And the real work begins...

September rolled around and it already felt like fall.  Daily high temperatures rarely exceed the low sixties and overnight lows were dropping into the forties.  School started and while we did not attend any, all of the schools in our town put on elaborate opening festivities.  After living in the southern U.S. for so many years and after a year of chasing the sun, we were not looking forward to our first winter in a long time.

Both of us were settling into a routine.  Being us, we saw no reason to sit around in our offices when there was nothing to do.  Better to explore our town, try to use our language and talk about existing and potential projects.  So, after a couple of hours of face time in the office we usually met for lunch and went out and about.

There was plenty to do at the incubator, in our opinion, but we soon were faced with the realities of Moldova.  Shoddy work (for example, construction work) is shrugged at and paid for anyway.  Inventory management is science fiction.  For that matter, it does no good to make plans here because assuredly, at the last minute, something more important will come up.  Business and politics are not separate things here either…..but that’s all I’m going to say about it.

My partner, probably in frustration, introduced me to his 26 year old son Ivan.  Ivan had worked a few years in American and spoke an intermediate level of English.  The three of us spoke about several project ideas and we settled on three to proceed with.  In my opinion, two of these projects were great ideas.

First off, we focused on the rest and relaxation park.  Being relatively new to my site and Moldova I had yet to realize that this is one of the basic ideas that every Moldovan confronted with the freedom to imagine a business will envision.  Animal farms, spas, children’s playgrounds, hair salons, bars or small stores follow close behind.  (Wow, that’s almost a complete list).  Ivan and I planned to visit a few existing parks over the next month or so.

Next up, a plastic recycling project that we all agreed was a good idea.  We designed the project and started doing research.  It looked like all the pieces were in place for a great project.  Ivan and I both liked the project because not only would it address a community need, if it worked it would provide much needed clothing to rural children living in poverty.

Finally, we focused on our large, ambitious project.  Forgive me if I am a little vague here but my partners have asked that I don’t speak with anyone about this particular idea.  Not that it’s extremely original.  It’s nothing like that; it’s more like once somebody has an idea in Moldova, and it looks like it might work, several other people will decide to do the same thing.

Anyway, once again our research was providing positive results.  We attended an agricultural trade show (yes my partner is the local director of the national agricultural extension program known as ACSA) and located several firms that provided just what we needed.  We spoke to potential customers and also a few potential beneficiaries (this was also a complicated project) and obtained some high quality, positive information.  Next on the list was to send out a Request for Proposal.

Silly me; this is apparently a process that is unknown in Moldova, probably in Eastern Europe and possibly in Eurasia as a whole.  In order to move the project along swiftly, I wrote the RFP but since I could only handle the English speaking firms, and there were no Romanian speaking firms, I needed my partners to translate it into Russian for there were several Russian firms that only spoke that language.  Not one American firm was willing to consider a project as small as ours.

Did I mention that I spent most of the month learning about a whole new industry?  I had to do this in spite of Ivan having worked in this industry, in the U.S. for several months.  We even had a volunteer from AIDC/VOCA email us several times although he treated us like bumpkins.  I guess we are bumpkins come to think of it.  The project was moving forward quickly.

That’s enough about work.  Lilia returned from her seminar in Ukraine after the first week of the month and a few days later our host family had yet another barbeque.  Charcoal briquettes are not generally used in our town; maybe not in Moldova.  Wood, of any kind, is burned until there are sufficient embers to cook meat (in Uruguay they call this a parilla). 

I digress.  At this particular barbeque we were introduced to an interesting combination; raw onion and aged sheep cheese followed by a bite of bread and a quaff of red vin de casa (homemade wine).  Mmmm Mmmm Good!

On a Sunday in the middle of the month we went to the bus station to catch the autobus to Balți for our language tutoring session.  The bus was full and the driver wouldn’t let us on and we walked away to look for a rutiera.  Five minutes later, he stopped at the corner we were at and started letting people on.  My God I have never seen such a thing.

This is a small, 20 passenger bus and there must have been 50 people on it, most of them in some weird yoga position in order to accommodate the other passengers.  I couldn’t stand erect because of an overhead handrail, someone’s butt was pressed firmly into my stomach and I had a man’s arm in my face while his wife’s head was in my armpit.  I was worried about Marilyn who had somehow been pressed, back first, against the large windshield and prayed that we wouldn’t get into a collision.  There has got to be a better way!

Forty-five interminable minutes and 25 kilometers later we staggered off the bus, stiff and sore but glad the trip was over.  “Never again” we vowed.

Another Peace Corps Volunteer, our friend Arun, came to visit our town for a day.  He was able to catch a bus directly to the center of our town and we had a nice time showing him around and telling each other about our experiences over lunch. 

At the end of the day Arun had to travel back to his town, about 30 kilometers away.  The logistics for this were incredible.  First, he had to catch a taxi or a bus or in this case, a ride from my partner, to the national highway.  Then he had to flag down a passing rutiera for the 15 kilometer trip to the road to his town.  Finally, he had to hitchhike the final 8 kilometers into his town.  Hitchhiking is not generally free in Moldova, unless you know the driver.  People pick you up and expect money for gas.  That seems fair.

Sound like we were all a little confused?  Correct.  Part of being a new Peace Corps Volunteer is to figure it out.  We were just getting started in our service but we felt like we’d made a good start and were excited about our work, our town, our language tutors and the people we’d met.  We thought we were doing a good job integrating into our community and were getting some traction on our projects.  Did I mention that it was getting colder?

Suddenly, it all came to an end.  Drop everything and return to Ciorescu for another two weeks of training.  Whoopee!  

PST Pre-Service Training in Moldova

Four very quick hours of language class and one massive headache later we sat outside the school with the other volunteers to compare and eat what was provided to us for lunch.  I have never been a big fan of cucumbers but the flavor of these Moldovan produced cucumbers was so good that I couldn't help chomping away on two or three along with the other volunteers.

Ciorescu in the summer time is a beautiful place to learn a language and we quickly noted the similarities and differences between the Peace Corps method of teaching the language and what we had experienced with Castila in Spain the year before.  The Peace Corps focuses upon teaching volunteers “survival language” as quickly as possible and it seemed to work well for us.

Waking up in our training village of Ciorescu (pronounced “chore-es-coo”) for the first full day of PST we found that Iulia (our host mom) had made Moldovan pancakes for breakfast and a packet for our lunch consisting of sausages, bread, cucumbers and tomatoes.  After brushing our teeth and negotiating our way past the huge garden and through the chicken coop to the outhouse we were off to language class which began at eight o’clock.

We had been told that since we had learned Spanish (a little bit anyway) learning Romanian would be easier for us.  This turned out to be true and not true at the same time.  Yes, we knew what to expect and could make comparisons with the process of learning a new language but in reality, the grammar structure, pronunciation and vocabulary of Romanian is significantly different so in many ways we needed to unlearn things we had developed while learning Spanish.  In our opinion, the languages are different and each has to be approached differently.

The Peace Corps keeps its new trainees under “lockdown” status (can’t leave our training village unaccompanied) for the first three weeks for safety purposes.  Our language trainers (LTI’s) were responsible for us and lived in the village with us during the week only going home to their families for Saturday evening and Sunday (they were on call however).  We could wander the village but could not leave without being accompanied by an LTI, or a member of our host family.  Our routine quickly became four hours of language in the morning (in groups of three or four volunteers) and a bit of cultural and technical training about business in Moldova with some small projects to work on in the afternoon.

The small afternoon projects were useful because they caused us to wander around the village, familiarizing ourselves with the place and in some cases, starting to use the language.  Our host families provided everything we needed and the Peace Corps provided about 29 lei ($2.25) per day of walking around money.  This would buy a beer, a glass of wine and a package of cigarettes.  Since Marilyn and I each received 29 lei per day sometimes we would have another beer or wine……or buy something useful like toilet paper.  Some of the volunteers quickly developed the habit of meeting at the local bar for a drink at the end of the day.

One day per week we traveled on the bus, with our LTI’s to Chișinău for Administrative training.  We really learned to dislike these days as the Peace Corps staff delivered the required information in the specified manner.  On the positive side we did get to see the other volunteers that had come over with us, serving in the other programs, and that was nice.  Meanwhile, the two doctors in charge of the 100 or so volunteers in Moldova interviewed, poked, prodded and vaccinated us over and over again.  Personally, our focus was on acquiring the language which we felt was the most important thing to our future success as volunteers.

The bus between Chișinău and Ciorescu takes 45 minutes and runs several times per day.  Inevitably, with 11 volunteers and 3 LTI’s added to the regulars, the bus became extremely crowded and hot by the time it arrived at our destination.  While it is not particularly hot in Moldova in the summer (it rarely exceeds 30-32 degrees) it is very humid (regularly over 80%). 

Since bathing in a bucket (a Peace Corp norm that can’t be imagined until you try it) was difficult for us new volunteers (it never becomes easy) and washing clothes is not an everyday occurrence it becomes important to try and avoid sweating through your clothes whenever possible.  One complicating factor; many Moldovans believe that a breeze, blowing past you (called “curent”) was a one-way, non-stop ticket to sickness.  The result was that on almost every crowded, hot bus, somebody would insist that the windows be shut to cut off the “curent”.

Our cultural integration seemed to be going well and we think our experiences in Spain and Uruguay helped.  Iulia and Sasha’s grandaughter Daniela, a 17 year old who was learning English in school, came over on our first couple of nights to interpret for us which really helped, and made us feel at home.  Thanks so much Dani!  We had to learn how to take a “bucket bath” in our first day or two because the outdoor, summer shower was not yet finished (a wonderful luxury that I wished we’d had in Arizona).  The house did not have a hot water heater, if you wanted hot water for your bath you heated it in a big kettle on the stove and put it in your bucket to use.  There are no instructions for taking a bucket bath.  It is an individual thing. 

The Peace Corps joke is; “an optimist sees the glass half full, a pessimist sees it half empty and a Peace Corps volunteer thinks ‘I could take a bath in that!’” 

The family provided homemade wine, both red and white with dinner and both were incredibly delicious.  We had lucked out; our host mother was a very good cook.  Iulia and Sasha took the time to speak with us every chance they got and we appreciated their efforts.  It was important for us to learn to understand the language although we later learned that Sasha was speaking mostly Russian!  Iulia would talk to us non-stop and laugh because she knew we couldn't understand much at all and we learned to appreciate her efforts.

Sasha was 73 and retired.  He worked around the house and in the garden and distilled the local hard spirits known as “samagon” from various fruits, usually apricots.  Iulia, we came to find out, worked two jobs; in the mornings she worked in a bank in Chișinău and a couple of nights per week she had the overnight shift at the Primaria (Mayor’s office) in Ciorescu.  We are not entirely sure what all was involved with this overnight job but we knew she cleaned and worked in the gardens and also answered the 24 hour emergency number for the entire village of 7 thousand people.  We later found that Iulia was one of 6 sisters, all born and raised in Ciorescu, with 5 of them still living there, the night job at the Primaria was shared by her and two of her sisters on a rotation.

By the end of June after 4 weeks of intensive language instruction, specifically designed for Peace Corps volunteers, we could say some basic phrases and were starting to understand how the language was supposed to work grammatically.  But carrying on conversation was still a long way off.  We could understand very basic instructions when spoken slowly and clearly (Moldovans speak rapidly, with a heavy accent and throw in lots of Russian words in regular conversation) but beyond that we were still hopeless with our Romanian.  As with our Spanish, some days we felt better about our language acquisition than others.  But we both were a little more patient with ourselves than we had been with Spanish; we knew it would just take time and patience.

Towards the end of the month we all went to an Administrative session in Chisinau and they had the big REVEAL.  Oh bloody joy!  We all were together as a group with many of the already serving volunteers and they gave us each our assignment, and revealed our new home towns where we would be expected to serve for the next two years. Rounds of applause and lot's of giggling and screaming later, we were starting to wonder if we were too cynical or simply too old for this kind of thing, but we did now have our assignments which was a useful outcome.

With 4 weeks of Romanian language training, we were sent off on our own for a “site visit” to meet our new partners and spend the night with our new host family during the first weekend in July.  Our partners had sent us letters of instruction about how to navigate trains or buses and were expected to meet us when we arrived. 

Needless to say, we met this challenge with much trepidation, and plenty of anxiety, but also with the hope that we would find the community welcoming and the people as lovely as our family in Ciroescu!