February 2007
I moved into my first apartment in early February. I had no hot water and basic amenities. It was typical of a starter-Ukrainian apartment. According to Peace Corps, a strong door and lock as well as a bed and stove were necessities. Hot water was not. My host parents and my counterpart helped me move. My host dad and his nephew called me a taxi and helped me transfer everything. I had two large suitcases and a couple of small bags. My host mom promised to give me potatoes and beans. Tricia went through her cupboards and loaded me up with pots, pans, utensils, linens and another table and chairs for my apartment, and offered the help of her friend’s son if I need anything fixed. She told me she’d shop with me for other things I needed.
The apartment was one large room with a separate little space for the kitchen and bathroom. My bed was a narrow futon thing against one wall while the other wall was filled with the wall unit. The thing was full of dishes and glassware left by the owner, and I had to rearrange everything to make room for my clothes.
I loved being on my own and cooking for myself again. I missed both families and the fact that they cooked for me and fed me and took care of me, but I loved having my own area.
I started to feel more comfortable and confident in the town once I was in my own place. I could listen to American music and watch movies on my laptop without bothering anyone.
Because I didn’t have hot water, I washed my hair the first week with cold water. It was like taking a bath at the North Pole. The water was made from ice cubes. I knew I was in the Peace Corps and what was the Peace Corps if not mud huts and arctic baths in the river, right? But Peace Corps said we should live at a moderate level, like our neighbors. And my neighbors, here? They had hot water.
When I visited my host family in the village, Sestra and Baba and asked me several times when I would be taking a shower. Finally, I smelled my armpits. "Do I smell or what?" I asked my sister.
"You have no hot water so you need to take a shower here!" she said.
I bought two metal devices I found at the outdoor market to heat my bathtub water. I had never seen such things before. They were simple metal coils attached to plugs that could be plugged in to heat up cups of tea. I figured if I bought two, it might be enough to heat up my bath water. I plugged them in at 4 p.m. in a metal bucket in my bathtub. By 9 p.m., the water had become tepid but nowhere near warm. At this rate, I knew that I’d be bathing sometime early next year. I unplugged everything and washed up in a foot of tepid water, all scrunched up because the bathtub was short. I shivered but was glad the water wasn’t icy this time.
Saturday morning, I went to the market again – bazaars they called them – and bought a much larger coiled metal device suitable for heating a bathtub. I used this several times, even though it usually blew my circuit breaker and I had to keep flipping the switch. And then, my regional manager read my blog and told me I had to stop this dangerous practice because it was a safety hazard.
I washed my clothes in the tub, scrubbed them, rinsed them, and hung them on laundry lines above the bath. I talked to Oksana about these things and she laughed and said, “I can imagine the situation.” I bet she could. Me, the American, bathing in cold water and washing my clothes by hand.
One day my new friend Sasha stopped by to show me stores in town to buy things for my apartment and I went to unlock the door for him. The locking mechanism used a big skeleton key and I had to lock myself into and out of the apartment.
The key wouldn’t turn.
“Interesting,” I thought to myself. I imagined Sasha standing on the other side of the door, listening to the five key chains attached to my one key scrabbling with the lock.
“Don’t hurry,” Sasha said from the other side of the door.
I finally said, “I think the lock is broken. Or the key. I’m stuck in here forever.”
“Open your balcony door and throw the key down to me. I’ll try it from the other side,” he suggested. So he went around the building and I threw the key down to him from my third floor window because the windows didn’t have screens. He didn’t have any luck, either.
He went to Natasha’s house to get her copy of the key to see if that would work.
It didn’t. I was imprisoned. “How about I throw one of the keys back to you and you try it again,” he said.
“Oh, that’ll work,” I said and thought about my great hand-eye coordination and the probability that the key would become lodged in some crevice of the building instead of my grasping fingers.
“Can you catch?” he asked.
“I have no idea,” I said. I went to the window and he tossed the keys up, and I caught it on the second try. I was quite pleased about all the key chains at that point, making it an easy and large target.
“I think you’re going to be in there for the next two years,” he said after we’d worked at the door some more from both sides. “I’ll go get my tools. Don’t go anywhere, okay?”
He was also a comedian.
He came back and took the lock apart. Once freed, we went to buy a new lock.
It took me awhile to figure out the trash situation. When I lived with my host family, I noticed that periodically, my host dad took the trash out. But I never understood the pattern of days. I thought maybe there was a specific day of the week like in America but he seemed to go out randomly.
Later, I found out it arrived daily, at 6 p.m., for five minutes. We were to bring our bags down to the street and wait for the truck. The garbage truck arrived, the man lowered a big trash container, and everyone threw their trash in. It was a good time to socialize and catch up with friends.
Michelle, the fifth member of our cluster group from the village who went home over Christmas, returned Jan. 9. and brought us gifts. I got peanut butter, a Nutty Bar, Ranch salad dressing, a chocolate chip cookie mix, Andes mints and a hot chocolate packet. Pulling out each item was like a birthday party. Peanut Butter! Ranch salad dressing! Chocolate chip cookies! I baked the cookies immediately to celebrate my move. I burned them only a little because I wasn’t used to the oven.
The Ukrainian hospitality took getting used to. They were used to going over to each other's houses without warning to visit, and expected tea and cookies. Usually they brought the cookies. One day, my host mom Tamara came to visit with a friend, which was unnerving because if I wasn’t expecting company, then my house was generally a mess. So I felt embarrassed and put on water for tea. They found seats in the clutter of my one main room with my messy bed and papers all over the floor because I was lesson planning. And then I had to try to carry on a conversation and understand them in Ukrainian because they didn’t speak English. People also expected me to drop by. My host family asked me, "Why haven't you come to us, why haven't you come to us?" And I was like, “Well, you haven't invited me. I had no reason to come to you. I want to go home and relax after work. What if you're busy?” Obviously I couldn’t translate all that so I said, "I'm sorry, when would you like me to come to you?"
In Ukrainian, that's how it translated. "I'm going over to Tamara's house" was "I'm going to Tamara."
After a month, I was spontaneously told I needed to move from my apartment to a new apartment within the week and could I move on Saturday? No, I was out of town Saturday? Then could I move the next Monday? I moved to a new apartment that had hot water and more space in the kitchen.
My second apartment didn’t have Internet access. To get the wireless access I had enjoyed before, I went down the street and sat on a porch across from the antenna. People stared at me because you don’t sit on a porch in Ukraine, you’ll get sick! I brought along a towel to sit on, because my bottom often did go numb from cold, and ignored the stares.
A month after that, I moved to my third, permanent apartment. I continued to go down the street to use Internet, even while old babushkas chastised me, until Sasha found a company to install it in my apartment. I paid for it, because this wasn’t a Peace Corps-deemed necessity, but it was worth it. I was connected to the world again. I could email, I could Skype, I could blog! I felt alive again.
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