"Banya Lessons" by Joel R. Stegall
– some situations can just make you sweat
Learning across the barriers of language and culture can run hot and cold.
Joel R. Stegall, a music professor and academic administrator, began his academic career as a choir director and then chair of the music department at Mars Hill University. He later served in administrative posts at Ithaca College, the University of Florida, and Shenandoah University. From this last post, he developed and led a Russian/American academic exchange program. Since retiring to Winston-Salem, he has worked as an academic consultant, amateur woodworker and as a not-quite-inept general household handyman. Five of Joel’s stories have appeared in the Personal Story Publishing Project series.
Joel R. Stegall
Author’s Talk
My first trip to Russia was in the summer of 1995, less than four years after the collapse of the Soviet Union. I went with a church group. The goal was to try to build relations between American and Russia people. There would be no politics, only making friends, doing service work and church-related teaching. I threw my heart and soul into building bridges with the people of a country we had feared for decades. Surely friendship was better than mutually assured destruction.
I thought I would visit for a couple of weeks and meet a lot of people I would forget about in a few weeks. But this passing venture changed my life. From that first trip sprang Russia/American academic exchange programs between my institution, Shenandoah University, where I was Vice President for Academic Affairs, and Russian universities in Stavropol, Pyatigorsk and Ulyanovsk.
Over the next several years, I travelled to Russia fifteen times. I met children, parents and grandparents, university students, professors, business leaders, doctors, lawyers, and clergy. I stayed in Russian homes. I attended cultural events and saw historic sites in and around Moscow, St. Petersburg, Stavropol, Pyatigorsk and Ulyanovsk. I visited Lenin’s Tomb on Red Square, ate at the first McDonald’s in Moscow, saw a Mary Kay billboard in Pyatigorsk, and drove past a Coca-Cola plant in St. Petersburg.
Dozens of Russian university students studied at Shenandoah University. Russian professors, deans, and presidents visited our campus and had meals in our home. We sent professors and students to institutions in Russia. The intent was not to Americanize the Russians; it was only to get to know each other as human beings.
“Banya Lessons” tells about one of my early experiences in getting to know Russians as friends and colleagues.
