It’s been a long time since I’ve written here. Christopher and I went home to the U.S. for a month in July/August and had our wedding. (See wedding photos) The wedding and time spent in CO, TX, NC, SC and NY with family was amazing, stressful, beautiful. Many emotions come to mind. Stephanie suggested that I write a screen play about the wedding and its preparation, fraught as it was with disparate, interesting characters (i.e. our families), juxtaposition of said characters as well as the situations that arose from these encounters. Maybe I will, but it likely won’t be a public document. Smile.

It was particularly difficult trying to see all the people that are important to us and unfortunately this proved quite impossible really. Being home in general was simply pretty relaxing, and I didn’t experience the reverse-culture shock I’d expected. We ate tons of good food and spent quality time being good consumers. I felt so hungry to stock up on shoes, books and toiletries, perhaps because everything is so plentiful and understandable at home, versus here.

Since returning, my work has become very busy. Towards the end of our visit, I began to look forward to returning to work, which I felt good about, not having known before going home how I’d feel about returning. Both of us were ready to come back to our “Little America” as we call our apartment and our work here.

Rather quickly after returning to work, I became embroiled in a political problem of sorts with an organization that works in the same field as the organization that I am working with, International Organization for Migration (IOM). I have been working on the communications for the Ukraine mission and part of my work has been a counter-trafficking information campaign. A component of this campaign are ads placed in employment sections of newspapers advertising hotlines that provide information about services for people who are considering working abroad, as a way to educate them about potential dangers of becoming trafficked. Traffickers sometimes advertise in these newspapers and with a large percentage of Ukrainians working abroad (estimated to perhaps be as much as 5-6 million of Ukraine’s 30 million population) people need information to protect themselves.

This is a very skeleton explanation of the problem. For more detailed information, look at IOM’s website at http://www.iom.int.

What came to pass was that the mission failed to inform the organizations that run the hotlines about these ads. It was an oversight that we corrected as soon as we realized it, but this organization took this opportunity to attack IOM, as it has done many times in the past. For some reason, this org began contacting international donors, organizations and embassies accusing an unknown source of placing ads that discredited the hotlines. Given the content of the ads, it seems a strange accusation to me. Nonetheless, we spent the better part of two weeks having meetings, drafting letters and other damage control acts trying to inform our partners about the situation and clear up misunderstandings and correct erroneous information. It culminated in a meeting with partner organizations and the deputy chief of mission of a European embassy who said something about me in this meeting. I didn’t really take it personally, although I felt sort of awkward sitting at the meeting and tried hard to sit impassively and not let shock show on my face.

Mainly, I took a lesson away from this meeting. When there are big budgets involved and some perception of power and territory, people do not always act in the best interest of their cause. I already knew this, but I needed to experience it firsthand to really learn it. It is important knowledge if I continue to work in the development world at this level.

I felt tremendous sadness about the above fact. At the same time that we were dealing with this, victims of trafficking were still coming through our offices, receiving reintegration assistance and other support and their harrowing stories of the atrocities committed upon them kept the utter political nature of “Advertising-Gate” in perspective. I am tremendously lucky to work with real activists who deeply believe in their work and work hard to help the people who have been trafficked as well as to try to improve legal recourse and social society to decreases the prevalence of trafficking.

That’s the first installment of Ukraine, Part Deux. I feel like it’s part two after having returned from being home again. More later, gentle readers.