Penoyar's gained his fair share of perspective over the years, and after living in Saudi Arabia, the Western U.S. and now Ukraine for the last five years, this USAID project officer is heading south to Zambia for a change
Two years ago, the Kyiv Post’s readership put Penoyar near the top of a list of friendliest ex-pats, behind only restaurateur Eric Aigner and former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Carlos Pascual. A program officer with the United States Agency for International Development here in Kyiv for the last five years, Penoyar refers to himself as the “ultimate bureaucrat.” He downplays work-related conversation and talks instead about his friends, family and coworkers.
During normal working hours Penoyar, 53, does all kinds of “technical stuff” for U.S. government programs in Ukraine, such as tracking government funding for various USAID projects and measuring their progress. It’s largely thankless work, but as he’d be the first to tell you, there’s more to life than work.
Penoyar’s life in Kyiv since his arrival in the spring of 1999 has entailed many things: participation in community theater and the Hash House Harriers; traveling across large swaths of Ukraine and Central Europe by car with his wife of 23 years, Sandy Penoyar; volunteering for various local church efforts relating to orphaned children; and raising funds for those kids, through the Kyiv Lion’s Club and the annual Burn’s Night supper.
“I’m a Christian,” Penoyar says. “That’s the basic underpinning. And volunteering feels good.” After taking a sip of his tall iced green tea at Limoncello Grill in Pechersk (Hr 5), he continues.
“Lots of people get this narrow tunnel vision,” he says. “You need to have a balance in your life, or you lose perspective.”
Gaining Perspective
Penoyar went west to college, as a way of gaining just that sort of perspective, graduating with a degree in communications from Washington State University in 1973. His worldview widened with his exposure to his Delta Tau Delta fraternity members, some of whom were from Cambodia, Vietnam, South America, Africa and other parts of the developing world. Meeting such people got him interested in the idea of doing development work, and he bounced around working for numerous NGOs in Washington D.C. for much of the 1970s. He met Sandy in 1978, after frequent run-ins with her in the small D.C. garden apartment building in which they both lived. They were married two years later.
Fast forward a few years, during which time Penoyar worked several years for Aramco as a contract negotiator in Dharan, Saudi Arabia. There he and Sandy had their second of two daughters, and he also developed skills in consensus-building that helped him secure work later: for the Navy back in D.C., and then with USAID. After 10 years of sitting at a table negotiating contracts, he finally got tired of it, and joined the U.S. government’s Newly Independent States task force in its Europe and Eurasia bureau.
In 1992 it became Penoyar’s job to put together technical assistance projects for the former Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries. He was only “tangentially involved” in Ukraine during that time, traveling in and out as needed to gather information and lay the groundwork for USAID programs, but his interest in the country soon grew to the point where he was recommended for a posting in Kyiv. He hasn’t looked back since, and he offers many reasons why.
He speaks with fondness and ease of his Russian teacher Lena, whom he considers a great friend, as she helped introduce him and Sandy (who now also works for USAID, after having once worked as a nurse, among other things) to their fine cook Nina. There are the people in his office, whom he describes as some of the best people he’s ever worked with; his daughters Natalie and Melanie; and the Ukrainians he’s called neighbors these last five years.
Home Sweet Home
“Kyiv is one of the safest cities I’ve ever lived in,” Penoyar says before diving into his green salad with a tangy gorgonzola sauce (Hr 41). In reference to this fall’s presidential campaign, he adds, “I really hope things stay this way here. The glass is definitely more than half full.
“Kyiv is a big city, but a small city. Invariably we see people we know everywhere we go,” he says. “The common thread is that we gravitate to the same people who have joy in their lives and look forward to new things.”
It’s Penoyar’s attachment to Kyiv and to all Ukrainians that will make him most reluctant to leave, and he and Sandy are leaving very soon. They’re not going back to Washington, D.C. however, meaning that he won’t soon be making a regular habit of going down to the Maine Avenue seafood market on the Potomac River.
“I really miss East Coast seafood,” he says. “Sandy and I would go down there on a Saturday and bring home a whole bunch of fresh shrimp, or oysters or crabs, throw in a case of beer along the way, invite over some friends and do it up. Boy, that’s a feast!” he says with a chuckle.
Moving On
After 18 years of working for the government, Penoyar is two years away from retirement, but he’s just not ready for that yet. He still wants to broaden his horizons. In fact, he’s just accepted a posting in Zambia for the next four years. He and Sandy will return to the States briefly to visit family and friends, and he’ll even have to endure 10 weeks of intensive language training to help him become fluent in Russian – which he wants to do because he thinks he may just return to Eastern Europe, and because he’d like to work for the U.S. Foreign Service. “I’m not looking forward to it,” he says of his upcoming courses. But then it’s off to the land of safaris, big game preserves, the magnificent Victoria Falls, and a house instead of an apartment.
“I can nail two pieces of wood together, but living here for five years, I kinda forgot,” he says smiling. In Zambia he’ll volunteer to build houses as part of a Habitat for Humanity project, and he’ll be able to take advantage of a local Hash House Harriers chapter to improve his social life. Whatever the case, he doesn’t relish the idea of returning to the U.S. When his sister and brother asked him recently why he’d want to go somewhere dusty, dirty, dangerous and hot, he replied frankly that it sounds like they were describing parts of D.C.
“Everyone comes from somewhere else,” Penoyar says in between bites of his ham pizza (Hr 39). “It’s fun to talk to people and compare notes on their similarities, to see where we differ and learn from them,” he says. That’s “Penoyar’s perspective,” as he likes to call it.
As he nears retirement age, he manages to sound like he’s that hungry thirtysomething who took that job in Saudi Arabia.
“I have to retire at 65,” he says, leaning forward as if to share a secret, “but even at 65, there’s such a demand for people with skills like mine, I can keep on doing this for as long as I want.”
Limoncello Grill
22 Moskovska, 254-2024.
Open daily
from 11 a.m. till the last customer.
English menu: Yes.
English-speaking staff: Yes.
