San Maday-Travis traveled to Lake Baikal in the summer of 2009 to work on the Great Baikal Trail Project. Here is an account of her experiences:
I spent 6 weeks working with the Great Baikal Trail Project (GBT) in Irkutsk, Russia, working on three separate projects on the southern side of Lake Baikal, the deepest, cleanest, most beautiful freshwater lake in the world. GBT (or ББТ, Большая Байкалская Тропа по русский) is a locally run organization dedicated to bringing sustainable and safe tourism to the shores of the lake. Initially their goal was to create a chain of trails that completely circumscribed the lake's waters, but it soon became clear that this was too large a goal for sucha small organization. Instead, the group works on building new trails and maintaining older ones for both recreational and scientific purposes. Volunteers come from all around the world, with about 50% coming from Russia and the other 50% from Great Britain, the U.S., Germany, and other countries. I have been told in confidence that Oberlin sent GBT its first foreign volunteer in the early 2000's, and every year since then up until 2008 an Oberlin student or graduate has worked with the program. In 2008, nobody wanted to go. In 2009, I took the chance and with only one year of Russian study, packed up a backpack full of maple syrup and anarchist zines as gifts, prepared for the unexpected joy that was my Russian journey.
On my way to the trailhead, I visited several places of interest. First, Stockholm, to see the place my parents met and got married. Then, Moscow - the captivating capital city of Russia, to couchsurf with locals and begin my orientation in true Russian spirit, or душа. From Moscow I took the train through Yekaterinburg, capital of the Urals, where the Russian teacher from my sophomore year lives. These previous travels were all paid for out-of-pocket, but made possible by travel support from OCREECAS.
By the time my train rolled in to Irkutsk, I had already been in Russia a week. My Russian language had gone from timid to strong to terrified and quavering, depending on how comfortable and self-confident I felt at the time. After meeting up with another GBT volunteer at the train station, however, my Russian soon made a permanent turn for the better. We took the трамвай to the hostel where I stayed between projects, and talked about all of the things I came to take for granted over the next 6 weeks. I became familiar with the local transit fast, especially the "marshrutkas," long-distance taxis, that made frequent stops at the lake. I made fast friends with severel long-time volunteers, including Fred, a professor at Yale who was returning for his 4th or 5th year as a GBT volunteer, and Natasha, a local biologist who spends her summers working with GBT and supporting their programs. Natasha even invited me to visit her dacha (summer house) near Angarsk for a weekend, which was a transformative experience and the closest I really got to Russian life during my stay there. During my "orientation time" of a few days, we went swimming in the (frigid) lake, had "excursions" to several local museums (I highly recommend the Museum of the Decemberists), and watched the breathtaking sunset off the 9-story building the hostel is located in.
Then, it was off to the lake.
My first project was located in Байкалский Заповедник (Baikalskii Zapovednik), the Russian equivalent of a wilderness area. Zapovedniks are like wilderness areas in they are extremely restricted in their use, and visitors are charged an entrance fee to use the space at all - but more importantly, they are specifically designed to be educational in purpose and those that do enter should be prepared to be guided, instructed, and closely watched during their stay. We had a special permit to be on our own because we were volunteering for the zapovednik, creating new trails for researchers to use in the winter season. Our group was mostly Russian, with a little more than half of the volunteers fluent in English and half fluent in Russian. This provided a huge linguistic challenge, especially for our translator, whose English was intermediate, but not perfect. Nevertheless, we all became fast friends - most of us were younger students or youg working people out for two weeks of valuable work, and everyone had an incredible personality and self-driven nature. Many of the Russian volunteers had been saving up money for several years in order to have the opportunity to work with GBT. The standard of living in Russia is far lower for young people than it is in the U.S. - many of the late 20's friends I made were working jobs where they earned the equivalent of US $200 per month or less. This made the experience seem much more powerful for the international visitors on the trip, espcially the three Americans.
In 2 weeks we broke 300 meters of fresh trail in veritable rainforest. The work was sweaty and rewarding, and the evenings were full of
stories and laughter. Every night, someone presented something about the place they were from, either their own country or their region of Russia. For American night, I taught a couple of folk songs and in very broken Russian attempted to teach everyone to contra dance. My good friend Reetta, who came to the project from Finland, held a wife-carrying race and a rubber boot-throwing competition in honor of long-standing traditions in her country. There was always delicious food cooked over a campfire, eaten on a picnic table handmade by our handyman from a lakeside village, Lyosha. Two people were on duty every day, in charge of cooking, cleaning up, and lounging around on the beach of our very own mountain river, the Ocanovka, or Aspen River - clean enough to drink! On the last day we visited the lake to swim, sing songs, eat fresh-smoked omul' (the most delicious fish EVER - found only in Baikal), and laugh our sorrows away as we prepared to say goodbye for perhaps the last time. I am still in touch with most of the people on that trip, and even got to visit the other American student at UVA in her room in Russian House there last fall. The bonds we built over those two weeks of hard work together were powerful, and I hope to see many of my friends again the next time I visit Russia.
My second project was on the western side of the lake, near the village of Bolshie Koty, or "Big Clogs." The town was named after the wooden shoes worn by Siberian prisoners working in a gold mine there. This project was an "Eco-English Camp," a program designed for Russians who wanted to learn English and participate in GBT projects at the same time. When I signed up for this program, it was my understanding that there would be multiple native English speakers on the project - turned out I was the only one! It was hard at first to deal with the frustrations of being forced to speak English all the time with those who clearly wanted to be more clear and more comfortable, while struggling to connect with a group that was totally Russian. Much of the day was spent in English classes, which I helped out in, and at night I presented my own cultural classes in English to continue the lesson from that day. We had a lot of fun learning from each other, despite the discomfort that everyone was dealing with. Overall it was an extremely powerful experience, if one that I wouldn't care to repeat. I learned a lot about how to teach English effectively and how to overcome my own cultural blocks in communicating with others that don't share my background. I made many connections which I maintain to this day. All of the people on the trip made me smile, especially the leaders and teachers I was working with on a daily basis.
My third and final project was about 9 kilometers north of the "Eco-English" site, on the opposite sie of Bolshie Koty. This project was flooded with international volunteers, several of whom were Americans traveling together as a family group. This dynamic changed my experience a lot, from eating a lot of American food, to learning to deal with being a member of the dominant group when you didn't always agree with what was going on, to remembering the things I love - and hate - about Americans abroad. There were 2 German, 2 British, 5 American volunteers, with 1 Russian volunteer and 2 Russian leaders. Only two of the foreign volunteers spoke any Russian, myself included, and our one Russian volunteer had only a very basic level of English. This meant speaking a lot of Russian, which made me quite happy, and it also meant speaking lots and lots of English, which was also a fun activity, especially with the dialogue between American, British, and German speakers of English. We all became close and enjoyed each other's company as we completed a set of stairs on a dangerous section of trail along the lake north of the village. Work was fun, but play was better - it was now August, and the once frigid lake was warm enough to swim in regularly, and we used that to its full advantage as much as possible. We spent a lot of time cleaning up trash that had been left there by tourists - there is a strong culture in Russia to leave trash behind wherever you travel, and fighting that urge is a dificult task. On our boat out of the campsite, we had about more trash than we had provisions, including tents, camping equipment, and or own belongings. Stairbuilding was rewarding, but became increasingly difficult as we ascended the slope carrying logs, stakes, gravel, and large stones to build the foundation for each of 33 steps up a 30-foot incline on the shore.
By my last day in Russia, I had met dozens of close friends, experienced the best and worst of Russian landscapes, seen villages and cities and nature alike, and improved my Russian dramatically at the same time. I would highly encourage any student of beginner or intermediate Russian to take the leap, find a project you want to pursue, and make your dream a reality through the incredible support of the OCREECAS program - there's so much to be explored in Russia and its neighboring regions! My summer was incredible, full of learning and laughter and hard work. To read more and see some great pictures, I encourage you to visit my travel blog linked below. Feel free to contact me with any further questions you might have about GBT and the work they do - smadaytr@oberlin.edu. Best of luck and safe travels to all who embark on this incredible adventure!
http://baikalsan.blogspot.com/
For more on GBT and the work they do, visit http://www.greatbaikaltrail.
