Prime Minister of Ukraine Yulia Tymoshenko sent a letter last week congratulating President-elect Barack Obama on his victory in the election.

From the Prime Minister’s website:

Members of the Bantu Youth Counci

From their mission

The Bantu Youth Council is an organization of young people committed to improving their literacy and leadership [skills] by engaging in activities that improve academic excellence, promote social interaction, advocate the understanding of Bantu culture, and heighten awareness of the needs of the Bantu community in Western New York and worldwide

Membership is open to anyone at least 14 years of age or attending at least 7th grade.

Meetings are normally held on Monday evenings from 6-8pm. They ask that people bring ideas, opinions, schoolwork and invite others to join. The group offers things like ELA/tutoring, college prep, leadership skills, and outings. Here is a link to some of their activities this year

Sherry Byrnes of the Literacy Volunteers explained the group has been active for about a year now. They are always looking for new and active volunteers.

“Members of the Bantu Youth Council attended Citizen Action’s Alliance for Quality Education first annual International Education Harvest with Junior League mentor Brooke Smith to serve up Bantu culture, history and contemporary community–with a delicious serving of sambusa, a traditional Bantu food made of spicy meat fried in a paper thin shell.  The Bantu Community Organization of Buffalo also provided several other dishes.  The Youth Council invites all youth age 14 or over who share an interest in–and commitment to–the advancement of Bantu people in WNY and elsewhere to join their group.”

-Sherry Byrnes, Literacy Volunteers of Buffalo & Erie County, Inc.

For more information, please contact Sherry at sherry@literacybuffalo.org.

Here is a video of the conference’s featured guest speaker, Abraham Awolich:

Here some of the information and agenda off of a Buffalo Rising post:

Guest scholars, community leaders, college faculty, and students will attend and provide presentations revolving around this theme: “Diversity and Peace: Integrating Inquiry and Action.” All and any community members can attend to watch and listen to the presenters, which will include essays from a competition specifically centered on the Peace Conference, by four finalists selected from around fifty entrees.

The featured guest speaker this year will be Abraham Awolich, a Lost Boy of Sudan who spent years in refugee camps before being resettled in the United States. The Lost Boys of Sudan, some of which are the picture with this post, were a group of around 27,000 boys who were displaced and some orphaned during the Second Sudanese Civil War. Awolich was separated from his family and endured a grueling journey through the desert and other trials as he struggled to survive.

Awolich co-founded NESEI, the New Sudan Education Initiative, which will help children in Sudan get an education by building twenty secondary schools. Their very first school opened in May of this year, and more will follow. Awolich will give a presentation at 1:35 PM about his organization, a video of which can be found here [I embedded it above], and his struggles as a Lost Boy of Sudan

Agenda:
9:15 AM - Dr. Muriel A. Howard, Buffalo State College President
9:25 AM - Lisa Morrison-Puckett, UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs
11:40 AM - Milton Rogovin, social-documentary photographer, honored
1 PM - Brenda McDuffie, Buffalo Urban League President
2:15 PM - Awadiya Ahmed-Yahia, Darfur native and activist
3:40 PM - Elea Mihou, WNY Peace Center President
3:50 PM - Clifford Cawthon, Students for Peace President

I apparently lost some posts during the site changes. Unfortunately, I didn’t save them, so they are lost for good.

Leaving Ukraine was hard. I miss my friends and I miss being at the IOM and La Strada. Research, despite all its frustrations, was interesting and challenging. We finished the study on the experience of foreign students after conducting 104 questionnaires and five focus groups at five major universities in Kyiv. I’ll be releasing the results in a full report soon.

I realize I have a lot of blogging to do so I’ll keep this one short and get on to more productive posts. Just wanted to drop a line and let you know I’m alive, and didn’t die from borsch or dioxin poisoning in my last week in Ukraine.

Some pics from my going away party in Kyiv. Clockwise: A candid group shot at Sunduk Pub; Me and fellow Buffalonian, Ellie Valentine; Me and George Itoro Ebong, activist, medical student and someone I miss very much; gifts from my amazing friends. Any guesses as to who the crazy stuffed animal is?

The recent military actions between Georgia and Russia have stirred significant debate about the status of Ukraine as it is also a country in transition that hasn’t quite made up its mind about NATO and has significant ties to Russia.

Although Ukraine is in a different position than Georgia, that does not mean Ukrainians feel safe. It does not mean they feel confident that Russia would never turn its resentful glare backed by military power towards Ukraine. In fact, some feel that because Russia moved into Georgia, Ukraine should never feel comfortable with its position again. And it does not mean the politicians here are not brass enough to do something to really provocative at the expectation that Europe and the U.S. will back them up.

What has Ukraine done so far in its response?

- President Yushchenko just left today for Tbilisi, along with the leaders of Poland, Lithuania and Estonia, to meet with President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia.

- In a more bold move, Ukraine is considering its options for not allowing the Black Sea Fleet to return to the Crimea, from which Russian warships were sent to Georgia. (For those that don’t know, Russia still has a lease on ports in Crimea until 2017. Yushchenko has made it clear he does not support the existence of this arrangement, people living in the Crimea are split on the issue).

In the morning of August 10, the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs informed its Russian counterpart that in order to prevent Ukraine from being drawn into an armed conflict, Ukraine might take measures to prevent the Russian Black Sea Fleet (RBSF) vessels from returning to their base in Sevastopol in the Crimea if they were involved in combat operations against Georgia. This ban might last until the conflict in South Ossetia is “regulated,” the website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine stated. -Eurasia Daily Monitor

- Ukraine has decided not to send military assistance to Georgia, although Russia has accused Ukraine of supplying Georgia with weapons that were used against Russian troops.

The last two points are already eliciting some rather threatening language from Moscow.

“The Ukrainian government, which has been enthusiastically arming Georgian troops from top to bottom, was in fact encouraging Georgia to attack and carry out ethnic cleansing in South Ossetia,” the ministry said in a statement on its website www.mid.ru. -Reuters

Russian statements took on more ominous tones later that evening after Russian troops began an assault on the Georgian city of Gori. The Ukrayinska Pravda website quoted a spokesman for the Russian Foreign Ministry as saying, “The actions by the Ukrainian side are contrary to Ukrainian-Russian agreements and are hostile to the Russian Federation.” At approximately the same time, Interfax, citing information released by the Russian navy, reported that a Georgian military ship had been sunk by the Russian fleet off the coast of Abkhazia. -EDM

It is all risk-taking for Ukraine. With the West showing little ability to be able to respond effectively to the situation and Russia touting justifications for its actions, Ukraine is in a vulnerable position. Yushchenko has a long standing anti-Moscow relationship with the Georgian president. Is Ukraine in as vulnerable a position as Georgia was before the conflict? No. However, Ukraine is not in NATO, Russia feels the same resentment towards Ukraine about its Western ambitions, and Ukraine is tied through economic and energy ties with Russia that it can’t afford to break. Russia knows all of this meaning that Russia has all the tools to reassert its influence over Ukraine.

Recent articles on the situation:
Russia Steps Up Its Push; West Faces Tough Choices, New York Times, August 12, 2008
ANALYSIS-US has few options in Russia-Georgia conflict, Reuters, August 12, 2008
Sarkozy off to Moscow, Tbilisi to discuss Georgia crisis, AFP, August 12, 2008

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UPDATE

Literally, during the moments I was posting this, news came that Russia has decided to halt operation in Georgia.

From the BBC:

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has ordered an end to military operations against Georgia, the Kremlin says.

He told officials he had taken the decision to end the operation after restoring security for civilians and peacekeepers in South Ossetia…

Before the announcement, there were fresh reports of Russian warplanes bombing the Georgian town of Gori.

Witnesses told the BBC that several people were killed when a bomb hit a hospital in the town, which is 10 miles (15km) from the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali.

A reporter for Reuters news agency said several bombs exploded in front of his vehicle, while a photographer for the agency spoke of seeing dead and injured people lying in the streets.

News of Mr Medvedev’s decision emerged as French President Nicolas Sarkozy arrived in Moscow expecting to press Russia on the need for a ceasefire.

According to a statement, Mr Medvedev told his defence minister and chief of staff that “the goal has been attained”.

“I’ve decided to finish the operation to force the Georgian authorities to peace. The safety of our peacekeeping forces and civilian population has been restored.

“The aggressor has been punished, having sustained considerable losses. Its armed forces have been disorganised,” he added.

The BBC’s James Rodgers, in Moscow, said there is no sign yet that Russia is willing to engage in talks with the government in Tbilisi.

Of course, this pales in comparison to the crowd of over 40,000 that came out for the celebration in Hyde Park. 46,664 to be exact.

The 46664 Campaign:

46664 is an African response to the global HIV AIDS epidemic that invites the whole world to take the fight in hand. It’s our aim to raise awareness overall and educate the younger generations in particular. By gaining global backing for the cause, we will also raise funds to directly assist the many HIV AIDS projects we support. We intend to do this by using our international ambassadors to spread our messages of hope, our calls to action, our pleas for compassion and our requests for assistance and support for those living with HIV AIDS.

46664 (we say four, double six, six four) was Nelson Mandela’s prison number when he was imprisoned on Robben Island, off Cape Town in South Africa. He was jailed in 1964 for 27 years for leading the liberation movement against apartheid and for his impassioned stance on the rights of everyone to live in freedom. He was prisoner number 466, imprisoned in 1964. The Robben Island prisoners were never referred to by their names, but rather by their numbers and year of imprisonment - hence 46664 was Nelson Mandela’s number…

It was for precisely this reason that Mr. Mandela decided to use this powerful, symbolic number in the fight against HIV AIDS. Through this simple, poignant means he has demonstrated and communicated to the world that people must never be reduced to simple numbers - we are human beings, all equal, and those infected and living with HIV AIDS have the same right to live and to be treated as equals…

It is continually imperative for us at 46664 to make an impact on a global scale in order to draw attention to the HIV AIDS issue; so far we have had success thanks to a worldwide audience of over 1 billion people either viewing or listening to our concerts on TV, radio and the internet…

We will continue to produce these unique concerts combining international, local and African artists joining together symbolically onstage to demonstrate their support for Mr. Mandela’s 46664 campaign. We will also be staging significant sporting and other entertainment events worldwide. Nevertheless a major part of our effort now will involve promoting community outreach campaigns that will encourage people to participate in discussions, educational activities, volunteer work and prevention, care and treatment support programmes. To do this we often partner with governments, NGOs and the private sector.

Happy 90th Birthday, Nelson Mandela.

The above quote came from Savik Schuster, whose show, Svoboda, is a popular political discussion and debate forum that attracts some of Ukraine’s most prominent personalities to banter over topics while a live audience electronically agrees or disagrees with the statements of the speaker.

He said, “It seems to me that Lutsenko has gone crazy.” Yuriy Lutsenko, who is the current Minister of Interior of Ukraine, made a statement on Tuesday that has ignited debate not only in Ukraine, but has attracted media attention in Russia and other CIS countries.

From Unian:

Interior Minister of Ukraine Yuri Lutsenko is opposed to attracting foreign workforce in Kyiv.

Thus, speaking at a session in the Kyiv Directorate of the Interior Ministry of Ukraine, the Minister asked the citizenship, immigration, and natural persons registrations department chief about how many residence permits were given to people from the far abroad. Having heard the answer “seventy”, Yuri Lutsenko said: “Do we lack our own workforce? If you want to go to China – you may buy a ticket and often go there on vacation. You may call me a racist, but I will not allow to turn Kyiv into another Kharkiv or Odessa. The instruction is as follows: we give a residence permit only if he marries to our girl. Because shortly I will have to invite the Vietnamese or Chinese to work in police instead of you!”.

Remember that World Bank report that said Ukraine needs more foreign workers to sustain economic growth because of population issues, etc.? Well, apparently Lutsenko disagrees and this is how he chose to express himself. Not to worry, though. Here comes his press agency to the rescue:

The Press Service of the Ministry of Interior has just confirmed Lutsenko’s recent statements, however noted that Mr. Lutsenko’s comments should not be taken so literally, and all he was trying to do is make a point ‘that
registration of aliens is a very serious issue’.

“The Minister’s concern is based on the fact that foreigners in Kyiv committed three times more crimes against Kyivites than crimes committed by Ukrainians against foreigners. This year we deported to their historical homeland 1309 individuals of whom 485 are from the Caucases. It is this category (Caucases) who steal and rob. The Minister, who is aware of these statistics, acted in defence of his own citizens”.

In fact, this defense isn’t even creative. The Russian government has been known for quoting the exact same reasons for slacking on combating racist and xenophobic violence within its borders. Yet when these numbers are quoted, the corruption that occurs in the court systems, particularly in dealing with cases against foreigners is, of course, never mentioned. The lack of respect for legal or human rights during the court process is not mentioned. As well, in Ukraine, the recorded number of attacks against foreigners is far below the actual number of violent crimes committed because they’re often too scared to go to the police. And not without reason. And, for example, these statistics also include the arrests of foreigners who have defended themselves after being attacked.

Can you see why Ukraine will have an extremely difficult time combating the rise of racist and xenophobic violence if even the top level of the government cannot look at the problems and issues for what they are, and instead merging everything together to create an unclear and misleading picture of the situation?

One of the most famous sites in Kyiv - the Pecherska Lavra

Another view of the Lavra, however this time you can see Rodina Mat, as well. Or as she is so fondly known to us: the Iron Maiden.

First, Happy Birthday Mom!

And Happy belated Independence Day. Unfortunately, being a Fulbright doesn’t get you an invitation to the fancy Embassy 4th of July Party and it looks like the American Chamber of Commerce Picnic is going to be rained out today. Oh well. To be honest, I see fireworks from my apartment almost every night so they’ve sadly lost their charm.

Here are some pictures of Kyiv I took the other day while wandering near Universitet metro:

A Ministry building of some sort:

Lovely fountain:

Well, I have officially moved on to my extension project. The focus has significantly narrowed. At first, I had planned to do more review of research than original research by collecting and drawing connections between existing material (the little there is) on the rise of xenophobic violence and attitudes in Ukraine. Now, I will be concentrating on the experience of foreign students in Kyiv. There is only one pre-existing study that we know of, so it is going to be more original research than I had intended to collect, but I think it will be worth it. Over the next two months, we will be gathering focus groups of students from a selection of Kyiv’s universities to find out what the process has been like from the beginning (in their home country) to the point they are at now, and how their experiences in Ukraine have affected them. Just from collecting background information and making initial student contacts, I think this is going to be a really interesting project and it will say a lot not only about the life of international students in Ukraine, but also about the larger situation facing foreigners in Kyiv and the Ukrainian higher educational system.

I spent a semester of my own in an Ukrainian university in Chernivtsi (voted, by the way, to be the best city in Ukraine to live in. Sorry, available in Russian only) I never had to deal directly with the administration of the university, but I also never feared for my safety the way my African student friends here do. Just from reports from students who have attempted to talk to their administrators to address their concerns and improve safety on campuses, it seems the administrations are fairly inaccessible and lack a serious attitude about the threatening situation facing their students.

I should probably explain the title of the post at some point, right? From my apartment in Kyiv, I can either walk or take buses or marshrutkas to wherever I need to go. The 527 is one of those marshrutkas, and yesterday, I passed up my 2 hryvnia bill and patiently waited for my change. As I noticed the driver was not making any effort to pass the change back to me, I looked above the windshield to see that the price had jumped up to 2 hryvnias a ride from it’s original 1.75. To put it into perspective, it’s not that big of a jump. 2 hryvnias is roughly 44 cents. But still! Inflation is taking its toll and the dollar is slowly, but surely dropping in value in Ukraine. I guess the hryvnia couldn’t stay at 5 to the dollar forever. It has since 2005.

Inflation, however, is definitely making life harder with an overall rate somewhere between 25 and 31%. Everything from rent prices to taxis to the price of meat and fruit is going up, up, up. When (if) I leave to come back to Buffalo on September 10th, I may be getting out just in time to save a few bucks.

Speaking of coming back to Buffalo, I’m going to need a job. Anybody have any ideas? After seeing that the U.S. lost another 62,000 jobs, I’m feeling a little nervous.