People
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are the property of Jennifer Dickinson
Please do
not copy or use without express permission.
One of the features of anthropological research
is that your field site is a real part of your life - when you're there, you
live, eat, sleep and spend your days in that place with those people.
The friendships I have built up over the last eight years of research in Ukraine
are part of my work, but they are also a part of my life that I treasure.
The family I lived with in Apsha has become a second family to me, and their
neighbors are my neighbors. Here is a photograph from the first Christmas
I spent in the field, with Mama, Njanjo ("Dad"), my research assistant Natalka,
my goddaughter Ivanka, and her father, Ivan:
Here are my "sisters" Natalka and Marika, with
Marika's husband Jur, their niece Oksana, neighbor Hanna (wearing headscarf)
and her nephew Vasya, photographed during a brief field visit in 2001.
Even in hard economic times, children are celebrated
and cherished in Ukraine- during a 2003 field visit, I got to meet some of
the "new additions" to village, including little Albina.
My "field parents," especially Mama, have been
invaluable participants in my research. Here we share a joke while I
discuss village history with them in 2003.
Apsha is quite large (around 7,000 people) and
so I am often recognized by people I don't know. On my last trip, I
stopped into a small state-owned store to see what they had for sale.
When I asked to take a picture of the shelves, the cashier and her customer
insisted that I join them behind the counter and hoist a bottle of champagne
for the photo op.
The person I enjoy photographing more than any other
is my goddaughter Ivanka. Not only is she a great little girl, but
as I watch her growing up, I see a new generation of Ukrainians, born and
raised in a post-socialist world.
This is one of my favorite pictures of Ivanka
- here at age 2 "helping" with the apple harvest. Most of these apples
were used to feed the two pigs the family owned, but some of them were also
made into "lekvar," a very thick jam that is cooked for several days over
a wood fire.
Here Ivanka is four years old, taking a break
after a busy day of shopping at the bazaar in the nearby town of Solotvino.
She is sitting on a French deep-fat fryer, clutching a toy made in China,
wearing a dress from Czech republic, and in the bag next to her are Disney
videos dubbed in Russian!
Here Ivanka is six years old, modelling the dress
I sent her for her first day of school. Beside her are her cousins
Kolya and Yurchik.
Here Ivanka, eight, and my second goddaughter
Marusya, age six, are coloring a "Sailor Moon" coloring book together on a
hot summer afternoon.
My research takes me all over the Zakarpattja region
as well to other parts of Ukraine, and the friends I have made have helped
me to understand life in Ukraine from different perspectives, from those
of factory workers and business people to scholars and politicians.
Often, the best friendships have been the result of pure chance. When
I told a friend in Kiev I was going to Zakarpattja for the first time in
1995, she mentioned in passing that I should look up her friend Marina at
the dormitory. I knocked on Marina's door, and began a long and enduring
friendship with her and her family.
Me with Marina, her two daughters, and her parents
in Uzhhorod, 2003.
Marina's husband, Lorand, with their baby girl.
Lorand's mother is Hungarian. Here we are
posing with a gift she made me - traditional hand-crocheted Hungarian lace,
as we enjoy a summer feast of shashlik and homemade wine.
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Rural Life
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