Recently I’ve read: Harry Potter & The Prisoner of Azkaban, J.K. Rowling; The Jungle, Upton Sinclair; and The Bone Woman: A Forensic Anthropologist’s Search for Truth in the Mass Graves of Rwanda, Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo, Clea Koff. The latter two books deserve some commentary, which I’ll keep brief. About The Jungle , I have 2 comments: Thank God I’m already a vegetarian, and How incredibly sad that so little has changed for so many people in the last 100 years. About The Bone Woman, I will say only that I read it in one day, unable to put it down.
In the last PC/Moldova newsletter was included a copy of a Time magazine article “It’s a Glad, Sad, Mad World” about a study of self-reported happiness, or Subjective Well-Being. The relatively crude study indicates that money truly does not buy happiness, but rather that happiness, and the value of personal happiness, is cultural. Thus, the overall happiness rating in some poorer and less developed countries was higher than one might expect, and it was lower in some richer and more developed countries than expected. Sadly to say, Moldova ranks low in all categories: poor, underdeveloped, and bottom of the chart in Happiness.
I can’t say that any PCV was surprised to find “scientific documentation” of the glum demeanors we each encounter every day. It was, however, surprisingly (if not strangely) refreshing to have confirmation that “it’s not just us” who think the average Moldovan has a damn depressive outlook on life.
Casey, another PCV here, recently attended a Peace Corps conference in Bulgaria. One of the unexpected observations (isn’t it always the unexpecteds that give us so much to reflect upon?) that Casey noticed, after several days of interaction with PCVs from Albania, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Moldova, Kazakhstan, Kyrgystan, and Mongolia, was that all of them found the local populations with whom they work relatively positive and hopeful about the future of their countries as well as their own personal futures. That optimism surprised Casey, and the rest of us when she told us about the conference. Why are people in those struggling countries more optimistic than Moldovans?
I’ve heard from several Moldovans about a study mentioned on the news last week. I don’t know exactly what it was about, but I heard repeatedly how “only Zimbabwe is worse than Moldova.” Interestingly, in the Happiness study, Zimbabwe ranks slightly higher on the happiness scale than does Moldova, so in whatever way Zimbabweans are worse off than Moldovans, they don’t seem to be quite as unhappy about it.
Most of the PCVs here have noticed and struggled with the sometimes overwhelming sense of hopelessness and helplessness in Moldova. Yet we recognize that life here ain’t as bad as it could be. The girlfriend of one guy in my group is a Health PCV in northern Africa, working with incredibly poor women and children, many of whom are HIV/AIDS infected. He told me once how he feels so guilty about his own depression and frustrations here when he talks to her – a typical bad day for her would be when “her favorite baby in the village died.” PCVs in Moldova don’t deal with that kind of suffering and grief at all, yet we find ourselves weighted down, overcome with the gloom and despair of life. Why? What makes Moldovans so depressed?
I can’t claim to be an expert on Moldovan history, culture or any other factors that may contribute to the general pessimism that seems to be endemic here. My observations have led me to a couple conclusions, though.
The greatest factor, I think, was the loss of the Soviet Union. Not only do people miss the financial stability, product availability, and social order of the Soviet era, but I think they miss the sense of being part of a great and powerful nation, a world leader. The struggles to rebuild after World War II were national struggles, and the successes of the Soviet Union were the successes of every citizen. The heroes of the Soviet Union were the heroes of the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic. Moscow or Baku or Vladivostock may have been thousands of kilometers away, but they were part of the same Superpower country as Chisinau.
Overnight, people lost that identity. Instead of being citizens of an important, powerful country, they became citizens of a country that most of rest of world has never heard of and probably can’t even find on a map. Instead of being one the richest countries in the world, they became the poorest country in Europe. Instead of being one of the best countries in the world (at least according to the propaganda), they became one of the worst, second only to Zimbabwe.
I can’t imagine that kind of loss. I’ve tried to create a scenario in my own mind that would be comparable. What if suddenly the United States ceased to exist? Instead of one mighty, wealthy, influential nation, tomorrow we were 15 separate countries? How would Ohio fare on the world scale? Would anyone care about my little country?
It quickly becomes overwhelming to think of all the treaties and negotiations that would have to be arranged with hundreds of countries around the world, including your own neighbors who yesterday happened to be part of the same country. All the services administered and provided by the federal government – suddenly your new tiny country has to do all that itself. Wow.
When you’ve suffered that kind of loss, the loss of your national identity… I don’t even know what to say about it. In that context, I can understand better why Moldovans aren’t very optimistic.
When I step back and look at society here, I can see the signs of slow progress. Villages are building infrastructure for water, gas, and electricity. International aid as well as investment are bringing new goods and services to some regions. I recently received an email from a PCV who served in Moldova 1993-95, in nearby Ceadir-Lunga. She said that although she tried to live on her own, she hadn’t been able to find enough food in the market to sustain herself, and without a plot of land to grow a garden, she had to move back in with a host family. The market in Ceadir-Lunga is now one of the larger ones in Moldova, and I think Kassie would be quite surprised to see it now.
It’s highly unlikely that Moldova will ever achieve the fame or glory of the Soviet Union, but perhaps as the country slowly develops a stable economy and government, the standard of living improves, and the younger generation grows up with opportunities and abilities their parents never had, perhaps then not only will a new national identity develop, but also a sense of optimism and hopefulness.
Anka in Kyiv 