After training for 8 weeks and swearing in....then what?

Our time in our training village flew by and we are down to the last few Romanian lessons and the last few tips and suggestions for making our service successful.  Everything gets packed back up (even more stuff than we came with) we all dress up in our Sunday best and are loaded up in minibuses to head to Chisinau for our “swearing in” ceremony so that our service can officially start.  Of the 51 of us who got on the plane in New York, 50 of us are still here and are as prepared as we are going to be to start this new adventure.

Bidding a fond farewell to Iulia was difficult, we would miss her and her family for more reasons than we could find words for. 

Her fabulous cooking, and the marvelous garden fresh vegetables with flavor like nothing you have ever tasted, and the wonderful homemade wine were just the tip of the iceberg.

But finally, we and all of our baggage were picked up and loaded onto a private rutierra with 5 other volunteers and taken to the hub site in Chisinau where we unloaded all of our baggage and put it into a small coat room (which overflowed all the way out into the lobby) along with that of 21 others.  Then we were off to the swearing in ceremony with Country Director Janet Utrecht.

The new host families were then supposed to attend a host family conference, first with the Peace Corps Staff and then a later session with us volunteers.  This was to establish the host agreement regarding the cost of meals, use of washing machine, who cleans the rooms, etc.  Then our partners were scheduled to arrive in the early afternoon to transport us and all of our baggage (quite a lot since the Peace Corps has provided us with fire extinguishers, large language dictionaries, procedure manuals, technical manuals, smoke alarms, pitchers with filters and on, and on, ..) to our new locations where we would settle in for our two years of service.

True to form, my partner did not come and Marilyn technically did not yet have a partner.  Our host family had agreed to come to the host family conference and provide our transportation.  After the ceremony we had an hour and a half to grab a cup of coffee and basically relax while the staff explained the contract to the host family representatives.  The idea was for the host family to obtain an understanding of the contract and then negotiate and settle on an arrangement with the volunteers while the Peace Corps staff was available to facilitate any language barriers.   We were expecting Andrei to arrive by himself.

By 11:30 we were asked to keep an eye out for our family whose arrival was imminent.  So we kept watch in the plaza while all the other volunteers scattered to enjoy the city of Chisinau.  By one o’clock, all volunteers had returned and the conference began.  Our family had still not arrived so we sat in the room and waited while a majority of the other volunteers worked out the details of their contracts. 

This process was completed quickly and the volunteers began to load their baggage and leave.  In the spirit of the Peace Corps, the remaining volunteers lent a hand.  More and more volunteers left and we were still waiting for our family.  Finally, there were only us and one other volunteer and we were exhausted from helping with all the other baggage.  Our host family arrived at around 3:30 and Lilia had decided to come to and they had given Lilia’s oldest son, Ion, a ride to Chisinau.

Cramming all our stuff their small SUV, we climbed in the back seat, with a large bag standing on end between us, and the journey to our permanent site began.  Two hours later, after stopping for watermelon, tomatoes and peppers and a roadside stand, we arrived at our new home only to learn that our rooms would not be available because a family of friends were also staying there through the weekend.  It was Thursday.

Stacking our bags in the hallway underneath a table and taking the bare minimum to the only available room on the third floor (toothbrush, change of underwear, shorts and a t-shirt) we changed and joined the group outside where Andrei was busily preparing a barbeque.

The food and company was wonderful with English, Romanian, Russian and German being spoken around the table.

  Some of us even had a little Spanish and French and overall it was a very enjoyable European evening. 

We were told that our partners weren’t expecting us in the office on this first Friday in our new location and that was a good thing because we couldn’t get near the shower or the bathroom until nearly 10 a.m. because of all the people in the house.  Later on that morning we cleaned up, dressed casually and went out into the beautiful summer day to explore our new small town.  Saturday was more of the same, with a big dinner together in the evening again with more food and wine than we could all comsume.

Sunday we spent moving our baggage and unpacking.  We desperately needed to do a load of laundry but were informed that it was a day of rest and there should be no work done on this day.  Welcome to community integration.  It turned out to be a nice, lazy, restful day. 

The one thing we did accomplish on Sunday was we worked out the details of the contract with Andrei and Lilia, I think.  They were as uncomfortable as we were discussing and we didn’t have any readily available assistance.  We really wished they had attended the host family conference because they really didn’t know what to expect.  We executed all of the copies of the contract and Marilyn and I thankfully handed over a majority of the cash we had been carrying around and we were done.

I showed up at my partner’s office bright and early Monday morning and found it locked.  When my partner did arrive we shook hands and I was able to use my slightly improved Romanian to exchange pleasantries and speak a little about the day’s agenda.  It appeared that he really did not have any particular agenda to execute with me and introduced me to a local farmer that he was apparently working with that day.  It was good to listen to the language being spoken but I found I could only follow about a third of what was being said and very quickly became unable to answer the questions they rapidly fired my way from time to time.

A watermelon was sliced up and there was quite a bit of fun conversation (most of which I missed) and later, amid what may have been some frustration, my partner left after indicating I should stay in the office.  I spent a couple of hours communicating with the secretary through Google Translate (not very accurate) and she provided me with some information about their company which I read and then, with nothing better to do, I opened my language notes and started working on the language.

Later, in answer to my questions my partner indicated that his ideas for working with a volunteer were limited to my visiting the surrounding 30 or 40 small villages in our raion (county) and looking for community projects to perform.  I would then bring those projects to him, in proposal form.  Wow!  I had been told that he had worked with a volunteer before but this is absolutely NOT how this is supposed to work.  Since I am not an agricultural expert (like the last volunteer 5 years ago) and his business does not really need any assistance, it seemed we were at a standstill as to how we might work together. 

I thought to myself that it might have been effective if my partner had attended the partner conference with me the previous month in order to work on exactly these types of issues rather than sending an employee that did not know why she was there or what she was supposed to do.  Well, flexibility and resiliency.  I figured we’d find a way to work together.

Meanwhile, the business incubator Marilyn is working with had identified a potential partner for her (the soon to be confirmed manager of the incubator) and it appeared that against all outside expectations, that the incubator was going to be opened the following Thursday.  There was quite a bit to do first however.  A large amount of landscaping needed to be done, all three floors of the building needed to be cleaned and most of the initial 14 tenants still needed to be moved in.  Did I mention that the electricity and water needed to be turned on?

At one o’clock my partner told me to take an hour and a half for lunch and that he would take me around the raion and introduce me to various community members later that afternoon.  I returned from lunch and continued to work on my language notebook but by four I realized he was not going to return so after saying goodbye to the secretary I packed up and left the office for the day.

Victor from the raion was at the incubator with Marilyn and he contacted me and requested my assistance for a few days in order to help get the incubator open.  I told him that he would need to ask my partner and later I was informed that he readily agreed to this.  Yea!  I have something to do tomorrow and the next day!