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.
Anka in Kyiv 