Today is a pretty significant anniversary. Ten years ago, March 27, 2006, I came to
Ukraine for the very first time. It was
just a two-week visit, and I had no idea at that time that it would be the
start of a ten-year odyssey that would be arguably the most remarkable period
of my life.
The Arrival
I really didn’t know what to expect when my plane touched down in
Boryspil early that Monday. It was the culmination of a wild weekend. I had
just returned to Denver Saturday morning from a week-long business trip to
Peru, and I had only a day to organize, pack and prepare for my two weeks in
Ukraine. I left Denver Sunday morning, and owing to time-zone changes, arrived
in Kyiv early Monday afternoon.
I was dog-tired as I got off the last of the three planes that
carried me from Denver to Kyiv. Going through passport control was a bit
intimidating that first time, but it’s gotten better since then. After emerging
from customs, I looked around for the guide I was expecting but whose face was
unknown. A young girl named Marina soon greeted me and we were off in a taxi to
find my hotel. And so it all began.
Why I Came
My reason for coming that first time – although I am loathe to
admit it – was that I had gotten involved in the online scam of websites that
promote dating and marriage with women from the former Soviet Union. I really
didn’t know much about this “industry” and had gotten into it accidentally in
2005 while researching things to do in Almaty, Kazakhstan, where I thought I
would be working. Up until that point, Ukraine had never entered my mind as a
destination for any reason.
But as it turned out, I received letters from a number of women in
Ukraine and struck up some correspondence with a couple of them, one of whom
seemed particularly interesting. She invited me to come and meet her. The
situation in Kazakhstan didn’t work out, so I decided to make the trip. About
two weeks before I was due to arrive, I got a letter that she had suddenly become
engaged. That seemed really strange, and I figured out soon after that the
woman probably never really existed; the letters were likely written by an
agency employee and the photos were probably fake.
But it was too late to cancel, so I made the trip. I found an
independent translation agency in an eastern city called Kharkiv, and they sent
a translator/guide to help me. I did meet a couple of other women, but I
quickly figured out that the whole thing was a scam. The women were “professional
daters,” whose game was to meet a succession of men who would take them out to
nice dinners or shows, and then leave.
The whole “industry” had bad people on both sides: cynical women
who scam clueless foreign men for money and despicable guys who travel to these countries
as “sex tourists,” using the nicer and more vulnerable girls for a week of sex
and then never being in contact again. I wanted no further part of that, and I
was embarrassed to have been involved with it at all.
That was the bad part. But there were some good points of my two
weeks in Kyiv; a lot, in fact.
A Turning Point
I saw many different and interesting places in the city and had a
lot of fun, mostly with my hired guide. Having learned some Russian years
before, it was interesting to be in the midst of the Russian and Ukrainian
languages. Even the sore spots of the city – street beggars, dull Soviet-era
architecture, and horrible drivers – were intriguing in their own way.
At one point, while we were returning to the center from a visit
to an open-air museum of historical Ukrainian building styles, I looked out the
window at the people going about their business. We were in traffic, moving
slowly through a mixed neighborhood of residential and small-business
buildings. The houses were typically dull five-to nine-level apartment buildings, and
the streets were dotted with grocery stores and other small businesses.
Suddenly the thought came to me: I could live here. It was a feeling I’ve had in few other places in
my life; throughout my many travels, only Colorado and Ireland come to mind.
Sure, language was an issue, but I could learn, I could adapt. After all, I had learned enough Spanish to get by pretty well in Peru.
I was at a point in my life where something inside of me was crying
out for change. It’s something I had gone through several times in the past. I
seem to need some kind of change – big change – every five to eight years or
so. Ten years ago, I was feeling that need, and in Kyiv, the seed of change
began to take root.
Before Kyiv
I had been working for a small project management company for
almost eight years, and it had been great. Doing that kind of work and being
asked to join that company was something I never could have anticipated when it
happened in 1998. I worked with good people, had interesting adventures in
places like South America and Kazakhstan, and had regained the high level of
professional self-esteem that had taken some hits in the early ‘90s.
And I was doing very well financially. By 2006, I was living in a
comfortable, cabin-style house on four acres of forest in the beautiful
foothills of the Rocky Mountains. My home was a retreat from the city, and I
had nature and quiet around me most of the time. It was the second house I had bought
since I started at that company, the first having been a new-construction home
in a Denver suburb. I had two pickup trucks, the second being a new
Nissan Titan with all the bells and whistles. That allowed me to let my
daughters use my other truck as they needed, and I enjoyed being able to do
that.
I had a lot of other creature comforts as well. From a material
point of view, my life had never been better. And I was able to travel and see
new places, mostly in conjunction with my work. It all seemed pretty good. But
something was missing.
The biggest part of that something was probably what led me to
take a chance on the dating website that discovered me while preparing for
Kazakhstan: loneliness. I had been living alone, without a love in my life, for
too long. We men don’t like to admit such weaknesses, but there it was; it’s
hard to deny that it was a big factor.
But there was more to it than that. Between 2001 and the end of
2003, I had been involved in a difficult and, at times, nasty environmental cleanup project outside
of Chicago. For the final six months of the project, I had become the sole
onsite manager from my company’s side.
Dealing with the people around the project, particularly the
residents and the local politicians was absolutely terrible. Most of the people
were just looking for ways to extort money from our client, a large utility
company, and the politicians were using every means possible, truthful or not,
to castigate the utility company and advance their own political careers.
That area in and around Chicago was (and remains) completely
controlled by the Democratic party, and we were at the mercy of liberal
politicians. I learned firsthand how nasty and downright evil they can be. At
the end, I was exhausted and very cynical.
For the next several years, I got more involved in some South
American mining projects, which seemed great. But again, politics and other
factors intruded to sap my enthusiasm for the projects. It seemed as though all
we did was create feasibility studies, but we never got on the ground to
actually build anything. And during this time we had some very bad internal
incidents that jaded my feelings about the company. It had become time for me
to do something else.
Something Different
Coming to Kyiv ten years ago was not just a desperate attempt to
find love; I was also moved by the sense of adventure. I was going to Ukraine,
a place that used to be part of the dreaded Soviet Union. In a previous life as
a Navy intelligence analyst, the USSR had been my primary target, and going there
was beyond impossible. But in 2006, there I was. It was a fantastic adventure.
When I had that feeling on the bus that I could live there, I paid
attention to it. Being at that “need for change” point in my life, I wondered
what I might do in such a place as Ukraine. I didn’t think too seriously about
it at that moment, but I kept it in the back of my mind as I returned to Colorado
and went about my project management work.
After the trip, I continued to correspond with my guide, and those
e-mails fed my thought process about making a life change. More and more, I
knew that I needed to do something different. A few months later, in May or
June, I had a lengthy online chat with the owner of the translation company in
Kharkiv that had provided the guide for me. I wanted to know what I might do
for work if I came to Ukraine and wondered what she knew about teaching English
there. I had a vision of a simpler life in which I would write and teach
English.
In the course of the conversation, we discussed working together
within the framework of the company she had been trying to build, expanding it
and registering it in the United States. We would become business partners. In
addition to writing and teaching, I would help manage and market this company;
we would grow it as a translation and interpreting company focused on business
and tourist clients. At that time, it looked like Ukraine was poised to be an
emerging market for such services.
Also, I would continue my business writing and editing work, but
on a freelance basis, and we would fold it into the overall offerings of the
new company. It all sounded pretty good, and I began making concrete plans.
The Result
That talk led to another trip to Ukraine at the end of 2006 during
which we set further plans and organized a team. It also led to my resigning
from the project management company. It was a very amicable resignation, and I
continued to do work for them, and for some other local companies, as an
independent contractor for several years.
In early 2007, some cracks began to show in our business
partnership, but I had made my choices, and there was no looking back. In May
of 2007, I came back to Ukraine to spend a month working together on the
business, which I had registered in Colorado, and to do some business writing
workshops at several local universities.
Later that summer, I sold my house in the mountains. It was a sad
moment to pack up and drive away from my beautiful refuge, but I was now headed
in a new and different direction, and it wasn’t financially possible to keep
the house at the same time. A few months later, in September, I rented my first
long-term apartment in Kharkiv, and by May of 2008 I had become a full-time
resident.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
The Years Since
There have been a lot of ups and downs over the years that I have
lived here. I’ve experienced personal highs and lows, and I’ve seen the country
go through enormous convulsions. But both Ukraine and I seem to be surviving.
When I first arrived in 2006, Ukraine was in the second year of
the Yushchenko government. He was the president who had been elected during the
Orange Revolution of late 2004, beating the kleptocrat Viktor Yanukovich. There
were high hopes that the Yushchenko government would rein in the thieving
oligarchs, reform the country’s corrupt institutions, and bring real democracy
to Ukraine. But even by the time I arrived, people were starting to lose faith.
As it turned out, the Yushchenko government was a failure, mainly
due to infighting between his camp and the camp of his Orange Revolution
partner, then Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko. As a result, the arch-kleptocrat Yanukovich won the
presidential election in January 2010, and “thug” government began to return.
“Tax police” raided businesses to exact bribes, and a whole slew of shady government
authorities got rich from the public coffers.
At the end of 2013, people had had enough, and in November, a
small protest movement began on the Maidan in Kyiv. It became known as
Euromaidan, and by February 2014, after the killing of 100 protesters by the
government, democratic forces swept Yanukovich and his cronies out of office. A
caretaker government took control while new elections could be organized, and a
few months later, the current president, Petro Poroshenko, took office.
In the meantime, Russia, which had long pulled the strings on
Yanukovich, began to move against the new Ukrainian government in early 2014.
First, they took control of Crimea and then annexed it after a trumped-up
referendum. Then they set about creating trouble in eastern Ukraine in concert with the existing criminal element in that region. That trouble
took hold in Donetsk and Lugansk and evolved into the war that has been ongoing
since the middle of 2014. For many months, there was a real fear that Russia
would stage a full invasion of Ukraine. We were very nervous.
I saw firsthand in March of 2014 how Russian provocateurs tried to
foment upheaval in Kharkiv. Thousands of Russians had come into the city on
March 1st to stir up locals who supported Russia over their own government. I personally witnessed a scene in which tens of thousands of people crowded Kharkiv’s main
square and angrily egged on thugs who were beating Euromaidan supporters. It
was ugly.
We all worried about Kharkiv going the same way as Donetsk,
especially with Russian military units only 30 kilometers away across the
border. But, thankfully, nothing materialized, and Kharkiv has remained
relatively safe and very Ukrainian. Still, we all know that Russia is not far
away, and one day it could all come crashing down.
And the Economy
When I arrived in Kyiv for the first time in 2006, the currency
exchange rate was about five hryvnias to the dollar. As an American with
dollars, everything seemed remarkably cheap. When the worldwide financial
crisis hit in late 2008, the exchange rate jumped briefly to 10 to one, and
then settled down to an average of about eight hyrvnias to one dollar. It
stayed that way for about four years, and we were all able to live with that,
and despite inflation, the cost of living was still pretty good overall.
But in early 2014, it all came undone. The exchange rate shot up
quickly: 12 to one, then climbing to 15 to one, and then past 20 to one. It
settled down again for a while, but the news of Ukraine’s failing economy the
past months caused the rate to spike again, and the rates have been in the
range of 26 or 27 hyrvnias to one dollar. Quite a change from when I first
arrived.
But the currency exchange rate isn’t the only problem. Ukraine’s
economic output since the beginning of 2014 has plummeted due to lack of
industrial production in the warring eastern region. As a result, Ukraine has been unable to pay its debts, and inflation
has skyrocketed. Food prices have risen multiple times, and energy prices have
gone through the roof. Because I and other people working in IT get paid on a
dollar basis, we do all right. But for millions of others, especially older
people living on meager government pensions, it’s very difficult.
Once again, Ukraine sits at the edge of economic and political disaster. Infighting is tearing the government apart, and it appears to be only a matter of time before a key member of the post-Euromaidan government, Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, is forced out. That will fracture the governing coalition. It all seems like just more of the same.
When I first arrived, and for some years thereafter, most people I
talked with were not thinking seriously about leaving the country. There were
some who wanted to emigrate, but most had the notion of making Ukraine better.
In the past year or so, however, I have encountered far more people who have
given up and decided their lives would be better in Western Europe or North America.
These days, I have a lot of former students and a few good friends who are now
living elsewhere.
My Ten Years
The business we had planned, Nova Mova, failed. The financial
crisis of 2008-09 had a lot to do with that: it became very hard to get client
work. But also, it turned out that my business partner was extremely dishonest
and incompetent. By early 2010, the company was no more.
But in the meantime, I had cultivated a good body of work as an
English teacher. It started with doing speaking clubs at a local language
school, and before long, I had individuals asking for private lessons. In the
fall of 2008, I was invited to come several times a week to give speaking clubs
at a local software development company, EPAM Systems – the company at which I
work full-time now.
I added another large IT company, Global Logic, to my list of work
in the fall of 2009, and my schedule was further filled out with private
students. At the end of 2009, I dropped the language school and became focused
on providing teaching services to IT companies and private students. Soon I had more work than I could handle. I wasn’t
writing as much as I had planned, but I was doing a LOT of teaching.
More important, I think, I was growing. I was changing as a person
and developing as a teacher. New ideas came to me – ways to more directly help
the students I had with the kinds of business English skills they actually
needed. After decades of different kinds of work, I had really found my niche.
I was doing what I was meant to do.
Now I work full-time for EPAM, which has grown to more than 1,000 employees in Kharkiv alone, and more than 4,000 in Ukraine. It keeps me very busy, and with that level of work, I've had to cut back to just a few private students. But I enjoy what I do – something I have not always been able to say about past jobs.
Living in Eastern Europe has afforded me opportunities to
travel that I wouldn’t have had otherwise. I’ve made several trips
to Switzerland to visit my daughter and her family, which has been a real joy.
I’ve also been able to see a bit of Italy, France, Denmark, Austria and Hungary. Last
year I took a real resort vacation to the south of Turkey. And I am still
thinking about making a return to Ireland someday soon. All of that has been
great.
Throughout these ten years of my Ukrainian life, I’ve had a number
of special friends and unique acquaintances. And I’ve built a LOT of memories.
There are a couple of people here I would count among the best friends I have
ever had in my life, and if I hadn’t come, I would never have met them.
In these years I’ve also felt the hope of love and the sting of heartbreak. I still live alone; that hasn’t changed. Perhaps this points out that
this kind of relationship is something I’m just not meant to have in this
life. Maybe it’s just a tough lesson of karma. Who knows?
Maybe it’s more related to the one thing about living here that
perhaps does not fit: age. For all of these years, I’ve been an older man living
among much younger people. My friends and acquaintances are all many years
younger. I know no one over 40 and very few over 35. Very often, I find myself
wishing I was a lot younger; lately I’ve thought about that a lot. But I am
not – and there it is.
But all of that aside, my life here has been good. I sometimes
reminisce about the house in the mountains and listening to the sweet, calming sounds of a Colorado forest on a warm summer day. But aside from that, I have no regrets.
I am where I am meant to be, around people I am meant to be with, doing what I
am meant to do. I think a lot of people would have trouble honestly saying the
same.
The Future?
Maybe I shouldn’t try to look ahead for now. I’ve thought a number
of times over the past four or five years that I probably should leave. But I am still here. Maybe that's because I've been not ready – or afraid – to make another change. Or maybe it's because on some level I still feel like I belong here. I'm not sure.
I really was primed to quit Ukraine after a series of bad
events in 2013, but then someone came along late that year who made me want to
stay and see what might happen. The jury is still out on that, but I’m not
quite ready to pull up stakes and move on. (UPDATE: The jury came in, and nothing good came of it.)
And I have great work now. There are challenges, and sometimes I
feel like pulling my hair out (if I had any to pull) over corporate bureaucracy
and such. But still, I find myself most days feeling pretty good about what I
am doing. I’ve finally gotten myself to start doing some serious writing on a
book. Again it’s all good, and it might be for naught if I give up on Ukraine
now.
But there is that urge to change. It’s a part of me. Maybe I need
to leave, or maybe I just need to make some other kind of big life change
without going anywhere. I don’t know the answer to that yet, but I do realize
that I am overdue to make some kind of big change. So, either way, I guess some
big things are still in the offing.
All I know for sure is that my arrival in this country 10 years
ago was not an accident: there was a purpose behind it. The life I’ve lived
since then, including the very hard parts, has been the life I’ve needed to
live. And I am glad for every moment of it.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
