I’m well into my month of travel now in July and the first trip I successfully completely without major catastrophes. I was able to visit a camp that another volunteer set up and help out at it. It was also one of my larger trips on my own where I got to do it on my own and required more than just jumping on one train or one marshrutka. But a little about travel in Ukraine, it might be hard to get a picture back in the U.S. but I will try to not exaggerate anything.
First of all, let me explain what exactly a marshrutka exactly is, in some approximation. Generally they are a full size van, maybe larger with a slightly raised roof, seats are located inside and if you are lucky you might actually get one. But once seats are filled up people still pile onto these things, filling up aisles and just about any other space inside of the van. There have been plenty of times that I didn’t think even a single person extra could fit, but multiple people still cram on. When you need to get somewhere you will always find a way I guess. I don’t want to go too in depth, but I know a Canadian I met while I was here wrote her final paper on travel in Ukraine. There is plenty to say, enough to fill a final paper, although it might be hard to keep it all serious because it can be pretty funny at times. On my way, I noticed the distinct smell of body odor and alcohol, at 9:30 in the morning. Although on the way back, I’m sure I contributed to the body odor since I had only bathed out of a bucket of cold water during the time I was at camp.
The trip in itself was a success however, All I had were rough ideas of where I needed to go to catch these marshrutkas and no idea what times they left but managed to get on them and make it all the way there. The only real adventure was when I was in the small town of Ckole and needed to find a new stop for my last jaunt. Much to my chagrin, I had a dickens of a time pronouncing the name of the town, resorting to writing it out on a piece of paper and wandering around the town for a little less than an hour before jumping on a marshrutka at the last moment after a man told me it would get me there. Once I arrived at the camp, I guess it was a bit of a feat to get there on my own, from what I hear, people were impressed. I just took it as no alternative; I wanted to get there and needed to figure out one way or another. But plenty of credit goes to the nationals that helped me out with initial directions and the plenty of people in the town of Ckole that put up with my poor Ukrainian and even got me on the right marshrutka.
The camp itself was dedicated to developing a film on drugs, alcohol and cigarettes by students from the city of Cokal. A lot of the work, well pretty much all of it was in Ukrainian way beyond my basic level so I did a lot of watching and more just entertaining the kids, but it was a good time and made some good friends. The most memorable part of the camp was a 15 km hike to the top of a mountain in some rather hot weather. I packed a good amount of water up the mountain, came back with none of it and was wiped out for the rest of that day and part of the next. The other memorable part of the camp was the Ukrainian holiday Ivana Kampala, forgive me if I butchered the spelling. It is an ancient pagan holiday here which involves making wreathes so girls can know who they’ll marry, jumping over campfires, running around looking for a mystical flower in the middle of the night while avoiding evil spirits and walking across dew in the morning for wealth and fortune. All I really did was the dew since I left early the next day and jumping over a fire, I couldn’t say “no”. Unfortunately I don’t have the photo of me jumping over the fire right now, someone took one, but not on my camera, but I have posted a couple of photos from the hike.