I usually don’t type and save updates at night while in bed, but I fell asleep this afternoon around 5pm and woke up a little before 9pm… I guess I was exhausted… and now that it’s 10pm I’m full of energy.
The weather has been so nice this month I’ve been finding time to jog nearly every day. Just to have a reason to be in the fresh air. I feel like I’ve literally been reborn, the sunshine is that incredible after 6 months of cold darkness. And now that I don’t have to start a fire every day I have a huge chore off my back when I get home from school. Moldova has hot summers and I have never been more ready in my life. I’ve even thought about the sunbathing I will do. For me, someone sunaphobic (I’m sure there is an actual word for my past though not completely diminished phobia), this is a pretty big change.
I feel like the sunshine and all of the energy I’ve had from issues exterior to my work have translated into extra motivation. Club this past Wednesday was awesome. Valentina is out of the village for 2 weeks so I did club alone with the six 7th grade girls who came. The words “volunteerism” and “activism” do not exist in Romanian, so we defined these words in English and I gave examples of volunteer work that I had seen or participated in in Raleigh. There is this one day per year where students at NCSU students volunteer around Raleigh and I talked about that… I forget the name, but it’s a pretty large event. When back in Raleigh I used to think that this one volunteer day per year could not possibly be that productive. I thought that people shouldn’t become so excited about only ONE day of volunteerism… they should be doing this all of the time… so why is just ONE day so special? But it really is special. The fact that so many people should agree to give up their time on the same day to volunteer, most of this whether consciously or unconsciously being for the purpose of promoting volunteerism in a community, is awesome… and this mentality does not exist in many communities in the world. So I gave this day of volunteerism as an example to these girls and they were so blown away that people would join together in a community to do this. My program manager, Elvira, helped me develop ideas of volunteer activities for the students in this club—we usually have about 14 girls consistently come to our meetings. Less on this particular day because the school director relegated students to the task of shoveling dirt and sweeping outside (does sweeping a dirt driveway sound productive to you?) instead of spending their time in class learning. So, anyway, I think I listed in an earlier post some of these volunteer ideas. I’m hoping it will rain tomorrow for different reasons. If it rains, Viorica won’t be working in her garden and said in that case she will go with me to the school for students with special needs to meet the teachers and find out more about the interests of the students there. I’ve been told it would be strange for me to go by myself. There are many formalities and behaviors in Moldova that I’m still discovering and getting used to. In America I do so many things on my own and people don’t see that as being strange. Eating alone is normal at home, jogging alone, jogging in general, reading on a bus is normal, and on and on. I would just go to this school by myself, but it’s not considered normal unless I’m accompanied by someone else. One of the girls in my club said that some of the kids at the school for special needs “have no problems at all and most have more material things than we do…like really nice stuff” because they are “just kids whose parents went abroad and were left with no one to take care of them”. So it might be sort of like an orphanage as well as the kids all live there. I wouldn’t say that these kids have “no problems at all” and think that whatever their case, they aren’t in the public school in Pepeni and don’t have the opportunity to participate in our health club or the chance to take one of the health classes I co-teach. So doing health presentations for them would be cool. BUT, I have to be careful to not make MY ideas my students’ ideas… that can be too easy to do when I see things I want to help change and others don’t really care. My job is to help others do what they want to do, and I can’t lose sight of this. That’s what I told the girls and that I want their ideas on volunteer activities… if they like my ideas, great, but if they want to do something else, even better. All of the girls in the club are really into theater. So if we can find plays or skits with health themes, this will be a great way to present information to other kids or adults. Some of the girls did a puppet show about alcohol this past year and really loved that. The puppets, which are super nice, were a donation to PC from the Mormon Church in the US. I’m wondering if the girls would be into the idea of making our own puppets. We have this loot-me bin at PC (which is pretty much awesome and how I dress myself in Moldova…) and we could use some of the clothing fabric like my friend Terri did with her students. I’ll see what the kids think.
Today, after months and months of interruptions, Viorica and I presented the information about breast cancer to the female teachers, cleaning staff, cafeteria staff at our school. I think it would very well, but I know Viorica was really disappointed that all of the teachers did not come. We presented the information at two different times during the day and the second time we only have five teachers and Viorica didn’t want to do it for “just five teachers”. I convinced her that we should always give the information even if only person shows up. If you’re able to make a difference to one person, or help one person, then that’s one person you’ve helped or taught and that should be something to be happy about. One of the teachers during the first presentation came up to me and poked me in the breast and said “that’s all they do at the medical center when we receive our free breast exams”. That’s why it’s good we taught about how to do self-examination. In most cases, no one will care as much about your health as you do. Viorica made the comment to these teachers that she has worked at our med center and all the nurses and doctors care about is making their bribes and sticking the money in their pockets. They didn’t disagree. Viorica has talked with me about the corruption recently and told me to not tell anyone what she said goes on. Others have talked with me, too, and everyone is too scared to speak out. It’s a very depressing situation because the people who demand the bribes have powerful roles in the community (doctors, people who sell food, police, etc.) and if someone were to try to expose (although everyone already knows that they do it) then the person doing the talking will probably be denied necessary services or treatments. I’ve consistently heard that the medical staff buy their degrees in university, and whether or not that is always the case, I know that the quality of care the people are receiving is terrible. The staff I work with does not have basic health knowledge. Honey does not cure the flu and cold drinks are not why the patient is coughing. Pointing out that the two doctors in the village are crooks will not have anyone fired or change anything. No one is in charge of anyone when basic ideas of accountability and government leadership roles don’t exist. It’s heartbreaking for these people because they’ve never lived in a society that has worked any other way. Viorica said that while taking the test to get her license she saw other people just paying for theirs. I know these situations happen in the US, but I’ve never ever seen or heard of so many daily incidents of corruption. And everything always goes back to the one and only English word other than “hello” that everyone seems to know: money.
I hope that over the course of summer Viorica and I can make a list of the topics we would like to do presentations about next year. This first year has been a huge learning experience powered mostly by trial and error. Two years of service in the Peace Corps seems like such a long time, but one year would never be enough. I’ve needed my first year to learn to speak Romanian at a basic level, learn what is culturally appropriate or inappropriate, get over the shock of differences I see every day (it doesn’t seem as strange or shocking now when I see little things like people stopping at wells by the road to drink out of the buckets…or students lining up outside of school to drink out of the buckets… funeral processions with an open casket carried on a horse drawn wagon with weeping people walking behind carrying bread and framed icons of saints—everyone is expected and encouraged to come and look at the body which is another story…and the horses and carriages are next to normal), and to know the people I work with…I’ve been in my village for 8 months and am only JUST beginning to feel like I have some sort of a place here. It will be even better when I have a more permanent living situation. My program manager told me to tell you, mom, that I have a big heart. That made me feel good:). I don't always win friends here, but I try. I will update about that once I’ve settled into a new home. Viorica told me I’m like family now and another villager from Pepeni which was very nice of her. I also feel like I’ve bonded with Valentina. She’s very different than most of the people I’ve met in Pepeni. I’ve developed a healthy level of skepticism about people over the months of being in Moldova. A few Moldovans have told me and other volunteers during serious conversations that “most people you meet here will not be your friends. They want something from you”. Suzanne’s host mother told her that she will be the only person Suzanne can trust during her two years in their village… because “People here either want your money or want you to help them have their passports opened to traveling to America… My sons have money so I don’t need yours, and I don’t care about going to America.” Her mother might be paranoid, but she’s a very good woman. Her son lives in Odessa and has a job working as a seaman that takes him around the world and has him working with people from many different countries and cultures. He spoke candidly, in English, about Moldova during a discussion with Suzanne and I at his mother’s home the other weekend. The conversation was similar to one I had with our PC Doctor, a woman originally from Romania, with his take on Moldovan culture and people being more harsh and disdainful than hers. It’s interesting to hear opinions about Moldova and its people from Moldovans who are no longer living in here. One of the biggest realizations I have made is that developing countries are not in that state of “developing” just because there is less money or material things. It seems obvious, but we often forget about the importance of social development and ideas. The lack of social development, or social development as I know it, has been the most different thing to adjust to in my daily life here. Commitment to projects, activism, critical thinking, personal and group responsibility, unity and accountability… behaviors that are usually present and expected in a developed society are not present where I am now living, or maybe exist in a different form than what I am used to. Not having a toilet is something I miss, but the largest frustrations are those where I am trying, for example, to convince the school nurse that it is her job, her responsibility to have soap available for sick students to wash the communal glass they drink from in her office. If she has her own glass and doesn’t have to drink after anyone sick, why she argues would it be her responsibility to make sure that sick students also have a clean glass?
Poverty brings this sort of desperation out in people that I had never seen before living in Moldova. I’ve never before been that aware of what I have or where I come from. I’ve never given much thought to whether the ring my friend is wearing is real gold, or if those earrings might be real silver, and how much they paid for it. I’ve started paying attention to these things because they are now pointed out to me, and I wonder how that will change me when I move back to the states. If I was to be given a cash gift, or an expensive gift, it’s only a thing because the world is such a large place with many unimportant things to fill it up. My things don’t change how I see myself, but maybe that’s because I’ve always had certain things being in themselves, a privilege. Viorica told me a few weeks ago that she hasn’t had much luck in her life. One of her friends who owns a few stores in the village, this friend being wealthier, “has had luck in her life… but me… not so much, Melissa”. I’ve had friends—all with their basic needs met—who have many things and friends who have less things and I’ve seen that this doesn’t make one happier or more important than the other. But, in a society where extra money buys you the basic givens we often take for granted in the western world (clean drinking water, heat for your home, food for your table or soup kitchens for those without food) money might not buy happiness, but it could buy a major sense of relief for someone who will otherwise spend their life pumping dirty water and digging in the fields to ensure that they will have enough to eat the following year. It’s not personal, but if people living in poverty think that they can use someone wealthier for money or other material ends, in many cases they will.
Some of you might be wondering about the protests that have been going on in Chisinau.. I'm TOTALLY fine where I am in my village. Things seem to have completely calmed down there, too. I received a text from our PC security officer last Tues telling us to not leave our sites bc there were protests going on. The internet had been kind of weird bc the government was blocking certain webpages like facebook to keep people from rally others to come to the protests. When I mentioned to teachers at school the next day that the government was censoring tv, radio, and internet, everyone seemed to think this was normal... "yeah, the government was just trying to keep things under control". So some of us have very different ideas of what role the government should be allowed to play. Everyone in the village seems to have a very strong opinion about the elections and about the protests... some are anti-communist and others are angry the protests happened and do not want Moldova associated with Romania. I'm not allowed to give my opinions about the problems, but it's interesting to listen to others give theirs.