My job with the Ukrainian Association of Retired People

During 2009 I worked as the webmaster for the Ukrainian Association of Retired People, UARP. It goes under three names, echoing the national differences among the organizations after which it patterns itself. America's AARP is one model. The European Senior Citizens Union, ESCU, is another; our acronym in German is USU. Lastly, in Russian and Ukrainian we are called the VAP, or the All-Ukrainian Association of Pensioners.

That is the reality. Any senior citizen in a former communist country is automatically a pensioner. The pensions are not much -- $100 -$150 a month on average -- but everybody gets one starting at age 50 for women and 55 for men. Needless to say, this class of people, one third of Ukraine's population of about 45 million, has been very affected by the double squeeze this year. The griven has fallen 40%, from about 5 to the dollar to about 8, and the price of commodities such as natural gas continues to rise.  The UARP represents people who really need help from some quarter.

I translated the stuff that appears on the web in English and German.  When I arrived nothing had been translated into English since 2006. Whatever you see that as more recent is my work. I translated letters in German to and from both English and Russian. Of course I needed other people to clean up the finished product in German and Russian, but the exercise gives me a great deal of practice.

I worked for a truly great fellow named Oleg Kravchenko, who celebrated his 71st birthday when I was there. Oleg has wonderful stories to tell about life in the Soviet Union and opinions to share about almost everything, especially the United States. I have to say I agree with him most of the time. We Americans stick our nose into things that are none of our business, and we have an appalling ignorance of most of the world, at this moment most especially the Moslem world. Churchill knew better than to get involved in the Middle East, and wrote extensively about it. Can't anybody read?  Obama, the man of change, is following right in George W's footsteps.  Oleg showed me a series of photos in paper showing George W's smiling face morphing in five steps into that of Barrack.  Scary!

Oleg spent a lot of time trying to teach me Russian. We worked on vocabulary, which is reasonably successful. We also worked on pronunciation which is frustrating to us both. There are pronunciation differences that I simply cannot hear. This is nothing new of course. Even in high school I could not hear the difference between my pronunciation of a "U" in the French pronunciation. This has been a problem in every language I have learned, but I accept the fact that I will sound like an American whatever I do. I need to get Oleg to accept this inevitability as well.

Working in their office was a lot of fun. The office staff are mostly women. We had an office party for Christmas/New Year's and another one for Oleg's birthday. Work knocks off about 2:00 and there is a handsome spread of food and quite a bit of beer, wine, vodka and cognac.  Ukraine does not get much credit for its wine and cognac, but it is good stuff. All it needs is some American entrepreneur to give it a brand name and start importing it.

The office parties involved endless rounds of toasts. You learn to be a little careful how much you drink at each one. It also involves quite a bit of dancing, and I will say to our credit that Oleg and I danced more than anybody else even though we are the oldest ones there.a good time is had by all.

Here is a picture of the two of us in our office. I think he was happy for somebody to talk to, and I am certainly pleased that he shares his wisdom with me. Here is a link to the website I maintain. If you follow it and read my English translations, I think you will get a pretty good overview of the Ukrainian perspective with regard to Russia, the financial crisis, and whatever else is affecting today's world.