Trick or Treat: Shyoltozero Edition

Finally, I am able to access the internet again! I already feel more sane. I uploaded the blogs that I wrote in the interim and adjusted the dates to match when I would have posted them, if the internet connection in rural Russia weren't so unreliable. Even now, the only place I can get a signal is sitting on top of an old Russian peasant stove in my hostess's house.

Where once peasant babushki sought refuge from cold Russian nights, an American college student finds the internet.

I will likely lose internet access again soon, but you can be certain that I'm still writing. To tell the truth, the process of blogging every night is therapeutic. After spending the whole day trying to think in Russian, if I didn't take time to go back over the day's events in English, I certainly would never be able to remember anything that happens to me. And a lot of stuff happens to me here.

For instance, today Venya and I had free time in Shyoltozero to visit the Veps families here, which meant another day full of eating and meeting people. We only managed to visit 4 families, because everywhere we went, we were so nicely received that it was hard to part from the new friends we made.

At one family, I impressed them with my knowledge of Soviet cinema—thank you, Nina Shkolnik, for making us watch so many movies in Russian class. Venya is finally letting me talk for myself a little bit, so the Vepsian father and I spent a full half hour talking about the movie Brat (Brother) and how much the actor Sergei Bodrov, Jr. looks just like my cousin. Now I'm supposed to send them pictures of my family as evidence.

As we were leaving another home, an elderly Veps woman mentioned to me that her granddaughter, who is my age, loves to travel. So I gave her my phone number and address in America and said, "Send her to me." And most likely, she will. In a few months, I fully expect a Russian woman to show up at my doorstep unannounced, needing a bed to sleep on and tea to drink. And after all the hospitality I've received, I would be glad to pay some of it back.

At another family, I talked with a Veps woman who was 89 years old, sharp as a tack, and physically quite strong. Venya wanted to take a picture of the two of us together, and at first she protested. Then he explained to her that it was "proof that America and Russia are friends," at which point she squeezed me so hard I thought my ribcage would snap in two.



What is interesting to me is how different the situation with the Veps people is here in Karelia. During the Soviet Union, it was illegal to speak indigenous languages in most places, but the Republic of Karelia was granted more autonomy and speaking Veps was never forbidden. And what a difference it has made! Back in the Vologda Oblast (where Vytegra and Oshta are located), the language is all but dead. Here, people still speak Veps to each other on the street, although now the language is only spoken among the elderly and a few children who learn it in school.

Of the Karelian schoolchildren I've spoken to, every single one of them has said that Veps and Finnish are much easier to learn that English. Keep in mind that Veps has eighteen noun cases. I can't even imagine! Russian's six noun cases have left me constantly tongue-tied, stalling to find the appropriate ending for each word. But the schoolkids say that they get worse grades in English than in Finnish and Veps, so I guess that is good for the Veps language.

Nevertheless, although the situation here is much more promising, nearly everyone I spoke to today said that there was nothing to be done; the language is going to die. Veps—the language that has thrived in this region since the 4th century, the language that developed a specialized vocabulary to explain the intricacies of reindeer-herding, the language that has a special greeting for bears—has only a couple decades left of existence at best.

I can't say I'm surprised. Across the world, indigenous languages are becoming casualties of globalization. But the more Veps people I meet, the more I am able to glimpse into their lives, the sadder it seems to me that their people will soon disappear, blending into the ever more homogeneous societies of the world.

However, I came to Russia to see if there was anything that could be done to prevent the death of the Veps language, and I'm not giving up yet. And no matter what the prognosis is, I'm glad I came. I'm keenly aware that I'm one of very few Americans to meet the Veps people, to hear their stories and eat their food. If that's all that I can come away with, that's enough.