Outhouse

June 18, 2009

My relationship with the outhouse is improving. There is definitely a strategy that you have to empirically master; if not you will be living in fear, as I have been, and also in pain. I would have given my right arm for a little Gold Bond yesterday. Nothing like walking ten miles a day daydreaming about an abundant supply of Boudreaux’s Butt Paste. It’s ironic that I used to laugh every time I went into a CVS and saw it on the shelf, and now I’m craving a product I’ve never used. Getting off this subject….I’ll get back on the topic of food. Language lessons have been paying off and I now know how to say “No more, thank you” about seventeen different ways, including some pretty legit sign language that I’m going to submit to be added in ASL. No one is punctual in Moldova, except for my host mother, and thus me as well. The other volunteers, and even Moldovans make fun of me for saying that I need to get back for the exact time my host mother told me. Besides being respectful, I have learned that I will pay for every minute I’m late in the quantity of food I will be forced to consume. I told her that I would be back from school at one for lunch today, but got held up and was ten minutes late. I could have gone for a swim in my soup bowl. Fortunately the soup was a delicious blend of herbs, potatoes, and onions, which was refreshingly lite.

I still haven’t gotten the internet and have gotten into the pattern of writing out my blog entries and emails on my computer, saving them to a flash drive, and uploading whenever I get a chance to take the Moldovan mobile sweatbox (microbuz) to hub site. I brought my wireless router with me to Moldova, and yesterday was pretty sure I was going to be able to hook it up to my host family’s modem. With the family gathered around, I plugged it and it started working. For ten seconds. And then I fried all the electronics attached to the surge protector. Fortunately after some Moldovan/American tenacity the computer and everything else came back to life; well everything except for my router. The family was pretty upset over my situation and was ready to bust the thing open and try to fix it. Unless they have a sautering iron and extensive knowledge of Chinese-made microchip appliances I’m pretty sure it’s beyond repair. But who knows, it seems everyday something new shocks the hell out of me here; especially when I find the kids trying to put some kind of Russian spyware on my computer to rip the songs I have on iTunes.

Yesterday I was in hub site for medical training, a lecture on Moldovan politics, and technical agriculture/business training. We spent two and a half-hours going over things we can’t drink/eat, how to identify if things have been properly stored and/or canned, etc. The medical officer showed us some pictures of street vendors with water bottles full of wine, and she warned us that we shouldn’t drink this because we don’t know where the bottle has been, how the wine has been made, and how it’s been stored. I didn’t even make it a day before I found myself hanging out in a makeshift Moldovan tree house in the woods drinking wine out of a liter bottle that smelled, and tasted, like gasoline, which just so happened to be stashed in what they referred to as a basement, but in reality was just a big hole in the ground. After a couple hours we had a swarm of about fifteen Moldovan boys, all about high school age, chatting us up in broken English about Steven Segal and repeating every slang/cuss word they could recall from movies they’ve seen in English. After we all shared the biggest bottle of beer I’ve ever seen (about $1.50 here) and a couple rounds of arm wrestling I told my neighbor Andri that I had to get back home because my host mother usually has second dinner ready around 10:30. I got some slack for that and was made fun of all the way back home by Vince and Andri…until they got stuck at the dinner table with me. While I was happily chowing down on chicken stuffed pasta, they had to finish gigantic bowls of mayonnaise, sour cream, and cottage cheese, combined. At some point a round of cognac shots were poured, and I don’t think there has been a point in my life that I’ve been happier not to have a belly full of sour Moldovan dairy products. Exodus 3:12, “God is good”. (One of the few Bible versus I can recite of the top of my head, and coincidently is very applicable to this situation).

Already had a couple volunteers drop out. I’ve found solace in my sense of humor. If you can’t laugh at all the awkward situations and just flat out crazy situations that we get ourselves into here, this isn’t the place for you. Slowly starting to come around to the microbuz, but everytime I see them unload I can’t help but crack up. I’ve got to post a video of this. Alright, I’ve got to go do my job and spread peace and friendship (Actually one of the mission statements of PC that Congress signed, how BADASS is that). Ciao!