The first three months in a new location, volunteers live
with their new host families to get acculturated to the new environment. It’s too bad that I haven’t yet had that kind
of experience. My host family has been pre-occupied
with their other house and I’ve been on my own, shopping for myself, cooking my
meals, and figuring out means on my own to integrate into the community. Undoubtedly it’s not the most ideal situation
especially fending for myself in a new place where the language seems to be
first Russian, and then secondarily Romanian.
While I have comfortable quarters, I do miss the ongoing interactions
with “family” members. We’ll see how things fare during the winter when it’s
very likely that my host family will be relocating back to the apartment with
me.
Here is my room (which is really a living room converted into a bedroom). Overall the apartment is spacious compared to other residences in the central area.
I do like the kitchen as it's got a microwave, toaster, clothes washer, and gas stove. Lots of natural light comes in from an attached covered balcony in both the kitchen and the bedroom. I'm able to cook some Chinese dishes which I've been craving! I must say I haven't had a potato since I left Ciorescu!
I get by in the most elementary way with my Romanian speech
and fortunately, I’ve started additional tutoring in the language with Ina, a
teacher who has worked with PC volunteers in the past. She teaches English and French to local
Moldovans, and on occasion will take on foreign students like me who are
learning Romanian. All we do is talk –
clearly that’s the practical instruction that I need right now because lacking
a host family who is present every day, I can’t practice day-to-day conversation. I do try to speak at work with my co-workers
but they actually understand quite a bit of English. They’d rather practice their English on me. I’m sure they get a bit impatient when I
speak Romanian because with the pace is so slow. I haven’t come close to thinking in Romanian
– I think in English of course, then try to recall the Romanian words in my head,
and finally those marginally correct Romanian words come out of my mouth! I have definitely committed myself to
improving my Romanian speech even at the detriment to fracturing the
grammar. PC supports these efforts as
they subsidize the expenses for hiring private tutors (which by the way, is
incredibly cheap here).
Something else weird has been happening as I’ve been
studying my new language. I have found
on occasion that when I’m struggling to recall the right Romanian phrase, what
pops into my head first is …. the Cantonese version! It’s happened to me several times, and the
irony is that I haven’t used those Cantonese phrases in a very long time. Guess what they say is true – what you learned
as a child does stick with you deep in your subconscious mind.
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| Tatiana & Me |
Along with Tatiana and her husband, I enjoyed the warm society of
Svetlana, her husband Serge, Elena, and two granddaughters of Svetlana/Serge
who live in Canada now and speak English fluently. They brought large quantities of delicious
food, and of course, home-made wine and cognac.
As soon as we got settled at our table on the top deck of the ferry, out
came the food/drink and we had placinta, brinza, fresh tomatoes, and biscuits
which are mostly cookies. After about an
hour, the ferry stopped along an embankment and passengers could disembark to
picnic further and swim along the narrow shoreline. We found a grassy clearing, spread out
blankets, opened up the food bags again, and laid out plates of chicken,
vegetables, bread, salame, cheese, more placinta, watermelon, etc. The men started up a make-shift grill laying
charcoal on the ground and setting up a grilling rack that they had brought
along. They grilled sausages in no time,
delicious!
I hadn’t brought a swimsuit
along but the others all changed and several went into the river water. PC had warned us that we should not swim in
any of the rivers or lakes in Moldova – we should only swim in swimming
pools. The medical team indicated that
the open waters are polluted and can potentially subject you to contamination
of one sort or another. Certainly, the
river water looked dirty but the general public willingly went in (the weather
was extremely hot that day and folks wanted to cool themselves off indeed, and
I didn’t blame them!). About women's bathing suits .... it seems that body shape and size are not factors when choosing a swimsuit. Practically all the women wore bikinis and whatever exposed skin spilled out, no one seemed to care! Liberated women!
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| Svetlana & granddaughters |
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| Village along Nistru |
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| Iionel and Serge with Boat Ride Promoter |
My work routine at the Asociatie right now is still evolving
slowly. August is a quiet month as many
Moldovans take their vacations now. The
office is very quiet, and activity appears at a minimum. However, the team is working on a small
business proposal to get some funding for training of disabled people in order for them to earn some livelihood. It's still in the earliest stages but if it develops further, I'll put out more details in a later post.
Practically all the volunteers traveled to Chisinau on Aug 14th for an event called Storytellers, a sort of Ted-talk format
where people associated with PC during its 20-year period in Moldova shared stories about their
experiences and recalled memorable highlights.
For example, a featured speaker from Moldova 1 had stayed beyond his
two-year period and ultimately married his host family’s daughter. In fact, several of the past volunteers ended
up marrying Moldovans. (No chance that'll happen to me!). Speeches were
made by the first President of the Republic of Moldova who had been insistent
on getting Peace Corps into Moldova, the first US Ambassador to the Republic
who herself had been an ex-Peace Corps volunteer, and lastly, the first PC
Country Director to Moldova. Their
stories and others were utterly moving and entertaining.
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| Mircea Snegur, first President of Republica Moldova |
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| Mary Pendleton, first US Ambassador to Republica Moldova |
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| Justine Murray, first Moldova Country Director |
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| Ansamblul Tarancuta (Folk singing group) |
Six of us stayed overnight rather than returning to our work
sites since we had to be in Chisinau the next day, Thursday, Aug 15. We decided on a hostel near downtown called
the FunkyMamaliga Hostel. Indeed it was pretty funky, but fun! As with most
hostels, you share bathrooms and a bedroom, like a dormitory, although each of
us gets his/her own bed at least. Eight
people slept in 4 sets of bunk beds jammed into a small room. It was crowded and rather noisy, but we had
clean sheets, indoor toilets, and hot showers. I always wear ear plugs
and an eye mask when going to bed so I wasn’t too disturbed by noise. Yet I did find it difficult to actually fall
asleep that night.
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| Inner courtyard of FunkyMamaliga Hostel |
It must have been excitement that kept me from sleeping
because the next day was to be a special celebration commemorating the 20th
anniversary of PC in Moldova. That day
was also the swearing-in day of our entire Moldova 28 group. Naturally we were anticipating an extraordinary
time. The event was held at a movie theater
as an audience of about 300 was expected to attend. Included in that count were our previous host
families from our training days, and our current business partners from our new
sites. Additionally, members from NGO’s,
government agencies, and the media were anticipated. Of course, PC staff and current PCVs were
cheering us on from the audience as well.
Moldovans are not generally prompt for events and meetings, so it wasn’t
until a half hour after the start of the festivities that the house looked
full.
Each one of our photos was displayed up on the wide screen, along with our home state, and our new Moldovan location.
My program manager, Vitalie, was supposed to have announced my name, but
instead got confused and announced Adil’s name even though my profile was the
one shown on the screen. Adil got up to
go on to the stage while I sat back down in my seat. Then Vitalie corrected himself, and I arose
to walk up onto the stage. It was the
only misstep in the flow of the announcements – just a chance occurrence but no
big problem. After we had all lined up,
we were given the pledge to repeat while cameras were clicking all around us. I know we made the local news. We were all filled with
American pride, for sure!
My host family from Ciorescu could not attend, sad to
say. It being a work day, some families
found it difficult to make the trip into Chisinau. I was very pleased, however, that my business
partner, Tatiana, drove all the way from Balti to be present. Nonetheless, we couldn’t linger at the
reception afterwards as she had to return to Balti right away to finish up some
work. I was feeling depleted myself and
was more than willing to conclude the ceremonies. All the M28s were now finally embarking on
their real mission – to spread peace and friendship throughout Moldova. Go Moldova 28!
17 August
THE CONTENTS OF THIS WEBSITE ARE MINE PERSONALLY AND DO NOT REFLECT ANY POSITION OF THE US GOVERNMENT NOR THE PEACE CORPS.
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