Stage 1, Evacu-cation

"What can you do to promote world peace? Go home and love your family"

-Mother Teresa

Have you ever experienced the feeling of unreality? Have you ever been walking around in the most familiar surroundings, or shooting the shit with the most familiar people when all of a sudden this wave of uneasiness and apprehension that none of it is real just crashes into you? Well, I have/am currently drowning in these waves. But it’s not a bad sort of drowning, at least, not all the time. I mean, right now my adorable little beagle has her front paws resting on my leg as I pet her head, a ritual we have gone through many times before but now there’s a feeling of a strange sort of nostalgia that I’ve been missing since I’ve been in Ukraine, mixed with regret. I’m not supposed to be here right now, yet here I am. Surrounded by the people I love and have been missing dearly for the past 6 months and yet I can’t help but feel guilty and out of place. It’s not that I don’t love and appreciate being home and with my family and my loving, amazing, fantastically supportive boyfriend (gods know I missed him SO MUCH), and I wouldn’t trade the world for the time I get to spend with them, the time I get to hug them and talk with them and share memories with them. It’s just…well...

Let’s go back about a week when I was sitting comfortably in my two room, five bed apartment in Bohuslav, writing lesson plans for the next two days while simultaneously studying Ukrainian for my tutoring session, while also fighting off a cold that was ruthlessly trying to take over. I really was comfortable. My lessons were a success and I was beginning to devise plans for reaching out to a secondary school to start an English club. I was even enjoying going to a fitness class that idolized Cindy Crawford workout videos.

I wasn’t blind or deaf though and wasn’t ignoring the atrocities happening just two hours away from my comfortable town of 16,000.

When the violence broke out in Kyiv I got worried. I got sick. I got disappointed. I got scared. Not scared for my life, no. I didn’t think that any violence would come to my town (and it still hasn’t). I was scared for the future. Was the country about to burst into civil war? What was this Yanu guy thinking (the President)? I monitored the situation the best I could and as the numbers dead started to rise it only lowered my spirits more. The cold I was fighting off grabbed hold in my devastated state and I canceled my Ukrainian tutoring session.

Peace Corps meanwhile, after a week of having lowered us to security stage 1 (see blog post: http://weloveme07.blogspot.com/2014/02/standfast-and-stock-up-on-wine.html for explanations of said stages), automatically put us back on to stage 2 when the violence erupted. My thought process was such: Alright, I just got my bags unpacked from the last security downgrade and I don’t really want to pack them again only to have to unpack in a couple days. However, things are getting more serious than before and I would hate to be that volunteer who consolidates with nothing but the clothes on her back because she was too lazy to pack her emergency bag.

So I packed. I packed EVERYTHING. My entire apartment into two suitcases, plus my emergency bag equipped with everything from shampoo to plates and utensils. Good thing too.

This was Thursday. That evening my counterpart called me and requested that I come and stay the night at her house. She heard that titushki (hired thugs) were in the surrounding villages and were burning down schools as they made their way to Kyiv (which might have them pass through Bohuslav--thank god they didn't. Presumably they were stopped by one of the many road blocks). My counterpart, a woman who whenever I asked her about her feelings on the whole situation would give me the calmest, most matter of fact answer that Bohuslav was safe and we don’t need to worry. Well, that night she was a little worried, which made me a little worried. So I took up my emergency bag and trucked over to her house for the night. We had a lovely meal of homemade soup and pasta. Then she showed me the presentation she was working on about Taras Shevchanko (a famous Ukrainian poet and human rights activist) for the national holiday in his honor. I gave her some power point advice, we laughed at T. Shev’s moustache, and we just had a real relaxing night.

I couldn’t go to sleep though. Not only because I couldn’t breathe out of my left nostril and my eyes were a watery, itchy mess from the best of a cat she owns. I was still worried about what the future held. So I checked my email after about an hour of tossing and turning (and nose blowing) and sure enough, there was the consolidation notice (or stage 3 of security statuses).

My regional manager (a wonderful Ukrainian woman who was on the phone the entire 5 hour car ride to our consolidation point) called me the next morning and said that she was coming to get me in a Peace Corps van later that afternoon to take me to the consolidation point down near the Moldovan boarder. But rest assured though, we were only consolidating for a few days. She had picked up the other volunteer who lived in Kyivska Oblast (we were the only 2 volunteers in that oblast) who I hadn’t met yet (there was a planned “meet your neighbor” event that was coming up where we would have met along with all the other volunteers in region 3 but, you know, circumstances). As we drove out of my town, we passed the administration building were, low and behold, a PEACEFUL, mind you, peaceful, protest was taking place. I had heard rumors of protests happening in my town but that was the first time I actually saw it. On the way out of Bohuslav we passed on of the many road blocks that I had been hearing about. This road block (like many I have heard about) was set up by protesters to make sure that those hired thugs didn't make it to the capitol. Thank god we didn't look like hired thugs. 

We picked up one more volunteer on the way and as we were finally embarking on the last 2 hours to our 

hotel we got the email to evacuate.

To be continued…