Back to adventuring

And on with my life here. The visa registration process is over, now I can focus on other things. And the weather has finally moved a little more towards spring. Not that we aren’t without cold and sometimes windy and rainy days, but we do have some bursts of warmth and sunshine, and I am determined as always to take advantage of them.

Besides as many local walks as I can fit in, I am starting to do some hiking in the mountains. But first, there was a trip to Yalta for a day with Nadjie to celebrate her birthday. Nadjie has a friend who lives in Yalta whom I have met several times. He is always inviting us to come and visit, so for her birthday, Nadjie decided to take him up on it. Luckily, he wasn’t busy and agreed to meet us at the bus station.
Nadjie and Stanislav on the terrace of his cafe.
His name is Stanislav—mother Russian, father Kazan Tatar. He was born in Siberia but has lived in Yalta for 35 years. I don’t know how he ended up in Yalta or what he did in the years previously—he is my age. Someday I hope to get more of his story.
I have been to Yalta several times but only with other Americans or stumbling along on my own with a guidebook. So it was a real treat to be shown Yalta with a native, someone who lived there before it became so developed. Though I didn’t always understand what he was saying, I was able to absorb enough information that the next time I take a visitor there, I can be much more helpful.

We took the trolley bus--free for us pensioners (basically anyone over 55)-- down to the water front and spent the day strolling from one end of the boardwalk to the other, Stanislav pointing out different landmarks along the way. Though it was windy and a bit cold, it was still pleasant to be there. We finished our excursion by ending up at the café he owns. It wasn’t open—is only open for the season—May through September—but he broke out some champagne and cognac in the typical birthday celebration style here, and the toasts began. Nadjie pretty much doesn’t drink, so we kept it to a minimum, but I could tell she was pleased by the attention. She kept saying that Stanislav and I are her only true friends, which though I don’t like to think of that’s true, perhaps it is.
Stanislav's cafe.

The following weekend, Cheryl and I took off for a true hike. The weather forecast was iffy, but more and more I realize exactly how unreliable the forecasts are here, so we just decided to chance it. She got an early morning bus into Simferopol (a 2-hour ride for her) and met me at the train/bus station. We also took off for Yalta, but instead of going into Yalta, we caught another minibus once we got there to the Uchan-Su waterfall and an 8 km. hike on the Botinsky Trail. We had heard about this hike and been wanting to try it. And I’m so glad we did—what a stunning trail along the mountains high above Yalta with magnificent views of the surrounding countryside and the Black Sea.

We started the hike at Uchan-Su, the highest waterfall in Ukraine. I had been there once before but there was little water running then. But in Yalta the weekend before I had seen how high the river was that comes down from the falls, so I wanted very much to see it again. And we were rewarded for our efforts.

Uchan Su means “flying waters” in Crimean Tatar and what an apt description it is of the water bursting over the mountain top high above us and “flying” down to the rocks below. As is true of many famous sites in Crimea that are accessible by car, there was a small admission fee to take the path to see the falls. When we came to the gate, the woman there said something to me about “souvenirs,” or so I thought, but I realized after a few minutes she was saying “pensioners,” and that I could see the falls for free! Yet another reason to keep my grey hair here in Ukraine, despite probably being the only woman I ever see without colored hair.

When we left from the falls area, she gave us directions on how to get to the beginning of the trail, and off we went. And miraculously enough, we were able to find the beginning with no detours and indeed, never got lost on the entire hike. A first for us, I think. Trails here are poorly marked, if at all, plus there are numerous side trails that don’t appear on the maps, destined to confuse us map oriented hikers.

The weather was beautiful—at least at the beginning. Later it turned windy and cold and rainy, but we were near the end of our hike by then. We passed many waterfalls and rushing creeks which we crossed over on poorly maintained bridges—missing floor boards or holes in the floor boards.
The trail wound through forests of tall pine trees—what looked like red pines—and out onto exposed bluffs high above the valley. We encountered a few other hikers, but mostly we were alone to soak up the brilliance of the day. The trail is named after the physician of the last czar of Russia—Nicholas II—who “established” it (in reality it was probably used for centuries by Crimean Tatars and other early inhabitants of the peninsula) and exhorted Nicholas and his family to get out and hike for their health. He also established another trail below their summer home of Livadia Palace (the site of the Yalta conference) which I hope to hike someday.

It made me so happy to finally be out in the mountains I love so much after such a long and hard winter. Spring wildflowers were starting to come up, the birds were chattering away, and the water was running. Kind of like Minnesota, though below me was not Lake Superior, but the Black Sea surrounded by a world far different from Minnesota.

With love from Crimea.

In Pursuit of a Visa III

My visa quest is over!! After a final return to one of the two passport desks Nadjie and I had been frequenting, I received the final stamp on a document that says, yes, I can be a volunteer in Ukraine. Though, unfortunately, only for one year--which means I have to go through this process all over again next March in order to stay to the end of my service, three months later. Sigh… But’s that a year away and right now, I am very happy to be done with it all and not have to think I am going to spend yet another afternoon in yet another government office.

As for Nadjie, I am sure she is even happier than I am. I knew of the difficulties of dealing with any kind of government agencies in Ukraine and the rampant corruption (as Serdar’s cousin told him: “Want a driver’s license? You can take the driving course or buy one which you probably will have to do anyhow because unless you slip the examiner a LOT of money, you won’t get a license no matter how well you drive.”). But actually experiencing the bureaucratic mechanisms here created a whole other level of understanding of just how very difficult it can be to be a Ukrainian citizen. And here’s why:

The physical space: The offices were invariably open only for a few hours two or three days a week and even those hours weren’t sacrosanct—twice an official up and left in the middle of the two hours the office was open despite lines of people waiting to see him. Usually the hallways were crammed with people. No waiting areas, sometimes a row of chairs in an already small space, no organization of the waiting process (numbers or sign up lists), few or no signs explaining processes, documents needed, etc. Though obviously people were used to the situation and there was a certain etiquette about the waiting process, something I have observed in other places. People always asked who was last in line, and for the most part, followed the waiting order. Except when someone with more “pull” barged into an office in front of whomever was next in line. Much grumbling occurred among people still waiting, but, clearly, that too was a common event and like so much else here, was accepted with a sigh of resignation-- “What can you do?”

The officials: Well, I guess it goes without saying—unfortunately-- that they were almost without exception rude, unfriendly and unhelpful. As an example, an official in one office approved some form that required our “landlord” to be there for the signature. A couple of days later, an official in an office across the hall said angrily, “No, this form isn’t correct. You need do redo it.” Which required the landlord to make yet another trip in his oh-so-kind agreement to help us. And on it went.

But what I found really hard was the affect it all had on Nadjie. Her hands would shake; she would frantically stumble through her previously organized documents looking for the right form; she would just quietly acquiesce to whatever demands were made. At the first office we went to when the official clearly didn’t understand what visa I needed, it was I who had to say to the woman, “No, you are wrong. This is what I need.” Nadjie told me later that if she had said that, the official would have thrown her out of the office. And whether or not that is true, her fear and aversion to the whole process were very real. At some point in the weeks it took for all this happen, she said to me that because I am an American, I am receiving my visa very fast—that it took ten years to get her son registered an a Ukrainian citizen when they moved here from Uzbekistan. And, indeed, everyone I told about our registration attempts, just rolled their eyes and said, “Yes, of course, this is Ukraine. You should have seen what it was like when we came here from Uzbekistan.”

And so, despite the immense frustration I felt with the whole visa registration process, what it really became for me was an intense learning experience that gave me yet another bit of understanding of what life is like for all Ukrainian citizens, but especially for that “other” class of citizens, the Crimean Tatars.

Here I am all legal in Ukraine!

In Pursuit of a Visa II

Eskender, a grizzled older man I estimate to be in his late 60’s, owns an apartment building--of sorts—more of an overgrown house--in Kamenka, one of the five compact Crimean Tatar settlements on the fringes of Simferopol. I had heard of Kamenka but had never been there, as it is on the opposite side of the city from Ak Mechet and a long bus ride from the center. It took us a while to get out there and then it was some time before we actually found Eskender’s apartment building. We wandered around the unpaved courtyard looking for him, trying not to bother a woman who was washing her clothes at an outdoor spigot (no water in the apartments?) and finally gave him a call. He pulled up in a beat up old Soviet car and escorted us down to his “office,” which turned out to be a dirt floored room underneath the building that you had to access through something that looked like a coal chute. We sat down at a makeshift table, and I looked around, trying to make sense of the place. Someone, at least some of the time, seemed to live there. Whether or not that is Eskender, I don’t know. There was a cot covered with old blankets, a hot plate, the little table we gathered around, several rickety chairs, and stacks of papers, books, boxes, foodstuffs, cups, and all kinds of other odds and ends everywhere.

Eskender and Nadjie proceeded to totally converse in Crimean Tatar so I was left out of the conversation even more than I usually am. But this wasn’t deliberate, I’m sure. As I learned more about his life, my guess is that Eskender always communicates in Crimean Tatar if that is a possibility. Yes, Nadjie translated, he would serve as my landlord and had the proper documents. I didn’t realize exactly what he was agreeing to, because, as it turned out, his being my “landlord” meant that he had to make at least four trips to the government offices with us and had to deal with the not-too-friendly workers in these offices—more on that aspect of my adventure later.

A couple of days after our visit to Eskender’s office, he showed up at the library with the documents we needed, and he also brought the book he wrote about his life to show me. It was not a polished looking, publisher- generated book, but rather a collection of many papers which were clearly not typed on a computer, loosely bound into an oversized folder. He wanted me to read the two introductions that someone had translated into English. They were obviously the work of an internet translation program because, as usual, the translation was very awkward and sometimes made no sense at all. But it was possible to extract the basic facts of his life, and what a story he had to tell.

I didn’t have enough time to really absorb all of his story, but the gist was that he was part of what is called the “National Movement” among Crimean Tatars—the movement while they were in Uzbekistan to return to Crimea. Petitions were circulated, letters written, trips taken to Moscow to meet with officials from the Soviet government, and nonviolent protests that resulted in movement leaders, including Eskender, spending years in prison. He lost both his son and daughter—his daughter murdered at age 19 by some thug he knew in prison. He came to Crimea in 1967, over twenty years earlier than when Crimean Tatars were officially allowed to return, and was deported several times.

That is as much information as I could gleam from the introductions and what he told me, but it made me want to know more of his story. And perhaps I will have that opportunity, because he very much wants to have his book translated into English, and I offered to help him. I have since been back out to his place in Kamenka to return documents he had given us, and I offered once again, but I know it might take a long time for him to trust me enough to work with me. But I will be going out there once a month to give him the 100 UAH tax the government requires for my “apartment,” so perhaps we will get to know one another and slowly we can start making his dream a reality. For me, I would love to have a project such as this—I think it would help me with my language and also further my understanding of the history of the Crimean Tatar people. And I just think his story, among many other Crimean Tatar stories, needs to be told. If I can help do that, it will be time well spent.

In Pursuit of a Visa I

My life has been consumed these past few weeks with the process of trying to receive a visa to be in Ukraine until the end of my service which is now July 2013. As I said in earlier posts, the Ukraine government changed their visa laws last October, requiring a new form of visa for all foreigners, which has resulted in Peace Corps Volunteers taking over our own registration process, something that had previously been done in Kyiv without our involvement.

Right now, this only affects those of us who are extending and the group that was sworn in last December. However, all new groups will have to abide by the new registration process, unless the pleas of the U.S. Embassy are successful in changing the requirements, which they mostly likely will be, given that the Ambassador is now meeting with the Ukraine Minister of Foreign Affairs.

However, for Volunteers like me, who cannot wait for the outcome of these high level talks, it has been a nightmare. Initially, I was told to wait for the central registration process to happen in Kyiv once Peace Corps learned of how many documents were going to be required in Crimea. But the visa I received from the Moldova trip expires at the end of March, and with no word from Kyiv, my Peace Corps manager told Nadjie and I we had to start working on getting the registration done in Crimea.

So we have spent every day for the last two weeks in various government offices, pursuing the elusive visa. Our biggest stumbling block has been the fact that landlords have to be involved in the registration process, providing documents proving their ownership of the house/apartment. Almost all landlords are reluctant to do this, as they are fearful of added taxes, etc., but in the case of Crimean Tatars, people don’t even have ownership documents. I discovered this fact when Neshet went with me to the registration place, only to be turned down because of not having the right documents. He has a document showing ownership of the land, but not the house. When I asked him why, he explained that when Crimean Tatars first returned to Crimea, they were only allowed to build houses in remote, unpopulated villages such as where Lenura’s parents live. They were denied access to land in Simferopol, where, of course, there was a much greater possibility of finding work. So people just started to squat on empty land surrounding Simferopol and began to build their houses. Eventually the government acquiesced (after a prolonged protest in the city center), and five “compact settlements” were established around Simferopol where Crimean Tatars could own land and build houses. At some point they were given deeds to the land, but by then, for the early settlers like Neshet, the houses had long been built without the required permits. And thus, they have no document showing that they own a house. Which begs the question of how they will pass their houses on to their children, and could the houses ever be sold. Many people have built substantial homes and over the years have continued to add improvements, such as what Neshet has done with our house. But all that work and money apparently will never be able to come back to them until there is some further development in the land reparations dispute.

But as it turns out, with the visa registration process the government doesn’t really care if you actually live were documents say you do--they just want some landlord to come forward and register you as living there. So we asked around Ak Mechet and the library to find someone who might possibly have the right ownership documents. Most people didn’t, but finally someone at the library told us to call someone she knew in one of the settlements who owned a large building with various apartments, and he agreed to act as my landlord.

So that brings me to the next stage of my adventure—my meeting with, as it turns out, the legendary Eskender Umerova.

Visa Struggles

No new word on the Ukraine visa front, but one Volunteer I know whose visa is expiring this week was told that she might have to pay some kind of fine and just stay here with the expired visa until she returns to the U.S. in August. Just got an update via email—the Volunteer was told that she will be in the country illegally for now and the Peace Corps will provide some kind of letter. Showing what, I’m not sure. Somehow this feels like the ultimate practice of “letting go” of the belief that what I do determines the course of my life. I have done what I can do to affect this process, and now I just have to trust that so boodet normano—all will be okay. And try not to get too frustrated with the Peace Corps not-very-helpful communication process.

I also have to keep in mind that I am an American citizen, which is a huge privilege that gives me the right to travel almost anywhere in the world with no hassles. How much I took that for granted, indeed never really thought about it, in my pre-Peace Corps life. And perhaps even living in Ukraine I would have continued to not recognize what a privilege an American passport is if I hadn’t accompanied Serdar on his quest to get a visa to visit the U.S., or any western country for that matter.

In the latest attempt to secure him a visa to visit the US, recently I met with an acquaintance from the U.S. Embassy who now works in the consulate section, reviewing visa applications. Due to the constraints of her position, she was only willing to give me general information, but I came away from the conversation realizing that Serdar will probably never be able to get a U.S. tourist visa as a young person. Once he is done with university and has successfully established a family and career in Ukraine, he will have a much greater chance to receive a visa. But he is in that category of applicants that is automatically rejected because of the fear that they will stay in the U.S. illegally.

The one possible opportunity for him to come to the U.S. as a young person is a State Department program called Work and Travel. Basically it is a way that foreign university students can spend the summer in the U.S., mostly working service type jobs in resorts, and supposedly travelling for a month at the end of the summer, though this privilege is excluded from the Ukrainian program, as all the universities here start at the beginning of September. And for the privilege of working his/her butt off at some crappy job, a student has to pay a minimum of $1500 plus travel expenses. I have talked to several students who have gone to the U.S. under this program—some have liked it, others have hated it. But it is a way to get a visa to the U.S. for a population that would otherwise be denied that privilege.

But here is the real kicker. They told Serdar that he might not even be able to receive a visa through that program because it is on his record that he was once denied a visa. So last year when I wanted to take him to the US with me and thought there would be no problem for him to get a visa since he would be traveling with a Peace Corps Volunteer, an assumption born out of my then ignorance of the visa process, in the end resulted in further damaging his prospects for visiting America, something he so badly wants. We have both come to accept it, an easier task for me of course, and have begun to talk about maybe doing a small trip somewhere else this summer. But ever country I look at requires a visa from a Ukrainian citizen, the only exception being Russia, Belarus, and Turkey, and perhaps some of the “Stans” (Uzbekistan, etc.). And obtaining a visa usually means two trips to the country consulate, most of whom are located in Kyiv. So an expensive hassle and always with the uncertainty of whether or not he will get a visa. It is a fact of life here that people are sort of trapped—not as much as when there was the “Iron Curtain” of course—but still, it isn’t an easy process to travel out of the country. And that fact, almost more than anything else I have encountered living here, brings home the reality of what it means to be an American in the eyes of the rest of the world. Do we really deserve this welcome, this freedom to move across borders unencumbered? Many times, I think not. But I am grateful for it.
With love from Crimea.

A trip to Moldova to get a visa

Scenes from Chisinau
On the bus.
Some of my traveling companions.
Remains of a synagogue from before the war.
Large Orthodox Christian church in the center of the city.

Snowy park in the center.
the Minnesota Twins in Moldova!
A quiet morning. Alone in the house today, a rare treat for me. I will spend the day doing a little laundry, going for a walk if it seems at all feasible given the cold and icy conditions of the roads, cooking dinner for the family, studying some Russian, and just hanging out, savoring the silence. Though I have become accustomed to living with the family—the TV on downstairs, Serdar’s music blasting out of his room, Lenura and the kids yelling back and forth—and have even come to miss it when it gets too quiet on these days of having the house to myself--I do cherish my occasional aloneness. It’s such a big change for me, this living in a family. For most of my adult life I have either lived alone or with only one other person. But I have grown to like the feeling of being part of a family. I like that both Serdar and Safie feel they can come into my room anytime and just hang out with me (I can lock the door if I want to be alone), that Lenura likes to come in and see what I’m doing and chat about different things, that Neshet and I occasionally remain sitting at the table after dinner, talking (or trying to) about Crimean Tatar life, world events, life in Uzbekistan. The hardest times I find living here are the result of my lack of understanding of the language. The other night Safie was rattling on about something to do with school and Serdar and Lenura were laughing so hard, and I didn’t have a clue what it was about. Times like that I can feel so isolated and alone, despite knowing how much they love me. I wonder if I will ever get to the level of fluency where I can understand conversations in which people are talking rapidly and (probably) using a lot of slang.

These last three weeks have been occupied by the visa registration headache. Ukraine instituted new visa laws last September, and it has created huge hassles for Peace Corps Volunteers like me who’s visas are expiring soon—basically all of the Volunteers that came in October and those Volunteers who are extending our service. The first step in the process was a trip to Chisinau, the capital of Moldova! We all had to get what is called a D visa before we could even start the registration process, and you can’t get that visa in Ukraine, you have to go out of the country to a Ukrainian consulate. Which, of course, makes little sense, but that is the law. So the Peace Corps organized bus trips for all of us to Moldova. Which could have been fun, I guess, but the trip turned into a 16-hour overnight on the bus, one night at a hotel in Chernisau, and then another 14-hour overnight on the return bus. Combined with the overnight train to and from Kyiv. Grueling is the word that comes to mind. Especially the return trip where I ended up at the back of the bus where the more partying types of the young Volunteers congregated. Finally, about 2am, I said, “are you guys ever going to sleep??” About 3, they eventually did.

Actually, I enjoyed myself in Chisinau. We had a lot of free time, waiting for the consulate to prepare our visas, and the Peace Corps gave us a generous spending allowance. I had fun walking around, checking out the city, buying presents, having a great dinner at a traditional Moldovan restaurant, perusing bookstores. The day we got back to Kyiv was not the best—exhaustion, a frustrating meeting about the steps of registration, a trip to the dentist to have a tooth pulled, and finally crashing at the hostel, waiting for Cheryl to come the next day. She had tickets to the Georgian National Ballet which was performing that night, so we had made plans to spend the weekend in Kyiv. It continued to be very cold which limited our sightseeing, but we still had a good time. Made it to the huge outdoor market there which I had never been to. Cheryl had the address of a booth that sold maps, and when we did finally locate it, what a treat it was—tons of maps from all over the world. I bought a geographical map of Central Asia that shows all the places Neshet talks about in Uzbekistan. Will definitely have to go back there my next time in Kyiv.

I arrived back in Simferopol on a Monday morning, and it feels like I have been dealing with the registration hassle ever since. After several frustrating trips to various offices with both Neshet and Nadjie, as my landlord and the site where I volunteer also had to register, I was finally told by one official that I needed to leave Ukraine and come back with a 90-day tourist visa, as there was no way that I would be able to complete all the documents before my current 45-day visa expired. Most of the Volunteers who are attempting to register are running into the same problem, and the Peace Corps in Kyiv along with the US Ambassador is pushing the Ukraine government to allow a simpler registration process for the Volunteers. And that is where it is now—in the hands of the Peace Corps office in Kyiv. I have one month to be registered, so we’ll see what happens.

More on that visa front next post—my visa and also Serdar’s attempts to once again to get a visa to the US. Love to all from cold Crimea.

Prague with Serdar

IMAGES FROM PRAGUE











Prague is as beautiful as everyone says it is. Definitely worth visiting, if old European cities is your passion. We stayed in a large hostel right in the center of the city, only a half block from the famous Astrological Clock, which has an elaborate display when it chimes the hour (with crowds of tourists in front of it taking pictures). We had a 4-bed room in the hostel, and for the first two nights, we had the room to ourselves. On our third and last night, we shared it with two young women from South America. All four floors of the hostel were filled that night, and I think maybe there were 200 people staying there—all forty years younger than me (or so it seemed). But I didn’t really care—I enjoyed some quiet time in the room after walking around all day in the intense cold. Serdar joined the nightly pub crawls, but didn’t find them as much fun as in Krakow—too many people. One night we went to a classical musical performance in a beautiful old building with wonderful acoustics. Though it was clearly a bit of a tourist trap—there were only eight musicians and just a handful of tourists in the audience—I still loved listening to the famous classical pieces being played in such an exquisite environment.

We spent our time walking around the four old quarters of Prague, exploring the castle located on a hill high above the city, strolling across the famous Charles Bridge, going to museums, checking out the incredible cathedrals, the old Jewish section, a lovely park. It really is a wonderful city to explore and just wander the winding, cobblestone streets. Unfortunately, the bone chilling cold made that not as much fun as it might have been in better weather, but it did keep the tourists crowds down. Though I was surprised at how many tourists there were, given it was the dead of winter and not a holiday. I can only imagine what it must be like in the summer, and I don’t think I would like the experience. I realized on this trip that something I had thought was true about myself is indeed true—I really am not much of a tourist in the traditional sense. I like seeing all the old historic buildings, museums, etc. but given a choice between a city and nature, I would choose nature every time. And one of the most gratifying things about the trip for me was that by the end of it, Serdar said the same thing, that he too missed spending time in nature. We tried to figure out how to do a day trip to the mountains, but it was just too far away. Though next time… that will be our first priority.

One of the things I did really love about the city aspect of this trip was the chance to eat some of the foods I miss living in Ukraine—real bagels, great coffee everywhere, Vietnamese and Chinese food, and vegetarian restaurants, one of which was across from our hostel in Prague and had kind of an all-you-could-eat happy hour. And the Czech beer wasn’t so bad either.

We reversed our transportation back—train from Prague to Poland and then plane from Poland to Kyiv. I put Serdar on an afternoon train back to Simferopol and then I went and crashed at the hostel. I spent the next three days in Kyiv at the Peace Corps office doing all the medical checkup stuff necessary for approval for extension—all okay—and then I too got on the train back to Simferopol. It was such a treat to get back home on Thursday morning and to be with the rest of the family once again.

It’s a couple of weeks later now as I write this. Despite the stresses of the cold, the visa hassles, the unknowns of traveling with Serdar, I think ultimately it served the purpose that I wanted for the trip—to give Serdar the opportunity to see life outside of his country, to meet other young people from different countries and continents, to open up his mind to worlds beyond his own. Tall order for such a short trip, I know, but it did, I think, give him a taste of different ways of living. But of course, like that old song “how do you keep them down on the farm after they’ve seen gay Paree” (which my dad used to sing about World War II), Serdar came back longing to live elsewhere and hating even more the difficulties of life in Ukraine. But, who knows, it could also have the effect of increasing his determination to make change in Ukraine. Only time will tell.
As for me, though at times in the course of the trip I wondered what the hell I was doing, in the end it brought me closer to Serdar and to my life here in Crimea.