MoldovAnn

The last two weeks were an adventure, but what else is new?

As I’ve mentioned before, I’d scheduled a seminar with La Strada, an international organization focusing on Human Trafficking, for Saturday, February 26. It was on-again, off-again for most of the preceeding week. When I first talked to the La Strada folks about a month ago, they said we’d talk after February 20 to set the time and confirm the location/venue. I called them on Tuesday last week, cutting it severely close, in my opinion, but they seemed unfazed. They did not ask directions, didn’t check if there was more than one school in the village, nothing. Just said they’d be there at 10 am. OK, I thought, I’m not going to worry about it if they aren’t.

So I turned my attention to confirming the room in the school and to making sure someone would be there to open the building, get out the TV and VCR for us, etc. It turned out that the School Director and Anya, the teacher who was my contact for the event, were both in Chisinau at a seminar – for THREE WEEKS! The Assistant Director was home sick, as were a significant number of other teachers and students (the flu has been going around the village epidemically). No one else was empowered to make any decisions, nor did anyone else have access to the Director’s office to get the TV/VCR out. Wednesday morning I was sure we would have to cancel the seminar. My host mom, bless her heart, gets even more worked up than me when she knows I’m upset or frustrated about something, so she set herself to the task of making sure this thing would happen. Thursday morning she told me to “Go to the school right now! The Assistant Director is there, waiting for you. Hurry!” I rushed over, met with Ludmila Ivanovna, and she agreed to come in Saturday morning to open up the rooms for me. Whew! Another teacher helped me type up an announcement, and by Thursday afternoon we had flyers posted at both schools, the Music College and the Primaria. Would anyone come with just 2 days notice? That seemed about the right amount of lead-time as I’ve seen for other events, so I figured we’d get some folks.

La Strada was sending 2 volunteers, one to meet with parents/adults and one to meet with school kids. They had asked for 2 TVs and VCRs to show the film to each group, but the school only has one TV & VCR, so my La Strada contact then suggested they could show the film to one group on a computer, as they also have the film on CD. Turns out the computers at the school are pretty old and don’t have CD drives. Well, I decided the Moldovans would have to do the accommodating this time, so I quit worrying about it.

Friday morning I went to Taraclia to meet Emily. She came back with me for the weekend, as she was interested in the La Strada seminar, too. When we got back to Tvarditsa, we popped in the Primaria, where I had a message from Maria Danilovna, the Vice Mayor, saying that we had to cancel the seminar on Saturday. I called her on her cell phone, in a near panic and down right pissed, thinking, first of all, who the heck is she to tell me we have to cancel the seminar, and second, what an awful position she was putting me in at 4:00 pm on a Friday afternoon. She told me Saturday was going to be a “working day” and thus school would be in session and no rooms would be free for the seminar. I told her point-blank that I wasn’t calling La Strada and canceling now, that she could call them if she wanted but that, in my opinion, it was too late to cancel. She pushed it back on me, saying she wouldn’t be back to the office until after 5 pm (when it would be conveniently too late for her to call them herself). I was furious, but another kind soul took pity on my, namely my host mom’s office mate, Nadia. She called Ludmila Ivanovna, school assistant director, who calmly informed us that they were NOT having school tomorrow, too many teachers and students were sick and it would be pointless. (I later learned the reason for the working day: Tuesday, March 8 is International Women’s Day, a huge holiday here, and the government decided to give everyone Monday, March 7 off so they could have a 4-day weekend; but the day had to be “made up” by working on Saturday, February 26. A pseudo-free day.)

Quick interjection: from the Primaria, Emily and I walked to the small branch office of the phone company as Anna had asked me to pick up the itemized phone bill (they don’t automatically include an itemized listing of long distance calls in the monthly phone bill, and Anna and Georghi finally got a friend at the phone company to print up a listing that we can pick up every month so I know how much of the bill is mine). Emily and I walked to the little office, which is full of the craziest looking phone equipment you’ve ever seen. It’s really like those things in old TV shows and movies – panels and panels of wires and cords connected in some confusing melee. I always think of Lily Tomlin’s phone operator skits when I’m in there. As we opened the door, a worker extends a telephone and says it’s for me! I was dumbfounded, in fact was too surprised to say anything for a few seconds. When I took the phone and it was my tutor, Anya. She’d called the Primaria looking for me, they told her I was going to the phone company, so she called there for me. Such is life in a small village! You can be found absolutely anywhere.

So, back to our original seminar plans. Saturday morning we got up early, and around 8:30 I get a call from Anya, my contact at the school who’d been in Chisinau all week. She was calling to let me know that everything was set for the seminar today; she didn’t want me to worry or think she’d forgotten about it. Gee, thanks. 90 minutes before the thing is supposed to start, and you’re calling me now so I won’t worry? Anyway, she said she’d meet us at the school at 10:00 to open the rooms and set up the TV/VCR.

We left the house about 9:30 and walked out into a totally yucky day – cold dreary rain. No one’s coming out in this weather, I thought to myself. Then my cell phone rings and it’s La Strada. They are running late, the roads are really bad (“Duh,” I thought. “They’re bad everywhere in Moldova.”) But we have confirmation that someone is coming from La Strada! They are on the way!

At the school, one girl is already waiting. We hang out in the hallway for a few minutes, which stretch into 10 minutes, then 20, then 30. At 10:30, Anya shows up with the keys and lets us into the room. Kids start to trickle in. At 11, the La Strada volunteer arrives. But only one; turns out the other person who was supposed to come got sick and couldn’t make it. No problem, I tell her. We have enough people for one seminar and only one TV & VCR, so it’s perfect! By then, we had about 17 kids (boys and girls) and 4 parents (including one father!).

The seminar was really good. The La Strada volunteer, Ina, facilitated a great, hour-long discussion with the kids, and later told me that she was impressed by how well informed they were. We then watched the film “Lilia 4-Ever,” which is just as difficult to watch the third time as it was the first. Ina told me later that she was also impressed by how well behaved the kids, especially the boys, were while watching. Although there is no nudity, there are scenes when it’s clear that men having sex with Lilia, and Ina said boys, especially, are prone to getting the giggles while watching. Our kids were serious, subdued and attentive.

So, seemingly against all odds, I pulled off My First Event as a Peace Corps Volunteer! I’m really glad we did it, the feedback has been very positive.

The weekend only continued to get more interesting, though. During Soviet times, February 23 was celebrated as something akin to Army Day, which I jokingly refer to as “Men’s Day,” since all men served in the military. Although the Moldovan military is honored in an autumn holiday, “traditionalist” still celebrate the February date. One traditional way to acknowledge the day is with sport competitions for the school boys. Tvarditsa hosted a competition on Sunday, February 27, with teams coming in from 2 neighboring villages. It was interesting, to say the least.

When we got the Sport Hall (aka gymnasium), the balcony was already filled with high schoolers chanting and cheering for their village team. Emily and I watched with intense fascination as equipment was set up for the first event. What do you get when you put together wooden hurdles, Kalashnikov rifles, and a bunch of teenage boys in a crowded gym? A unique competition, that’s for sure. Emily and I entertained ourselves with musings on exactly what we were going to witness. Turned out that the first event involved the boys jumping over the hurdles and racing to the rifles, which they had to disassemble and reassemble, then run back to the other end of the gym. This was repeated by the 10 members of each team. For the second event, they had to scramble under the hurdles, and one boy would empty a gun clip of all the bullets and then run back; the next boy would scramble under the hurdles and have to put all the bullets back into the clip. The third event involved shooting BB’s at targets. The fourth event was basketball – each boy had three shots to make a free throw basket. The day wrapped up with a tug-of-war. Tvarditsa swept the games and were declared the Victors this year – yeah!

The weather turned terrible during the sport competition, and I wasn’t sure if we’d get any kids at the English Club meeting, so I was delighted 3 “regulars” waiting for us at 2:00. I had prepared a variety of materials, not knowing who would show up, but all three on Sunday were older kids, so we talked about the short biography I had given them to read at the last meeting. They were very impressed to read about Januarius MacGahan (1844-1878), a journalist from Ohio who wrote about the horrors and oppression of the Ottoman Empire in Bulgaria, and brought the Bulgarian people’s plight to the attention of Europeans, and his writings helped gain support for Russia in the Russo-Turkish War. In his day, Bulgarians called MacGahan their “savior” and “The Liberator of Bulgaria.” There is a statue to him in his hometown of New Lexington, in southeastern Ohio.
How cool to find such a connection between the kids’ “homeland” and mine!

I had also prepared some material about the Season For Non-Violence, an international campaign, begun in 1998, to commemorate the 30th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s death and the 50th anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi’s death. The Season spans the 64 days between the dates of their deaths, Gandhi’s on January 30 and King’s on April 4. Previous PCV’s put together a wonderful packet of materials and information for us to use at our sites, and this year the coordinators organized a Poster Contest throughout Moldova, in which youth were invited to submit original art on the theme of non-violence. One girl from Tvarditsa, Galina Yemets, submitted a stunning poster that has garnered much attention. The PCV coordinators divided the posters into 3 sets, and those sets are “traveling” around the country as mini-exhibitions that can be displayed in local communities. We have a set in Tvarditsa now, which includes Galina’s poster, and I’ll pick up another set next time I’m in Chisinau.

The Season For Non-Violence manual includes a word/thought for each of the 64 days of the campaign. Emily and I had prepared index cards with some of the words and phrases, to generate discussion with the English Club. I think I’ll do that a few more times, as the kids seem to enjoy it. The manual includes some short stories and parables, which I’ll use during some of our upcoming meetings. I’ve given Russian-language copies of the manual to both schools, and some teachers have expressed interest in incorporating some of the material into their lessons. I also adapted the introduction to the manual into a short article for our village newspaper. Next year I’ll be prepared earlier to do something more during the SFNV, but at least we’ve got the notion introduced to the village this year!

In other news, I’ll visit Alyona one last time next week. She and Anya were approved for visas to England as dependents of her new husband. Alyona leaves on Saturday, March 12, to start her new life. Anya will finish the school year, graduate in June, and join them probably in July. It’s an incredible opportunity for the both of them; I’m so very thrilled for them. It will be bittersweet next week, though. I will miss them both immensely. Alyona and I have had many conversations about the parallels in our lives – too many sad years in unhappy marriages, struggling to finally end the relationships, finding freedom and happiness again, the miracle of a second chance, starting our lives over. Only I came to Moldova to start over, and she is leaving for her new beginning. I am so glad that our journeys crossed for these few months.

And now I have friends who live in London! They can count on me to visit.