Ukraine - Burtyn Village (Part 2)
Ohio
Farm
I passed the time by looking at the scenery.
Crossing the bridge over the Dnieper gave us a magnificent view of
Kiev’s skyscrapers and green treetops, which covered both sides of
the river. Everyone in
town was on their way to the market. We shared the highway with
everyone from pedestrians, to bikers, to horse drawn carts filled
with potatoes or firewood.
Tanya spoke non-stop during the drive, chatting
and joking with Dimitri in Ukrainian.
I could not understand a word they said, of course.
But I knew Tanya had my wellbeing in mind, when she handed
Dimitri and me each bottles of water. During the briefing, I had
been warned never to drink water from the well or river (unless it
was boiled first). I was
grateful to know that Tanya had made sure none of us would have to.
As we left Kiev, we passed into a stretch of
rolling farmland. There
was hardly anything to see along the hills except for the occasional
village, farmstead, or grove of trees.
I’d been expecting to see the
countryside covered with snow, but found that the farmland was dark
green, fading into a white foggy sky.
Aside from the highway traffic, we saw very little activity
anywhere, except a few men on horseback, carrying rifles. They were
hunting foxes and hares, Tanya explained to me. This is a popular
winter sport in the Ukraine.
We reached the Ohio Farm in the mid afternoon.
Dimitri pulled up to the main building, parking between a bus
and a small car. The brick building wasn’t particularly large, only
about two stories tall. Along one side of the building were small
structures roved with corrugated metal sheets, like one often sees
on the houses in pictures from Third World countries.
These structures clashed oddly with the elegant brick patters
on the building’s walls and roof, and the colorful geometric designs
that lined the walls.
Building-1, as this one was called, had just recently been
constructed, along with five round steel grain storage bins, and a
large corn dryer.
Once we stepped through the main doorway we
found ourselves at the end of a long hallway.
We hung our winter coats in a
small reception room. Right next to that room was a briefing room,
where a meeting was already underway.
Across the hall lay the Ohio Farm’s main office, and another
large room filled with tables and chairs set up in classroom style.
Over at the far end of the hall, across from the toilets (as
restrooms in the Ukraine are called) were some benches for workers,
who waited for the bus to take them to a work site or Burtyn
Village. To one side of
the wall sat a cot with a pillow and some blankets.
“The night guard sleeps there,” Tanya said
off-handedly, before I could even ask about the cot, “with his guard
dog.”
We entered the meeting room quietly, and took
our seats in the back row, near the kitchen.
Professor Stranberg was introducing Mr. Sculyak, the last
speaker of the day. Mr.
Sculyak, a bank representative, spoke to us about bank loans,
interest charges and repayment schedules.
Most of the Cooperative members here were unfamiliar with the
concept of individual financing, having never experienced it during
communist rule. Mr. Sculyak
spoke only in Ukrainian or Russian, so I couldn’t follow what he was
telling us or writing on the flipcharts.
Jetlag was making it hard to stay awake, and my
inability to follow the speaker didn’t help.
But Tanya whispered rough translations to me, so I could
follow along reasonably well.
Basically, Mr. Sculyak was explaining the long-term real
estate mortgage program, which was available to the cooperative
members. The National
Bank was running this program, to help former collective workers
acquire land to start their own family farms.
Sculyak stressed the
importance of the repayment schedule, and of the annual interest
payments. When the meeting
was adjourned, virtually everyone in the room went outside for a
smoke, before boarding the bus.
Professor Stranberg introduced himself to me.
“My name is Donald,” he said in a loud voice, “but I go by
‘Don’ around here.”
He didn’t have much time to talk. Don was a
retired PHD from the Ohio State University, and was now responsible
for managing the USAID Burtyn Village project. The tall, boisterous
man was constantly on the move, always with paperwork in his hands.
He had recently returned to
the Ukraine, after a Christmas Leave to be with his family in Ohio,
and perhaps had some catching-up to do with his work.
Natalie, Don’s interpreter, was busy helping
the housekeeper, Katherine, with washing the dishes (from lunch) and
mopping the floor. Don invited me to his office, and asked Natalie
to bring us each a cup of “mud.” This
was what Don, an avid coffee drinker, called the instant coffee that
he’d gotten from the markets—the only type available. As we sipped
our “mud,” Don filled me in on the history of the Ohio Farm. During
its years under communist rule, it had been the Teofipol Collective.
Now reconstructed as a
cooperative, it had been recently renamed Burtyn Village
Cooperative. At 7,500
hectares (18,000 acres), the Burtyn Village Cooperative was among
the largest farming operations in the Ukraine.
The entire cooperative lay within the Khmelnytsky Oblast.
This farm cooperative
specialized mainly in corn, wheat, barley, sugar beets and buck
wheat.
As with my other trips, the purpose of this
USAID project was to educate and train the members on the principals
of a democratically organized cooperative, with elected officers.
These workers of the new Burtyn Village Cooperative had never
partaken in open meetings to elect officers.
It seemed that Voladimir, the former Director of the Teofipol
Collective and now self-appointed president of the Burtyn
Cooperative, had been continuing to run the cooperative like a
communist operation. Voladimir, a devout communist, wasn’t very open
to the idea of running things like a democracy. Don, in turn, wasn’t
too happy with Voladimir’s leadership decisions (to put it mildly).
Sergi, the son whom Voladimir had appointed to
Farm Manager, timidly stepped into the room.
He was also serving as Don’s driver, and had apparently come
to remind him of something important.
I didn’t catch what was said, but the next minute, Don had
stood up and was putting on his jacket.
Don turned to me. “It’s been a long day,” he
sighed, zipping up his coat. “I suggest you and Tanya go to the
Guest House. Sandra, the cook, will fix dinner for you tonight, and
I’ll see you at breakfast in the morning.”
With that, our meeting with Don ended for the day.
by Everil Quist, International Agri-business Consultant
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Everil Quist - President & CEO of QuistSpeaks, LLC
"Enjoy this story about the noble peoples of third world countries. I've truly enjoyed working with them and have many heartwarming and entertaining stories to tell.
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