Sunday, October 21, 2007

A thousand words' worth of pictures

Written: October 18, 2007

In lieu of the pictures I still haven’t put up, here’s some figurative language for ya:
What I normally eat throughout the day, for example, will probably give you a better picture of Moldova than my ranting about identity and emotional gobble-dee-gook.

BREAKFAST:
Normally it’s an egg or two, fried with salam (which is kind of a mix between an Italian salami and pork sausages), and maybe some chicken fried in there too. On a frying pan, not deep fried.
Then of course there’s bread with homemade butter and maybe some brinza (a white, homemade cheese, salty like feta)
And tea…with lemon and lots of sugar unless I pour the sugar myself.
Sometimes some mini cucumbers because they grow in kilos in the garden…always with a small bowl of salt.
And twice we’ve had porridge. But, of course, I had no idea that’s what porridge was and they don’t call it porridge – they call it caşa – so it took me a while to realize I was eating what Oliver wanted more of. Oh, sorry, that was gruel. And caşa tastes better than gruel. But, then again, I never thought that porridge would be something I liked. And I’ve never tried gruel.
I had rice in the morning once. It’s easy on your stomach and it was almost creamy. I loved it. (And bread).

LUNCH:
Normally we have soup for lunch. And, mind you, if it’s chicken soup, you see the chicken feet and the organ meat, if you’re lucky enough to get it. The meat is tender, fresh, and cut in random shapes, not small and bite-sized like in the Campbell’s soup cans. I don’t like the feet though - no meat, just awkward to eat. There are normally potatoes in the soup (and a LOT in my bowl), plus onion, maybe some carrots, and sweet parsley.
And bread.
Often, though, we have barley with meat, which many people eat with mayo (which I have started to like again…in moderation!) because it makes some dry grains not so dry, a little more tasty and more caloric for the winter.
Bread.
And some cucumbers
When I get a packed lunch, it often has a skyscraper-sized pile of bread-brinza-bread-briza-bread-brinza, half a kilo of cucumbers, five medium tomatoes, and a quarter kilo of sweet, saliva-trickling mini tomatoes. Maybe a hardboiled egg or two.

DINNER:
For a main course: Often the same type of soup is served, or noodles with chicken, butter, and parsley. Or livers. I can’t even imagine how many ducks and chickens have died so that I can eat their livers. And I don’t even know if that’s definitely what I’ve been eating, because that really is way too much dead poultry to keep up with the reproduction rate.
Bread, always, in abundance. But I’ve realized that if you always have a piece in your hand and make sure to take little nibbles every so often, they don’t push you to eat so much bread. One is a must, but I love bread, and I love scooping up my remaining soup or rice, or egg with it.
There is always some type of salad for dinner, normally with cabbage, some oil and vinegar, black pepper, and dill. Dill goes in most every salad. I don’t know if this dill just tastes better, if I’m getting used to it, or if I never really gave it a shot, but I like Moldovan dill. Or, at least, I like dill in Moldova.
As fall starts getting chilly (and by “chilly” I mean “almost freezing”) we don’t eat as many bell peppers (only the red kind), but sometimes they are in the salad too. And tomatoes from the garden! At least six twenty-foot rows of tomatoes!
We once had this really yummy mushroom dish of chopped little button mushrooms (store-bought because some forest mushrooms are poisonous and only sometimes does that mean “hallucinogenic”). Well they were cooked with sweet parsley, maybe some butter, and just enough sour cream/egg mixture to coat.
Sometimes we have fish, but I don’t normally eat it. Except when I succumb to the “Eat! Eat!” pressure, and when it was cooked outside on the makeshift fire. It was a shoe-box-sized tin box with coal and corn cobs burning inside. Two fish were on skewers resting on the top of the box. Delicious! Tender, fragrant, and then garnished with fresh dill and scallions from the garden. Actually I can’t say that they were scallions because these “green onions” were the sharpest skinny little supposed-to-be-scallions I have ever bitten into (because you eat them raw). I think that was for my two week anniversary in this village, accidentally.

Which brings me too…

Dancing! After dinner that night we danced Moldovan-style. There are two basic ways we danced: in a circle and in a waltz. The circle is called hora, but it’s not the same as the traditional Jewish hora or other European horas. (And sorry if I spelled either one incorrectly.) You all hold hands and step, step, kick, step, step, kick with the other foot. I think I got the pattern down, but who knows? It was fun, communal. The waltz was dizzying as all waltzes are, but it was quicker and your arm is stiff and father from you, almost straight. It seems a little more hoppity, more flexibility in the direction of spinning. We danced outside on the front porch. I like Moldovan music a lot more now that I’ve had fun dancing to it.

SIGHTS:
And now, for the second verbal picture, the scenery:
Let me describe my future village. It’s an old village. The roads are horrible. HORRIBLE!! Huge crevices along the dirt roads that look like fault-lines down the center make it necessary to be a skilled driver when you take your 1980 van out in the wee morning hours. But riding on that old school bus was really amusing; I was totally impressed with the driver. And I was amused that, as my torso stayed stable, everything below my belly button went boppity-boppity. But I love that, save the main roads, the roads aren’t perpendicular. They turn and twist, and the presence of more dark trees adds a characteristic shadow here and there. The wooden fences match the wooden houses. If the houses aren’t made of wooden and painted blue or green, they’re made of stone. And if they’re painted, they’re blue or green. If the gate is metal, it’s blue or green. But on the outskirts of the village, behind the last curve of houses…space. Backyards blend into the slopes of pastures and hills. Peaks of houses from other villages are visible but not tangible and autumn makes the land look like golden hour.

As far as I know, no one in the village has running water, but maybe that’s just the case for the majority. Perhaps the mayor does. I will be bathing in a bath tub, but the water will be heated on the stove and then poured in the tub or over myself and you can be sure to expect an entry when I do that for the first time. I know some volunteers already do that, or they bathe in a bucket outside. But I’ve yet to have such fun. Soon! I’m wholeheartedly looking forward to it! I’d rather the water be warm than running.

To get back to the capital we got driven the four kilometers to the main road in that 1980 van through the creviced streets, got a minibus to Soroca (fifteen minutes maybe), then got on another unheated minibus for the 3-hour ride to the capital.
The drive to and from my future site is one of the most naturally charming routes I’ve ever taken. I went a little before sunset the way there and a little after sunrise the way back. I’ll take you along the route back. What I’ve seen of Soroca is that it’s a town, but it’s not too big. Its buildings are relatively short and I saw a sign for yoga lessons! The town is right on the Nistru River, the border between Moldova and Ukraine. The bus station in Soroca has one strip of spaces for minibuses (rutiere) to other main cities. It was early morning and very cold. Frosted breath, gloves and hats, couples close and cuddly.

As we first pulled away, we drove parallel to the Ukraine and the flatbed of the river on our left with a row of trees dividing our view. We turned gradually and were into shadow, surrounded by a thicker burst of trees and climbing gradually. I saw white rock cut from the mountain to our right, but I couldn’t see if it was man-cut or natural. Sometimes I wouldn’t be able to see the slope, but I would feel it, or visa versa. Then we emerged from the trees and were traveling through interlocking hills that look like they’d reach a giant’s hip. Like fingers interlocking. And I saw a meadow on my right once we were no longer following the river. A meadow! Farther on was a dense, if small, forest, and closer to the road was a seemingly smooth, grass-green meadow with cows and a random grazing horse.

And then, further on to my left, where two hills crisscrossed, an older man was herding sheep. I hadn’t before seen a herd of sheep in Moldova. (Have I ever seen one?) Every evening in my current village the cows cross the street from the narrow pasture opposite the village, but this herd of sheep was different. It was distant. It didn’t involve the passing minibus. And the cows practically get hit by the passing cars each evening.

It’s not too different from my current village – poop of all kinds on the street, people polish their shoes, older women wear scarves on their heads, people have chickens. More horse-drawn carts in my future village! I can’t wait to ride on one! I saw at least three on my walks throughout the village on my visit last weekend! And even in Soroca, the capital town of the raion (region), people drive the horse-drawn carts on the side of the road. Some of the most dangerous accidents involve mini taxi buses and horse-drawn carts. Along every trip you see crosses on the sides of the road (often blue) where someone was killed in an accident. And no one wears seatbelts. If you put it on, they tell you to take it off. And after I leave I wonder if my host family will start drinking the unfiltered well water again.

Friday, October 12, 2007

Three hours to the next outhouse!

written: October 10, 2007

Yesterday we got our site placements. Staff drew a replica outline of Moldova outside with sidewalk chalk. Chairs were placed in the relative locations of our sites, decorated with corn, plants, and signs stating the village and raion (region, pronounced “ray-own”). I’m going to be in the north of Moldova. Three hours or more from the capital and a lifetime away from the volunteers in the south. I’m probably just as inconveniently far from the Kiev airport as I am from the Bucharest airport. No bother. I think I’ll like it. I know I’ll like it. Probably a little over twenty kilometers from the major city, Soroca. I believe the village is larger than my current village, as based on the most accurate of sources: font size of the village on the map. I’d say my current village is at a 6 pt. font and my future village is at about an 8 pt.

But there’s more! The closest other M21 volunteer will be none other than the first person I met at staging in Washington. The one who looked at me like I was a psycho Californian with my dodgers t-shirt and the luggage I could neither carry nor drag by myself. And who is the second closest M21 to me? Why the second person I met, of course!! We are all in the same raion. I won’t mention your names in case you like me less than I like you, but our recent day trip to the south of Moldova (which took 3 hours one way and 2 hours back – mind you this was by car, not airplane, so what was the change in duration, I’ve no idea…) bonded us a little. An intense Rock-Paper-Scissors tournament can do that. (Do you read my blog?) Two years will pass by in a jiffy since I’ve realized I know way more about Star Wars and Star Trek than I ever knew. I have my father and brother to thank, of course.

Ok, but besides the trekkie trivia, I don’t know much about my future village, but the raion (Soroca) is getting mixed reviews so far. Some say it’s beautiful and I’ve “hit the mother load.” Others say it’s “not bad” but not much else. Two things seem undisputed: there is an ancient fortress in the area, and a large number of Romi families, or ţigani. I haven’t investigated the terminology yet, I don’t know if “ţigani” is derogatory or not, but since I know “Romi” isn’t, I’ll use that. You’d probably call them “gypsies” anyway. Yesterday, three representatives from the Romi population came to speak with us. One man who runs an NGO, a mom and her daughter. They wore the traditional dress. Bright colors. Head scarves. Shawl around their waste. They danced for us. They performed a symbolic scene of suffering and being ostracized, of no one wanting to employ them or school their children. But the mother had a beautiful speaking voice, she spoke some English, and her daughter was beautiful and wide-eyed.

It upsets me that I still don't know much about the stereotypes that are prevalent here. It bothers me because I’m still ignorant here. There are a lot of things I don’t know and stereotypes will only perpetuate that. In addition, I will not only likely be working with Romi families, but I am excited about it. There are so many different stories within Moldova, so many separate histories and cultures. There was an older woman who spoke about her experience as a Jewish woman in a country changed from generation to generation, a history that extends past two world wars into regional and local struggle. Even after my service I will probably still not be able to identify the “Moldovan” identity. (I know that there is never one single national identity, but for a country so small, I am interested in the vast difference in cultures and the perpetuation of reciprocal animosity). Interesting tidbit: In one family, the generations of women were perfect representations of Moldovan history via the language they studied and spoke. Pre-1812, Bessarabia was a principality of Romania. Great grandma spoke Russian because she lived here when Bessarabia was annexed by Russia after 1812. Grandma spoke Romanian because she lived here between WWI and WWII when the area was part of Romania again. Mother speaks Romanian and Russian because she lived here when Moldavia was part of the USSR and Russian was taught in schools, but Romanian spoken at home. Daughter speaks Romanian, Russian, and beautiful English.

But bear with me for the obvious: there are stereotypes in America, too. Everywhere. I might be the youngest, I might be idealistic, and I might be from California, but now I’m going to be the American in my village. I am representing my country. I will be the sole source of stereotype in my little village and within my organization. There are people in the past who have ruined the opportunity for other Americans to ever live in a particular village because they have been irresponsible or otherwise inappropriate. Of course there are places where not even the most immaculate of souls would change the perspective of the locals. But first, I’m not going into a “we hate Americans” war zone and, secondly, I know it’s not my job to “change people’s minds” anyway. I’m just saying that I know I’m in a position where the negative results might be easier to conjure than the positive. So what do I do? I pray. I mediate. I thank God for putting me in a place where I can be away from the easy hubbub. I’m in the north, it will probably be colder (though you never know, last winter was dry). I’ll have time to focus more on spirituality and less on volunteer gossip. Yes, we selfless souls can gossip quite a bit.

I’ll find out this weekend. On Saturday we leave to visit our sites. First test in navigating ourselves (what happens when I get to the village? Will someone be there to meet me? What if I can’t find the families’ homes? – There are no addresses in the villages, by the way). I believe once I’ve found my way to a particular intersection, my counterpart will come pick me up, though she suggested I hitchhike. I will be staying with three host families between Saturday and Tuesday. We get to try out each of the outhouses, test the home cooking, and find the house with the biggest garden. The funny part is I’m not even kidding. What I like is that my organization is located in the actual village and the village is small(ish). Considering the nearest bus seems to stop three kilometers from the village, I wouldn’t want to walk that distance in the dark. The safety-against-being-careless-and-getting-raped talks made two things very clear: don’t get wasted and don’t walk alone at night. I don’t want to talk statistics; I just want to be thankful. I’ve been having ugly dreams. I can’t call them nightmares because they only scare me when I wake up and think about them. But none of them are real, and I’m getting hungry. First, sorry it’s taken so long to get out postcards or mail anything at all. Soon! And then let me end by saying: being in Moldova makes me want to read history books.