Readers' Lives

A Call To Action: An American Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Drives To Ukraine

I am an American in London, but when Ukraine was attacked earlier this year, it had a particularly personal meaning for me. Twenty years ago, I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ukraine. My hosts welcomed me like family, and, over the two years I spent there, I learned the language and made many close friends. It became a second home for me.

As the war broke out, I reached out to my friends to ask what I could do. They needed transport. More specifically, they needed a truck to help aid and support the brave people fighting on the front line.

I immediately started approaching my friends and family to raise money to buy a pick-up truck in the UK and then drive it to Ukraine. Through their generous support, I raised enough money for two pick-up trucks and then some. With the additional funds, I could purchase much needed goods like winter coats and boots. I asked a friend to drive with me, and so we loaded the trucks in London and made our way to France, through Belgium and Germany to Poland. In Poland, we handed the trucks over to Ukrainian contacts, who drove the trucks and supplies into Ukraine.

As we were driving, we could see donations continue to pour in. The war shocked the world, and people wanted to help. Meanwhile, my contacts began building a supply network in Ukraine to get critical goods and equipment to where it was needed most. They needed more trucks and more supplies.

On our return, we started building a charity to provide continued support to the people of Ukraine and the heroes on the frontline. It was clear that we could make an impact, so we registered as a US 501c(3) nonprofit, built a small group of volunteers to run the operation and developed a network of volunteer drivers. Every other weekend we drive convoys of pick-up trucks loaded with humanitarian, medical and protective supplies from London to Poland, and from there our Ukrainian volunteers continue to drive them the rest of the way into Ukraine.

In nine months, we’ve raised over $1.5M and delivered over 100 vehicles and countless supplies to civilian defenders and internally displaced people. And through this work, we have built a reliable supply chain across Europe operated by a network of volunteers and partners.

As our mission has grown, so has our network. Our critical logistics pathways and contacts span the UK, across northern Europe and throughout Ukraine. We work in partnership with local Ukrainian charities, run by trusted friends who I’ve known since my time in the Peace Corps, so that our combined resources and networks can increase our impact and levels of support for the many people affected by this war. Through partnership with the global organisation Water Mission, we have installed 45 water distribution systems in Donetsk, Mykolayiv and Kherson. Combined, they supply over 10,000 gallons of safe water per day. We have also granted tens of thousands of the dollars we have raised to local charities to help heal minds affected by the trauma of war and repair damaged homes, such as replacing windows before winter sets in.

Most recently, we have prioritised the supply of generators. Due to recent attacks on power infrastructure, Ukraine has been plunged into freezing darkness. Nearly the entire population of around 45 million are living without electricity and heat. In the last two weeks of November, we delivered over 45 generators to families and schools in Chernihiv, Kharkiv, Kherson and Kyiv. Generators will remain our focus through the coming winter months. We expect to allocate about half of our funding to generators to keep people warm and connected. While the other half will be used to supply vehicles to distribute humanitarian aid to liberated areas, evacuate civilians from conflict zones and transport civilian defenders.

We have also received several large donations of children’s winter clothing, including 50 pallets of new warm clothing from a Polish retailer and Gap UK. Such donations in kind and corporate partnerships are very welcomed and enable us to get more critical gear to Ukraine to keep people warm through winter. While I am grateful for the critical supplies we have been able to provide, as we head into winter, the people of Ukraine still need us, and in particular, more generators and warm clothes.

While the war has been raging for over nine months, our work is only just beginning. We are always welcoming new volunteers and partners into our network, and of course the generosity of donors. If you want to make a difference in Ukraine, and are inspired to join our mission please sign up to drive in our convoy to Poland or to donate to our 501c(3) via our website.

www.ukrainianaction.com/volunteer www.ukrainianaction.com/donate Slava Ukraini!

Jeffrey Hartman Founder, Ukrainian Action Peace Corps Volunteer (Ukraine 2002-2004)

READERS’ LIVES

“Great Britain is a great place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there”.

That’s what I told my friends after a highschool exchange trip to England 30 years ago.

Careful what you don’t wish for, I guess!

Now I do live here. I have on and off for 12 years. What part of Britain do I live in? Every. Wherever I park my house. I’m a vanlifer, you see. Yeah, one of those. All the rage now, I hear. Well, I’ve been at it since long before it became a thing you read about in the Sunday glossy magazine.

I’ve always had a van; the same one actually. I bought it when I was 17, fresh outta highschool; 1965. A VW Campervan; a split-screen one; paid 800 dollars for it. All the rage now, I hear. Might be worth a hundred times that now, I hear. Well, I had it long before it became a thing you saw in corporate bank adverts.

That one stays in the USA. It’s my home when I’m there a few months of the year. I have a newer one here; a 1978. Just tore the exhaust off it today, in a friend’s back garden, in the snow!

That’s vanlife to me: like the cowboys of old; or like running away to join the circus; a life on the move, a life lived outside, a life full of stories, a closeness with your horse, or these days, your van. Though to be technical; mine is a bus. A van has the engine in the front, a bus has the engine in the back. Now you know.

But I’m not a real cowboy. I’m a parkinglot cowboy over here, a car-park cowboy. I play music for a living, in pubs, at festivals, wherever will hire me. It’s about the closest I can come to being a cowboy, or running off with the circus these days. I play the blues. I play boogie-woogie. I play the back of any pub piano I can find. I never use backing tracks. I sing my heart out. It’s the only way.

On a good day I play the sitar, sing my songs, make people laugh, and often enough, make people cry. Then I swap stories over free cider with folks I just met, or old friends come back round until the wee hours of the morning. Then I curl up in the cosy bed in my bus, peek out the curtains at the moon one last time and shut my eyes. I’m parked in a beautiful green field, I can hear sheep in the distance. The egalitarian trubador.

On a bad day, I’m laying on my back in a cold puddle making a guess at what’s gone wrong with the bus this time. I do some sort of makeshift repair, and am happy to call a cold, rainy lay-by home for the night. I curl up in damp blankets, make a thermos full of coffee for the morning; mostly so the cooker takes the edge off the chill, and wish I was somewheres else. I can hear the hiss of car tyres on the wet highway. I try to tell myself it sounds like the sea, but it doesn’t. The middle-aged homeless guy.

So which one am I? Whichever beast I feed, I guess.

It’s not the life for everyone. I’ll tell you that. When I was a kid, there was this girl buried in the local cemetery; died aged 8. She never got to live, so I figured I had to live for her; when there was a choice, I had to always choose interesting.

That’s how I wound up in Britain. I met a woman at the Burning Man arts festival in Nevada.

Dave Manning

We really hit it off. She was from Aberdeenshire, Scotland. I’d never heard of the place. We spent a few days together after the festival, then she had to catch a plane home. What’s a guy to do? I chose interesting. I cancelled a couple gigs, and bought a plane ticket to a place I’d never heard of. It became home.

I’d lived in Alaska before, and Scotland is the Alaska of Britain. (Some people in Alaska like to talk of independence referendums too!). I liked it there; we had a great marriage, a cabin, a wood stove. I immigrated, the marriage ran its course, and we split up after 8 good years.

What do you call a musician that doesn’t have a wife? Homeless. Or an egalitarian trubador. Which beast do you feed...?

Well, I have a girlfriend now. I do stay at her place sometimes, but the road always calls like the wind. It is my home. It’s always felt that way. It’s what my songs are about; the romance of the road, the impermanence of life. It’s why I bought a bus in the first place.

You work a job, you own a house, you marry a woman. It all feels permanent, but it isn’t. You’re always only one heart-beat away. The vanlife reminds you of that every day. It cuts through the B.S. You could die on the road today. When you say good-bye to someone you mean it. And when you hug that old friend ‘hello’, you mean it; you hold them tight, you are alive.

So is vanlife in the UK better than in the USA? Of course it is. And of course it isn’t. That’s what I learned on that first high-school foreign exchange visit: it’s not better or worse, it’s just different.

Different. In the USA, I stay out west, dry climate, wide open spaces, plenty of Forest Service land to camp on for free. I book my gigs in the little towns and camp in the wideopen spaces during the week. I go north in the summer, almost to Canada. I go south in the winter, almost to Mexico. The places to camp are amazing; great views, natural hotsprings, dirt-road campsites so remote that more days than cars go by.

In the UK there are the festivals. There are the pubs. Both have a great culture. An ideal summer has a different festival every weekend; a different field, a different old manor-house grounds. I see old friends, we drink cider and lay in the grass, it barely gets dark. We ask each other what festivals we’re doing...”will I see you at Camperjam this year? How about Vanlife fest?”.

In the good country bars in the States they literally oil the wooden dance floor. The guys spin the ladies country-swing as the band plays. My heart swells to see it, and I am proud to be American. In Britain you stomp in wellies on cider-slick grass in a steamy marquee as they worship old Queen and Oasis songs like a gospel revival. I am lost in the moment, hands in the air to the music. I am proud to be British.

I feed both beasts. I am blessed to have both in my life. Some things will always be harder as an immigrant, but it is always worth it. It is always interesting. I am blessed to live in an age where I can travel across the ocean easily. Though I must say: I do grow weary at the ever-worsening soul-sucking process of long-haul flights. I hear you can take a ship across the Atlantic. I hear it takes seven days instead of seven hours. Maybe next time I cross over, I should choose interesting.

Dave Manning is on all the social medias, though rarely. He’d rather be on a hill-walk than the internet. His website is a great place start: DaveManning.net.

He’s released 3 albums, and the fourth is due out soon. All his albums are doublelength and come with a money-back guarantee. In twenty years, he says he’s only had one person ever take him up on the guarantee. Know a pub Dave should play at? Send him a message. Know a festival where he’d fit in? Let him know, and maybe you’ll see him there.

Safe Travels.