Our new home would be in a Raion center (like a county seat)
and like many raion in Moldova, it is an almost exclusively agricultural area with
very little else in the way of business.
Mike’s primary partner, Costa (short for Constantine) was the head of a
government extension program for farmers called ACSA, his application for a
Peace Corps Volunteer stated that he wanted help with the business side of
things and was well connected with the farmers in the region so there was the
hope that some new business opportunities could be created.
My primary partner had not been confirmed by the Raion
council when we first arrived but a wonderful woman, Tamara, stepped in as a
volunteer to show me around and try to talk with me about my future
assignment. I had been assigned to the
brand new Incubator de Afaceri (business
incubator) that was just being finished and was scheduled to open in
August. The Raion council had requested
the volunteer but my primary partner would be whoever they chose to manage the
incubator.
After a 45 minute bus ride into Chisinau, a 15 minute walk
to “Gara de Nord” the bus station for travel to the north, a 45 minute wait for the right bus, and a 2
hour rutiera (mini bus) ride we arrived at the bus station a bit tired but
mostly just nervous! I guess we were
easily identifiable because Costa came up to us immediately and motioned for us
to get in his car, Mike rode up front with him and I rode in the back with
Tamara.
They took us on a ride to see the town, it is quite spread
out and covers a lot of ground for only having about 17,000 people (with almost
a third living and working abroad that means only about 12,000 really live
there at any one time). Since we were
not able to understand much of what was said to us they mostly pointed to
things and gave us one or two word descriptions in the hope we could pick up
some of it. We learned some new
vocabulary, and came to understand that the town was long and narrow roughly
following and old river bed along the bottom of a small valley with the town
growing up the hill from the river bottom to the north. “Centru” the center of town has the Raion Council
building (think county government) the Primaria (think city government) and the
“Casa de Cultura” (think Soviet style theatre/auditorium) a huge park, two
monuments and a couple of high schools.
A small assortment of shops and two or three restaurants/bars kind
rounded out what we could see.
One of the things that really struck us both immediately was
the huge number of trees, gardens and open green space. It turned out that our new host family lived
on the edge of a beautiful wooded area, the long drive was lined with big old
chestnut, walnut and pine trees. We were
met by Lilia, our new “host mother” who quickly became “host sister” as she was
many years younger than us. She set up a
table in the garden and brought food and drinks outside so we could enjoy the
beautiful summer day. Costa headed out
and Tamara, who was friends with Lilia stayed to visit (think lots of charades
and looks of confusion with bits and pieces of information getting
through). Lilia’s husband Andrei
arrived soon after and brought beautiful, huge sunflowers to each of the ladies
and a bottle of vodka to share.
Andrei spoke a few words of high school English, but he had
his laptop handy and fired up google translate so we could manage to actually
exchange some information. We had our
laptops but did not have internet access so it had been beyond us to this
point. Tamara suggested that we should
all have a barbeque, we were not quite sure what this entailed in Moldova but
we were game if they were. We thought we understood that she would go home and
get her husband and be back in a little while and we would barbeque then. Tamara returned a half hour or so later and
we all piled into a big van and headed out to what turned out to be a very
small village, where Tamara and Petru have the old family house, no running
water, an outhouse at the far end of the garden, no electricity or gas. They had all brought food and drink, and
shortly after we arrived had a roaring fire.
There are no charcoal briquettes here, just build a bonfire and the
coals will make themselves. They walked
us around the large garden filled with grape vines, cherry, apricot, apple and
pear trees, vegetables of all kinds and a large raspberry patch. Up near the outhouse across the back end of
the property were hives of happy bees producing fabulous honey.
Another couple joined us, Igor and Ala, no one spoke any
English (and very little Romanian as we were to find later) and there was no
WiFi so we played a lot of charades, and laughed a lot as we all tried to
understand one another. We had enough spoken language to tell them about our
family and a little about our background (our language instructors had made us
practice these things before we left) but understanding what they were saying
to us was quite another matter. They
quickly started talking very fast among themselves in Russian or Ukrainian
(their native languages) and then one of them would try very slowly in Romanian
to explain something or ask us a question.
Believe it or not, we actually found that we did learn a bit about each
of them and we had a marvelous time. Many hours and much food and homemade wine
later, it was beginning to feel like we might really learn to like our new
“site”.
The following morning Costa picked Mike up to take him off
to see some of the farms and meet some farmers in the area. Lilia and Tamara had conspired to have me
meet them at the Raion Council building later in the morning to meet some
people and then to get a tour of the incubator.
I was introduced to the Raion Council President and several other
important people, needless to say, I could not even understand most of the
names and remembering them was out of the question, but it was a lovely gesture
on their part to try to make me feel welcome.
A young man in the Economic development section of the Raion,
Victor was detailed take me to the Incubator because he spoke a little
English. Wow, first chance I had to
actually ask a bunch of questions in my own language, he tried valiantly to
understand and answer my questions but needless to say it was a challenge all
the way around. The building was not
completed and was a major construction zone when I saw it; I was very surprised
that they were all convinced it would open on time in just 5 weeks. I was destined to learn more about this
cultural trait over time.
Costa brought Mike back to “centru” and we met up at the
house to find that we had been invited to dinner at Andrei’s parent’s
home. Igor and Ala supplied their 14
year old daughter, Dacia as a translator for us; she was by far the best
English speaker we had met in town and was a very impressive young woman.
Dinner was lovely, we ate out in the garden and with Dacia’s
help were able to communicate with the family and enjoyed ourselves
immensely.
The following morning we headed out for a two day “partner
conference” in Chisinau, kind of a misnomer for us, Costa was unable to go so
he sent a consultant from his organization with Mike, and since I did not have
a partner yet the Raion council made Victor go with me. It was supposed to be a planning and
prioritizing time for partners to set initial expectations with
volunteers. We went through the motions
knowing that our actual partners would have to do this with us after we arrived
at site in August... or not.
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