PST Phase III

Day 8,524
October 31, 2009

It’s amazing the striking difference between this year’s Halloween and last year’s. At this time last year I was sitting in an economics class anxiously waiting to get let out so I could finish party preparations at my house. Now, well you know the story, I am waking up in a tiny village on the other side of the world, listening to roosters crowing and drinking a cup of coffee in a country that has never even heard of Halloween.

Today marks the end of PST Phase III for the ARBDs and CODs- yes, PC loves their acronyms. Usually Peace Corps training is a power course over the first ten weeks of service. This year, the ARBDs and CODs were the first groups to switch it up and have training for eight weeks, go to our sites for two and a half months, and then finish up the last phase of PST in October (PST III). We were officially sworn in as PCVs in August, so I don’t really know if the completion of this makes us more legit, or if we just completed two more weeks of mandatory language lessons. Either way, these past two weeks have been great. My old host family in Milestii Mici was not able to host me because they had family from Italy staying with them. It would have been nice to stay with them because I really appreciate the fact that they helped get me through the first two months in this country when I knew absolutely no Romanian and nothing about Moldova, but I have had a great opportunity getting close to a new host family. I did get a chance to visit my old host family and they were blown away by the fact that we could actually have a two-sided conversation and that I’m no longer an invalid. Needless to say, it was quite the confidence booster.

Out of the thirteen original ARBDs in our group we have had four older volunteers (all above the age of 60, except for one whom was 45) drop out, and so I was placed in one of their families. I was quite lucky in the fact that I got an amazing host family. They have two kids, a boy and a girl, that are both in high school and they are a very warm and open family. If I were the older guy that had them over the summer, I would have had hard time leaving to go to my site, because as it is now I am staying an extra night and am having mixed feelings about going back to my site. On one hand, it is great feeling loved and welcome in this new family, but on the other hand I am ready to get back to my site and start developing a new project idea that I want to implement by spring.

Last night it was my host mother’s birthday and they threw a huge party for her. I showed up late because we had a meeting with the Ambassador and Peace Corps staff, and was greeted by 30 guests sitting at the table. One of the guests, I think it was my host mother’s brother-in-law, was asking me what I’m doing here and what my goals are. I try to iterate to everyone that first and foremost I am here to experience a new culture and to learn from them, and ideally, I would like to help in any capacity that I can. I usually get a good response from this that opens up the dialogue, and I thought that this conversation was headed in that direction because he then asked me how old I am. When I told him, he flipped out and started shouting that I’m too young to help and was quite hostile throughout the entire conversation. The entire table was dead quite, except for his wife who was shouting at him to shut up; the whole time his batty eyes were locked with mine. After what felt like an eternity, he stormed out of the house muttering that he had to smoke a cigarette. I was a little shaken up until the entire table rallied behind me, and were all encouraging me not to take it personally, and that they are honored to have me in their country. In that moment, I realized that they were right; I shouldn’t take it personally. I may be young, but I have seen the powerful effects the young and old Peace Corps Volunteers continually make in Moldova and in over 100 countries worldwide. This is what John F. Kennedy meant when he addressed an assembly of college students at 2 am on October 14, 1960 challenging them to go abroad to countries in need, work side by side with the people, and make a difference at the grass-roots level. I have opted to give up a comfortable life in America, away from family and friends, and move to a country where I don’t know the language or anyone else. The simple fact that I can now understand what he said a mere five months after arriving here makes me feel good. It’s people like this that make me ready to get back to my own village because I want to get to work and implement projects so that for every person that doubts that we can’t help here, I can show them differently.

I have finished translating the grant for the Regional Council for Economic Development in my region, and am waiting to see if we are awarded the funds. The scope of the grant is to setup a business incubator in my village that would help entrepreneurs start local businesses that would encourage them to stay in Moldova and not illegally immigrate abroad. I don’t want to sound pessimistic, but the size of the document and the time frame I had to translate it made for a difficult situation. I was working on it the night before it was due. I don’t like this last minute scrambling, and the lack of planning was apparent, which only reflects poorly in the grant. I learned a lot from this experience, and will make sure that the grants/proposals I work on in the future will be conducted in a new fashion. I have a project idea that I am eager to start research on because it is something that I am very interested and can benefit local Moldovan farmers. Irrigation is a big problem in Moldova, and because of bad practices the topsoil is eroding and the salinity level is rising, causing the productivity of the land to decrease. Ideally, I would like to setup a demonstration plot that can be easily replicated that is cost effective and is completely green. I want to build a greenhouse that uses solar batteries (water barrels) to heat up the space, instead of a heat source that burns propane or carbon-based fuels, and is also equipped with a drip irrigation system that utilizes a solar panel to power the water pump. This would not only help the environment, but would also extend the growing season and increase harvest from 1 to 2 times a year, to 3 or 4, help farmers feed their families and increase their livelihoods, save water, and increase the knowledge and capacity of the community. If anyone has any input on this subject, I encourage you to get in contact with me. This idea is still very young, and any ideas/resources that can be provided are welcome.

It is a beautiful, crisp autumn day outside and my host brother’s soccer game that I promised to attend started ten minutes ago. Happy Halloween. Noroc.

Yeah, I've eaten raw pig skin with fat dripping off

Greetings from the lesser motherland! I sometimes wonder how I manage to get myself into precarious situations; I must have a knack for it. Whenever I think I am figuring out Moldova, I get a curveball to the face as a wake-up call, but in a good way. I’m learning how to take things more in stride, and if you could shadow me from day-to-day I think you would be quite shocked at, quite frankly, all the weird shit that I get myself into. I want to highlight my week for you with some of the more memorable moments.

I was walking up to my apartment on 4th floor the other day and was whistling a catchy tune that was stuck in my head. I passed one of my neighbors in the hallway, a sweet old baba that always gives me a toothlessly grin every time we greet, except for this time when I got chewed out. I didn’t catch most of the tirade she was yelling at me, but I got enough of the gist to figure out that my whistling was going to make everyone’s money fly out the window. Oh Russia, thank you for your superstitions, life wouldn’t be the same without them.

More stories of babas: I spent some time with my babusca and her friends several days ago shelling walnuts to sell in the market. While I wasn’t shucking, they were force feeding me a big bowl of warm brinza (homemade goat cheese, definitely not the same as feta), and for some odd reason it made me miss my own grandmother, as well as stain my hands brown for the week (from the nuts). I’ve tried everything from Gojo to gasoline to get the stain off (FYI, always take precaution when a drunk man tells you “I think this might work….”), no dice.

I was at work late last night trying to arrange some traveling plans, because for the time being it is the only place I can get internet. I’ve tried to get the internet every day for the past month, but everyday is the same and I have formed the same distain for Orange, the telephone company that sells the internet here, as I have for AT&T. Surprise, surprise, AT&T owns Orange. Bastards. That company will haunt me for the rest of my life. Sorry for that sidetrack, I was going somewhere with this story. After locking up, and bundling up to sprint home in the freezing rain, I was cornered by the janitor. I ended up drinking tea in the janitor’s closet for half an hour listening to him talk about how much he hates Romanians, and that I insulted him when I told him that I am studying the Romanian language. After listening to his sound argument about how they have different cultures, with different histories (this can be debated), and that from here on out I should only refer to the language as Moldovaneasca, I made the observation that Americans speak English, not American (this can also be debated if you happen to be in Texas). In my eyes, this is a relevant analogy, but this dude was having none of it, and our conversation came to an end soon after.

I often run into huge packs of turkeys wandering around the village. I really need to start carrying my camera around with me, because this occurrence, although frequent, always cracks me up. For some odd reason though, I am yet to eat turkey meat here in Moldova. Well, except for one time when I had a turkey club at Sky Towers in Chisinau, a ridiculously nice shopping/business center, but I don’t count that as real Moldova.

I’ve been afraid of the postal workers in my village since I got here. Getting yelled at in Russian from a heavyset woman with hairy, tumor-sized mole on her face is extremely intimidating. I had to go to the post office to buy an envelope, and when she asked where it was being sent, my partner said America. She responded “Seriously???” and of course my partner introduced me as his American. She started laughing and said that she yells Russian at me because she thought I Ukrainian. Whatever that means.

I was eating at the same little restaurant everyday for lunch, and because of my limited Romanian, and their lack of a menu, I ordered the same meal everyday: half a bowl of borst, mashed peas with a small ground meat sausage. After a month of the same lunchtime meal, I decided to venture out and try a new dish. I tried ordering chicken with rice, and received mashed peas and sausage. The next day, I tried fish and mashed potatoes, and got mashed peas with sausage. Fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice, and I take my business to another cantina. I hope they miss my dollar-a-day business.

I started going to a new eatery for lunch. For a whooping dollar-twenty I can get my mashed peas with sausage, half a bowl of borst, and a small salad. I skip ordering the borst now (it seems like a summertime meal after eating a steaming bowl everyday for lunch during PST) and just go with the mashed peas and salad. It was a really cold day yesterday, and I decided to change it up and just get a big bowl of borst for lunch. Not only did I get my borst, but they also brought me my mashed peas and sausage. I decided to make a PBJ for lunch today instead of trying my luck and probably ending up with the same meal that I probably didn’t order.

On a more serious note, the Day of the City in Chisinau was two days ago. Every village, town, and city here has hram, which is from what I gather, similar to the town’s birthday, although not really. Hram is a pretty big deal with concerts, speeches, fireworks, and the whole shebang. This year, some yahoo decided to bring a grenade to the celebration and detonate it during one of the concerts, injuring 30 people. I’m not really sure what to make of this seeing that I was just in Chisinau for a large celebration a mere five days ago.

You ask for a dozen eggs here, and you will receive ten, not twelve.

I saw a “riot” in Chisinau several weeks ago. The city raised the prices of transportation without raising the rates for pensioners (whom are forced into retirement at a certain age and receive next to nothing to live on) and the riot consisted of a couple hundred old timers chanting in front of the mayor’s office. Unofficially, I can see their point because trolley buses marked up their prices 100%, which is pretty absurd.

Today I was called into the governmental building for a meeting about a grant project. That somehow manifested into me giving a presentation to 30 people about business, the American economy, and access to credit. After fifteen minutes I exhausted my Romanian, but was then told that I had the rest of the hour to talk. Good times, I am actually getting quite good at these impromptu “Let’s put this guy on the hot seat in front of a large audience and get him to speak in our language about a subject that is quite difficult to talk about even in his native tongue.” I actually knocked this one out of the park today, if you were gauging from the wow factor, because I tried to convey the importance of debt in business growth and economies to extremely debt-averse people. They probably think credit cards were invented by the devil, but hey who wouldn’t when all bank loans are attached with 30% interest rates.

Alright, so that about does it. I’m off to Milestii Mici for two weeks for more language and technical training. I found out three shocking pieces of news today, the first being that I will be co-writing and translating a 60-70 page grant for economic development in my village that is due 12 days from now, and so far only 7 pages have been written, in Romanian- it must be submitted in English. So not only will I be spending most of my days sitting through language classes that make my brain feel like it’s about to explode, but I will be working while everyone else gets to catch up and hang out. Second little gem of info I received today is that I will no longer be staying with my original host family from this summer. I wasn’t given a reason, and I am pretty upset over this. I’ll hopefully get a bed over the soba, because it is getting quite cold here. And the best for last, tomorrow morning I’m headed out to my host aunt’s house to help her son slaughter a pig. After that we have to chop it up and conserve it for the winter. Hopefully we will get some shashlik tomorrow. I’m on the fence about bringing my camera. TBD.

No new posts will be up until after I finish this grant, so enjoy and please comment at the end of each of these entries. I’m getting tired of reading “0 Comments” every time I log on. Adios amigos.

Ziua Vinului

Wine festival pictures.

My PST village, Mileștii Mici, had a booth setup for their winery.


Entrance to the festival.

A couple PCVs after a morning race in the park.

Look at me go.

Gathering before the Peace Corps 5k race started.

My host mother has been stashing grapes all over the apartment. This is the top of my dresser in my room where I found a bunch of grapes. The next day I started finding them in drawers, cabinets, and under beds. Strange...

If you have been flowing this blog, you should know that Moldova is notorious for its wine. At least they claim to be famous for it, because before moving here I had never even heard of Moldova, much less Moldovan wine. It has been told to me that during the glory days of the Soviet Union, Moldova was one of the richer Soviet blocks and that officers in the Russian army would vacation here. Let’s not get caught up on the apparent fact that “being a richer” state, technically, doesn’t mesh too well with the whole communist thing. Moldova grows a ton of grapes, more so in the center and south of the country, and the country boasts quite a few wineries. The problem now is that there is no one to sell all of their wine to. Russia was the target market, but because of an embargo that was placed on the wine, the market has deteriorated. It is quite hard to break into the European market because it is flooded with wine from France, Italy, Egypt, Greece, and Spain. Moldova has a little bit of a capital problem; no one is buying their main commodity export, and so the metaphorical well is drying up quite quickly. You can tell that once upon a time this country was productive and industrious, but now it seems that post-Soviet grayness has blanketed the landscape. So what do you do when you are sitting on a gold mine of wine that no one is buying? Throw a wine fest, duh!

This weekend marked the annual Ziua Vinului in Chișinău. It was a two day festival held at an outdoor expo that was hosted by wineries from across the country. Upon entering the main area of the festival, you were immediately surrounded by booths selling frigarui (BBQ), pastries, souveniers, and of course, wine. Free samples were given out, and for those that wanted to really splurge, bottles of wine were two dollars. I was quite impressed with the booths the wineries setup- the facades were beautiful and there was usually an area for tasting/buying wine and also a formal area where the judges would test the wine. On Saturday most of Peace Corps Moldova was there, and it wasn’t too hard to walk fifteen feet and run into someone you know. Getting started at 2pm probably wasn’t the best idea, but we had all just run a 5K race that some of the veteran volunteers hosted, and we were eager to get the party started. The last bit I remember from Saturday night was dancing the hora with a couple thousand exuberantly lubricated Moldovans, eating a hot dog with pickled carrots and mayonnaise on top, getting lost in the woods trying to find the porter potties, and riding one wicked spinner-car-festival ride. Gata.

I somehow ended up back at the festival on Sunday night. Not the brightest idea, and work has been quite miserable today, but all’s fair in the name of integration, right? I have a two week training session coming up this Sunday, and I will try to squeeze in a blog before then about something other than my glutinous weedend-ul la Ziua Vinului. Trebuie sa merg. Hai noroc!

Ranting

The entrance to my apartment building. Check out the yellow gas line running above the door.

A corn crib with chickens under it near my apartment.

Box of grapes someone gave me for helping in the fields.

Fall colors on my walkabout.

Random well.

I've been naked in this stream.

Arrrrgggg talk about frustrated. I really have no clue what’s going on with my life right now. Moments like this really bring about a bitter voice in the back of my head screaming “Seriously, what are you doing here?” I’m back on that old rickety rollercoaster called Life, where the major catalyst for the change is good ol’ Moldova. This hostility and frustration is probably, if I had to guess, coming from the fact that no one wants to work with me anymore, I have absolutely zero clean clothes, I haven’t showered in a week, we have no water in my apartment, the electricity is out most days, I don’t have the internet anymore and the only way(s) to get it back is to be exploited for mucho dinero (“prea scump” în limba română), my friends in my village left for work or school, it’s cold, dark, and rainy outside, and to top the ice cream sunday off, I shattered my fly swatter rendering me powerless against my new found archenemies.

Wow, it feels good to get that off my chest. Tomorrow is a new day though, and it marks the four months to the day that I have been in Moldova, and it’s also Thursday, my favorite day of the week. I don’t want to come off that I don’t like where I’m at, on the contrary, I just really need to find some work to keep me occupied or else I’ll go crazy. Working in the fields these past weeks, although exhausting, was exhilarating. It felt good to go out and get my hands dirty. It’s a cheap way to gain respect from the people here, and I was able to learn a lot about agriculture practices, connect with people, and get in a workout in the beautiful countryside. It doesn’t hurt that I was always paid handsomely with meals and praise. I’ve actually been offered land, grapes, wine, chickens, rabbits, and daughters. But now the fields are harvested, and the wine is fermenting and we are all hunkering down for the winter. My fellow volunteers, especially the ones from up North, don’t think I’ll survive the winter. During the months of December and January the temperature hovers around -20 Celsius (-4 F), and the buildings here are insulated where in the summer time it’s blazing hot inside, and in the winter, yep, you guessed it, it’s freezing. Right now I’m sitting in my office building wearing a jacket, but I know that I won’t need it when I step outside. Gotta love it.

This past Sunday I went on a walkabout near my village. It was a beautiful fall day and I was in a village called Banești, about 10 kilometers outside of Telenești (I am on my work keyboard so I get to easily use my fancy romanian letters like ă, î, ș, ț, â. Ш сщгдв фдыщ ензу шт кгыышфт ша ш лтуц рщц- I could also type in Russian if I knew how). The pictures I am posting are from that outing. It was funny because I ended up on an hour long skype phone call from my parents while cars and caruțas-horse carts- were going past me asking if I wanted a ride to my village. When I got close to my village, I didn’t feel like going home, so I picked a mountain about 13 kilometers away, and struck out. I didn’t anticipate being exhausted by the time I got there, and my conversion of kilometers to miles is awful and walking 23 kilometers in a day is a lot more than I thought it would be. I gladly accepted on the ride back. As always, thanks for reading and pray that the water is turned back on when I get home, because pretty soon you´ll be able to smell me from America. Peace.