Life is all about those pesky interruptions.....

Just when we were getting the hang of things in our town, starting to meet people we can communicate with and finding a few things to start working on, way too soon we have to pack up, cancel everything for two weeks and return to our training village for two more weeks of training. 

On the plus side we will get to see everybody that we initially trained with and hear about their experiences and new homes.  We will also get some additional language training, and some more Peace Corps administrative and technical training.

On the down side, we had found a wonderful private tutor who is working with us specifically on the language we need and we will be missing several sessions with her.  We have to stop all work and every discussion about projects and explain that we have to pick it up again in two weeks.  Worse, we have to pack for two weeks right at the time of year when it could be 80 one day and 45 the next so packing is crazy.  Finally, we have to face two more weeks of endless training sessions, some valuable - some, not so much.

Sound like we’re not enjoying training?  Guess you could say that, in our minds, the down side is winning this battle.  But, off we go, on our two hour rutiera ride to Chisinau then a quick change to the local bus and 20 minutes later we are back in our training village.  Arriving at the house was very much like going “home” since it was our first home here in Moldova and we lived in it longer than we have been at our new site. 

Seeing Iulia was great but there was definitely an air of melancholy about her, she commented that things were very difficult without Sasha.  The next day Iulia tried to talk to us a bit as she left for work and told us that there was someone sleeping in the house – we did not quite understand everything she said but since our area was accessed from a separate outside door we did not think it would be a problem if someone was staying with her so we just settled in, went about our business and thought no more of it.

As it turns out the man sleeping in the house was her son, Vitaly who lives in Russia, he had come back to Moldova to visit his mother and to handle some legal paperwork.   He is the spitting image of his father Sasha; we were absolutely amazed when we saw him!  He speaks almost no Romanian and we have no Russian but he makes a valiant effort and we do our best with charades and whatever else we can do to communicate. 

When we were here in June and July the house was very quiet, we were able to study and we saw quite a bit of Lilia and her children.  This time, Sasha is catching up with all the friends he has not seen for many years, there are people we don’t know over at the house all the time, particularly when Iulia is at work.  Thankfully with the door shut we can block most of the noise, but the trick is, getting in and through the garden into the house before anyone sees us, if we get seen it means stopping to try to chat and of course to have a few drinks.  Studying goes right out the window if you start drinking with Moldovans right after class.

We did have the pleasure of seeing Lilia, Daniela, Iuliana and Bogdan again and spent a couple of delightful evenings visiting with Iulia and the family.  Our language was definitely better, but we still struggled mightily.  Daniela still had to do quite a bit of translating.

The language lessons were challenging in ways we had not anticipated.  Since we were working with a tutor, we were in a completely different place in our learning than the classes were geared for.  Mike and I were in different classes and the content was not consistent between the classes.  It was not that we were ahead or behind, we were just studying different things.  All in all, Mike felt that his language lessons were not very valuable where I felt that I did get value from mine.

Most of the other “training sessions” were handled by volunteers who came to Moldova a year before we did and had some experiences to share.  While some of it was interesting we found that some of the younger volunteers who spoke to us appeared to be less involved in their own communities than we were already in ours.  They spoke of the difficulty in gaining the respect of their Moldovan counterparts and about many of the challenges they faced.

In these sessions we were struck by the realization that we were having a very different experience for one very simple reason.  Age, we are older than the average volunteer.  The culture in Moldova ascribes a certain amount of respect to people simply on the basis that you have lived life for a while.  It is interesting to note that in Moldova “youth” programs are open to anyone age 18-29 and many are open for people up to age 35.  The age grid in Moldova goes something like this:

Under 19 – child

20 to 30-35 – youth

35 to 50 – adult

50 to 65 – experienced, respected older person

65 and on up – very respected elder (as in, why aren’t you dead yet?)

You do not get brownie points in Moldova for getting through the University early and working on things that no one else around you will ever understand because you are a physics savant; to an adult Moldovan, until you are 35, you are just a kid, not matter how smart or accomplished you are.  We have met extremely bright, accomplished, young Americans serving here and discovered that quite a few have very real difficulty in getting traction with their Moldovan counterparts, unless the counterparts are of a similar age.  

In the time we were in our training village the weather went from late summer to decidedly fall.  There is no heat in the room we were in (the camera mare) so we found that we were heading for bed early whenever possible just to stay warm.  The outhouse is a long ways away when it is 5C outside!  We poured buckets of water heated on the stove into the barrel atop the summer shower every other day or so.  Multiple layers of clothes, sweaters and jackets were piled on as October began and training wound up. 

Many of the volunteers planned to spend the weekend after training in Chisinau as the first weekend in October is the National Wine Festival.  While we love wine and were very interested in the Festival, we found ourselves really wanting to be back at our site.  We figured that the festival would happen again next year so there would be another chance to attend.

Reversing our trip we found ourselves back home and as we walked from the bus station to our home we found a whole lot of activity in our main square and surprise, surprise, we have our own wine festival brewing up for Sunday!  We were so glad we did not stay in Chisinau. 

Back at the house we found Andrei preparing the first soba of the year to warm one of our rooms.  A soba, for those of you who don’t know, is a special fireplace designed to heat a wall of a room.  I don’t think it was an hour before our Peace Corps carbon monoxide monitor was shrieking.  Andrei came running up the stairs wanting to know what all the commotion was about.  We aired out the room and reset the monitor and it didn’t go off again that night.  We simply assumed that the chimneys needed to air themselves out a little.

We turned our attention to unpacking the rest of our luggage to get to the coats and boots that had not been out of the bags since our arrival.  Looking forward to the festival we also found ourselves anxious to get to work, with no more interruptions in sight, and even more anxious about the onset of winter, we have not experienced a real winter since moving to California in 1988. 

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!  

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!

Summer in Moldova, an entirely new experience.

It is summer in Moldova and we were freed up to leave our village during our free time which many of the younger volunteers took advantage of to travel to Chișinău.  We were happy to spend the afternoons doing language homework, reading or trying to talk with Iulia and Sasha.  We were finding that we were understanding a bit more of the language and were feeling pretty good about this part of our training.

Culturally we are “integrating”, we are accomplished “bucket bathers” but will use the summer shower any chance we get.  The summer shower is a lovely contraption that consists of a shower stall in the garden with a big plastic 100 litre barrel on top.  A tube runs from a hole in the bottom of the barrel straight through a hole in the roof, there is usually a valve attached just inside the ceiling with a shower head just beneath.  You reach up and turn the valve on and have a great gravity shower.  The water is filled from the well in the morning so that it sits in the sun all day, if the weather turns cold or you have a few days of rain with no sun you just go heat a bucket of water on the stove and add it to the barrel (by climbing the ladder in the chicken coop to reach the roof of the shower) so you can have a warm shower.  It is heaven compared to a bucket bath!

We have dinner at home every night and depending on Iulia’s work schedule, we have Sasha or one of the grand-daughters for company, or we have Iulia and Sasha.  We love the homemade wine and enjoy the food that Iulia prepares for us.  We had our first experience with “racitura” and like many other volunteers found it very difficult to eat, it is a jellied meat dish (usually pork or chicken) that takes a lot of time and effort to prepare, it is a specialty here and they make it for special occasions. I am afraid we may never acquire a taste for it.

We had the opportunity to attend a birthday “masa” for Lilia, Sasha and Iulia’s daughter.  She is the mother of Daniela, the 17 year old English speaker, Iuliana, age 11 and a new baby boy named Bodgan who was just 8 months old (at the time of this writing in summer 2013).  Lilia and her husband Valeri have a new home on the other side of the village.  It is more modern and has an indoor bathroom with an actual hot water heater and working shower.  Valeri works in the Cricova winery not far from Ciorescu and his job, we think, has something to do with the manufacturing of their Champagne.  The birthday dinner (or masa) was, as usual, way more food than any of us could eat.  We all gathered around a big table with family and friends talking a million miles a minute, in Russian or the local dialect known as Moldovanesti. 

Dani made a point to try to talk with us a bit and translate a little, then she went off to tend the baby and we found that these lovely folks would switch to Romanian to try to talk to us.  We know it had to sound like baby talk to them and we are sure that we are very difficult for them to understand but they asked us simple questions about the U.S. and in particular about our family, things we could answer, somewhat anyway.   The choice of beverages was cognac or champagne….for several hours……good thing everybody was walking home!

Late June through early July is cherry season in Moldova.  There are loaded trees everywhere you go, two varieties are very common and everyone seems to have access to both, a sour cherry similar to a bing, and a dark sweet cherry that you could easily eat enough of to make yourself sick if you are not careful.  Lilia with Daniela and Iuliana came over one evening to pick cherries for bottling.

  We all picked until we couldn’t get to any more cherries and then Iulia made some compote, the Moldovan version of juice made by cooking the fruit in water for about half an hour and then letting it cool overnight before bottling.  She also made preserves from some of the cherries and we had them on crepes for breakfast, the cherries in Moldova are absolutely wonderful.

The huge garden behind the house is producing onions, garlic, cucumbers, potatoes, beans and herbs of all kinds.  The grapes on the vines are beginning to ripen and the carrots, cabbage, beets, corn and tomatoes are just coming on.  We have never lived anywhere else that you could literally walk out and pick your dinner.  The chickens provide fresh eggs and occasionally meat for the table.  Rabbits are in hutches at the bottom of the garden and provide the staple meat for the house, and every year Sasha and Valeri buy a pig and have it slaughtered and each family takes half of the meat to freeze and use throughout the year.  The food is simple, fresh and nutritious during the summer.

We are starting to better understand when and who to greet and interact with.  This is particularly difficult for me as a woman because my normal behavior is to greet and talk to everyone.  In Moldova, it is very common for men to greet each other and shake hands but they do not normally greet women unless they know them very well and they very rarely shake hands with a woman.  In more formal situations when we are introduced to men, I generally find that the men kiss my hand if I extend it rather than shaking it. 

We can competently order beer or wine at the local bar (of course) and get a bag of chips if we want it.  We are slowly making friends with the bartender; she now smiles at us, (our first few times in the bar she was definitely scowling).  The local drunk has joined us once, uninvited of course, and he spoke to us in uninterrupted Russian for about 10 minutes.

Our language instructors have changed up the classes and we now have different teachers.  It is probably a good thing to have put us in separate classes; I guess they got tired of asking us what we did the day before and getting the same story twice using only the “we” personal pronoun.  All three classes are studying the same material but each teacher has a slightly different style.  We are really enjoying the language learning even if it is incredibly difficult.   For our technical training they have had some of the volunteers who have been here for a while come in and talk with us about the projects they have going and the experiences they have had.  If there is one thing that has become abundantly clear already it is that the “Peace Corps” experience is unique to each volunteer.