Korop

Last week we went to go visit the little town of Korop, which has a population of about 5,000, to see what the size was. We were visiting another PCV who was working with the local government and had a bunch of projects going on, including the building of the town's first internet cafe. You could pretty much walk anywhere in the town in about 10 minutes. It had a cute little park in the center of town, a bizarre that was only there on Wednesdays (so you'd have to plan your food budget around the fact that you could only get things on Wednesdays), and a cute little museum with all these artifacts dating back from the 12th century (old scraps of pottery and such) to WWII and the Great Famine.

It was really interesting to see the differences, not only in the size of the town, but the attitude of the people there. Everyone was so friendly and welcoming, and loved the fact that we were trying to speak Russian! They were all very surprised and please by our really bad Russian, because I think just the fact that we were attempting was flattering to them. This is totally different to the majority of Chirnigiv, who aren't as patient with our lack of Russian skills. The government agency was also pretty cool to see, just to see how things work in a small town. It was very similar to a small town in the States compared to the big, bad city. That's the closest I can think of to a good comparison. The government structure here, on the other hand, is very different and hard to comprehend or explain. Basically, the gyst of it is that Ukraine is made up of 27 oblasts. Each Oblast has regions, and each region has cities and towns. Each city, region and oblast has its own council or governement, depending on the level (very much like State, County, City in America). However, each town and city collects taxes not for the city or region, but for the State of Ukraine. Once this money is collected, it's then sent to Kiev, where the government redistributes as they see fit. That means that while some of the most populated areas are bringing in the most taxes, they're probably not getting the same amount back in the redistribution, and their budgets are therefor lower than they'd like. Which means that everyone suffers because not enough money is being brought into areas that need it. This also brings about a lot of corruption, because if the government is redistributing the money as they see fit, how do they determine what is "fit"? Think about that for a while. Anyhoo, that's the overall government structure (confused? So am I). And to see it actually in the works on the local level and see what works and doesn't was fascinating.

This visit pretty much came at an ideal time, because on Wednesday we have our site placement interviews, where we sit down with some head honchos and they discuss our resumes and skills and we can make requests for where we'd prefer to get placed permanently. Not to say that it'll happen, but we at least can get a word in about it. So seeing the difference in size and everything was very helpful. What size town do I want? Who the hell knows. . . honestly, I'm pretty easy. I'll be happy whatever and wherever, so long as I have a bed, toilet, and some sort of running water (even it's just cold water, which is likely to happen). Oh, and IF PEOPLE START KEEPING IN TOUCH! (That's everyone's nice warning. Don't make me put on my new and improved stone cold face).