MoldovAnn

I decided to add a new feature to my blog entries – a list of the books I am reading. I kind of wish I had started this a year ago, for my own self it would just be interesting to have kept track of all the books I read while in PC. Well, better late than never! I don’t know if any of you will find my reading list of interest, but I know some of you are avid readers, too. I don’t plan to include any commentary, but who knows? If a book inspires me enough, I just might tell you more about it.

In the last month or so I read: Namesake, by Jhumpa Lahiri; Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides; The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini; River Town, Two Years on the Yangtze, by Peter Hessler; and Tortilla Flat, by John Steinbeck.

Sunday I was in Chisinau with a long of list things to do. Instead of tackling any of them, I was stranded in the PC office during an incredible 5-hour thunderstorm. It rained buckets and buckets. Another PCV got some great photos after the rain finally tapered off, in front of the Chisinau train station (photos are posted on my Flickr site). That’s in a pretty low spot of the city, but still, that’s quite a lake that was created, covering cars nearly to the roof!

Sunday night I went to a hotel on the edge of town where Donna and Galya were attending another 5-day NGO training about grant writing, coordinated by European Youth Exchange/Moldova (EYE/Moldova). Donna had asked me to come out and meet some of the other attendees, in particular a man she’s known and worked with for several years, Slava, from a town in Transnistria, a break-away area in northeastern Moldova. I also had hoped to meet with Iosef, one of the EYE/Moldova coordinators. I met him briefly a couple months ago and was hoping now to talk to him about some specific project ideas. As it turns out, Iosef was on vacation and thus not at the training himself. Slava wasn’t staying at the hotel but instead was driving home in the evenings, and because I was so delayed by the storm, they figured I wasn’t going to make it out there after all and so he had already left for the night by the time I got there.

The trip was well worth it, though, as I ended up talking for a couple hours with the two German consultants who had been contracted for the training: Elke is from Munich, and Hans-Georg from Cologne. They work for a German organization, in conjunction with the German government, on promoting good government and civil activism in Eastern European countries. This was their first trip to Moldova, but they have also been working in Albania, which I learned is now considered poorest country in Europe, moving Moldova up to the #2 spot. They don’t speak any Russian or Romanian and thus had not had any opportunity to chat with the participants. Donna was anxious to learn more about them, too, so I served as translator for a few hours. The conversation was fascinating.

We talked about what Elke and H.-Georg had heard about Moldova before this project, which was (like for most Westerners) basically nothing. I told them that most Americans think Moldova is somewhere in Africa; they said they had though it was part of the Baltics. Donna talked about the political and economic history of the country, and shared many personal experiences from her own life and family. She talked about how there had been stability during Soviet times, that people knew how much things would cost, that people were not rich but they could afford everything they needed. Natural gas and electricity cost kopeks, public transportation was regular and convenient, people didn’t have the worries that they have now. I wasn’t a very good “neutral” translator, I’ll admit, and I had to interject at this point that it’s not a post-Soviet issue that there are villages and towns that do not have natural gas, electricity or running water. In fact, it’s only been post-Soviet Union that many villages have had the infrastructure constructed for such utilities. True, Donna conceded, the Soviets had not always provided everything for the people, and life was not “all honey” (as the saying here goes).

Before World War II, Donna told us, her grandfather had owned a large property, with fields and animals, as well as his house and farming equipment. When the Soviets took over the region, everyone was required to “contribute” their land and animals to the new collective farm. Regardless of how much you gave, whether it was one cow or a herd of cows, 1/4 hectare of land or 5 hectares, everyone received the same small “compensation.” Almost everyone went to work on the collective farm and for many years they were paid only in goods, maybe bags of wheat or bushels of corn. When they did start to pay workers in cash, it was, Donna said, the equivalent of a few cents by today’s currency. There was a person at the farm who’s job it was to record every day a cash value for the amount of work completed by each laborer.

There were many hard years after the war, but, Donna said, people didn’t think about whether they were free or not. They worked, they had enough food, enough money for all the things they needed. Tvarditsa, in particular, was a “rich” village and many developments occurred there long before in other villages. They got electricity and gas lines in the early eighties, and were one of the first villages to have telephone service and paved roads. Their already small salaries would be further reduced to provide the funds for whatever project was underway. Today, though, people don’t remember that it was “their own backs” that made those improvements possible. Instead, the director of the collective farm, or kolhoz, was and is always credited with bringing these advancements and services to the village. What the people never understood or thought about, Donna said, was that he was paying for it all with their money. Today, when anyone suggests that the residents might need to pay taxes or fees for some service or another, they are outraged, abhorred by the idea that they should have to pay for something that the government always provided before. As Donna said, they never really understood that it was them, all along, who were paying for it. They didn’t see it that way because they never saw the money in the first place, it was just deducted from their salaries.

Today, Donna said, Tvarditsa finds itself in an unusual position. Most residents have gas lines, electricity, running water, telephone service, and many streets are paved. Many international aid organizations are providing funds to villages to bring these services to villages that have never had them. The irony is that although Tvarditsa was one of the first places to have these things in Moldova, it now has some of the worst infrastructure due to the age and poor upkeep of the systems. Electricity and water are periodically shut off for hours or days at a time for repairs. Although there is running water, it is not cleaned or filtered and comes out of the tap nearly black. Many people still drink well water, believing it to be cleaner and safer (granted, the color is clearer, but nonetheless it is completely untreated). The phone system is sporadic and the connection is so bad that even people in Moldova say it sounds like I am calling from the moon. But it’s hard to get funds to replace and/or improve infrastructure when there are still so many villages that don’t have those basic utilities at all.

Next Elke asked about the health care system. Again, Donna talked about the community she knows best. In Tvarditsa there is a hospital, but it is essentially closed. Two yeas ago, Moldova began the transition to something that sounds a bit like managed health care, with health insurance and restrictions on coverage. Donna joked that they had learned this system from “you in Western Europe”, and Elke was quick to note that Germany had learned the system from Australia. Seems like no one wants to take credit (or responsibility?) for managed health care! Anyway, in contrast to the 50+ years of free medical care, people are shocked now by the changes in services, from the shortened time one stays in the hospital to the cost of services and medicines. I would agree that this is definitely one case is which they would have been better off to not follow the West’s example.

The conversation then turned to retirement. During Soviet times, men retired at 60 and women at 55. The government has been trying to raise those ages for several years now but has much strong opposition. Donna told of a meeting she’d attended with a government committee where they were trying to inform and convince people of the necessity and benefits of raising the retirement age. One committee member said she even looked forward to working longer, she didn’t want to retire at 55 because she enjoyed working. Donna pointed out, though, that the life of a government official is completely different from the average villager. That woman still had strength and energy and life left in her at 55 precisely because she worked for the government, received a good salary, and in general led a pampered life. The average citizen, though, was half-dead by 55 from years of hard labor in a factory or on a farm coupled with all the arduous work at home.

I can attest that Donna isn’t exaggerating, especially about the life expectancy of men. One of my regular walking routes around Tvarditsa passes through the village cemetery, where I never ceased to be amazed by the number of people who died in their 40’s, 50’s and 60’s.

Although I think we all would have enjoyed much longer, the evening was getting late, the trainers were tired, and I still had to get to Ialoveni, where I was spending the night at Anya’s. We exchanged contact information, and I look forward to meeting Hans-Georg and Elke again, either on their next trip to Moldova or my next trip to Germany!

A few days later, back in Tvarditsa, I mentioned that Sunday evening conversation during dinner with my host family. I told Anya and Georghi that living here has shown me a different kind of poverty than I am used to seeing, that for a long time it had been hard for me to think of most people here as poor since most people have homes, plenty of food and clothes, etc. Anya quickly began telling me, as she has many times before, how everything was so much better during Soviet times, how everything they own they bought when salaries were sufficient and goods were affordable. “It’s this democracy we have now that has made everyone so poor!” she said. (I’ve tried to explain over and over that Democracy and Capitalism are two very different things, and that the former is not nearly as guilty as the latter for the current economic situation, but when she gets going, it’s still Democracy that she holds responsible.) “But,” I said, “what about the gas and electricity? It’s not a new problem that villages don’t have those services; it was never installed during Soviet times.” I inadvertently but clearly hit a sore spot, but Anya’s response was interesting, despite the defensiveness in her voice. She said that after the war (WWII), the Soviet Union had much bigger problems to deal with than getting gas and electricity everywhere. I couldn’t help but wonder how much was truth and how much was propaganda they’d been told over the years; I’m sure there was plenty of both. Then Georghi asked me if I thought they were poor. How do you answer a question like that? Do I say Yes, and risk insulting the very people who have been my saving grace here, or do I say No and risk belittling their hardships? It had somehow turned into one of those situations where you’re not exactly sure how you got yourself in so deep, so quick, and any attempt to dig yourself out only makes it worse. I finally decided the best approach was to keep my mouth shut!

As I maintained my silence, Anya and Georghi carried on the conversation with each other, and like most of their debates, it eventually turned to gender issues, a friendly argument about who works more and who has it harder (men or women). Eventually Georghi wrapped it up with his fail-save argument ender, a tongue-in-cheek concession about women always being right, which made Anya laugh, and me sigh with relief that I had escaped the awkward conversation.

One comment particularly sticks with me, though. At one point Georghi looked at me, started to say something, and then stopped himself. “No, not now. Ann’s still here for another year. We still have time for that conversation.” I’m have no idea what he wanted to say, and I’m both intrigued and a bit apprehensive about this topic he is saving for a later date!