By Shannon Prestridge
Although
born in the Midwest, Shannon claims to be Las Vegas native. After
graduating from Las Vegas High School, she followed her heart and majored in
Cultural Anthropology at the University of Southern California. Her passion for culture and travel led her to
the Peace Corps where she served as an English Teaching Volunteer in
Petrozavodsk, Russia. Shannon continues to teach English as a Second Language
and has taught a range of students from housekeepers on the Las Vegas Strip to
performers with Cirque du Soleil. She has also worked in training and
development in the hospitality industry and has developed curriculum for
cross-cultural skills and management. Shannon currently holds a master's degree
in Educational Leadership and teaches English to university-bound international
students.
For two years, I lived in the northern Russian republic of Karelia and claimed the self-created title of "World's Northernmost Peace Corps Volunteer." Since the fourth grade, I had wanted to become a Peace Corps volunteer, traveling to distant places and learning about lives vastly different than my own.
I taught English at a local school in the Karelian
capital of Petrozavodsk.
My students would proudly recite texts they had memorized in English, and since
my Russian proved sketchy, it was my first introduction to the region.
"Petrozavodsk is washed
by Lake Onega. Lake Onega is the second largest lake in Europe."
"The nature is quite
wonderful in Karelia."
"Peter the Great
founded the city. He built a factory. Petrozavodsk means 'Peter's
Factory.'"
"Petrozavodsk has
sister cities in Duluth, Minnesota, and La Rochelle, France. Our embankment
features statues from each sister city."
"Kizhi Island is a treasure. It
features an ancient church built without nails and is a UNESCO World Heritage
Site ."
Over time, I was able to expand on their information. The
area is indeed well known for its folklore, amazing nature, and Kizhi Island.
Only 43 miles from Petrozaovdsk, Kizhi is the region's main source of tourism,
bringing tourists during the white nights to the city and greatly supporting
the local economy.
My greatest cultural lesson, however, came not from my students,
but from a summer visit to a village on the banks of Lake Onega, not far from Kizhi.
Velikaya
Guba was a village in decline twelve years ago, and I'm not sure it has
fared better since. The village was home to a handful of older people, most of
whom moved to Petrozaovdsk for the winter. It is also where my friend Marina
has a house that has been in her family for generations.
Velikaya Guba Photo by Pavel Dogadushkin, 2010 |
Velikaya
Guba had electricity,
but not much else. A post office doubled as a general store, which offered few
canned goods, some bread, plus beer and vodka. It was also here I found a
prized souvenir—a notebook featuring Boris and Natasha, the Russian spies from
the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon. My
attempts at explaining the humor to my hosts failed, or maybe I was so removed
from the life I once knew, from the person I had been, from the world I
understood, that it just simply wasn't funny.
Goats and cows grazed freely among the wooden houses in
the village, and the bells that hung around the their necks woke me up each morning. Time was irrelevant. We were so
far north that the sun never set, only flirted with the horizon, turning the
sky marvelous shades of purple and pink. When I woke to a cow mooing into the
window, the sense of disorientation was enormous. Where was I? When was I?
Marina's House in Velikaya Guba. |
Marina’s water came from a well, the potatoes from her garden,
and the milk from a neighbor's cow in exchange for a bottle of vodka. Marina's
husband, Volodya, took off fishing in Lake Onega, returning with a cache that
would last us days. Marina gutted the fish herself at the kitchen table while I
sat guiltily unable to bring myself to stick my thumbs in their gills and break
their necks. I felt like an incompetent child from another world in which fish
came breaded and bagged, without scales or bones.
Volodya smoked the fish in a pit dug in the corner of the yard. I drank black tea
throughout the day, and
savored fresh milk,
warm and yellow
with fat. It was beyond delicious. I used an
outhouse at 2 a.m. as the sun shone on me. That experience was less than
fantastic, but far from hellish. Mint swallowed the outhouse, climbing up so
high that it blocked the midnight sun.
A giant white oven sat in the middle of the house. Without central heating, this was the
means by which people had heated their homes for centuries. In 2001, it still served as the only heating in the
house. Marina pointed out a space between the oven and the roof. This was the
spot where, in the past, the family would hibernate throughout most of the
dark winter, when the sun would rise at 10 a.m. and set at 3 p.m., briefly
dancing above the edge of the earth before plunging the world back into
darkness. During my visit, however, the cows, the
people, and the ground took advantage of the summer break from darkness and exploded into
activity. Green overwhelmed everything. People hardly slept.
Sunset at midnight. |
View of Kizhi Pogost. |
After a few days of staying in the village, we packed Volodya's army issued tent, the freshly
smoked fish, some fresh potatoes, and a well-used, metal tea kettle and took off in the boat to find an island overlooking Kizhi. If in Velikaya Guba, I had gone to a time
before indoor plumbing, I had now been transported back further, to a time before
civilization. In the distance, we could see the golden, wooden domes of Kizhi Pogost , Kizhi's main structure. Were we the only people to have ever
camped on this island? How many times had the inhabitants of this region dined
on smoked fish during white nights, drinking tea, and watching the sun circle
around them.
The wind was bitter, blowing through the tent like a
hurricane, and yet we spent three days on that island. Marina and I sang the
song " King of Pain" by the Police while sharing some wine.
Time became even less significant, and I finally released the last ounce of
that American urge to control and produce. I just sat back and enjoyed. There was
freedom from worrying about all the things that should have bothered me about that moment: the
lack of toilets, the absence of bathing, the pervasive smell of birch smoke,
and the endless supply of nothing but smoked fish and potatoes. Indeed, "the nature " was quite wonderful.
It was at this moment that I felt closest to Russia and
all that was good with a country that could otherwise be so frustrating. It was
if I had been allowed to view Russia in its true, natural habitat, without the Cold
War bravado or leather-clad Mafiosos. It was sitting together with friends, against the cold,
drinking a pot of tea, and sharing their last bits of food with
each other. To this day, I still struggle to find precise words to express the sheer
beauty of that moment and how it changed my perspective on life.
Even though I lived (oh boy did I live) through St. Petersburg's White Nights, my experiences were more of the vodka and zakuski variety, not quite the back to nature magic you have expressed here. Thanks so much for sharing it with us!
ReplyDeleteShannon, thanks so much for this story! I met you in the south, in Rostov-on-Don and Sochi, and it had never actually sunk in with me that you were staitoned so far north! And in such conditions! Wow, that must have felt like travelling into a sort of an inverted Oz country - I don't think any usual American cultural experience would have covered something like that %-)) The story is very impressive, and the midnight sunset is unforgettable :-) Lena
ReplyDeleteLena! Thanks for commenting. It was an unusual experience, but perhaps, I'm an unusual American. I didn't live in such conditions year-round, though. I was only a guest to Marina's summer house in her village.
DeleteI experienced the midnight sun over a period of weeks in Sweden one summer and remember being similarly disoriented. Thanks for sharing your adventures in this fascinating part of the world.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Shannon. I feel like I got to experience this poignant remembrance through you---I even feel the shivers. Just lovely.
ReplyDeleteThanks for commenting, everyone.
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