How Ukrainian peacekeepers cope with the language barrier and weather in Sierra-Leone
Currently two Ukrainian peacekeeping contingents are carrying out UN missions in Africa, one being the Fourth Detached Repair and Reconstruction Battalion in Sierra Leone and the other the 56th Detached Helicopter Platoon in neighboring Liberia.
The main task of Ukrainian repair units in Sierra Leone is ensuring reliable operation of armored personnel carriers and trucks of peacekeeping forces of other nations, each having its own zone of responsibility, patrol routes, and outposts in the midst of African jungles, where the are no roads in the European sense.
One such Zambian peacekeeping force stationed in a settlement of Tongo numbers 800 men, who use ten BTR-60 armored personnel carriers, ten Ural-375 trucks, and five ZIL-131 trucks in their peacekeeping mission. The Ukrainian peacekeepers are charged with repairs and maintenance, as envisioned by the relevant memorandum between Ukraine and the UN. This is done by small repair units of the battalion that work autonomously and in isolation from the main contingent.
The Ukrainian repair unit stationed in Tongo on the premises of the Zambian contingent numbers six professional repairmen headed by Ensign Oleksandr Putiatin, a professional repairman of armored personnel carriers and trucks. It is his second mission in Africa, and he has sufficient experience to head autonomous repair units. In Tongo he supervises Ensign Serhiy Volosaty, Sergeants Serhiy Zohiy, Yevhen Dziubak, and Oleksandr Hoi, and Jun. Sgt. Valery Korovchenko.
Realizing the complexity of missions in isolation from the main contingent, the Fourth Battalion command has formed the unit from the best repairs specialists from different battalion companies. Thanks to their expertise, all fifteen vehicles of the Zambian contingent are always in running order and ready for their daily patrols despite the difficult conditions of African jungles.
Every morning the Ukrainian repairmen inspect the vehicles and perform service maintenance. Other repairmen prepare the armored personnel carriers for their daily patrols. After the vehicles leave on their missions, our men go about fixing the vehicles that need repairs after rounds in the jungle. Zambian drivers do not mark time either and work with our repairmen as a team.
In general, Zambian drivers treat their trucks and personnel carriers very responsibly and follow strict rules, whereby the driver is held responsible for the condition of his vehicle. These rules have been laid down by the command of the Zambian contingent. If it transpires during the repairs that the breakdown is the driver’s fault, the latter could be punished severely. Oleksandr Putiatin tells how once a Zambian driver got arrested for 42 days for overheating the engine. He spent all this time in a dark pit, which is the Zambians’ idea of a detention cell.
Yet such cases are sooner an unfortunate exception, since major breakdowns through the fault of Zambian drivers are rare.
WHERE MERCEDES TRUCKS WILL NOT PASS
Breakdowns are mostly caused by the roads, or rather their absence, and the difficult climatic conditions. A brief description of the site where the Zambian contingent and our repair unit are stationed should give you a rough picture of these conditions.
The settlement of Tongo is in the southeast of Sierra Leone at the foot of mountains overgrown with age-old jungles and famous inside Sierra Leone and out for their diamond fields. Here diamonds are mined in sandy ground using the open-pit method. As a result, the territory of Tongo is strewn with pits and mounds.
The distance between Tongo and a small settlement of Pangoma along the patrol route of Zambian peacekeepers is twelve kilometers. Yet in the rainy season it takes nearly two hours to cover this distance. Rain comes in a wall of water and lasts for days. In this period the ground cannot absorb water any more, and it streams down into valleys. As a result, the roads turn into slushy dirt with ditches overflowing with water.
Considering the hard climatic conditions and the famed reliability of Ukrainian vehicles, Zambian peacekeepers prefer them instead of other vehicles in their fleet. Incidentally, those include Mercedes trucks and Land Rovers. Whenever a Zambian commander travels anywhere in bad weather, his car is preceded by a Ukrainian truck to tow the commander’s car whenever it becomes stuck in the mud.
LANGUAGE BARRIER
Good performance of the Ukrainian machines and the fact that they are in use all the time keeps our repairmen busy. But they do not complain, as they are ready to do their job in any kind of weather. Moreover, they always work in the open, as there are no special tents to protect them from heat or rain.
Initially, during the rotation of the Ukrainian battalion our repairmen had a difficult time coming to terms with their Zambian colleagues because of the language barrier. Only Ensign Serhiy Volosaty could put together several words in English. But after working for some time hand-in-hand with Zambian peacekeepers our men acquired the minimum essential vocabulary understandable to both sides.
Yet whenever faced with a complex problem, which requires a detailed explanation, the services of Captain Moses, a local policeman conversant in both English and Russian, are enlisted. Under the Soviets, he graduated from the History Faculty of the Voronezh Institute. Now he is deputy sheriff of the local police and is quite influential in his township. However, despite his high office Moses is always eager to facilitate communication with the Ukrainian peacekeepers, who return his kindness by inviting him for a cup of tea, over which our peacekeepers learn much about the life of the local population.
LIVING CONDITIONS OF THE AUTONOMOUS REPAIR UNIT
The repair unit occupies a tent that has been put up on the premises of the Zambian contingent. The vehicle park is next to the tent and thirty meters off are the tens of the Zambians. The Ukrainians cook food on a gas stove borrowed from the Zambians. Before that they used a kerosene lamp.
Yet Zambians are no technology buffs and almost always cook their meals in a big cauldron on a fire. In the Ukrainian unit Sgt. Oleksandr Hoi, serving on contract basis, volunteered to cook food. Every day he rises before everybody else and hovers above his pots and pans, understanding that breakfast will set his comrades’ mood for the whole day at work. Knowing their tastes, Oleksandr uses his talent as a cook every day, always treating his colleagues to his specialties.
Although limited, there are possibilities to improvise with food. The unit receives food deliveries from the Ukrainian base camp once a week brought in on a helicopter. The same helicopter delivers food to the Zambians.
The Ukrainians store their food in the refrigerators of their Zambian colleagues. All dishes are washed clean after each meal and locked in metal boxed together with products that do not require cold storage. This is done to fend off rodents, which spread fever in this region.
Drinking water is also delivered. Before use it is boiled and then refrigerated in canisters. The tent is air-conditioned. In the rainy season the air conditioner is used to heat and dry the tent and personal belongings, which become wet with excessive humidity. Daytime temperatures are as high as forty degrees. Night temperatures can drop as low as fifteen degrees.
Twilight sets in at seven, when the work day is over. Fifteen minutes later the night begins in Africa. This is when insects and mosquitoes come to life. One has to wear pants and jackets and use repellents to avoid bites. A mosquito net is stretched above the bed at night to keep out mosquitoes. In addition, various fumigators are used to keep out insects.
There is no special evening entertainment. Some read books, others play chess or write letters to their folks at home. Yet, as the peacekeepers often say, sometimes all they want after a hard day at work is to sleep, exhausted more by the heat than work. Yet they have one, so to speak, common distraction, a pet monkey named Saiman. She accidentally wandered onto the premises of the Zambians’ camp and chose the tree near the Ukrainians’ tent as her new home. She has lived there for over two months and has become tame. During leisure time she entertains the peacekeepers in return for snacks.
On holidays and regular days the Ukrainians receive their Zambian friends, Sergeants Joseph and Victor and Ensign Ostana. Evidence of the fact that the Zambian command treats our Ukrainian peacekeepers favorably is that they are allowed to call home from the Zambian premises for 25 cents. For them it is like a breath of fresh air that makes all fatigue disappear.
