The Wandering Farmer (an feirmeoir fánach)

My priority for tomorrow is to get settled in to the new volunteer organization I’ve joined in western Ukraine. This organization provides two hot meals a day and other food items to internally displaced folks who’ve temporarily moved to western Ukraine.
I’m joining this organization, and continuing humanitarian work in general, because I’ve come to the realization that I consistently fail to predict how useful I’ll be on a humanitarian project…and I don’t think that’s just my experience – I’ve seen it with other volunteers too. This means that you cannot make decisions based on 100% surity of what your contribution will be. You have to move, “in faith,” and trust that things will work out.
For me, in Turkey I came just in time to help build outbuildings on base, and being a Turkish speaker on standby when staff were busy. The funny combination was that by staying back on base to help build up our camp, I was in the perfect position, milling around our lumber pile, to meet our neighbors and be a first face until Turkish staff could come and explain more.
In Poland for my second stay, I came just in time for a greenhouse project. A community near Krakow had asked for one and I came in time to help design it, and then nearly finished building it (I left with probably two days of wrapup work to do.)
With other volunteers, I saw folks with arts and crafts skills come right when the program was introducing arts and crafts as a form of psychosocial support for refugees. You don’t know when you sign up that your knitting hobby, your passion for watercolors, etc, may be a really critical piece of the program.

The thing about “moving in faith” (as I borrow a Christianese phrase) is that I don’t think anything metaphysical is involved. Simply being a curious human, who has accumulated hobbies and interests, and a principled human, who has high ideals to guide them, cannot predict all the ways they’ll be able to be useful- yet nevertheless those usefulnesses emerge in the right situation.
Sentient higher powers are not at play here, but my own understanding of higher powers- what makes us truly precious as humans – have made me what I am today. The higher powers of curiosity, openness, eagerness to learn, sense of fairness. These are fundamentally human traits, and ones I particularly value. From those I let myself be compelled by conscience, as the final dash of spice on top that pulls it all together.
I think often of the impact we had on the communities we’ve worked with. Cracking a smile out of a Polish or Ukrainian partner as we come to work onsite. Difficult things like grown men crying and embracing you when they stop you on the street. How much it can mean to people to be there, as a stranger, compelled by higher powers.
At the end of the day, what this is about is to shape the world in the direction I want it to go. I made a life choice to shake my life up into a more impactful one, and with the skills I have, these responses are the best avenue for me.
I’m crossing the border today on an odd day in Ukraine news. A few things e.wrged at once, just in the past 24 hours or so.
First, Elon Musk, a man I used to admire for his innovation in the rocket industry, shared a distasteful meme on Facebook mocking President Zelenksy for seeking aid for Ukraine. Never mind the mass graves, the atrocities, the fact that Ukraine is shielding free nations at great cost in lives and lost economic potential. Musk is now proving to be a russian asset. At this point, ignorance is no lesser a sin than malevolence- whichever one he falls under, it doesn’t matter to me.

Secondly, news from Slovakia, with an anti-Ukraine party winning the largest share of the parliamentary vote at 22%, heralds that the world is at risk of falling for Putin’s vision. 22% isn’t much but it’s the largest single share of votes, and they’re likely to make a coalition government that will reduce military aid to Ukraine. Ukraine bleeds while some of us are ready to stop handing it the tools it needs to stop the madness.

Third, was that elements of US congress used Ukraine funding as a bargaining chip for their ridiculous, morally bankrupt political theatrics. Hopefully it’s passed soon on its own, but it makes our allies question our resolve and gives hope to tyrants everywhere.

So…regardless, I’ve made my choice to see what I can do next. I want this blog to keep awareness up. There are still women and children sleeping in train stations on cots. I just saw it on the way here. There are still people waiting in cold drizzling rain outside food pantries, all due to the greed of putin and the cowardice, the lack of moral clarity, of the realpolitik assholes of the world who made moral compromises with russia over the years. They’re a kleptocracy of blackmailers and thugs and until they decide to self democratize, they need a solid punch in the nose from freedom-loving people armed to the teeth and fed, clothed, and financed to the maximum. It’s the least we can do- if we insist on tiptoeing around a bully’s “red lines.”