Trips to the sea- part one with a farm tour

Somewhere at the Black Sea

In part one I will review our trip that ended a week ago, a fast trip (well when the road was good) over to Odessa to pick up our translator Nelly for the school year. Nelly left us several months ago when her mother had a stroke. She took care of her at home in her mother's apartment near Odessa after she was a patient for two weeks in the hospital (standard hospital practice in Ukraine as she was considered hopeless) until she passed away in July.

Garry and I met with a Canadian guy I had met on the plane in Toronto for lunch in Zaporosia Sunday afternoon, slipping out of church early (you don't really slip out of church in the village, everyone bids you goodbye). He was with a Canadian- Ukrainian group that works with orphans and other charitable groups here. It was an interesting two hours, at Puszata Hata (restaurant) we even talked about the possibility of opening a battered women's shelter in the area.


Around two in the afternoon we headed out of the city south toward Melitopol and then turned toward Odessa. Some of the roads were quite bad in some districts, but there were places with lovely new pavement, which is the sum of most driving in Ukraine these days, as some road repaving is taking place all over the country. It seems that they hope replace the old hole and patch filled ones, bit by bit.

Garry was hoping to get to the area close to the Black Sea near Odessa before nightfall, but we didn't quite make it. However, we pulled off the road near Odessa just after dark and found the sea and a resort town, I can't remember the name, but we bought a fridge magnet, I'll have to find it.
 We parked on the street walked to the waterfront, and eating a bit (and paying to use a toilet), we found a hotel, right across the street from where we'd parked. After being shown the regular room, we checked into the deluxe room, with a queen bed instead of two singles.

 We spent two nights and one day (Labor Day in North America) relaxing before returning to reality. We ate out, pizza the first night (best pizza I've had in Ukraine) staying up until 11 pm- late for Garry- and breakfast at the same restaurant the next morning, after sleeping in to eight am. That day we walked around, went for a swim and ate shaslik at night. We had an earlier bedtime the second night since we planned on leaving at 6:30 am to meet Nelly at the train station in Odessa at 8 am.

More food than we could eat

We woke up at 6:28, but packed up and left quickly. I am still having trouble sleeping about every other night because of jet lag (the second night I'm exhausted so I go to sleep at the right time) We got there just in time, traffic was heavy in the city Tuesday morning. They have a center lane going into the city that can change with the morning or evening rush hour, you can see it in this photo. Further into the city there were less lanes and we went much slower.

Odessa train station

Nelly arrived about the same time, and after she called the guy we were supposed to visit, we found out we could go and even though the GPS couldn't find it, we eventually got out of the city and headed in the right direction between Nelly and few phone calls back to the guy- on the road to Izmail (we drove through it on the way to Reni four years ago, I think we had the old GPS then.)

While I was taking photos, they were documenting our visit also

This pastor had visited us in Nikolipolia and wanted Garry to see his humanitarian project and ask about what to do with his cows he'd been given (as a side note, don't buy Christian organizations in Ukraine cows unless someone knows how to care for them, it generally does not go well and they do not make money milking them).

chickens upstairs

This group has a number of people living there they care for, some help with the farm; besides a few cows, there are a couple goats and pigs, plus laying hens and chickens for meat. The compound is an old Christian camp, and they have done a lot of work there fixing up the dormitory. They are growing food in a greenhouse.

They had the smallest Belarus tractor I've seen

The meat chickens were upstairs in the barn, here's a look down over the hens
and pigpen, the green house is in the distance

They had one potbelly pig with babies in a shed

The big problem is the climate is dry and the cows have little to eat. After we were shown the cows in the barn they were turned out onto a very brown field after milking. Right now they are in pretty good shape, but they don't have a lot of feed put aside for the winter. They are selling some milk and cheese in the local market right now.







We had a tour of the dorms, they have some people yet from Donetsk region, when the war was new they had 200 people living there. The kitchens are industrial sized but need renovation. They have remodeled a number of bathrooms already and were working on another. He gave Garry a jar of hot tomato sauce he'd made, they were very generous and it sounded like he was planning to retire when he took on this project and was very busy as overseer, manager and pastor.

They kindly offered us tea/coffee and Garry said we had time.  I was hoping it was the usual cookies and maybe candies with tea, so we could eat quickly. They had fried eggs (his wife apologized because lunch was not ready yet) and had a large amount of food for us to try before leaving, I could not eat the three undercooked eggs on my plate, I tried, but I kept picturing the mold on the kitchen ceiling they are trying to remedy. It is one thing I have trouble with in Ukraine, food prepared by other people, and how long it may sit before serving. I don't think the one I ate made me sick after all, but I was worried with us leaving for our trip to the sea with the students the next day.

Van next to the barn

We managed to leave about noon, with many goodbyes, Garry's deadline for taking off for home. We traveled the same route home as we had taken to Odessa, with the same hole-filled road before Melitopol to maneuver before dark. We did the McDonald's drive-thru as we went through Zaporosia and were home in time to go to bed to prepare for part two of the sea side adventure.