The Truth Shall Set You Free

I have a confession to make.

I haven’t been in the Peace Corps this summer.

The reason is simple - up to August 17th, I was not a ‘volunteer’ but instead a ‘trainee.’ I had to mark it down on all my official papers that the Peace Corps gives to us and there are also certain things that we can do as Volunteers that we are not allowed to do as Trainees - thus, I was not officially in the Peace Corps.

But now that’s all over, all the training and classes and loads of work. We had our language exam last Monday, the next Tuesday we had nothing except start to pack our things and start saying good-byes to the families, and on Wednesday we all went to Chisinau to prepare for the swearing-in.

First, the exam went well - I actually passes without problems. There were certain things that I made mistakes with, but that’s to be expected. It was conducted in an interview format, with a woman from Peace Corps asking me questions for twenty-five or so minutes - of course, all was in Russian. At some point in all the exams the testee had to do some sort of role-playing with the tester (one of the other Russian speakers had to ‘call a hotel and reserve a room for his parents’ and the other had to ‘plan a day leading tourists around Chisinau’). I had to ‘meet my new school director and ask questions about the village and talk about my family’). As much as I wanted to get frustrated with what I could have done better, I quickly realized that on June 7th when I got here I could barely communicate at all and now, in the middle of August, I had just spent twenty-five minutes speaking only this nightmarish language and doing OK. I can’t complain.

Tuesday (my birthday), little was done. We were all able to sleep in and, for the first time in recent memory, mentally relax. My host brother returned about 1:00 in the afternoon from his one week trip to the Crimean peninsula with his friends from the university, so we talked about that for a while. The three Russian speakers also met at school to talk with our teacher and hang out one last time there. When I got home from school my host parents were there (they were selling cucumbers and tomatoes in the market all morning) and I said to my mom, “Mom, I have a secret.” She gave me a . . . quizzical look before asking me what it was. When I told her it was my birthday she was surprised, to say the least - birthdays here are a big deal. But soon her energy was refocused on the most important task at hand - the evening BBQ party at the lake, one final time for all the families and all the trainees to gather together and talk. We were there for a few hours ( I have some amazing pictures too) and the wine was flowing (and sometimes tasting) like juice. Even the mayor showed up with some champagne to send us off. It was a night about which I have no complaints, the perfect way for us to leave the village and the families with which we had lived for the previous ten weeks.

Wednesday morning we left our village with heavy hearts - my host mom told me that she would miss me - I told her likewise and also told her that I would return to the village for a weekend the moment Peace Corps will allow me (more later). All three of us from our village went together, driven by the cousin of my friend Aaron. We arrived in Chisinau about 11:00 and actually had most of the day free - we had only to be at the Philharmonic at 2:00 in the afternoon for a rehearsal of the swearing-in ceremony and we had to be at a restaurant for dinner at 7:00. That was it. I spent the day first going to the Peace Corps office to get some books, then to a large store where I bought Harry Potter in Russian, then to the central bus-station before finally heading to the rehearsal, which was a fairly straight-forward event. From there I sought out and found the biggest Catholic Church in Chisinau, a place where they have masses in Polish, German, Russian, and Romanian, before finally heading to the hotel to clean up.

In the evening about thirty of us rookies went with to one of the nicer restaurants in Chisinau with about ten current volunteers for a few hours of drinks and dinner - it was an amazingly relaxed night in which we were able to really get to know each other (the ‘trainees’ and the volunteers) in a casual environment. The food was really good too, which didn’t hurt. That was followed up by a trip to an Irish place in town where we watched replays of PGA Golf on TV and listen to real Irish music on the radio. The night ended with fifteen or so of us
heading to a local disco in the capital, City, which we finally left at 2:30 in the AM.

The next day I was up bright and early at 7:30 so I could get cleaned up and head first to breakfast, then to the philharmonic for the big ceremony, which turned out to be quite the even. The US Ambassador to Moldova was there, as were several other employees from the US Embassy, as well as officials from the Moldovan government. Everything was translated into Romanian because all the families that we lived with during training were there, and it featured speeches from all the higher-ups present, a video about what we did during training, we swore in, and it ended with two very elaborate, intricate Moldovan folk dances that some of the trainees had learned from an instructor during the summer.

So with that, it’s official. My secret is safe to release to the world.

And I’m finally in the Peace Corps.

Notes:
- At the swearing in ceremony three of the trainees delivered speeches in our new languages - I was the Russian volunteer. On Tuesday afternoon I wrote the speech with the others in my village and my teacher translated it, and I spent the next two days trying to wrap my mouth around these crazy vowel combinations that exist in the Cyrillic alphabet. When it was time to get up and deliver, I did ok - I was really nervous because I wasn’t comfortable with the alphabet, but there were some great lines and the people really liked it.

When we were writing the speech we planed to ending with a comment about the great wine and thought about a joke about the beautiful women, but we Americans thought it might not be too appropriate (commenting about the women in such a formal event). When we told our teacher, she frowned at us and told us that simply, we’re not in America anymore and that such a joke about women is, unfortunately, all too appropriate - we ended up closing the speech by saying “We’re very glad to be here, and we would have to come sooner if we had known of the great wine and the beautiful women.” Needless to say, it was a hit. The crowed erupted, and people I didn’t know came up to me afterwards and told me how good it was. There was a lot of media at the event too, and a woman from Moldovan state television news came up to me and had my repeat the line on camera, which was replayed on the news last night (yes, I was on TV).


- I’m finally in my host village, with my host family. After the ceremony on Thursday my director came into Chisinau to pick me up and bring me home. If you’ll remember, it was the family with the father who was dying. First, you should know that the man has passed on - I’m not sure when, but it seems like it was at least a few weeks ago. No one around here seems to off or sad, but of course they are, at least a little bit. They have to be.

So far, I’ve spent the days just holed up in my room mostly, distilling water and reading with the day broken up by meals and trips to the outhouse and to the well to draw water. That’s about it. There are four people in the host family - sister Natasha (12th grade next year), brother Sasha (24), his fiancee, Anya, and my host mom. Of the four, only the fiancee talks to me much - they others really don’t, although it’s really my problem (more later). One thing I’m really excited about that I didn’t know - we have cats here. A mom and four kittens. I don’t really know how or why, but some time in the last three years I started to really like cats. Now, I have some. We also have a dog, numerous chickens who run around the yard, turkeys, two pigs (including one monster who’s at least 300 pounds), a few horses, and we may or may not have a cow. Not sure on that yet.

And in terms of the house itself, on one hand it’s possible to say that I’ve downgraded facilities - I’ve gone from an indoor bathroom with toilet and shower to an outhouse and an elaborate process of mixing hot and cool water, then pouring it over myself with a pitcher while standing on the floor of the bathroom.


However, here I live 150 yards from a densely wooded forest that I can stroll through any time I want, and every night I brush my teeth outside under the Milky Way. So clearly, I have some advantages here . . . .

- My host brother in my training village, Leonchik (colloquial for Leonid), had told me for months that he was soon heading to Chisinau for work some time in the middle of August. However, on Tuesday at the farewell party he told me his plans had changed - now, he’s headed to Moscow to work with his brother, who’s been there for a few months. He’ll go there and work for three months, come back for two weeks, then go back for another three months (he needs to come back to be legal). His goal is to open an internet café in the village, which is great. But it was a surprise to me when he told of his plans, that’s for sure.

- One problem I’ve already had with my language development is actually a personality trait - if I’m not comfortable in a situation, my ‘defense mechanism’ is to keep quite. Even in America - when we had our Peace Corps training in Philadelphia for two days, I didn’t really talk at all because I simply wasn’t comfortable with the situation (of course, once I start talking I don’t stop, another personality trait . . . ). Well here, because I’m not comfortable with the language, I don’t talk much (even in my training village). The problem is that in order to develop my language skills, I need to talk as much as possible. It’s just something that I need to force my self to do.

Another note on the language - last Friday, my first whole day in the village, I didn’t speak English all day (and probable less than 100 words in Russian). But nonetheless, it marked the first day in about 21.5 years that I didn’t speak English in the day. I just thought it was interesting.

A final thought: I’ve realized that the biggest challenge in learning Russian from English is that almost nothing translates too exactly - you can take an English phrase and try to say it in Russian with the exact words and it can take on a totally different meaning. Look up the word “go” in a Russian dictionary and you’ll see columns and columns of translations - it’s a half a page (in small print) in the dictionary I have.


- Now begins what the Peace Corps volunteers unofficially refer to as “lockdown” - officially, it’s falls under the umbrella title of “out of site policy.” For our first three months in our village, when we’re just out training, we’re not allowed to leave our villages for the night, even on weekends - if we want, we can make day trips to the regional center. From what everyone says, it’s the toughest part of service. We don’t really know the language, and if your in a village like mine there’s not much to do. And we’ve just spent ten weeks forming these intense relationships with people, and we’re not allowed to see them until Thanksgiving. Could be rough . . .

However, there is a reason for the policy. PC thinks - likely correctly - that if we didn’t have the policy we would be in Chisinau every weekend visiting each-other, that our language skills wouldn’t develop quickly, and that it would take us a while to integrate into the community, the latter of which is highly important for our safety.

- Our medical staff here is full of great information. For example, if you get bit by an animal, from a bacterial standpoint the worst is actually a human bite, with a pig bite a close second, a cat bite behind that, and a dog bite actually not too bad. To quote Bill Simmons, I just think you need to know these things.

- The Peace Corps provides volunteers with money for a tutor, so my goal over the next week or so is to find one. My first candidate is the future sister-in-law ( the one who actually speaks to me), but I’ll see. The money is pretty good - PC pays for sixteen hours a month, at a price of about three dollars per hour. That’s a lot of money here. I have on candidate in line already - my future host sister-in-law has a sister who speaks English a little.


- Finally, I will end by saying that Thursday was a hard day from the standpoint that all the trainees are not split up - we’ve gone through this really emotional, exhausting experience together as one for ten weeks, and now we’re apart. It was really, really hard to see some people go and to know that I won’t see them for three months.

But in the meantime, it’s time to get to work. As I told my director on Thursday, I’ve studied enough and now I just want to get to work.