Shakin' hands, kissin' babies, and kickin' ass

Remember what I said about the weather turning and spring on its way? Yeah well, I lied. Several days ago winter showed it’s evil face again, and dumped a foot of snow on the ground, and temperatures have remained below freezing delaying the inevitable mud, and thus spring. This has been the longest winter of my life, and it just so happens that this is an unseasonably brutal winter by Moldovan standards as well. Schools in the country had Spring Break last week, and I could never have imagined spending my spring breaks in a long-john body suit eating pickled watermelon when I was still in school.

As to not completely ruin my mood, I’m going to switch topics from the weather (Be warned to the reader that commented two posts ago, if you say “I told you that winter wasn’t done yet”, I’m going to f-ing loose it). Village life has been good to me lately. Everyday it feels like there really isn’t much going on, but when I take a step back and see what all I’ve got my fingers in, it seems that there is plenty of good work going on. I’ve been slowly, but surely pulled away from the agriculture field, which is bittersweet. I really wanted, and still do want to work primarily with agriculture, but the wants and needs of the community are pulling me more in a business direction; this is probably a good thing considering I don’t know the first thing about farming.

My water project to bring potable water into a village of 150 households, a kinder garden, and a kids summer camp is coming along nicely. After waiting nearly two weeks for the last remaining budgetary details, I received them today and we will be finishing the grant proposal tomorrow. This process has been slow, tiring, and frustrating….but totally worth it. The other day when someone came into our office to go over another project proposal, I heard my partners arguing over the specifics of a grant, and I heard Doamna Larissa, the lady I brought with me to the three-day grant writing seminar awhile back, say “No, we have to include a clear plan for sustainability and need to include specific details for monitoring and evaluating.” This didn’t sit too well with my other partner, her boss, until she said this was something we learned at the Peace Corps seminar, and that settled it. That was the first moment I’ve had in nine months in country that really showed the first signs of me having an effective role in my community. I couldn’t have been more proud of her.

I have also started working with the Raion Council, which is the head governing body of our district. We just won a grant from the US Embassy that will help setup a program to make a database of all the NGO’s (non-governmental organizations that are non-profits that serve to better the community) in our district, facilitate communication and transparency between the government and the NGO’s, and create a website that will allow for easier NGO registration which will help eliminate corruption. With this citizens will also have a resource point to see if there is an organization already established in the areas they maybe looking to improve within their own community. For example, with my organization, a lot of farmers and people with great business ideas simply don’t know that our organization exists and never are able to get adequate help if desired.

Tomorrow I have a meeting at the orphanage in my village. The organization FRUA has agreed to finance half of the heating project that is desperately needed in the two houses, and the work should be able to commence soon. I only wish this could have been done early last year before this brutal winter got here, but better late than never. I have a special blog post to devote to this orphanage, so stay tuned for that later.

Besides from work, time keeps clicking by. Yesterday was International Women’s Day, and man you wouldn’t believe what a big deal it is here. It’s like Mother’s Day and Valentine’s Day combined, and on steroids. The schools were closed, as well as all the businesses and stores in the country. I don’t think I saw one woman without flowers, candy, or a stuffed animal in hand once yesterday. I was on a rutiera headed home when we stopped in some tiny village to pick up a guy standing on the side of the road with a four foot stuffed tiger in tot. It took him about ten minutes to squeeze the oversized stuffed animal onboard, down a cramped isle, and of course, deposit it in the seat next to mine. I was exhausted from a really busy weekend with mentor training and then running around a large Russian-speaking city, and after watching this debacle with the stuffed tiger, I proceeded to use it as a pillow and pass out on it. About an hour later, right when I was really catching some good Z’s, I got a nice case of whiplash when my pillow was jerked out from under my head.

Today I was supposed to checkout my new apartment that I’m slated to move into in eleven days, but once again, the guy bailed on me. Peace Corps still has to approve it, and they can’t do that unless I actually see the place first. I’m headed to Ukraine and Poland in two weeks and would really like to be out before then. So now that I’ve caught you all up to speed, more or less, on what has been going on over here in the ‘dova, I’m going to head out for what is hopefully one of the last snow runs for a long time. Once my Internet starts going fast again (the 12^th of every month…long story) I have a ton of great pictures to post. La revedere!