glucose tolerance! Damn, knowledge is awesome.

If you take a look back a few entries, you can find some information on what the Russian call, "dachas." Every few weeks or so, I spend some time at my director's parents' garden home, planting and tending various vegetables and fruits. The most consuming task was planting roughly 400 potatoes, way back in June. Each time we would work there, we would have to clear weeds or cut back the frothing potato bushes that would come up. It was an annoying task, and all for potatoes.

But to force a theme here, much of work in this instance and in countless others is about working toward the harvest, the realization of our efforts.

And there just aren't many situations that are so clear cut as 1) dig a hole 2) plant a potato 3) tend potato 4) eat potato. Over the course of the past two years, I have planted illustrative potatoes in a variety of places, whether it was trying to teach my co-workers how to create a student volunteer group or writing to numerous book donation agencies or editing scholarship applications or teaching a kid how to dribble a basketball properly or introducing the concept of microcredit to old women. I haven't eaten many of these potatoes. I don't know if they're growing. I don't even know if they will be of any use or success. I don't know.

At my office with the HIV/AIDS group, we have written multiple proposals for project financing and experience exchange trips. Recently, we inquired about an international AIDS conference to take place in Amsterdam. My counterpart, the lovely Dina Galyeva, was rejected right off the bat. My director, Elena Bondareva, was put on the waiting list as the heading company searched for further funding to pay for her trip there. They assurred us that the funding would come through, and the excitement from Elena was damaging to my ears (she is an expressive, loud woman). Unfortunately, we recently received word that she would not be going.

That potato died.

Another time was when I started a youth sports club. At our first meeting, over forty kids came to learn how to play basketball. After two meetings, less kids showed up, and the tendency for each game to degenerate into a call for soccer grew. After two months, I had only three reliable kids showing up*.

That potato died.

The Pavlodar Public Library is supposed to receive shipments of books from the International Book Project soon. My director is soon going to begin working as the National Coordinator for the AIDS International Candlelight Memorial project for two years. Youth volunteers come to our weekly meetings with regularity and vigor in order to help with planning and implementation of HIV/AIDS projects.

Those potatoes are still in the ground.

Last Sunday, after digging up those 400 actual potatoes at the garden home, the sight of them spread out on the ground made me so damn happy. Such a smile for such a starch.

So whenever I have the chance to see some sort of result--good or bad--I am genuinely thankful for that moment.

But most humbly, as I approach the end of my service here, I know there are many things in the ground that I will never dig up and eat.

Countrified Overgrowth

Food prices are going up, yes?

The bread here has gone from a 2006 price of $0.28 per loaf to $0.45 as of July 28, 2008 (statistics personally gathered by buying bread, eating it, not finishing it all before mold sets in, and then getting angry). This is too much.

No, seriously, people are getting antsy round these parts because of such everyday purchase price pressure. You should hear the locals start with cooking oil. They're already getting their old Soviet ration line boots ready just in case.

But there's a lovely solution to all of this worry with supermarket price gouging: grow your own food.

Many people in this region, mostly the Russians, have a long tradition of using the land for both sustenance and relaxation by maintaining a garden village, or 'Dacha'. They are second homes that may be lived in year round, though are normally occupied during the summer months. Thanks to the beautiful simplicity of the Russian language, a person that lives in a Dacha is called Dachnik.

Dachas have a long history in Russian culture, dating back to Peter the Great.

Our garden cottage

Extra land was given out to loyalists by the Tsar (Tzar? Czar? Theatre?) and in archaic Russian, dacha means 'something that is given.' Over time, fortunately, that whole government give-a-way went to the wayside, and people started up their own Dachas. These garden homes have some of the following fruits and vegetables: potatoes, tomatoes, lettuce, cabbage, apples, pears, cherries, raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, blackberries, gooseberries, snozberries, blackcurrants, redcurrants, honeysuckle, grapes, carrots, cucumbers, onions, garlic, dill, radishes, parsley, rubarb and yougettheideaberries.

Snozberries located in bag.

Through the generosity of wanting to teach an ignorant, little American about this rich agricultural history, my organizational boss, Elena Bondareva, has so kindly volunteered me to work at her parents' Dacha every Sunday. Dacha work includes planting of potatoes, picking of sweet berries and vegetables, clearing of overgrowth, movement of heavy things, jimyrigging an irrigation system and moving piles of dirt and dung from point a to point b.

In complete sincerity, it is the best part of my week. I return home every Sunday with a bag of vegetables and fruits that I could not possibly finish on my own, and the rest is sold by the Grandma to street vendors around Pavlodar.

If you work hard, you get dirty. If you get dirty, you eat.

There is no talk of sustainability, project planning, strategic plans, English lessons or laptops. I simply move and remove things that have grown from the ground or trees for a few hours, sit down at the kitchen table and allow an old woman to force me to eat however much food I can take until she is satisfied enough with my tortured gluttony to openly tell me "good job". This usually occurs after a minimum of six boiled eggs, two bowls of soup (in the summer!), two glasses of homemade wine, two cups of tea, half a kielbasa, three potatoes, a tomato and half a loaf of bread. I am fully fortified by 2 o'clock every Sunday afternoon.

And that is the Dacha.


GARBAGE FIRES ARE BAD IDEAS

And Sunday the 27th came.

I'm coming towards the Dacha home to start up work for the day, trying to formulate an opportunity where I can insert my gardening word of the day, "Мотыги" (hoe), into a proper sentence. Walking along the path past a pile of garbage, I come up with, "So when am I going to have the happy opportunity to use the hoe?"

I pass a woman burning some grass and weeds outside her fence. When I reach my summer garden home, the rusted gate on the fence scratches obligingly, and I am a little embarrassed to see that everyone (Elena, her husband Papik, and Grandma) are eating lunch already.

"Why are you late?" scolds Grandma.

"I am late becaus--," I'm interrupted.

"I don't need to know. There is food to eat. Sit. Eat. It's for your health," says Grandma, more out of habit and force than stereotypical kindness. I sit. I eat.

The Photogenic Igor (Papik).

I suggest that after lunch, I could weed some of the overgrowth outside our fence in the pathway. Papik shoots it down.

"Why should you clear the pathway? That's not our territory," he states.

"But everyone uses it...weren't all you Communists about community and the collective before?" I ask with a smile.

"Ha! That garbage! Everybody's worries about their own things now, and we're the same," Papik answers,"We clear out our own area, and let the rest to whomever. Leave it."

We take a drag of homemade wine. Something outside, past the limits of our territory, catches Elena's attention.

"What's that smoke over there?" she asks to no one in particular.

Our investigation begins. There is a fire situated about 200 yards away from our Dacha, along one of the main walkways in our region, far enough to not pose any danger to us. Our conclusion is that a large garbage pile was lit on fire for disposal purposes and, like most plans involving fire, the whole damn area around it wants in on the hot, burning action. The fire begins eating up the dry brush surrounding it, spreading to the fencing around another Dacha. Thankfully, no one was at the Dacha. No one would burn.

The same could not be said for the outhouse next to the fence; that shit went up in flames.

The fire burned for nearly an hour.

Dancing reds were overtaking the indifferent gold of the ground and turning it all into black. The sky remained defiantly blue. It had rained, just a little bit, a few days earlier, but people don't grow potatoes in sponges--this grass and land was dry.

I suggested that we get some buckets of water from a pond nearby to cut the spread of the fire. That was shot down by Elena.

"A waste of time," she concluded.

A small coddling of people had gathered at this point, looking on and giving guesses as to how far the whole thing would spread. Their demeanor and dialogue came off like porch-dwelling elderly discussing and debating the potential of a dark cloud forming in the sky.

"Yip, that right there's a problem that'll get worse before it gets better," says one.
"Nah, 'taint gonna be nothing more than a little wind and a blow-by," the other argues.

Then they just waited around for something else to happen or burn.

A big red truck.

We had called the firemen roughly twenty minutes before they came to put out the blaze, the firemen being three guys in a red truck. They had a hose of sorts, and performed their job well, keeping the damage to some overgrowth, a fence, an outhouse, a little singeing of a Dacha nearby and that pile of garbage.

The crowd disperses, all turning towards their Dachas, and I to Elena with a question.

"So when am I going to have the happy opportunity to use the hoe?"

Spread it on.