FEODOSIA, UKRAINE Sometimes you collect information from the most unlikely of sources — this time from a precocious eleven-year old girl vacationing with her mom and relatives at a small resort hotel on the Black Sea. Her father is with the Ukraine embassy in Kenya from where she had just returned after a year there, learning English, and now speaking it almost flawlessly. Here’s what she had to say.
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| Veronica |
Veronica: I prefer to speak English and Russian, but, of course, I speak Ukraine with my grandmother, because that’s all she knows. At home we speak Russian. Like Ukraine it’s our mother tongue although my younger sister doesn’t really speak Ukraine. She speaks Russian and English with an African accent. I want to learn French next. My English teacher was from California and says I speak American English. I know San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge. I know President Obama. I think he’s a good president. But I’m glad to be back in Ukraine. It’s my home and I like it here and although it’s near Russia, it’s part of Europe. I don’t think Ukraine will become part of Russia again, because we have our own president. I didn’t like Kenya. It’s a very poor country with people sleeping in the streets. There are a lot of monkeys, lizards, and insects there. It’s dangerous too. If you roll down your car window, the poor people will steal the necklace off your neck. I don’t like Mr. Mwai Kibaki, the president of Kenya. He’s a bad president because he keeps the people poor. I don’t care for the dark people there, or the Catholics, and I don’t like the Muslim women with their masks — you can only see their eyes. The Ukraine consulate in Kenya is small — the American consulate huge. When I grow up, I don’t want to work in the embassy. I want to be a translator and a designer. I want to design dresses. When I’m your age we’ll have electronic closets so all you need to do, for example, is type in “party” and the closet will return the right dress. Later, Veronica became the resident translator as I was invited to have dinner and drinks with the owner of the hotel and some other guests, all Russians, none of whom spoke English.
