Jaded

A year After a year in Ukraine, I’ve heard a couple times recently that I’ve become jaded. It’s not terribly surprising. I remember meeting volunteers while I was in training. They spoke of Ukraine: a country where officials stand in your way at every turn, where winter sets in before Thanksgiving and lingers well after Easter and where students cheat or lie rather than do any work. I also remember thinking to myself, “I won’t be like this.” I have been through winter before. I had dealt with red tape in the past. I was somehow more prepared to deal with the problems of teaching than all the other volunteers. Now I know better. I expect everything to go strangely. I know that I have to prepare myself to deal with whatever Ukraine throws at me. I feel like I have the right attitude to deal with life here. So when I was told I was jaded, I started to think. Jaded. No one wants to be jaded. If I don’t care about what I’m doing, why am I here? It seemed like time for some real thinking and perhaps an attitude adjustment. In the middle of this, I had an adventure that helped me figure everything out. The post office in my town was being remodeled. I was expecting a package, but had no way to reach my PO box. So, I went to the temporary office and asked where the PO boxes had been moved. The woman explained something about going to the right and a post office. I walked around my city for almost an hour with nothing to show for it. I was determined, however, to find the box, so I went back to the post office a second time. I asked where I could go and was told, again, to turn right and look for somewordinUkrainian post office. I asked which street this post office was on, but she didn’t know. I explained that I was American and needed very specific directions. At that point, frustrated, the woman walked me where I wanted to go. She had been trying to tell me to go to the back of the post office and I can understand her impatience. I was asking the name of an alley and it was only a five minute walk away. Excited to finally be able to check my mail, I ran up to my PO box and unlocked the door. Of course, after all that work there was no package to be had. It’s impossible to say how depressing it is to work for about an hour and a half to find your PO box only to find that it is empty. Life goes on. I went back to the post office everyday for a week without receiving anything. I was beginning to worry that the package would be lost forever. Well, almost a week after I found my box, I was walking home with a friend and we stopped by the post office. My package finally came. We went together to the temporary post office and I tried to claim my package. I was told quickly that it wasn’t there. It had been sent to another post office and not even my friend, a native to my town, knew exactly where it was. Wondering how much more work I would have to go through to get this package, I complained to my friend and told her the whole story. Her response shocked me. She started to explain that here in Ukraine anything can happen, that I shouldn’t let small stuff like this get to me. I now found myself on the opposite side of things. A week ago I had been worried that I was becoming jaded. Now I was trying to convince a friend and Ukrainian that I knew enough about this country to expect the unexpected. To be honest, I was surprised and frustrated to find that my package had been shipped clear across town to an unknown location. I wanted things to work like they always did. I wanted them to be simple. She was right. I should have known better than to let a silly mail issue upset me, but by the time I got home that night I was thinking about how something like this would never happen in the US. She was right. I’m left with the conclusion that it must be possible to be completely jaded and still naïve at the same time. I could simultaneously feel like there is no point in calling on the weak students in class and still feel like I’ve won a battle when they are able to make a simple sentence. I can’t defend myself against the new volunteers who call me jaded nor against the Ukrainians who think I don’t understand how things here work. Besides, perhaps being jaded is the only way to deal with a life where so many things can go so…unusually.

Tagged: Kris Wasik, Peace Corps, Ukraine

Posted in: Life in General