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.”