With the financial depression coming, I have thought a lot about the reality of survival in hard times. Maybe also because I'm reading a history book of modern Russia.
I'm amazed to think that here, in Ukraine, seventy years ago, there was famine to the point of cannibalism. Last week I talked with our fellow staff from Moldova about the early 90s, when we were all finishing high school. While I was flitting from class to cross country practice, they were getting up at 4am each morning to stand in line at the store. They received a loaf of bread and a bottle of milk for the family. They were hungry all through their university years, living on their own potatoes and pickles, with a lot of cabbage and buckwheat, of course.
In Ukraine and Russia, most people still are one-degree-of-separation from the land. If they don't have a dacha just outside the city, then their parents or grandparents or aunts do. On weekends in the fall, everyone goes to help harvest potatoes. Our babysitter grows a lot of food on her plot of land, and then purchases cheap potatoes in the fall to last through the winter. She needs six 50kg bags, which she can get for about $25 each right now. During the lean years at the end of communism, many people survived having their savings and salaries wiped out by simply living off of the land.
I tried to make freezer-jam this summer. With a packet of liquid pectin and explicit directions. It didn't set. I'm not ready for canning, that's for sure! And gardening--I love gardening. But the spinach I planted on the balcony barely sprouted. And the peas only produced 2 pods. Obviously, I need to be in a community of people who can really help me. So if the world economy crashes, I'd rather be in Ukraine than anywhere else. And the famous black earth will be a definite plus. Maybe our extended families will come join us here, then it would be perfect!
When I started talking about contingency plans, Eric wisely said we should wait to see what happenned. (I'm the pessimist; plus I find a silver lining in every bad situation--at least I can plan!) Hopeful, it won't be so bad. And I probably wouldn't be so flippant about talking about it if I really believed we were headed for a serious crisis. But the more I know about history, the more it seems to me that people are often very surprised by the quick turn of their lives from comfortable and secure to terrible conditions. Somehow, we think that it can't happen to us--but they all did, too.
What I'm thinking of today was perfectly expressed in the Fresh Air program I just listened to. It's long, but worth listening to.
Food As A National Security Issue : NPR http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95896389&sc=emaf
1 comment:
I just found the link to this. And although we've talked about it all, it is nice to read it all concisely here. We're just hoping you move to our (hypothetical) land in the mountains instead of us going to Ukraine... although there is more rock than 'black earth' here...
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