Another busy week! It started with a LONG walk.
My best friend in Tvarditsa is 17-year-old Petya. We met one day last winter on the bus returning from Ceadir-Lunga. Petya and his friend Yura had “pre-reserved” their return seats on the bus by leaving a bag on one of them. Me not knowing the “rules” of the bus, I had sat in what I thought was an empty seat, only to discover that when there’s a bag or something saving one of the seats in a pair, it means both seats are saved. Silly me. I was reading a Newsweek when Petya and Yura came to claim their seats, but Petya, with what I’ve come to recognize as his constant curiosity and keen interest in new adventures, noticed I wasn’t “local” and decided to sit next to me to find out what the deal was. Poor Yura ended up standing for the ride home, but I think Petya found his friend’s sacrifice worthwhile. Petya started up the usual conversation (where are you from? Why are you here?) and we chatted throughout the 40 minute ride home. I took an instant liking to him, and was really happy when he corrected my Russian at one point. Most of the people I spend time with are (a) either used to how I talk, mistakes and all, or (b) are not comfortable correcting me. As it turned, Petya also speaks excellent English and he has a strong desire to practice speaking it. I ended up asking him to help me coordinate the English Club, and he’s been one of the die-hard regulars.
He wanted more English-speaking time, though, and I offered an exchange. I wanted to get some more exercise but was getting bored walking around the village by myself. I said I’d speak English with him if he went on walks with me. At first, he thought it sounded pretty weird, especially when he saw what kind of walk I meant. Not just some lazy stroll for 20 or 30 minutes, but a brisk hike for an hour, sometimes even two. Eventually he started liking the walks, too, and he’s shown me all around the village and even a few kilometers beyond. We walked one day to a pond a couple miles away, another day to the brick factory a few miles north of the village, and another day to the Ukrainian border about 5 miles away. He’s a super smart kid, placing in the top 100 high schoolers in all of Moldova in the national Computer Science competition (called Olympiad). He’s always got some interesting story to tell me, some bit of history about the area, or something about the plants and animals here. We’ve been talking a lot about educational systems lately. He’s just light-years beyond his peers in all subjects, more advanced than his teachers in some classes, as well, especially Computer Science. School is not challenging at all for him, but to his credit he works hard and studies extra on his own. An Advanced Placement or Honors program is exactly what he needs, but in a small village school with few resources, that’s just not going to happen. I submitted his name for English Camp in July, run by PCVs and a Moldovan Teacher’s Association. He was so thrilled when I told him about it, excited most, I think, by the prospect of getting to spend a week with even more Americans.
As the weather has improved and we’ve been having a harder time finding new routes for our walks, we started talking about walking to or from Ceadir-Lunga sometime. He laughed outloud when I proposed it, but I think secretly he was keen on the idea. He brought it up a couple times over the next few weeks, and Sunday June 5 we finally decided to do it. We took the 7:30 bus there, putzed around the town and did some shopping at the market, then at 11:00 am headed home. I had expected it to take us about 2 hours to walk the approximately 10 miles, but we were slow, enjoying the view and the company. In the end, it took us 3 hours. At one point, Petya asked me what I was going to tell people when they asked me why I walked back from Ceadir-Lunga, and I told him I thought they were getting used to me doing strange things. Then I told him about the popularity of walking and hiking in America, and of places like the Appalachian Trail. It’s an interesting contrast in cultures and societies that a people who have to walk every day don’t really find it very interesting or exciting, and certainly not relaxing, and the people who travel by car every day will drive miles and miles to find a “good place” for a walk or will go hiking for a weekend getaway.
I had neglected to mention to my host family the exact nature of our plans for that day, and Anya said she’d waited for me for lunch as long as she could but finally ate without me. She was dumbfounded when I told her we’d walked from Ceadir-Lunga. Vova was eating his lunch then and nearly choked on it, then just shook his head and chuckled. Yep, they are used to me doing strange things. The conversation with Babushka was a little funnier.
“Anya said you walked from Ceadir-Lunga!”
“Yep”
“Was the bus broken?”
“No, we rode it there in the morning and then decided to walk back.”
“But the bus ran in the afternoon too?”
“Yes, it passed us on the road.”
“And you walked? Why?”
“We just wanted to, it was something to do.”
“But the bus was working?”
And so on.
I slept like the dead that afternoon, got up for dinner, and went to bed early. Man, I need to get back in shape!
Galya, the young woman who’s started working with Donna and me, had attended a training seminar the previous week in Chisinau, organized by European Youth Exchange-Moldova (http://www.youth.md), which was the first time she’s attended anything like that. She came home just dazzled. Their trainings focus on teaching young people how to conduct activities and seminars for youth in their community, and participants have to conduct a some seminars quickly upon their return home, to put to use right away their newly learned techniques and skills. A couple young girls from Tvarditsa attended a training with them in April on “how to spend your free time” and came home so energized and excited! They did a really fun workshop one Saturday afternoon, and the both of them are taking on leadership roles in our Children’s Primaria. Galya spent last week getting ready for her first seminar, on Life Skills. She made an invitation (yeah! Somebody using the ideas we taught at our Etiquette seminar!) and created a certificate to give to all the participants. She’s split the workshop into 2 parts, to be conducted on Monday and Tuesday evenings, as she said there’s just too much to do and she needs at least 5 hours for it all.
Friday, I headed to Ceadir-Lunga to meet Emily and Ross to prepare for Round 2 of our Professional Etiquette seminar, to be held in Comrat. We reviewed the evaluations from the previous week, made a few adjustments, and re-stocked our supplies. Emily and I had decided to spend the weekend in Comrat, which is the capital of the Autonomous Region of Gagauzia, located about 40 minutes north of Ceadir-Lunga. Gagauzians are a people (“nationality”) sort-of related to Turks, but their language (which uses a variation of the Latin alphabet) is unrelated to any known language. I’ve read that they are descendents of Turkish occupiers who converted to Christianity and choose to stay after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. When Moldova gained independence, one of the disputes in the early years was “the Gagauzian question,” which was eventually resolved by offering them an Autonomous state or region. I don’t really understand how it works, as they have their own Parliament but also participate in national Moldovan government. As with most things in Moldova, it’s complicated.
We had been to Comrat in December to attend an NGO conference Ross has organized, but we had been too busy (and at that point still too shell-shocked having just moved to our sites less than a month earlier) to really see much of the town. So, we decided to take advantage of the nice weather and see someplace new in Moldova. The town (pop. about 30,000) seemed positively bustling after our sleepy villages. The town center, with a beautiful church and lovely park, is surrounded by shops, markets, and cafes.
I had called the previous week to reserve a room at the small hotel there, and had a funny conversation with the desk clerk. I told her we wanted a 2-person room for two nights, and she said OK, we’ll see you soon. I paused, waiting for her to ask, perhaps, for any information about us, then said “Don’t you need our names?” “No, I wrote down ‘Two American girls’, that’s all I need.” Guess they don’t get too many foreigners! We had fond memories of the hotel from December, a big house converted into a 10-room hotel, with a bar on the first floor and an outdoor patio cafe. The clerk saw us coming up the walk and instantly recognized us as “the Americans.” She was very sweet and helpful. I don’t know if it was coincidence or not, but we got the exact same room as we’d had in December, and unfortunately it seems our memories were a bit rosier than reality. It was fine, don’t get me wrong, but just not quite as quaint as we recalled. The quirks weren’t cute this time, like the toilet that sometimes had water in it but usually not (and since the sink always had running water, we really couldn’t figure out why the toilet didn’t), and the faint but constant strange smell. Oh well, we’re Peace Corps Volunteers, it’s fine for us.
The desk clerk gave us directions to the history museum, and we stopped along the way for lunch at an outdoor café. The museum was wonderful, quite impressive, with lots of original artwork by local Gagauzian artists, as well as examples of traditional clothes, farming tools, household items, etc. I have to admit, most of it looked pretty similar to what is labeled as “traditional Bulgarian” items in the Tvarditsa museum, but I wasn’t going to brooch that delicate question of the similarities and differences between the different nationalities here with the museum staff. A sweet little old lady showed us around the museum, giving a running commentary on the displays. Our favorite room was the Natural History exhibit, with an wildlife display including 3 stuffed boars rummaging through the woods. It also included a rather bizarre small collection of bones from pre-historic times, such as something from a mammoth, and other specimens of God-knows-what preserved in glass bottles. Oh yes, and the plastic fruit and vegetable display, providing examples of locally grown produce. We have that in the Tvarditsa museum, too, and it never fails to make me chuckle.
Admission to the museum was 2 lei, and if you wanted to take photographs there was an additional 5 lei fee. Not knowing if there would be anything worthwhile to photograph, we initially passed on that. Then we came across a couple items that intrigued us and we asked if could pay the fee at the end of the tour. Emily was particularly fascinated by an item in the Education and Schools exhibit, in between an old manual typewriter and an abacus; some kind of old calculator-type thing. I decided to cough up the 5 lei to get a picture of a 1980 Olympic torch that was carried by a Gagauzian athlete.
At the end of the tour, we were asked to sign their guest book, which documented an impressive range of international visitors, including some previous PCVs. As we stood chit-chatting with our tour guide, I asked if it was possible to buy somewhere any of the work of the artists on display, particularly since two or three of them were still living Our guide asked a little old man, whom we later figured out was the museum director, and at first he would say, “Oh, it’s very expensive.” I finally convinced him I was just curious, and he offered up a sample price – 1000 lei (about $80). He then asked where we were from and if we had any American currency on us. Emily and I were both a bit taken aback and quickly said no, having no idea where that conversation would lead us.
After a few more minutes of small talk, he asked our guide if she’d shown us “the closed room,” and she seemed startled, said no, do you really want me to? He grinned rather sneakily and handed over a key. We were intrigued and gleefully followed the guide back upstairs, where she proceeded back through the Nature room and unlocked an inconspicuous door. Inside was a display of gifts given to Gagauzia on the 10th anniversary of it’s autonomy – bowls, rugs, certificates, vases, plaques, and other items from a wide variety of countries. There was also a coin display, and thus the answer to our puzzle of why he’d asked if we had any American currency.
Our tour of the museum complete, we headed back to the hotel to relax a bit. We headed back out around 5:30, planning to find a place to make some copies for our seminar and see what the town had to offer in terms of evening entertainment. To our downright shock, almost everything was already closed and the formerly bustling streets were nearly deserted. We literally could not find a single place still open with a copy machine, and even the internet café we ended up in closed at 8 pm. We eventually found a nice café for dinner, reviewed our notes for the following day’s seminar, and stopped by one of the few open shops to get some bottled water and an ice cream. One of the clerks was quite curious about us and we talked with her for a good 20 minutes. She asked if we’d been to the church yet, saying it was so beautiful and definitely worth a visit. Unfortunately, we said, we hadn’t brought scarves with us, and since women can’t enter an Orthodox church with their heads uncovered, we didn’t expect to be able to go inside. “If I remember,” she offered, “I’ll bring a couple scarves with me tomorrow and then you can go.” How sweet! We had heard that there were nice saunas in Comrat, and we asked her if she could suggest one. She didn’t remember the telephone number, but gave us the address of one and said we’d have to call early to make a reservation.
Saturday morning we got up early to find a copy place and get to the seminar location early. We ended up being even earlier than expected, arriving just as a woman arrived to open the building for us. We had time for a cup of coffee with her and got to learn more about her and her organization, which had just celebrated it’s grand opening 2 days earlier. Svetlana had previously worked in Comrat for a rehabilitation center, and had recently left that job to begin working with this new anti-trafficking center. They will operate a hotline, provide educational material and workshops for women and men to help them avoid falling victim to the human-trafficking industry, and also will help women returning from the sex slavery. They received funding to purchase and renovate a house near the center of town for their office space, and we held our seminar in their partially-completed conference room.
The seminar went well, and of course was a bit easier the second time around. We had a small group, 8 people, including 2 from Chisinau, one from Ceadir-Lunga (who had not been able to attend the previous week) and 5 from Comrat; 6 women and 2 men. They were active and engaged and the discussions were lively. This time, during discussion of personal resumes, the question came up about whether or not to include personal information like date of birth, marital status, etc. on a resume. We explained that in the U.S. it’s not only not required to include, it’s also against the law to even ask such personal questions. A heated and fascinating discussion started, with some men and women saying it’s important and even necessary to know that when you are hiring someone, and others saying it was only used to discriminate, usually against women. The reality is that many employers here WILL ask for such information and WILL use it usually against women. One participant gave an example of a job that required a lot of traveling, and said she wouldn’t want to hire a woman with kids because they would interfere with her ability to travel and fulfill her job responsibilities. “Don’t you think she could make that decision herself, whether or not she could balance the work requirements and family obligations?” we asked in response. It was an interesting discussion, and I was especially surprised by the women in the group who seemed not only accepting but also supportive of what seemed like discriminatory practices to me. A new idea for another seminar perhaps!
In the morning, we had asked Svetlana about a sauna, and she offered to help us get a reservation someplace. During a break, she took Emily and me to the sauna she’d been able to reserve for us. We’d been told it was 100 lei/hour, with a 2 hour minimum. A little steep for just three people, but apparently the price is set by the hour, not by the number of people; 1 or 10, it’s the same. We walked a couple blocks from the town square and along a residential street, stopping at a front gate. A rickety man came out, looking a bit bewildered, spacey or perhaps drunk, I couldn’t really tell. I didn’t see anything that looked like a sauna to me, but then again I really had no idea what to expect. We handed over our 100 lei deposit, confirmed the time, and turned to leave. “There goes 100 lei we’ll never see again,” I thought to myself. Svetlana paused a moment longer, talking quietly with the man, and I said to Emily “She’s telling him to take good care of us, I bet.” Then we heard him ask, “Do they understand Russian?” and we chuckled. Another nice person watching out for us.
On the walk back we asked her for more information on the “whole sauna thing.” Svetlana had been to this sauna a couple years earlier and it had been very nice, but she didn’t want to promise us anything since it had been a long time since she’d been there. She recalled that they had a pool, a kitchen, a TV. We had to bring our own towels, food and drink. I still couldn’t really picture what the place was going to be like, but the afternoon at our seminar kept us busy enough to not worry about it.
Another volunteer, Joanna, came up from Cahul to meet us for a Girls’ Night, something we’d been talking about doing for a long time but never found the time to actually do. We met at the bus station (probably more actually called a Bus Stop), and decided to get the details on our various return options for Sunday. As Comrat, and Gaguazia in general, is a primarily Russian-speaking area, Joanna needed some help communicating with the lady in the ticket office, as Joanna is, like most PCVs here, a Romanian speaker. I asked the lady about times for our three different destinations. She grudgingly mumbled the answers. Just as I’m convinced bus drivers are required to be jerks, bus station ticket office employees are required, I am sure, to not only provide as little information as possible to actually be as UN-helpful as possible. I translated the information back to Joanna and Emily, and we had a couple follow-up questions. Another customer grew impatient and pushed ahead, apparently he needed a ticket for that day, and since our questions were for the next day, he got priority. We re-grouped, and there were a few more questions remaining regarding various options. I approached the window again, and this time the lady gave me a look that could kill. I asked what time Joanna’s bus would arrive in Cahul, and instead of answering that question, the lady told me when it would arrive back in Comrat. Not exactly what we were looking for. I gave up, turned to Joanna and Emily and told them the lady was mad at us now and we’d just have to stop asking questions today. I’ve learned it’s just not worth it to keep “pestering” people like that, the more you ask the less information they provide. But we had enough to know that we could all get home easily enough Sunday morning.
We had some dinner, bought some water and snacks at a shop, and headed to the sauna. The man was waiting for us, let us in the front gate, and then a woman, perhaps his wife, showed us into a large building behind their house. From the outside, it looked anything but impressive, but inside was another world. The large entry way looked to be newly tiled and was very clean. She gave us a tour: to the left of the door was the sauna room, followed by the cold-dip pool. Back across from the front door was a shower room, and a small room with a toilet. Up the steep and kind of treacherous stairs, we found a spacious kitchen, with laminate flooring and brightly tiled counters, a sink and stove, and a large beautiful wood table. In the hall was a stereo, and doors to two “resting” rooms where you can change your clothes as well as take a nap after a good bake. We were delighted! Everything was so bright, cheery and clean. Well, everything except the pool.
The tap water in most of Moldova leaves much to be desired. In much of southern Moldova, including Gagauzia and Tvarditsa, the water is rather grayish, sometimes downright black. It’s one thing to see a small sink or basin filled with it, quite another to see a small pool of it. Joanna and Emily were braver than me, and after about 10 minutes in the sauna, they were willing to take the plunge into the inky cold-dip pool. I opted to stand under a cold shower, knowing perfectly well that that water was just as dirty as the pool water but it’s more manageable for me in shower form. For the next 2 hours, we alternated between the hot dry sauna and the refreshing cool wetness of the pool/shower. It was surprisingly refreshing, I thought.
After our 2 hours were up, we dried off, packed up our stuff, and headed out into the courtyard. The man and woman were outside with a young boy, probably their grandson, and we paid our remaining 100 lei. We told them we’d loved the sauna, and asked for their phone number so we could come back again. Their grandson was playing in a toy car with the Russian abbreviation for “USSR” on the hood. Kinda cool.
Back at the hotel, we had a fun and late night of girl talk and eating junk-food. We were up early the next morning, and caught our various rides back to our sites.
What a great week!
Anka in Kyiv 