Bringing It Home

A few months ago I liked this article about the plight of much of the youth in Moldova. As I stated at the time, the article is written about a regional center in which a girl from my group words, about 50 miles south of Chisinau.. The girl in my group actually was interview for the story but not quoted, as the article is also about her school and the girl in the article is also her student.

Statistically, 25% of all Moldovan's of working age work abroad. The vast majority are in Moscow or, of all places, Italy, while many more are spread out among countries like Ukraine, Romania, Greece, Turkey, and Portugal (Italy and Portugal are high on the list because the Romanian language reads a lot like Italian but sounds a lot like Portuguese, making both languages easier to pick up for Moldovans.).

Well, to bring the issue to my village, I had a conversation about this topic with one of my students last Thursday. She told me, for example, that of my 13 students in the 10th grade, 6 have both parents at home, 5 have only one at home, and two have neither. And of the two with neither, one guy lives with his grandparents and another girl, 16 years old, lives alone, although in the winter she moves in with Grandma so as not to freeze. Not only are these parents not at home but they also come home rarely, as transportation costs make it prohibitive to get to Moldova from the majority of these nations. Also, because a fair amount of people are there illegally in the first place, any attempt to return has to also be done illegally, making the costs higher. The exception to all this is Russia, which only grants visa to Moldovans for a length of 3 months.

Many problems result from this diaspora. While there are clear economic benefits behind the decision to leave (money being sent home), the negative results are equally as clear, as these kids are left with only one parent – or none – to guide them through their youth, the most important time in the development of these kids. From a teacher perspective, this lack of a guidance figure can be seen the lack of motivation of kids, because (believe it or not . . .), most teenagers are not the most efficient self-starters. Without parents, they become that much more likely to not do anything. And on a different note, most of these kids have massive amounts of work to do at home, work that needs to be done my someone. Without the parents, the work just trickles down to kids, leaving without much time even if motivation to do work is present.

And there is no real easy solution to the problems, as people leave not really for money – as salaries are not huge abroad – but because of the lack here of job options. For example, in walking through my village and the one next to it, I count maybe 80 positions for work in a village of 2000. People can go to Chisinau, but there are 100,000 other from villages with the same idea.

Notes:
- I found out why my host family didn't take me around for Easter in the cemetery (actually, two reasons):1) They thought I would be bored there, although as I explained to them, there are a lot of things we do in America that I am amazingly bored by but they would likely find exciting, and 2) (The stronger of the reasons): People there are expected to drink a lot of wine – they all give it to each other – and because a lot of people come home only once a year for this day, she was worried about people sort of ganging up on me, a reason I totally understand. But they have promised to take me next year . . .

-One of the greatest fears we have as Peace Corps volunteers before service is about missing things in America, our families and friends and American life in general. But when we talk about it, there is a general feeling amongst volunteers here that we don't really 'miss' our lives in America, families and friends. Yes, we think about everything often and we have a sort of nostalgia for our lives in America, but the word to say that we 'miss' our families is not correctly (for me, the exception is Grandma. I miss my Grandma a lot). It's a different feeling that can't totally be described unless you happen to be in the our position.

Once in a while, however, we all have things that make us think strongly of home and really miss everything. For me, it happened when I, of all things, watched the movie “A Prairie Home Companion,” the brilliant dialog between Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin, which instantly brought me back to Minnesota (the movie was borrowed from a friend). I felt like I was sitting around, listening to my aunts talking about the recent developments in their lives – one one hand, it made it for a really tough few days, but on the other hand it made me realize that the last year has flown by and the next, according to everyone here, goes twice as fast.

- Spring has finally arrived, and with it has come the birth of all the barn-yard animals, all of which are totally adorable. Baby cows just kind of run around like dogs, baby horses are are like four long, awkward legs with a brain on top of them that is all the time trying to figure out what to do with these odd four appendages that it has to control, and baby goats look exactly like stuffed animals and don't walk around but kind of bound.

- From my village to Chisinau there are three options in the morning – a bus at 6:00 and two mini-bus like things at 7:00 and 7:45. I used to be, by necessity, a fan of the bus. But last Saturday I became a convert to the 7:00 option (more in a second), which gets me into Chisinau only 15 minutes later than the bus but allows me an extra hour of sleep. The reason I took the bus in the past because, while slow, it was simple, as I just sat down and two hours later was in the capital, while the other options go just to the regional center, where I have to get off and take another mini-bus to near the center of Chisinau, where need to take another trolleybus another 15 minutes.

- Finally, the highlight of my last week – I actually didn't take a mini-bus from my village last Saturday, as I walked to the one bus stop and found a man there waiting with his car for passengers. The going fare is the same as a bus but the time is better by 10 to 15 minutes.

We quickly filled two people and headed for Calarasi, the regional center, but on the road we stopped to fill the two other seats. As we pulled up to one man on the side of the road the driver asked him if he was going to Calarasi or Chisinau, and the man said we was waiting for the bus to Chisinau. Our driver informed him (correctly) the the bus had left 45 minutes ago and no matter what, the man could not go right to Chisinau, but the man insisted that he would wait, which prompted the driver to instantly start yelling, “Who knows better, me or you! The bus left 45 minutes ago! I'm the best option!” His volume scared off the waiting man and we sped away, while the driver and the other passenger traded insults about our potential car-mate.

I, meanwhile, was listening to my Ipod but too it off long enough to simply say, “I guess he wants to wait until next morning.”

He's Back

I have officially returned from Kiev and finished one day of lessons at school (only 33 more days, but who's counting . . .). It was a great Easter break, a chance to recharge myself for the final home stretch of school. A quick recap:

The ride to Kiev last Monday was harmless – 18 dollars and only 8.5 hours on a bus, surprisingly do-able. We even went through the break-away region of Transnestria that is supposed to be dangerous but turned out to be amazingly painless; an 9 lei (40 cents) transit fee, four passport checks which involved nothing more than a guard stopping the bus, checking all the passports, and letting us off. At the Ukrainian border we had to get off and show our bags to two control officers, but being Americans they basically let us off easy. Actually, just getting to the Ukrainian side of the border took 2.5 hours of the time, odd because its only 100 miles. Once we hit Ukraine we all stopped to use the bathroom and we then took off for Kiev, not stopping once and rolling into the bus station at 5:30 in the morning. (This is a far cry from the return trip, when we were on the bus for twelve hours do to excessive amounts of stopping and time spent at the border. The distance between Chisinau and Kiev is about 300 miles, meaning that we averaged 25 miles an hour. It was a torturous, made worse by the fact that the guy in front of me put his seat way back, jamming me in).

Wanting to wait for sunlight, we started at 7:30 to walk to our hotel in the direction of the center of the city, directed there by a map in our Lonely Planet guide book. However, do to some mis-reading by me what we thought would be 30 minutes quickly escalated into 3 hours, all on foot with a vague map to guide us.

Having found the hotel, we spent our three days basically walking through the center of the city, checking out all the sights. Highlights:

- We made a beeline for the center of Kiev where all the protests over the governmental struggle are happening, and I can say with confidence that it's as peaceful of a protest as can possible – any talk of potential violence is merely hyperbole. Basically, all of the three factions are in a large square mixed together – all their flags are intertwined – and people just listen to speakers on a large stage. Speakers from one faction will stand up, give a speech, then sit down to applause from everyone. Then a speaker from another faction will give another speech, and again sit down to applause from anyone There's not so much as a 'boo' heard. In a way, it can be described as “social disobedience” without the “disobedience.”

- We ate at TGI Fridays, quite possibly the best 20 dollars that could be possibly spent (with one exception – see next). It was like a restaurant in America that was simply reconstructed in the center of Kiev – all the waitresses spoke English, as did half the patrons there.

- We also went to the ballet – without a doubt, it was the best 4 dollars we spent the whole time. We were debating between the ballet and the theater, but we figured that the ballet would be without words so it would be a more pleasant experience for everyone. As it was my first ballet experience, it was especially stunning for me.

- All of the volunteers who had been to Kiev told us that we needed to go to the Chernobyl Museum, which we decided to save for our last night. Unfortunately, we had no real idea where it was, as our book was old and the museum had changed locations. I though I had a vague idea of where it was so I led us to the appropriate neighborhood but after walking for a half hour with no luck (and after asking 4 people on the street, including 2 cops, where the museum was was, with no-one having an idea), we decided to just hail a cab, where I simply asked the driver if he knew where the museum was and how much it would cost to get there (5 dollars).

The museum was split into two parts, one about the disaster itself and what happened then and the other about the impact of the blast on the communities in the area, which was really powerful. The hole experience, actually, was amazing.

- For one of our evening we spent a few hours in the company of a woman – and her husband - who I was introduced to by my uncle, who used to work in Kiev often. She is an assistant to the Minister of Energy, and both her and husband were very kind in taking time out to walk us around, showing us various sites and landmarks. Turns out, her parents are in the diplomatic corps, having served both in the UN as well as the Ukrainian ambassadors to a number of nations including Belgium, Holland, and The United States, a revelation which certainly left us guests in awe of the host.

- Not to sound my own horn here, but it was great for my friends to travel with a person who spoke Russian (which turned out to be the more prominent language of Kiev, heard there much more than Ukrainian). While they would have been fine without me, it just made life easier. In most of the service industries people spoke English but they were far more comfortable speaking Russian (like at the hotel, where the woman greeted us in English, I responded in Russian, and we commenced to do the whole transaction in Russian). And at night the only thing open for water or food were little kiosks on the street, where with English it would have been tough to do anything but was a breeze with Russian.

- It was a very interesting experience to go from Chisinau to Kiev and back and to subsequently compare the two cities. In short, Kiev is what Chisinau could become in 20, 30 years time, with the biggest difference between the cities being the presence (and lack) of money. This is present not only in the types of cars and clothes that are seen but also in things like the shops lining the roads, the reasons being 1) History, as Kiev was the first capital of Russia and is over 1500 years old, and 2) Connections between Russia and Europe, as the political situation in Belarus (the logical choice) necessitates that most of the money go through Kiev, an influx of Westerners, and some of the advantages that comes with.

As a result, the people there are just different. The main example of this could be seen in the service sector, as people not only help you but are actually willing to do so and seem happy to be, a far cry from the common experience in Chisinau, where people are thrilled take money but seldom do so with more than a minimum amount of effort. The reason for this, I realized while talking to my Dad on Sunday night, revolves again around money.

In Kiev, there are a lot of restaurants and a lot of shops and a lot of people with enough money to spend at such restaurants and shops. As a result, people actually have to make an effort to please the customer, because if the customer doesn't have a good experience he/she can simply take his business elsewhere, at a loss to the establishment. It creates a different mentality in the minds of the attendant. In Chisinau, however, the lack of money means a lack of choices in places like restaurants and shops, meaning that the quality of service can be fairly low, the experience for the consumer less than ideal, but because of the lack of choices, the customer really doesn't have the ability to take their business elsewhere because there are no options.

Notes:
- Easter, the biggest holiday of the Eastern Church Calender, has come and gone here. The first Easter, on the 8th, was interesting. We all went to my host grandma's house at 9:00 in the morning for a big feast that broke the strict fast of Holy Week, the relaxed all day before going to a dance at night (which I left at 1:00 because of my early wake-up call the next day but which featured a massive brawl about 3:00 AM). The Saturday night before, too, I was told about a big event that was a fire on a hill near the village where they would burn tires and drink wine. Expecting much, I went and was met by one of the most over-hyped event's I've had here, as there was simply a small fire to which, when it shrunk enough, was added a small tire. Amazingly boring.

Then on Monday of this week was the day I was most looking forward – Easter in the cemetery, when people bring food and wine to the cemetery to memorialize the dead. I had actually heard about this a year ago from a blog I was reading at the time, and I was really excited about it. So on Monday morning I woke up early, got all ready, and stated to wait while the others were preparing themselves. But around noon my host mom came in and said, “Andy, were going to the cemetery,” which got me excited, only to follow it with, “But you'll stay here.” That was shocking – it was without explanation too (my theory – because the host father had been dead under a year, they wanted it to be a private thing, which I totally understand).

Maybe next year.

- Finally, we are told as Peace Corps volunteers that the quality of medical care in the villages is less that adequate and that, barring an emergency, we should get to Chisinau for our medical care.

I saw this medical 'care' first-hand on Friday when I returned from Kiev to the village. I was sitting and eating dinner when my host aunt came in and told me excitedly that I needed to go outside to help and that 'something happened.' I walked outside to see a group of people huddled around my host brother, who had fallen from a horse on his head and had thrown-up – he was huddled in a fetal position. The 'doctor' from the village came and her first reaction was to give him a shot and then, while my host mom was, through tears, saying that they needed to get to a hospital right away. The 'doctor', on the other hand, was saying that we should wait. It was stunning to watch, and if I knew how to translate “blunt force trauma to the head” I would have spoken up.

Host brother, it should be noted, is OK – he was in the hospital for 3 days but returned home yesterday, a little shaken and with a heck of a black eye, but generally ok.

Problem Children?

If there is one main problem with the Moldovan Educational System, it's that the system contains no restraints on behavior – there is absolutely no structure of discipline present. There are no detentions, no suspensions, (in theory) the lack of ability to kick kids out of class. And worst of all, there is no chance to punish kids in the way that matters the most and would be the most effective – through grades – because kids are always automatically promoted to the next grade, no matter what their skill level. If a kids fails, it is largely viewed as the fault of the teacher. As a result, social promotion is far more than the norm – it's the set-in-store rule – meaning that most volunteers (myself included) have many kids who have been studying English for seven, eight, nine years and still can't form one complete sentence. And needless to say, classroom management is one of the biggest problems of Peace Corps volunteers and among teachers in general, as my host mom comes home at least once a week with words about how difficult her kids were.

There are many reasons for the prominence of this discipline problem. I think the biggest reason comes from the lack of discipline in the structure of the schools themselves. Between classes, for example, kids are allowed to basically do anything to each other that they want; they are given free reign to slap, hit, beat, chase, and do any number of things to each-other. As a result, 1) This aggression is hard to just turn-off once the bell rings, and 2) It creates a lot of situations where kids feel they have to reciprocate for actions just done to them. Thus, just about of the previously mentioned actions that happen between lessons are known to happen with some regularity during the lessons themselves. My first reaction, naturally, is to blame the kids: then I have to remind myself that, while I was a fairly well-behaved kid, I can't imagine what I would have been like if I had had the free reign that these kids have.

I actually consider myself lucky from a classroom management standpoint in that my kids, for the most part, like me and as a result, self-discipline. Plus, my kids know that there will be consequences for their actions. Playing football is my new ace-card, as the kids know that if they want to play they have to do certain things in the classroom – even when we get out on the field, they have to treat each-other and me with respect. They also know that if I see them between classes in school – not in a classroom – then they get to take the day off from playing football, and if they get riled up enough and start complaining, then they can wait more and more. On Monday of this week, for example, I had a kid outside on the field complain about getting let into the game, so I finally relent and let him in. He had been on the field for 30 seconds when he decided to be funny and kick another kids, which just doesn't fly, so I kicked him out for the day.

He kept whining and whining so I at last told him that if he said another would wait two days to play. Thinking I was joking, he tried me again.

So guess who has to wait until after Easter break (two weeks) to play? Thats right, the kid who thought he was smarter than me.

Notes:
- A few of my friends from Peace Corps came here to my village last weekend, three TEFL guys from the group I came in with (Aaron from Maine, Peter from Cincinnati, and Chris from Roanoke, Virginia). Their trip led to the following highlights:
1)We all came to my village on Saturday evening on a mini-bus, and while conversations were going on when we entered, once we started speaking English everything stopped. In the midst of our talk two guys turned to each other and in Russian said:
“What language is that?”
“They're all speaking English.”
“Did you study English in school?”
“Yeah, eight years.”
“Do you understand any of this?”
“No, nothing.”
2)After we got off and were walking through the village we were talking about how we gave all the people on the bus a story they will tell for the rest of their lives when the kid from Kentucky said, “Yeah, they'll all go home and talk about how there were these Germans on the bus all speaking in German to each-other.”
3)There is a little (very little) stream that requires crossing sometimes, but the only 'bridge' is wood laid down that starts at 1 inch wide but extends to about 7 inches. My friend, not trusting the wood, decided to jump and ended up getting all wet when he didn't make it. We laughed until we cried about that one. We then proceeded to the local disco/mayor's office for a few minutes, and on the way out my friend became so frustrated with his wet socks that he decided to take them off and throw them into the forest (in front of everyone), which caused more questions in school on Monday than anything else.
4) At one point we looked at an animal and thought it was the biggest dog we had ever seen before we realized it was just a very small cow.
In short, it was a great time. We all plan on doing it again in one month's time and the home of my buddy from Virginia.

- On Tuesday of this week I was watching a football game on the dish – Utah vs. Tulsa in the 2007 Armed Forces Bowl – and my host mom walked in. Her reactions were classic, a combination of shock and disgust. She couldn't believe that people play a sport that physical and violent and that, least of all, I would play such a sport.

- Russian State TV loves to take TV shows from America – there are countless examples. There is even a Russian Wheel of Fortune that is quite possible the worst show in the history of television. The words they guess are no longer than 8 letters, they only guess one word at a time as opposed to the phrases in America, and they spend countless amounts of time just talking, with all of the contestants giving gifts to the host and talking with him. It's terrible.

I mention all this because my host grandpa (who was with us for 2 weeks but has since moved out) absolutely loved the show and when it wasn't on TV last Friday at the normal time, he was really really bothered. I told him why it wasn't on (because of the satellite dish), he didn't believe me and we had to wait until my host mom came in to explain it. Not that he was any happier though.

- I'm heading out for Kiev on Monday night, the day after Easter, going with two girls from my group who are health volunteers. Should be an amazing time, despite the massive amounts of protests going on there due to the battle between the president and the prime minister.

And speaking of Easter, it should be really to see how it's conducted here, as Easter is a far more important holiday in the Eastern church than it is in the Western. Today and Friday we have a fast where-by we aren't able to meat or any sort of dairy product – basically a vegan diet.

- In closing, I'll write a few words about how I'm spending my spare time now – learning about soccer.

We have a lot of channels devoted totally to the sport (like the Real Madrid channel), and we have a Ukrainian sports channel that shows a lot of games as well as two channels devoted totally to the German League and a few that show games from the Spanish 'La Liga.” And to top it off, all of our news channels are international, so soccer is usually the first sport highlighted. I can say with pride that I already have favorite teams in England (Liverpool, Blackburn, Tottenham Hotspur) as well as Spain (Vallencia).

I've also decided that when I get back to America the first thing I'm going to do when I get a job with money is to start a collection of jerseys from soccer teams in Europe.

Can't wait to get started – only 17 more months.