MMAP - First Quest of Belarus, August 2010 - Kokhanava

Starting from the capital

The very first international participants were a family of Polish Americans (or American Poles) who now live in the south of Poland and travel to the US extensively.

Delia Walbridge-Gosik and her sons Stefan (the taller) and Robert. The guy in the orange shirt is me, Alex Skrebniow, the project key instigator bearing most of the responsibility for the failures (luckily, insignificant ones by now).

Here united we stand near the National Library building in Minsk.

3 days in the town of Kokhanava, near Orsha

Frankly speaking, in our first quest we did not do long distances by bikes. It was an unusually hot August, and besides, the Walbridge-Gosik family came to Belarus by a mini-van. However, we did bike quite some.

Kokhanava has about 5,000 inhabitants. We could not have a chance to meet all of, of course. Our most important contact here was Nikolai Petroushenko, whom we soon began calling 'the Colonel'. He is indeed a retired Colonel, a very active social volunteer and a real getter.

The Colonel made sure that our visit had an official part. We were received by the town Mayor, Mr. Baryshnikov. Contrary to our expectations, he was very open and told us a lot of interesting fact about Kokhanava's past and present, and its prospects for the future. He also helped us to establish contacts with local schools.

Thanks to Nikolai Petroushenko, we got acquainted with the local environment protection club. We made a presentation on American history for them, and both school kids and adults asked interesting questions. In exchange they told us about their activities, and showed them knowledge of American literature.

After the presentation our communication got even more informal. here the kids from the environment protection club are doing their best to remember the English they studied at school. Reciprocally, Stefan is trying his best to remember the Russian he learned while staying in Kyiv.

The first day was over, and we stayed for the night at the studio of Vasily, the local artist and a teacher of arts.

It was cool and pleasant inside, there were a lot of paintings around, and this whole place smelled oil and canvas.

The next day we were making another presentation, this time for the Readers Club in the local library. The Chief Librarian was making excuses for the repairing going on. Actually, we thought this is a thing to be proud of, when renovation is taking place in summer, so the library is fully ready for the new school year.

 After the presentation for the Readers Club we decided to have a swim. It was the hottest August, remember?

 The main goal of the MMAP project is meeting real people in person, learning from them and about them, and telling them about ourselves. We were reminded of that goal quite unexpectedly.

When we got out of water, we saw two local guys, noticeably drunk, heading in our direction. When they came closer to us, they roared something like "Hey, you guys, you can swim here as much as you can, and if anyone gonna cause any  f***ing trouble to you, just tell us. We will be hanging near, and we will beat f***ing **it out of any jerk if he just thinks of causing you any f***ing troubles, you just tell us!" The contrast between their aggressive outlook/speech and their caring words was very touching.

In the picture one of the guys (the less drunk) stands with Robert holding a pocket Bible Robert presented him. Apparently they managed to find a common language :). The other much heavier drunk guy politely stayed far.

 Nikolai Petroushenko showed us a place which was very likely used by Vikings to draw their ships across ground when they were traveling from their Sweden, or Norway, or Denmark to Byzantium.

The name of the village can be loosely translated as 'Capstan-Hill', so he suggested that there was a capstan on top of the hill ahead, and there was time when the main business for the village was to draw ships up and then down to a rive flowing to the Baltic Sea, just about 3 miles from here.

 Now nobody lives in that 'Capstan-Hill' village, but back before World War II there were some families. Here we are together with Nikolai Petroushenko at the plate commemorating a war hero who lived in this house.

 After going up a gentle slope and then going steep downhill we reached the Baltic Sea basin. We could go to Sweden or Norway or Denmark from here, but we are not Vikings, so we decided to postpone the journey.

Another idea of the MMAP Project is that every place, no matter how small, has its own unique history, its places of interest, and outstanding people.

Here we stand near a windmill which was build about 5 years ago all by one man, in a village not far from Kokhanava. Not only it makes flour, it also saws wooden logs.

This is just one of many historical treasures hidden in the land of new Belarus/old Litwa...

After the Russian take-over at the end of the 19th century the cemetery was forgotten, and during Soviet times it was levelled off. We found several tombstones with Polish inscriptions.

The next day we were going to Sianno, our next point of operation :)