MoldovAnn

My site visit went well, I am pleased to report! It will take several days to type up everything I want to share, but I’ll get started here.

There is one bus every day from Chisinau to Tvarditsa, leaving at 5:10 pm. The bus starts from Chisinau and Tvarditsa is the last stop, so it was pretty simple for me – get on at the beginning and off at the end! It normally takes about 3 hours by bus to travel the 120 km (approx. 72 miles), which seems crazy until you experience it. Well, it’s still crazy even after you experience it, but at least you can see why. First, of course, the bus stops along the way in a couple other towns to pick up and drop off people. The biggest reason for the slow travel time, though, are the totally terrible roads. At some points, especially when it was dark out and difficult to see where all the potholes and ditches in were in the dirt road (by the way, 90% of the trip was on dirt roads), I could have walked faster than the bus was going.

I arrived in Tvarditsa about 8:30 pm, and was met by my counterpart, Donna Mikhailovna and a friend of her’s named Tanya. They grabbed my backpack, each took an arm, and walked me to my host family’s house a few minutes walk up the street. It was an absolutely beautiful night – an amazingly clear and bright sky, billions and billions of stars twinkling, and of course no streetlights to hinder the view.

That night was a bit of a whirlwind; I was tired and overwhelmed. I met my host family, a husband and wife named George and Anna, and George’s mother who lives with them (I never did catch her name!). Of course, an enormous meal had been prepared on my behalf, including an entire roasted chicken. So, one of my first tasks was to share the news that I am vegetarian, at which point George looked at me as if I had just landed from Mars. Anna seemed crushed, mostly, I think, because she was worried I wouldn’t have anything to eat, as she quickly started asking a list of foods I do eat and pulling things out of the fridge to pile every possible vegetarian item in front of me. I tried to explain that I was perfectly satisfied with the lovely salads, fresh vegetables, cheeses, and homemade bread, but then didn’t have the energy to argue when she started boiling eggs for me, too. George spent much of the rest of that evening with the same look on his face, as if I truly was the strangest sight he had ever seen. Later, when I thought about it more, I think he was mostly having a hard time understanding my poor, accented Russian, and since I was exhausted, I was even less comprehensible than usual.

Tvarditsa is a “pure” Bulgarian village (whatever that means), and the language of choice at home and between friends is Bulgarian. Babushka (Grandma) understands Russian, and I’m sure can speak it, too, but she speaks mostly in Bulgarian, except when she’s tell me to “Eat! Eat!” and to “Take some bread! Take some more!” They all started talking about how wonderful and easy it will be for me to learn Bulgarian, insisting that it’s very close to Russian, and to demonstrate, they started naming things on the table for me in Bulgarian and making me repeat the words. I played along as nicely as I could, but managed to mention that I really need to achieve comprehension in one language before I start another.

At some point was my introduction to the outhouse. Yes, the Dreaded Outhouse. We walked through a gate in a tall fence behind the house and past their animals – turkeys, rabbits, pigs, chickens and geese – and made our way around the corner of the pens. Thankfully, they have floodlights for the yard, and Anna waited for me to make sure I was OK and found my way back to the house safely. Well, over the course of the next 2 days, all systems functioned appropriately, and I suppose I’m on way to overcoming my “fear” of outhouses (although I don’t expect I’ll ever come to prefer them). A couple days later, I told Anna that in the outhouse, when everything was “done” I still felt like there was something else that I needed to do. She looked at me strangely for a moment, then laughed and said “The water, right?” Somehow the whole “process” doesn’t quite seem complete without a flush, but I did begin to see some efficiency in eliminating that step from the process.

Despite my ability to laugh about things a few days later, I went to bed Sunday night overwhelmed, a bit horrified, lonely, and scared. I thought “What the heck have I done? There is no way I can live on a freakin’ mini-farm, pee outside with ducks watching me, learn Bulgarian, and, worst of all, move yet another time, start yet again with all new people but this time without even one other American anywhere near me!” By Monday morning, I had pretty much decided that when I got back to Chisinau on Wednesday I would tell Sylvia (our EOD coordinator) that I would give it a try for a while, but that I really didn’t think I could do this and she should be prepared to find another site for me.

I did change my mind about that over the course of the next two days, though, and I am looking forward to living in such a different way, and with such wonderful people. It is very bittersweet, though, as I am crushed to leave my wonderful family in Ialoveni, who have quickly become very dear friends. At times, I feel like all I have done for many months now is say good-bye and leave people whom I love. At least this time, there won’t be an ocean between us, and I can come visit relatively easily.

Well, back to Tvarditsa. I was supposed to spend Monday and Tuesday with my partner, and she tried her best. Unfortunately, she has been suckered into taking on the duties of the Secretary of the Primaria, which is City Hall (or, I guess, Village Hall). The mayor is called the Primar, the vice mayor is called Vice Primar. Secretary of the Primaria is not what might expect (but then again, very little in Moldova is what you might expect), and in fact a better translation would be “the person you have to see for absolutely every single thing.” I sat in her office for several hours on both days, and was simply amazed. She heard people’s complaints, from why they were fined for something to how their taxes are too high; she stamped a bazillion documents, collected money for the processing of various forms or applications or God-knows-what; she typed up forms on an ancient manual typewriter (which I dubbed “the computer” as it is the most technical piece of equipment in the entire Primar’s office). Honestly, it’s hard to imagine the plethora of activities in which she has to be involved, and suffice to say she barely had time to breath, much less entertain me for two days. She did introduce me to the Primar, a nice older gentleman (probably in his 60’s), who is Communist; to the Vice Primar, a spunky young woman (I’d guess in her 30’s), who is a doctor by training and became Vice Primar a year ago; to the police officers, whose “station” (which is exactly one small room with just enough room for one desk) is in the Primaria, and to various other people. I hadn’t realized she’d be so busy, so hadn’t taken anything with me on Monday to do. She apologized profusely for not having time for me, and promised she’s trying desperately to get out of this position. I’m not sure how easy that will be, though, as it’s clearly a totally thankless job and no one else wants to come close to it. Well, I hope they are able to find someone to fill the position, but either way, I’m comfortable working independently, and my first 3-6 months will be spent mostly learning about the village and its people, not in really doing any work, per se.

At some point, another member of the Primaria staff came in, introduced herself as Nadia, took pity on me, and invited me to coffee. She’s a couple years older than me, divorced, with a 17 year old daughter. I instantly liked her, and some of those earlier anxieties started to be eased. We had a nice talk, and when I mentioned with whom I was staying with, she had very high praise for the family, which also made me feel better to get another positive opinion on the people I’m going to live with at least for the foreseeable future. I spent much of the rest of the afternoon in her office, which she shares with another woman. Nadia collects and processes the business taxes, and I enjoyed watching the totally archaic tracking process in action. Binders and binders full of handwritten lines of information – who paid how much, when, and for what. She glued seals onto certificates to indicate that term’s taxes had been paid, and painstakingly copied information onto documents for the business owner and for the Primaria’s records. Not a computer nor a copier to be found, and not a single process automated.

I went home for lunch with Anna, as the house is barely a 5 minute walk from the Primaria, and it was nice to have some time alone with her to get to know each other better. I think we were both a bit apprehensive about each other, but by the time we went back to the office, I was very comfortable with the idea of living with her. She is 48, George is 49. They have two grown sons, the older is recently divorced and is working in Russia, the younger is studying computer programming at a university in Chisinau. She has a 2-year old grandson. She worked for 20+ years as a Kindergarten teacher, and left her job as Director of the Kindergarten a few years ago. It sounds like she was the primary caregiver for her grandson until her son got divorced and his ex-wife moved away and took their child with her. The pain and sadness is so very clear on her face and in her voice at the lose of him, and I felt so very sad for her. Her younger son, apparently, has been pestering her to “get out of the house some,” as she has been quite depressed, so when the Census came to town, she started working as a Coordinator for that.

The Census is worth an aside in the story here. This is the first census in 15 years, which also means the first census since Moldova became independent. The data collection sounds somewhat similar to how it was done in the U.S., with the main difference being that forms were not mailed out but instead a Census worker interviews a household personally. People have the normal concerns: their taxes will be increased if they tell the truth; something must be corrupt or fishy or scandalous about the Census; somehow I’ll get screwed by this; etc. In a small village like Tvarditsa, where most everyone is related in one way or another, and they certainly all know each other, the workers can easily correct someone who gives an incorrect answer. For example, Anna knew that someone’s son was working in Russia (which seems to be where almost every Moldovan man between 25-40 is), and when they inadvertently included him in the household number, she could say “But isn’t So-and-So in Russia?” and get the numbers correct. Everyone knows that lots and lots of people have left, but when you see the numbers on paper, somehow it has a stronger impact. Tvarditsa used to have about 6500 residents, but Anna told me they hadn’t even reached 5000 yet in their counting, and as they are coming close to the end of the data collection period, they are now anticipating the population will be around 5500. If I did my math correctly (which is always a Big “If”), that’s a 15% loss in the village’s population. Families are having fewer children, yes, but the biggest loss of population comes from the fact that so very many people are working abroad. Russia, Portugal, and Italy are the countries I hear most often as the place where someone’s husband, brother, cousin, father, etc is working. It is usually men, usually under 25-40 years old. This, of course, will have a dramatic impact on the society in the long run, in ways we can’t even begin to predict.

But again, back to Tvarditsa. The Census is “headquartered” in the Primaria in Tvarditsa, so Anna walked to work and home together both days. Her husband, George, is the tractor driver (“Traktorist”) on a large cooperative farm in the village. Right now, of course, is a very busy time on a farm, and he is the only Traktorist, so he has been working from sunup to long past sundown, every day of the week. So again, Anna and I had some nice time together as she prepared dinner after work, until George came home around 8/8:30. There seems to be a good amount of employment opportunities in the village, as there is the large cooperative farm, a wine and cognac factory, 2 mills, and I heard they are building a dairy plant (or cheese factory, they called it in Russian). That’s not particularly glamorous work, though, and although employment opportunities exist, I am curious to learn more about their ability to find workers. Anna told me that at the farm where George works, during Soviet times (when it was a Collective Farm, or kolkhoz), there were almost twice as many workers on the farm and there were 2 Traktorists. I didn’t quite catch if the number of employees is so drastically reduced from attrition or from lay-offs, but I strongly suppose it’s the latter. That good ole capitalist principle of doing more with less! So, now people work even harder and longer, for less pay and have less time to take care of their lives or, God forbid, relax and enjoy their lives a bit.

Tuesday Donna Mikhailovna asked a school boy to show me around a bit. Sasha’s about 15, I would guess, and he was a perfect gentleman. He helped me buy a sim chip for my cell phone (the cell phone system is totally different here, but I won’t bore you with the details), then took me to the Children’s Library, the Village Library, the Internet Café, and to his school. We was an excellent tour guide, and I thoroughly enjoyed spending a couple hours with him. At the school, he left me in the care of the Vice Principal as he had classes in the afternoon (a lot of schools seem to be on what we would call “block scheduling,” with students coming for classes at different times during the day). The Vice Principal also happens to be an English teacher, which gave me a much needed break from struggling to converse in Russian all the time. She took me to the teacher’s lounge and introduced me to her colleagues, and I even quickly met the Principal (or School Director, as they call them here). It was the breaktime between classes, and chaos seemed to be ensuing, so I didn’t stay long. But, it was fun to meet the teachers, they were all delighted to meet me and I’m looking forward to working with them.

By Tuesday night, Anna, George, Babushka and I were all talking as if I’d be living there, which means we were all used to the idea and planning for it! I’m looking forward to living there, working there, and experiencing so many new things.