Books I’ve read this past summer: Wormwood Forest: A Natural History of Chernobyl, Mary Mycio; Voices of Chernobyl, Svetlana Alexievich and Keith Gessen (translator); The Chronicles of Narnia (The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe; Prince Caspian; The Voyage of the Dawn Treader; The Silver Chair; The Horse and His Boy; The Last Battle), C.S. Lewis; Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China, Jung Chang; In Her Shoes, Jennifer Weiner; and The Lost Continent: travels in small-town America, Bill Bryson. I’ve also listened to podiobooks Taken Liberty: A Tale from the Arbiter Chronicles, Steven H. Wilson; and Burn, James Patrick Kelly.
I had a really nice trip to Moldova. I had expected hassles and delays at the border, but everything went smoothly. We arrived early, even, in Chisinau! As I walked up the street to the Peace Corps office, I had to have a chuckle when I heard a rooster crowing in somebody’s yard – in the middle of the capital city of a European country. Yes, I’d forgotten some things about Moldova.
I spent Saturday with Joanna, and in the evening we had dinner with Beryl and Krystal, two other PCVs from our group. The M14s were all headed to Chisinau for their Close of Service conference. Yes, it’s been two years and the M14s are winding down their service and trying to figure out what they are going to do next. Some will go to graduate school, some will look for jobs when they get home, some will travel for a few weeks or even months. It was neat to see many of the PCVs from my group again, especially to see how the youngest ones have matured in the last two years. When I think back to our first months in Moldova, how everything was so confusing, so hard, and so damn frustrating, it was really impressive to see how settled and comfortable our group is now. Many things in Moldova are still confusing, hard and frustrating, but after 2 years, most PCVs seem to have figured out a good chunk of it, or are able to “go with the flow” in an almost accepting sort of way. I guess that’s what they call cultural adjustment!
Sunday morning I headed down to Ceadir-Lunga in hopes of catching the noon bus to Tvarditsa. It was a refreshing feeling to know that if I didn’t make it in time, or if I just plain decided I didn’t want to take the bus, I could splurge for the $7 taxi fare to Tvarditsa if I really wanted to. But much to my surprise and delight, my host brother Sasha had arranged with a neighbor who has a car to pick me up at the bus station. And there was Sasha waiting for me when I got off the bus! About 20 minutes later we were pulling up to the familiar gate on Dimitrova street, and there was Anya, Gresha, and their adorable grandson Greshka waiting for me. Babushka was at church, but was home soon after I arrived. We, of course, sat down to a huge and delicious meal. I’m not ashamed to admit that I pigged out on the delicious homemade bread and cheese, and the fabulous salads made from fresh-picked tomatoes and peppers. Yum! That was stuff I’ve been missing.
On Monday, Sasha took me on his motorcycle to a beautiful area near the Ukrainian border. PC does not allow volunteers to ride a motorcycle, even as a passenger, because of safety concerns, and thus this my first time riding with Sasha on his bike. We had always talked about going to this area, but as it is a good distance from home and transportation was always a problem, it just never worked out while I was living there. The family’s sheep spend the summer in the fields near the area we went to, but they were far out at pasture somewhere and we didn’t see them. We walked for a few hours along a series of three small lakes, chatting with local fishermen and inspecting their catches. One guy had a whole array of lines set up along the shore, at least ten, with small bells attached so that if a fish took the bait, he would hear the bell and come reel in his catch. We also saw some really interesting bugs sunbathing and a remnants of a big beetle.
We were literally right on the border of Ukraine, and my Ukrainian mobile phone worked but my Moldovan phone had no service. So I took advantage of the opportunity to make some calls to folks in Ukrainian without the international surcharge!
I had a good visit with my old partner Donna, who recently retired, and my friend Galya, who has taken over the community organization work in the village. Galya’s done great stuff, including officially registering the organization (ECOU XXI) and getting the mayor’s office to give her a small office in the building! She’s set to receive another PCV this fall, which makes me extremely happy. The next volunteer will start with so much more than when I arrived in Tvarditsa two years ago, when there was no registered organization, no office, and Donna was so busy with other things we hardly even saw each other.
Tuesday night we had a board meeting for ECOU XXI, of which I am a long-distance member. Some board members, including Donna, participated in a week-long canoeing/camping trip along the Dnister River this past summer. The trip was organized by an ecological organization in Chisinau (who’s president, it turns out, is the mother of a young woman I know in Kyiv!), with two goals for the participants: culural exchange between ethnic Moldovans, Russians and Bulgarians in Moldova; and learning about the ecological diversity and beauty of Moldova. The Tvarditsa participants showed us pictures, and I was not alone in being surprised by the incredible scenes – the participants said they themselves had had no idea such beautiful places existed in their own country! The group wants to make the trip again next year, and invited me to join. I would love to!
Anya and Gresha had been busy the previous days with several invitations to birthday parties. But Tuesday night, they were finally able to stay home, and Anya and I had one of our “traditional” long and thoroughly enjoyable after-dinner conversations. Just like old times. We all had a great meal together, and afterwards Anya and I cleaned up, then sat down with our cups of tea and talked and talked and talked. That was what I had missed most of all since leaving Tvarditsa, my evening talks with Anya.
Early Wednesday I took my “beloved” 6:00 am bus to Chisinau, and spent the day visiting the PCVs and doing a little gift shopping. It was again nice to have a bit more economic freedom, and I was able to buy some nice cognac in the Cricova store that I had always oogled but never could afford (now, it was hard to believe that $13 for a sampler set of 8 different cognacs was once too much for me to spend on a gift).
The trip ended on a very stressful note. I had stored my bags in the Peace Corps office during the day, and had had to leave my passport at the reception desk. As I was leaving, I stopped to get my passport and was surprised when the guard gave me someone else’s passport. “This isn’t mine,” I said as I handed it back to the guard. He checked it (as if I don’t know my own passport), and said that was only passport he had. “Probably the other guard gave your’s to someone else by mistake,” he calmly said. That’s a bit of a problem, I thought, as I checked my watch and saw I had about 50 minutes until my bus left. The guard, in an oh-so-typically-unhelpful manner, stood and stared at me. Joanna was with me, and we quickly looked throught the guest log and found the name of the man whose passport the guard did have. He had visited one the PC staff, and had left about an hour earlier. Joanna ran up to see what the staff person knew about him, and she kindly offered his email address (another oh-so-unhelpful offer). Joanna explained the urgency of the matter, and a home phone number was finally offered up, but she didn’t have a cell phone number for him. To our luck (and surprise) he was home. Since the PC office is only about 5 minutes from the bus station, I asked him to come to PC so I could try to get to the bus station on time. But he didn’t seem very keen on going out, much less coming to meet me at PC. He seemed utterly unconcerned about the urgency of the matter for me. I finally offered to pay for his taxi if he would come ASAP. I had a maddening 10 minute wait for him outside PC, not entirely sure he was really going to come or not. He did, though, and I quickly exchanged passports with him and jumped in the cab before the guy could even say anything. I made it to the bus station with about 5 minutes to spare, adrenaline raging, and pretty damn disgusted with several people.
The story had a happy ending, though, so I tried to focus on that on the long bus ride back to Kyiv. We made it in at about 7:00 am, and I splurged for a taxi home. Everyone at work raved about the Moldovan candy I brought in, and Igor was truly impressed with the cognac sampler.
Anka in Kyiv 