voluntary@mail.uzhgorod.ua

Dear Friends, Family, Former Professors, and Fellow Volunteers,

Another 6 weeks, another email address—so this is my current address here in the Ukraine, but you can always send mail to my regular email address (at bottom of this letter) and it will be forwarded to the correct place. Thank you for all your messages; I’ve much appreciated them. As with the last email, I apologize to my fellow volunteers with limited computer access about the size of this email, but you can just set it aside for a while and read it later. And to everyone else, it’s not a quick read, but as you know, I do not think like a dime novel author.

I suppose I’ll try to construct a general picture of my daily (or weekly, anyway) life as it stands at the moment. I have finally, after a 4-year interruption by college, restarted a regular workout schedule, and so that is how I begin my Mondays (and Wednesdays and Fridays). Monday morning to early afternoon (along with Friday at the same time) is the time I teach the Hungarian and Ukrainian children English. I mentioned this in my last email, but now I’ll paint a more in-depth portrait of my work with the Hungarians and Ukrainians, since it is the work here that I (without mincing words) dislike the most—actually, it’s probably the only work here I dislike.

I said in my first email that the first day with them went relatively well. Well, things only went downhill from there. On day two, I tested all of them on their English ABC’s (something they should have learned a long time ago, but only about half of them did) one at a time out in the hall, leaving Hanne (a reminder, she’s the Danish girl I’m working with here) in the classroom to teach the rest. While I was out in the hall, the kids got so out of control that Hanne had to barricade the door using her body in order to keep the children from running wild out of the room. I still remember that, after finishing with one student, I tried to open the door to get back into the class and couldn’t because Hanne was barricading the door. It wasn’t very funny at the time, but now, looking back and remembering Hanne’s face and stance, it’s pretty amusing, I must admit. In a dark and depressing kind of way.

Other times they have been much worse. Here’s an excerpt from my journal from the end of October: “the Hungarian and Ukrainian children were horrible today. Indescribably evil. As if Satan himself had delivered instructions to them personally, in their own respective languages, about how to torment Hanne and me most effectively. I think Hanne came back and cried for a while afterwards; I just came back, sank on my couch, read some of The Last Temptation of Christ, and then passed out for a bit. Three or 4 more classes like this, and I’m going to tell my boss that I am not going to teach these children—they need a trained educator, which we are not, and that if it is absolutely, 100 percent necessary that the volunteers teach English to these little heathens, then he will have to find new volunteers and either give us a new assignment or ship us home. I’m not going to develop some sort of phobia, psychological problem, or emotional disorder for these brats. So that was my day—and the sooner it’s over, the better.”

And here’s one more: “So today was the celebration of the Reformation here in Hungary and Transcarpathia. I was unaware that such a holiday existed, but apparently it does. No one at Dorcas worked today at all, except for Hanne and me. In the morning, there was a special church service to commemorate the day, complete with youth-composed poetry about how cool it is to be Reformed, what a great guy Luther was, and how great it is that the Bible was translated into Hungarian. Fortunately, Zsolt (the assistant Reformed pastor here) didn’t have anything to do during the service, so he sat next to me and kept me clued in on what was happening and what Guszti (who is the pastor at the Reformed church and the executive director of Dorcas Aid Transcarpathia, i.e. my boss) was talking about. After the church service, Hanne and I went to teach English to the Hungarian and Ukrainian children, as we are apt to do on Friday in the late morning. I assume because of the holiday that kept everyone else besides the two of us from working, the Hungarian children were nowhere to be found, so we didn’t have to teach them—but never fear, the Ukrainian children more than made up for their absence. The Ukrainian kids were worse than they had ever been before—all of them, even the one guy who speaks pretty good English and is usually the guy always being nice to us and helping us keep the classroom under control so we can actually teach. One girl in particular is really horrible—I forget her name at the moment, but she is the one who really rules the classroom because she is so straight up physically violent. For example, we gave up and at the end of the class were just playing with them, and so we were swinging them around and making them and us very dizzy. Hanne had already swung this one girl perhaps three times in a row, and so others came up for their turns, but she said something to them in Ukrainian and they all backed off. She has no qualms about kicking or hitting the other children. Or kicking or hitting Hanne and me. It was so bad today (and it hurts a little too, yes), that it was all I could do to refrain from slapping her and knocking her across the room and into next week. I really don’t know what to do to control her short of answering her physical violence with either physical violence, with tying her up, or with banishing her from the class (i.e., physically throwing her and her stuff out the classroom door and locking it)—kind words in Hungarian (which she also speaks), threats, nothing works—I don’t know what to do. My work can’t continue like this. I didn’t come here to do this, and this isn’t my job—these kids need a real teacher. I’m about ready to say to my boss that I’m not going to teach these kids anymore—I didn’t come here to teach English to these kids; I came here to work with the Gypsies; that’s my job. I’m about to tell him to either find another teacher or to tell him that if there are real teachers for German (the language all other grades are learning, other than the 3rd and 6th grades), then they can start over with German—it’s not like they can speak that much English anyway. I can’t remember the last time I was so angry as when I was leaving the school today. And it’s hard to make me truly angry.

I was glad to learn that the problem isn’t Hanne and me, however; the problem is the 3rd grade class here. They are notoriously bad, and no other teachers here envy the people who have to teach them (i.e. Hanne and I, among others). The reason, I have been told, that the 3rd grade kids behave so poorly is because the teacher before us was terrible—she had no idea how to teach or how to maintain order in the class. She just sat there and screamed at the kids. So I think that’s actually the main reason, though the problem is probably exacerbated a bit by the fact that we don’t speak their language fluently (and in the case of the Ukrainians, we have to communicate using Hungarian, which for all of them as well is a second language).

Things have gotten better, however. In response to the above-described day with the Ukrainians, I sat down one Sunday night and wrote a speech in Hungarian, which I then read to both the Hungarian and Ukrainian classes on the following Monday (and yes, the Ukrainians understand enough Hungarian to get the drift of what I said). Here’s a translation of the speech:

“Our last lesson was very bad. That will not happen again. Hanne and I are here to teach, not to quarrel and bicker with you and not to play with you, although we will sometimes play in order to teach. We do not have to be here, and we do not have to teach. We are here and we are teaching you English because we want to help you and because you have no other English teacher.

“Do you want to find a good job? Do you want to study at the university? Do you want to earn more money than your mother and father? [Each of these questions was answered with a resounding “yes,” which set up the next part perfectly.] If yes, I recommend that you sit, listen, and do what we tell you do to. If you don’t like that and don’t do that, I will send you into the hall, outside, or home, and I will fail you. That means I’ll give you a one for the day [a 1 in the Ukraine = a 0 in the U.S. system]. There will be no questions and no discussion—I’ll send you away and fail you. Understood?

“If you hit someone, I will send you into the hall, outside, or home, and I will fail you. There will be no questions and no discussion. Understood?

“I don’t care if at the end of the day there is only one student left, if that is the only student who wants to study, find a good job, study at the university and earn a lot of money.

“These are the rules I’m setting down:

“Sit, listen, study, and do what we tell you. Don’t hit or kick anyone. Very simple. Understood? Repeat after me: ‘Sit, listen, study, and do what we tell you. Don’t hit or kick anyone.’

“If you don’t like these rules, if you don’t follow them, then I will send you into the hall, outside, or home, and I will fail you. There will be no questions and no discussion. Understood? Good. But I expect that already today I will have to send someone away and fail him or her. We’ll see.”

It made quite an impression, apparently. I expected it to start a war for control of the classroom and for me to have to send away and fail at least 5 kids on the first day, but I didn’t have to fail a single one—they were as perfectly well behaved as 3rd graders can be. It was amazing. I didn’t know that the threat of failing them could have such an effect, though I suppose that would be a difficult thing to explain to mom or dad back home. The only exception to this good behavior was this most recent Friday, when almost all of the Hungarian kids were out of control. I told Hanne that, in case something like that happens again, she should keep an eye out for those kids who I shouldn’t fail—ah yes, that will be fun sometime, I’m sure. I remember when I was in elementary school that behavior was a significant portion of our grade—I think a third of our report cards were devoted to conduct alone. The Ukraine doesn’t have anything like that set up in their system, which is a real shame.

[Since I first wrote the previous paragraph, I did indeed have to fail my first kid because of behavior—the biggest bully in the Hungarian class. He was arguing with some girl and stabbed her in the back with a pencil (he didn’t draw blood or anything), so I failed him and kicked him out of the class—these kids need to learn that words are just words. To make the matter even more amusing, I found out today that this bully that I failed is the principal’s son—oh the irony!]

On Tuesday-Friday mornings, Hanne and I often have to substitute for the 6th-grade English teacher (she is also the Dorcas secretary, so we have a good relationship with her). I think we’re being primed to take over teaching them completely starting in January. Their English is much better than the 3rd-graders’ English, although they too, like the 3rd graders, have only had 1 year of English. When Hanne and I teach them, we usually give them some sort of short skit in English (such as “A Visit to the Bank” [about a bank robbery] and “At the Dentist’s”) with the meanings of the new words, and then we act the skit out in groups the following day. It’s good because it gets them talking and makes them practice their English pronunciation after listening to me talk, which is the point of me teaching English in the first place—so they have a native speaker to mimic. Teaching them, as opposed to the 3rd graders, is a real pleasure, and we teachers and the students always have a good time together. I wish the 3rd graders’ English was good enough to let us do things like that, but the best we can do with them right now is simple games and working on the English alphabet, since most of them can’t write the English alphabet yet (and some still have a bit of trouble with their own).

The second Friday I was here, it was Teacher’s Day in the Ukraine, so there was no school and all of the teachers at the two regular schools got together to celebrate being teachers. Since Hanne and I are now teachers, we went to the school and hung out with the other teachers, partied, ate good food, and drank cheap champagne, vodka, and some really tasty chocolate liquor. I spent about 2 hours chatting with the 2 ladies who teach German at the school. At first they were really excited because when they heard me speaking German, they thought that I was a native German, and they seemed a little disappointed to find out that I was in fact an American. They were consoled, however, by the fact that I could talk about Germany from a first-person perspective, since I’ve lived there. The two women who teach German at the school told me that they have never had the chance to talk to a native-speaking German or to visit any German-speaking countries, which didn’t surprise me intellectually, but the thought that someone could learn a foreign language from a book and then teach it without ever having heard a native speak was indeed surprising (and a bit depressing too, I might add). In addition, for some reason it still surprises me that almost all poor folks the world over think that the United States is exactly like it’s portrayed on TV and in movies—a land of rich and beautiful people where there are no problems, no poor—although I should be used to it, since it happens every time I go to a poorer region of the world. Much of my time was spent balancing their view of both the United States and Germany and telling them some of the darker sides and secrets of both countries.

Thursdays are without a doubt the low point of the week for Hanne and me, because we have nothing scheduled to do, and so we just see if something comes up—otherwise we just hang out, read, study Hungarian, or do whatever else we feel like doing (except that I do teach my German student on Thursday afternoons—more on that shortly). I know that one of the first volunteers here, someone from Germany, went to Uzhgorod, the nearest “big” (i.e., about 100,000 people) city every Thursday, whether she needed anything or not. She had some kind of issue and just needed to get out of this tiny village once a week in order to remain sane. I feel no such need, but I can see why she picked Thursdays—I’m starting to consider starting such a tradition as well, just so I have something to do on Thursdays, other than go for walks, read, study, relax. Arg, I’m such an American—I can’t even enjoy free time, I’ve always got to have something to do. Sigh.

As opposed to my work with the 3rd graders, my work with the Gypsy children is going well. Hanne and I teach them on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoons. Tuesday is the Bible lesson and mathematics, and Wednesday and Friday consist of reading and writing. There are no history, science, or other lessons.

The Gypsies are always fun and relatively well-behaved, though it is a little difficult to get them to do what you want them to do. The problem with them isn’t behavior, though—they’re happy to listen to you—it’s just that they don’t like to feel dumb, and so they’re not very willing to try new things or to practice things that are difficult for them, or to approach things a different way. For example, there’s one girl I am working with on reading, and she refuses to read words by syllable and insists on getting the whole word figured out and saying it at once (which makes it much slower and more difficult to read Hungarian), despite my attempts to get her to do it the other way and despite an explanation (in Hungarian) by Zsolt as to why the other way is a superior way to read. English speakers read word-by-word: “A ntivae Esgnilh sepaekr suohld be albe to uednrsntad tihs snenecte” (as long as the first and last letters of a word are in the right place, the other letters of words can be in whatever order, because English speakers read a whole word at a time, not letter-by-letter). However, in Hungarian, a person must read syllable-by-syllable, since individual syllables change the meaning of words drastically: csinálom “I do it”; csináltatom “I have it done”; “csináltattam “I had it done”; csináltathatom “I can have it done.”

One afternoon, Hanne and I went to the Gypsy school to teach as usual. It was Tuesday, meaning it was time for the Bible lesson and mathematics. Jozsi Bacsi, the head Gypsy, gave the Bible lesson, and Zsolt, the assistant pastor and my best friend here (other than Hanne and Ryan, the other American volunteer), was also there, mainly just to listen to the lesson. After the Bible lesson, Zsolt asked me if the Bible lessons always went like that—i.e., way over the children’s heads, and I told him yes. He said we probably need to develop a program for study that the children would understand, and then we had math class, which went OK, except that every day that I teach, I am painfully reminded of how tragically far behind the Gypsy children are in comparison to the other kids I teach—10-year-olds who can’t write their own alphabet, 12-year-olds who have trouble adding single digit numbers, 16-year-olds who can’t read a simple book.

Why are the Gypsy kids in such dire shape academically? It’s a combination of things. Karcsi (the main Gypsy missionary with Dorcas and my boss when it comes to all things having to do with the Gypsies) is the only real teacher they have, which means that they can only have school when it fits into his schedule (and he’s a busy guy—he has three Gypsy congregations in the area, though with the others he only does Bible study and worship service, no school, etc.)i.e., not every day, but only 3 times a week for 2 hours at a time (while the regular kids go to school 5-6 hours every day). Also, Karcsi is a great guy, but he’s not a trained, university-educated teacher. Finally, the Gypsy kids themselves are not really geared towards working a lot to learn a lot and better themselves. No one has ever pushed them like that, and whenever someone tries, they just kind of shut down. That’s been the situation here for a long while now, and so things now stand very poorly as regards the education level of the Gypsy kids. And of course there’s a huge lack of resources.

So why not send the Gypsies to school with the regular Hungarian students? The problem with the Gypsies and the Hungarians going to school together is that the Gypsies have been segregated from the rest of the population for so long that they haven’t kept the same education schedule as the society at large, so if they went to school, they’d be extremely undereducated for their respective grades. Furthermore, the Hungarian schools themselves actually aren’t that much better equipped than the Gypsy school—but they do have access to qualified teachers and slightly better access to books, which are the main differences. In addition, the Hungarians’ school is responsible to the state, while the Gypsy one isn’t, of course. The relation between cultures is pretty poor at the moment—the townspeople always grimace when I tell them that I’m either going to the Gypsies or coming from the Gypsies when I pass them and they ask me what I’m up to. Dorcas has had several complaints from the townspeople about the fact that the Gypsies get more aid than they do: “The Gypsies don’t deserve it, why waste this aid and money on them? Give it to us instead” and similar sentiments.

Here in the Ukraine, the government regulates education, but it doesn’t force people to go to school (or if there are truancy laws, they’re not enforced), and the Gypsies don’t go to the regular school. Right now, they couldn’t anyway, since they are so desperately behind everyone else in their respective grade levels. I’m not sure why in the beginning the Gypsies weren’t integrated into the government schools. I bet that for that situation, both sides are guilty. This is why the new school is so important—Guszti (my main boss) wants to set up the school with government-certified and approved teachers so that the Gypsy children receive a proper education and then have the paperwork necessary to go on to further study at a university after they’re done here. Unfortunately, this process will have to begin separately, since the Gypsies are so far behind, but I hope that when the new school building opens with real, certified, government-employed teachers, it doesn’t become a situation of permanent segregation, but rather a stepping stone to get the Gypsies integrated into the regular school system eventually. That will be something the volunteers in the future will have to deal with, however. My main responsibility right now is, with Istvan (to be introduced later) and Hanne, to get this school up and running before my time here is finished.

Besides the problems with education, there are still many aspects of Gypsy culture, life, and worldview that I do not understand. For example, I don’t understand why the parents don’t make their kids go to school, or why education is not valued very much, or why the Gypsy children respect their parents’ and adults’ wishes so exactly sometimes and about some things and not at all about other things. In addition, Gypsies don’t (as far as I’ve seen, though again, maybe I’m missing something or just am not yet privy to this information, so this opinion could certainly change—so not only should it be read with a grain of salt, but I’m even writing it with a grain of salt, so I can see how my opinions change over the year) have much outlook or sense of history. At the very least, this is one of the Gypsies’ problems in Europe when trying to deal with European governments (according to every book I’ve read about Gypsies)—a people without a history is a people without justification or a homeland, which makes it tough to enter into dialogue with the “established” peoples of Europe. Besides that, I’ve not yet figured out their interests and character beyond fulfilling daily needs and loving their children.

I read one book on the Gypsies that was particularly interesting and painted a particularly romantic picture of them (but if you want to read up on the Gypsies, I would not recommend this book, at least not as the first one to read—drop me a line and I’ll be happy to give you a bibliography of up-to-date, balanced books about the Gypsies, as this book is neither). It was written by a man who, when he was 12 years old, ran away from home with a Gypsy caravan (this was pre-WWII) for six months and never contacted his parents. He just ran away and vanished for 6 months as a 12-year-old, and his parents had no idea where he was. So, after 6 months, the Gypsies brought him back and said “OK, time for you to go back and be a gadjo (non-Gypsy) for a while.” He went back to his parents, who, get this, didn’t kill him on sight. They said they had been saddened, but they figured he was OK, and they said it was his decision (he’s still 12) as to what he wants to do with his life, so after spending a few months back in Western civilization, he went back to the Gypsies (he was now at the ripe old age of 13). Absolutely incredible. My parents would never have allowed something like that when I was 12, and if I had simply vanished for 6 months, I would have stayed away until I was a grown man, I think, for fear of my life. Anyway, it’s an OK book about the Gypsies while some of them were still nomadic, but the author is describing a time pre-WWII, and the book itself was originally published in 1967, and the situation of the Gypsies has significantly worsened in the past 35 years, and even more so since the time the author is describing—but it’s an interesting account of a past time in Romani history.

In addition to teaching the Hungarian and Ukrainian kids English and teaching the Gypsies Hungarian (reading and writing), I am also teaching German. There’s a 22-year-old girl in the next village who wants to continue her German studies from high school but who can’t afford to go to the university, so I said I’d teach her German if she’d teach me Hungarian. I teach her on Monday and Thursday afternoons. We have had a few lessons. When I agreed to do this, I thought her German was much better than it actually is—I’m sort of having to start at the beginning with her, and I’m guessing that it would be more productive simply to study Hungarian with my Hungarian book than have her teach me, but that’s OK—I could certainly use a couple more friends around here (besides the assistant pastor and Istvan) to whom I can say a little more than “Hol van a kulcs?” (“Where is the key?”) and “Azt mondtad anyámra, hogy süket, vak és a jégszekrényben napozik?” (“Did you say that my mother is deaf, blind, and sunbathes in the icebox?”) Anyway, we’ll see how that goes, if it’s useful for either her or me, or if it’s just a big waste of time. I hope it’ll turn out useful for us both. It’s really taxing, though, trying to juggle three languages at once and trying to teach someone a foreign language (German) through another foreign language that I know even less of (Hungarian) when the language I do most of my thinking in is English, except when I’m writing or speaking exclusively in German.

Speaking of German—it’s a very good thing that I’m fluent in German. German is definitely a handy language to know around here, especially if you don’t know Ukrainian or Hungarian. If someone (who doesn’t work in Dorcas, that is—the second language of all the Dorcas workers is English) speaks a language other than his or her mother tongue, it’s German. In addition, my German skills have definitely proven handy to Dorcas as well (I’m the only one at Dorcas fluent in German, though one other worker speaks a little bit of German). Eva, the Dorcas worker who speaks the best English and is the second in command, recruited me to translate for a visiting German man (it’s this week that he’s here, actually). This German is coming in order to take two sisters (and their mother) to hospitals and doctors to look at giving the daughters medical treatment they need—one has serious problems with her thyroid gland, and the other one was burned on the neck as a baby. She is now 8 and her scar is getting worse - she can no longer lift up her head. Eva and I, as a team, are translating for him. She speaks Hungarian, Ukrainian, and English, and I speak English, German, and some Hungarian. I love talking, and translating offers much opportunity for conversation, but going from one language to another is very taxing—once I start speaking German, I would rather just be able to stay in German, think in German, etc. instead of having to move between German and English, but such is my work here.

In the middle of October, we, the volunteers, had the first of four seminars that we will have throughout this year. This seminar was a special seminar just for those of us working on the Roma Initiative. The man who recruited me to come here to the Ukraine, John Stringham, was the one leading the seminar, and it was good to hear about the grand vision of the Roma Initiative and our role in it (as the first volunteers in the program) and the extent to which we are going to be experimental lab rats this year. But, he also made it apparent how great a responsibility we all have this year to the Roma Initiative as a whole. The aims of the Roma Initiative, the program that brought me here, are indeed grand. Its goals are nothing less than large-scale societal and structural transformation of the way countries and governments treat and interact with the Roma, the transformation of the hearts and minds of the people of Europe, the empowerment of Roma across Europe as individuals and within majority societies, to create dialogue between the Roma and non-Roma, the inclusion of the Roma in church activities, liturgy, and worship, and the transformation of us, the volunteers, in ways that will serve as examples for European society at large. No, this is not something that I will accomplish this year, or that the Roma Initiative will accomplish in the next 10 years—but perhaps in 50 years, if those of us who care about these issues work unwaveringly and with intention, we will have changed the world.

Aside from those grand visions, Hanne and I have even more responsibility because of all that our boss at our placement wants us to do (i.e. set up a Gypsy school and establish the Gypsy congregation in the new Gypsy church building—which we also have to get up and running). Much to do and much Hungarian to learn in order to be able to do it all. Speaking of my Hungarian, it’s coming along slowly, as you may have picked up thus far in this email, but it’s not conversational yet. I’d thought I’d be conversational by Christmas, but it may be more like February or March. We’ll see.

Grant

My regular email address is: g-love03@mail.davidson.alumlink.com