Tuesday, August 30
Not much is going on lately. Half of Moldova was on vacation in August, and the other half goes on vacation in September, including my partner Donna. I was pretty mad at her last week for asking me to chaperone some kids to Chisinau last Sunday. I was so sick of traveling, and was also irritated that riding the bus with kids seems to be the extent of my usefulness here lately. My frustration was only exacerbated on Saturday when the Children’s Primaria held their “elections.” As usual, Donna hadn’t planned or organized a single thing, so what could have been accomplished in 30 or 45 minutes ended up taking nearly 2 hours. Also, she couldn’t manage to keep her opinions to herself, and ended up allowing only herself to comment on candidates. So, in the end, the kids “elected” the girl that Donna wanted to have as Primar (or mayor). I think the girl will be great, don’t get me wrong, she’s an excellent choice. But that’s not the point. I’m afraid Donna’s quickly alienating some of the kids with her pushiness and bossiness.
The other thing she wanted me to do was deliver the garbage truck grant application to LGRP on Monday. I’ve been irked about that for a month, now, too. The application was originally due in July. They horsed around too long and of course missed the deadline. She called and asked for an extension, and I think LGRP so very much wants to have each of their participating communities win a grant from them, they agreed to a few more weeks. Well, they missed that deadline too. When Donna called last week to tell our contact there that they were finally ready, Natasha said “Gee, that’s really nice. Unfortunately you’re too late again.” The LGRP office would be closed for vacation the following week and so no one would be there to accept the application. Donna somehow convinced them to let us deliver it anyway, and so I arranged to meet Bob, my friend at LGRP, for lunch and he agreed to pass the application on when the office is open again. Anyway, when I left the Primaria on Friday, the application was all set, all the attachments were in order, the documents and copies all paper clipped together. Somehow from late Friday afternoon to early Saturday morning, Donna managed to make a total mess out of it all and we spent a good 30 minutes looking through the disaster area she calls her desk, shifting through every piece of paper over and over until we found all 25+ pages of the application and attachments. This was just icing on the cake for me with her. She’s like a tornado, rushing around, looking busy but just leaving a trail of disaster behind her. I really hate working like that, and I’d reached my limit on Saturday. I was especially angry about the elections, which seemed to be mostly about Donna and not about the kids, and I knew if she had let me plan and organize it, it would have been a million times better.
Oh, then she filled me in on the rest of the deal with taking the kids to Chisinau. It wasn’t as simple as previous times, when someone met us at the bus station. I had to take the kids to a meeting place in central Chisinau, which was no big deal. But then she said I had to meet the kids on Monday when they got back from their training. She didn’t know exactly what time, but she said they’d probably be back around 12 or 1. Which meant I would have to “babysit” two 14-year-old girls for 4 or 5 hours in Chisinau before our 3 1/2 bus ride home. And since I had already made lunch arrangements with Bob on Monday to hand over the grant application, she told me I’d have to change those plans so I could meet the kids. The whole freaking trip was a favor to her so she wouldn’t have to pay 60 lei of her own money to take care of all of this, and she just kept adding it on and on.
When I dropped the kids off on Sunday, there was a woman I know from Ceadir-Lunga there, Lilia, who runs an NGO “New Generations.” She was attending the training with some kids from her community. When I heard that they were planning to be done on Monday by 11 am, I asked her about taking my girls to Ceadir-Lunga with her. Regardless of my own inconveniences, it just seemed cruel to me to make the girls wait around 6 hours for a bus, and it would be a ridiculously long day for them. Lilia agreed, and she had them to Ceadir-Lunga by 4 or so on Monday, and called Donna to have someone come pick them up.
But before I knew how that would all work out, I had already rearranged lunch with Bob for Sunday instead of Monday, and so I was left with no real reason to stay in Chisinau overnight. I considered going back to Tvarditsa Sunday night, but in the end decided to stay anyway and enjoy some quiet time to myself. I recalled some advice I gave to one of the new PCVs, who were sworn in a couple weeks ago. I told her to be sure to do something nice for herself, treat herself once in awhile, to help her stay motivated and happy. It was advice I’d forgotten to follow for myself lately. Sometimes it’s buying an ice cream, sometimes it’s watching a DVD, sometimes it’s talking on the phone for an hour with a friend, and sometimes it’s taking a day or two “off”, to unwind, to decompress, to not think about being a Peace Corps Volunteer in Moldova.
As luck would have it, I had a hotel room by myself Sunday night in Chisinau, so I just relaxed, read, and enjoyed a little “break” from Moldova for an evening. I need to remember to take my own advice more often!