DATE: Thursday, November 13, 1997           TAG: 9711130452

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A17  EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY BILL SIZEMORE, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:   66 lines

U.N. WORKER FINDS PAIN IN SOVIET TRANSITION

When Arthur ``Tuck'' Evans, a Peace Corps volunteer from Virginia Beach, arrived in the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan to teach English in 1995, he found a place of overwhelming need.

There were many days when the school in the remote village where he taught had no electricity, telephone service or heat.

The average temperature in his classroom was 45 degrees in the winter.

He and his Peace Corps colleagues were particularly touched by the plight of children in the country's many orphanages.

``They're all over Kyrgyzstan,'' Evans said Wednesday in a telephone interview from Bishkek, the capital. ``Pretty much every town or city has some sort of orphanage or handicapped children's home. They're pretty terrible places. There's a severe need, especially for winter clothes.'' Some of the volunteers told their parents at home about what they had seen, and the parents sprang into action.

Families of volunteers in Virginia, North Carolina, Indiana, Wisconsin, Colorado, California and Washington collected thousands of winter coats, boots, shoes, hats, mittens and teddy bears for the Kyrgy orphans.

First lady Hillary Rodham Clinton delivered some of the clothes Wednesday on her tour of former Soviet republics.

All together, the donations amounted to three shipments valued at $150,000.

Evans, 24, a graduate of Colby College in Maine, finished his Peace Corps tour in June and now works for the United Nations Development Program in Kyrgyzstan. He was heartened by the outpouring of donated clothes, but his hopes are leavened by experience.

``We distributed clothes to schoolchildren two years ago with the UNICEF program,'' he said. ``One problem is that you can distribute this stuff, and the directors of the school or the principals or various officials will actually take the clothes from the children and sell them. Even if you were to ride around and give out these clothes and put them on the children's backs, it doesn't necessarily mean they'll be there when you come back the next day or the next week.''

And that is just one aspect of the country's painful transition from communism to a free-market economy.

``In the capital city you see a lot of changes - a lot of gilded development, I call it,'' Evans said. ``Nicer restaurants, more products available. They way people here describe it is, there are more products available but you can't afford them.

``People say that in Soviet times sometimes things didn't work well, but we almost always had our salaries, we almost always had jobs, there was electricity more often, there was heating more often, more order in the schools. The police department was a better organization - less corruption, they say. The streets were safer.

``The school system is deteriorating. Teachers are often paid in sugar or flour or they're not paid at all. Sometimes the teachers here seem more like volunteers than we are.

``Still, I think Kyrgyzstan is a nicer place than some of the countries around it. The Kyrgys tend to be very gentle people. The government is more tolerant than some others. It's not quite a budding democracy, but it's more democratic than the countries around it.''

In his U.N. job, Evans helps arrange small ``microcredit'' loans for community-based organizations.

``The hope is they will become small village banks that will help start small businesses and give people a chance to work their way out of poverty,'' he said. ILLUSTRATION: Photo

Arthur ``Tuck'' Evans

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