Getting down to work

Lest you think the American taxpayer is funding a 2 year vacation for this Peace Corps Volunteer, let me assure you that I am, indeed, doing some work. Sort of.

As I’ve mentioned before, it takes time to get settled in to life here, and PC staff and other Volunteers constantly remind us to be patient, take our time, integrate into the community, and they say that most folks feel like they actually do something in their second year. TEFLs and Health Ed folks have a clearer job description, that is, to be teachers, so they hit their sites with a schedule, a classroom, some lesson plans, and they get to work right away. EODs and Ags have less definition to our jobs, and rely much more heavily, at least in the beginning, on our Moldovan counterparts to provide structure and work. Some PCVs have already found that, with offices or schools to go to everyday.

I’m told we’ll have some space in the Primaria eventually out of which Donna Mikhailovna and I will work, but in the mean time, I don’t have a particular place, a desk or an office as a locus for my time. I’m fine with that, I kind of enjoy so far the freedom I am afforded by not having to report to a particular place at a particular time. For now, I’ve met a few times with D.M. at the Primaria, but as she is still engaged as the temporary Secretary, we haven’t had time to sit and chat too much. We’ve discussed some upcoming projects as well as ideas for other activities, we attended a conference together (see below), and this weekend will be a journalism seminar coordinated by a youth organization. The teenagers are planning it pretty much all themselves, but I’m going to begin putting to use all those doodads I brought with me (the HUNDREDS of pens, pencils, markers, etc. that folks gave me before I left), and we will give each participant a “gift pack” for attending.

As I’ve mentioned before, PCVs are Volunteers for the entire community, not just for the specific organization where the Moldovan counterpart works. Thus, I am using my time right now to meet various people in the village. For example, I’ve met with the Vice Principal of one of the village schools, the Principal of another school, the Director of the Music College, and, of course, the librarians. As I’ve mentioned before, I attended the “Disability Awareness Day” celebration and met with that group of parents. I’ve also made the acquaintance of Natasha, the Vice President of the Parents’ Association for one of the schools. In fact, we both attended a presentation in Taraclia a couple weeks ago about the Moldovan Citizen Participation Program (CPP), which is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and administered by the International Research & Exchanges Board (IREX). This past weekend, Natasha, Donna Mikhailovna and I attended the “First Annual Conference of National Minority NGO’s in Moldova,” which brought together representatives from 20-some different NGO’s serving minority populations, namely Gagauzians and Bulgarians in southern Moldova. Donna Mikhailovna was elected to the planning committee for next year’s conference, so I expect to be involved with that in the future, as well.

I’m definitely finding work, or maybe I should say work is starting to find me. The librarians noticed that I often have my digital camera with me, and they asked me to take some photos for their web site (http://www.tvarditsa-library.narod.ru; they’re not posted yet, but I’ll let you know when we get them up!). As we looked through their web site, I noticed the English wasn’t quite as, shall we say, “polished”, as it could be and offered to clean it up a bit for them. That’s turning out to be harder than I had thought at first, but it’s interesting work. I also took my first stab at translating a contest announcement into Russian, which was a good exercise, and with the help of my tutor, turned out pretty decent. My tutor had it typed up at her school, and distributed copies to all the schools in the village (it’s a poster contest for Moldovan youth to submit original art projects on the theme of anti-violence; winners will be displayed in a traveling exhibition throughout Moldova in the spring). Today, during my lesson with my tutor, she mentioned an idea she has for a project at the school, and we started to talk about how to go about the project, find funding, etc. I gave her a Moldovan Citizen Participation Project flyer I’d picked up at the conference over the weekend, and she’s going to call for more information and we may apply for one of their small grants.

As I said, work is finding me. That’s the nature of EOD work, at least for many PCV’s. It’s not always very defined or clear at first, but when you “belong” to an entire community, someone is bound to have something you can help with. Many PCVs (EODs, TEFLs, Ags, and Health Eds) get involved with Model UN, summer camps, English Clubs, and other such activities. I’m resisting the urge to get involved with all kinds of activities right away, as so many of them sound interesting to me. Tvarditsa is an active community, with many energetic, enthusiastic people. I have some ideas for projects that interest me, but I also tell every person that I meet that I am here to help the people of Tvarditsa with their goals, with their ideas and their projects. I can always find work for myself, but I am happy that work is finding me. I think I won’t be bored here!

The Question of “Wheat”

When I got home Friday night, I retold the day’s events to Anna Kirillovna. I got to the part where Sophia, the librarian, said she’d received wheat today, and I stumbled over the word for “wheat” (it’s one of those tongue-twister words that makes you long for Pat Sajack to show up and sell you a vowel), and when Anna understood what I was trying to say, she said knowingly, “Ah, yes, she got her wheat today”, as if that somehow explained it all. Again, I thought to myself, this is a question for later.

After dinner, as we sat drinking our tea, with a full stomach, strength returning, and being a glutton for punishment, I asked Anna Kirillovna what exactly it meant that Sophia had received her wheat today. She took a deep breath, and I knew the explanation would be as complicated as I had expected.

The main industry, employer and power in Tvarditsa for many decades was the collective farm, aka “kolkhoz.” When perestroika started, around ’91/’92, the collective farm was privatized, sort of, and turned into a cooperative. Employees and retirees of the farm were each given a percentage of ownership, based on some complicated calculations I couldn’t really follow. Many people in the village were in one way or another connected to the farm, and the vast majority of residents of Tvarditsa own a “piece” of the farm now. The cooperative owners, every year, receive a sort of dividend for their “investment” in the farm, in the form of wheat. At the end of the season, the farm office figures out the calculations, who owns what percentage and thus who gets how much wheat. You don’t actually get bags of wheat (well, not usually; more on that later), instead there is a registry at the farm store in the center of town where they keep track of everybody’s “accounts.” It’s kind of like Mr. Olsen’s store on “Little House on the Prairie”, with exactly the same technology: a book that looks like it’s from 1850, a pencil, and somebody’s noggin’. The farm office converts how much wheat you “earned” this year into loaves of bread, and when you want some bread, you go to the farm store and get it. The clerk makes a notation in the registry of how many loaves you got that day, and it’s deducted from your “wheat account.” When you’ve used up your yearly allotment of wheat, No bread for you!

I tried to explain this system to a friend Friday night. We were both floored, and he joked that three thousand years ago people had decided it was too complicated so they invented money. That notion hasn’t really caught on here in Tvarditsa.

Of course, I’m joking (mostly). Currency exists here, and of course people want it, need it, and use it. Unfortunately, they don’t receive enough of it. Salaries are ridiculously low, and most people get by only because they have some land of their own on which to grow their own produce and raise their own animals. Many people also sell fruit, vegetables, milk, eggs, meat, etc. to supplement their measly salaries, or in some cases, that’s their only source of income. Many men work at other jobs during the day, or are living and working abroad, or even worse are alcoholics and not useful at all to their wives and families, and thus much of this work is left to women. The market is full of worn down women who’ve hauled enormously heavy bags of goods from home for miles to stake out a spot along a row in the outdoor market.

Barter and trade is also a regular part of life here, though. Last year, the farm paid out dividends in actual bags of wheat (I didn’t really understand the explanation, either the price of wheat rose or dropped or something like that), and what exactly do you do with hundreds of kilos of wheat? Georgii and Anna had that very dilemma last year. In the end, Georgii made a deal with the Wine-Cognac factory here in Tvarditsa, and traded many kilos of wheat for many bottles of cognac. “What on earth will we do with all that booze?” Anna asked him. He had surmised, though, that cognac would keep longer than wheat or flour, so he traded the perishable item for one that could be stored indefinitely, which can be traded later for some other useful items, or can be given as gifts for birthdays and other occasions.

But back to the librarian and her wheat. So, when the collective farm became the cooperative farm, not every profession in the village was directly connected to it and thus there were some people who did not receive a percentage in the cooperative, such as librarians, doctors, and teachers. Thus, Sophia has to buy her wheat every year from the farm, as she does not have an account at the farm store for her bread. And yes, she buys hugs bags of wheat (or flour, which is produced by the farm’s mill), which will be stored all winter in her attic and she will make her own bread. Thus, Friday was the day she got her wheat, and she had to go to the farm to pay for it, receive the huge bags of it, arrange for it to be transported to her home, and carry it bag by bag up the ladder into the storage area. This amounted to the better part of the day, and was long hard work. Thus, the library was closed because Sophia received her wheat!

Friday, December 3, 2004

I haven’t felt much like writing this week. It’s been an emotionally and mentally draining week, ups and downs and lots of confusion and stress. Today was typically full of unaccomplished tasks, confusion, miscommunication, and frustrations, but I’m laughing about them instead of crying, so I guess that is progress! I keep thinking about how Peace Corps told us to be satisfied with small accomplishments, but holy cow, I had no idea how small those accomplishments would be.

Today started out great — I was well rested, the weather was warm and beautiful, I had a cup of real coffee with MILK even. I felt good about some translations I was working on, and just all around felt positive and energetic and ready to tackle whatever Moldova was going to throw at me. Then I left the house.

I had just a few small goals today: mail some Christmas cards home and send some emails. Anna Kirillovna asked me to stop and pick up a bottle of milk, too, near the post office. “Will you be able to do that?” she asked. “Hell Yes!” I thought to myself, “I can buy milk today!” She handed me a bag with an empty bottle and a few lei, and I started to rethink my fortitude. I’d forgotten that here you don’t actually buy a bottle of milk, you take your own empty bottle and come home with it full of milk. I’ve never actually witnessed the process, so wasn’t sure exactly what steps I would be required to take myself, and I’ve learned not to assume anything here in Moldova. Well, as it turned out, the store had already sold all it’s milk for the day, so that solved that problem.

Next stop, the post office. Buying and mailing Christmas cards has been a week-long process for me here in Tvarditsa, and I’ve been kicking myself every day for not doing it in Chisinau when I was there. Some things just seem so overwhelming, like buying cards at the post office, getting off the bus at the right place, finding the internet cafe; I can only deal with so many of these activities at a time, and I had reached my limit in Chisinau. Thus when I walked into the post office there and surveyed the situation, I turned around and left. I just didn’t have it in me last week to tackle the purchase of Christmas cards. So, back to Tvarditsa. Tuesday I went to our post office and asked for Christmas and/or New Year’s cards. “They aren’t here yet,” the clerk told me. Orthodox Christmas is January 7, so there’s not quite the demand yet here in Tvarditsa for holiday cards. I went home, thought it over, and decided to purchase whatever kind of cards they did have in stock as I need to get them mailed darn soon to make it to the States while people still remember Christmas 2004. Went back Thursday, picked out a bunch of generic “Congratulations” cards. “Envelopes?” I naively asked. “No envelopes,” she said. Of course. Being the nice people that they are here, she called to Taraclia, the regional center, and ordered envelopes for me, which were to arrive on Friday. No problem, I thought, I’ve got to write all the cards anyway, so I’ll do that tonight and send the cards in the morning. It’s also important to get your mail to the post office before lunch because there is one pick-up a day, at lunch time, and after that your mail goes out the next day, and today being Friday, means Monday as our village post office doesn’t work on Saturdays. I went at 11, and guess what? No envelopes yet. “No problem,” I thought, “I’ll go to the library and do email for awhile.” Guess what? Library is closed for an unknown reason.

Undaunted, I return home, continue working on my translations and meet with my tutor. 2ish, I head back to the library and post office. I meet the librarian on the way, and she says they are closed all day today because “We received wheat today.” I’m sure that explanation made sense to her and to everyone else in the village, but it has absolutely no meaning for me at all. I decided that would be a question for later, as the explanation would most likely be even more confusing than the statement itself.

I continued on my merry way to the post office, exchanging text messages via cell phone with a friend in Chisinau. “Wish me luck on attempt #3 at the post office” I wrote. “Interesting thought,” he replied, “I’ve never wished anyone luck mailing a letter. Only in Moldova.”

At last, the long-awaited and much coveted envelopes had arrived, along with a shipment of holiday cards. Sorry, folks, but I wasn’t about to start that process all over again, you’ll get real Christmas cards next year. I sat down to fill out all my envelopes, and stepped back up to the counter with them and a package I wanted to mail home. The clerk looked at my package, and said something to the effect of “Oh, honey, you can’t mail a package from here. We don’t have a scale to weigh it. Maybe you could try to send it from Ceadr-Lunga?” Five days ago I would have started crying on the spot. Today, I chuckled to myself. Only in Moldova.

So close and yet so far from successfully mailing my holiday cards, I went to Anna Kirillovna’s office to consider my options. There’s always the 6 am bus to Chisinau, and I know the post office works in Chisinau on Saturday. This led us to call the post office in Ceadr-Lunga, the only sizable town in the area, about 10 kilometers from Tvarditsa. There is one p.o. open there on Saturday, we learned, so I will hopefully be on the 7:30 am bus to C-L, and since the only bus returning to Tvarditsa comes back at 12:00 noon, I’ll have a few hours to spend at the internet, shopping or doing whatever it is you can do in C-L.

It was then about time to meet again with my tutor Anya, who had invited me to a celebration for children with disabilities. December 3 is, roughly translated, “Disability Awareness Day” in Moldova. Anya’s daughter, Galya, is visually-impaired, completely blind in one eye and has only 10% sight in the other. She had told me that Galya is a wonderful artist, and I was excited to she some of her work today at the party. Getting there turned out to be complicated, of course.

I was to meet with Anya in front of the Primaria at 3:30 and she would take me to the party. My partner, Donna, and I seemed to have some miscommunication over how I was getting to the party, and she “volunteered” a young girl who just happened to be in the area to take me to there. Or at least that’s what I understood. Mariana, as I later learned was her name, thought I knew where we were going. Somehow, we managed to lead and not lead each other on a lovely walk all around the village, chatting away and having a pleasant conversation. When we came to a big open field, I finally asked her where were we going, only to discover that she didn’t know. This will be a good story, I thought. So, back to the Primaria, where there was commotion about what the heck had happened to me. Mariana, I could tell, was afraid she would be blamed for the misunderstanding, so I told her they all know I don’t understand things, I make mistakes every day, don’t worry about it all. I told everyone we’d had a lovely tour of the village, that she was a great guide, and we’d had a very nice time. Donna found someone else to take us to the party, and as it turned out, it was in the only cafe in the village, so if someone had just told me that was where we had to go, I could have easily gotten there on my own. Oh well.

The music was loud, kids were dancing and enjoying themselves, and I sat at the table with parents and the Vice Primar, Maria Danilovna. It seems they met together last year, too, and she asked them to share their concerns, issues, problems, etc. They asked me about how children with disabilities are or are not integrated in American society, and they were particularly interested in whether persons with disabilities worked in “regular” jobs. I tried to explain the Americans with Disabilities Act, accessibility issues, and the Office of Disability Services at Ohio State. My language capabilities were tapped out pretty quickly, and with the noise from the kids’ party, my ability to participate in the conversation didn’t last long. I slipped out with Anya to meet her daughter, and was incredibly impressed with her portraiture sketches. Incredible talent for anyone, not to mention someone who has almost no sight.

So, I came home to laugh with Anna Kirillovna about my day. Just a few small goals today, but no envelopes, no milk, no internet, and no scale to weigh my package, plus got “lost” going 2 blocks to the party. Only in Moldova.

Address correction

I found out yesterday that I had the wrong zip code for Tvarditsa. I kind of think it doesn’t really matter, as PC sent me a letter with just my host mother’s name and “Tvarditsa” written for the address, and it found it’s way to me, but just in case…

Ann Merrill
str. Dimitrova #39
v. Tvarditsa 7422
Republica Moldova

I’ve made acquaintance with the ladies at the post office, and they are prepared to receive any packages for me. I’m also very ready to receive goodies, so, Mail Away!!

Reflections on keys

I’ve been thinking about keys a lot the last few days. As in the ones that lock and unlock things.

This past summer, as I prepared for my departure for Moldova, a very tangible manifestation of the end of one phase of my life and the beginning of a new one came in the form of the decreasing number of keys on my key ring. I sold my house, and 2 keys came off the ring. I quit my job, and 3 more keys came off the ring. I sold my car, and another key disappeared. In the end, I left even the keys to my parents’ and my grandma’s houses, getting on a plane without a single key in my possession for probably the first time in my entire adult life. It gave me a strange, unexpected and disconcerting feeling (perhaps a premonition of how I was too feel all the time for the foreseeable future in Moldova!), letting go of these keys that were in a way a statement about my connections to home, work and family. It was also liberating, in a way, to let go of the responsibilities that came with some of those keys — don’t have to worry about raking the leaves or shoveling the snow or fixing the next thing that breaks at my house; don’t have to go to the office anymore and take care of all the problems and issues there; don’t have to drive a car anymore and deal with traffic and worry about gas prices and insurance, etc.

Out of habit, though, I brought a key chain with me to Moldova. I didn’t really think about it, just brought it and I guess assumed I’d eventually have some keys to something: a house or apartment, an office, etc. In Ialoveni, my host family gave me 2 keys for the locks on the front door, and a key to the lock on my room that they were required to install per PC policy. The bedroom key I never used, in fact I almost never closed that door and never felt a need to. The front door keys, I put on my key chain with my emergency whistle and a little flashlight, and kept in my purse. If someone was home, though, the door was usually unlocked and I didn’t need to use the keys often.

Here in Tvarditsa, I don’ need a key at all. There is a “lock” of sorts on the front gate, and the “key”, which is really more of a long metal stick with a little curve at the end, hangs on the inside of the gate at all times. Most days, at least one person is home and thus the gate stays unlocked. If we are all gone, the last person takes the “key”, closes the gate, slides the metal stick into a small hole, snags the bar on the inside of the gate, and slides it closed. Then you reach over the top of the gate and hang the “key” back on the hook so when someone comes home, they can get the “key”, put it in the hole, snag the bar and slide it open. That’s pretty much how it works in villages here in Moldova. If the gate is locked, you know no one is home. If it is unlocked, you open the gate and whistle loudly until someone hears you (which doesn’t always happen as the resident could be out in the “garden” pretty darn far away). As far as I can tell, it doesn’t occur to anyone to open someone else’s “locked” gate, even though all the keys are hanging within arm’s reach.

There are also 2 types of gates on the houses. One is person-sized, and it is the one used regularly. The other one is car- or wagon-sized, and if you don’t have a car or wagon or you don’t have your car or wagon out today, you use the smaller gate. Coming home to a friend’s house the other night, her gate was locked as no one else was home, so she walked over to the larger gate, opened it, walked around to the small gate, and unlocked it from the inside so the rest of us could enter the yard. I seem to be the only one here who finds this kinda silly! But hey, if it works!

Last week, I was in Chisinau for the All Volunteer Conference over Thanksgiving. Saturday was Alyona’s birthday, so I had planned to stay an extra day in Ialoveni to celebrate with her. When I called to confirm the plans, I still wasn’t sure what my schedule would be with the conference, so couldn’t tell her for sure when I would arrive at her place. “You have a key,” she said, “so just let yourself in if we’re not home.”

I have a key to someone’s home in Moldova. I reflect often on this, and I am constantly amazed by how a family opened their home to a total stranger, and welcomed me more kindly and warmly than I could have imagined. “I must have really lucked out in Ialoveni,” I thought to myself. It’s true that not every single PCV had as great an experience as I did with their host families, but I was not alone in making time around the holiday weekend to see my first host family. I also am not alone in finding myself again welcomed into another family and community so kindly and warmly.

During Alyona’s birthday dinner, a friend of her’s called from abroad to wish her a Happy Birthday. The friend asked if she was having a big party, and Alyona said “No, just family tonight.” I wondered to myself who had received the better gift this year. I gave her new chair pads for the kitchen stools and a serrated knife, but she had given me a key to her home.