Weather For The Ages
The sun flared down on the growing corn day after day until a line of brown spread along the edge of each bayonet. The clouds appeared, and went away, and in a while they did not try anymore . . . The surface of the earth crusted, a thin hard crust . . .
The above quote is from the first pages of my favorite book (one in which I'm in the process of re-reading), The Grapes of Wrath, but it could easily describe the summer of weather that we're having now in Moldova. We're in the middle of a drought, the worst that has been around since 1946, by all accounts. In my village there is a little stream and a little pond, both of which are totally dry and both of which, according to my forty-eight year old host mom, are dry for the first time in her life. Just walking around it's possible to see cracks in the ground that are literally, in some places, two and a half inches wide and eight inches deep. The land is, in a word, parched and it's not too much of an exaggeration to say violently. And it's an absolute, almost indescribable disaster. My host grandpa, when he is here, spends literally six hours a day outside, just looking at the sky and repeating, “There's no rain.” And the crops are suffering as a result. The corn is growing but the size and overall quality will be far lower than in normal years, and apples as well as grapes are in the same boat. Tomatoes and cucumbers are not growing really but can be found in the markets in the various regional centers, but at prices three to four times normal for this time of year.
The real problem, however, will come with potatoes, the staple food for Moldovans in the winter. As a woman told a friend of mine the other day, “we can live without tomatoes and cucumbers. We can't live without potatoes.” My host mom told me that ours here are coming in but with great difficulty, that they are far smaller than in normal times and that in the winter we'll have to buy them, likely – as already with tomatoes and cucumbers – at prices three to four times higher than usual. As a result, my host mom has already gone to my local regional center with the hopes of buying potatoes already, hopefully ahead of the pack, wanting them to just put them in the cellar until winter. She's stuck out until now but she'll likely succeed in the near future.
The people who are going to really suffer from this, however, are the same who usually suffer in times of crisis such as these – the poor. People will need to buy potatoes to eat, but if the cost of potatoes – again, the staple crop in the winter for everyone – will shoot up to three or four times higher, it will almost certainly break people. For example, my host grandpa eats only potatoes and bread at home. Literally. That's it. Normally this isn't a problem because everything he eats comes from his own garden while bread costs one dollar a week, but this year . . . and considering that his pension is 400 lei (around 33 dollars) a month, with prices shooting up – I can't imagine what he'll do. And there are literally ten's of thousands with him in the same boat.
To make the issue of weather worse, we are, in the last ten days, in the midst of the hottest weather that, by all accounts, has ever been here (at least people remember the year of the last bad drought – no one has ever seen this heat wave). When I wake up in the morning (embarrassingly, no earlier than 10:00AM), the temperature is usually in the mid-90's and climbing. Last Tuesday the temperature in the afternoon was 105 degrees according to our thermometer in the shade, with reports of the temperature in the sun being as hot as 112. In my room, I go to bed and the temperature is around 85 degrees, and I wake up and the temperature is still at 85 degrees (my friend in Chisinau has me beat – it's 95 in his room when he goes to bed). I go for walks – short ones at that, maybe forty-five minutes to an hour – and when I get back I'm so sweaty that my host family asks if I've been swimming. Having to sit in full mini-buses, with that many people crammed into such a small area when the temperature is in the mid 100's, should be investigated as a human rights violation. The cats just sit under bushes all day, doing what they can to beat the heat. It's unimaginably hot, and it's a wave that has actually struck all of Southeast Europe (I actually heard them talk about Moldova on the BBC on Sunday, saying the the government has called out for international aide in helping to deal with the effects of the heat).
The situation, as my host mom told me literally one hour before posting this, is getting literally deadly in many villages because of the lack of water in the wells. Our well is low but should have enough water to carry us forward for a while, but others are in big trouble. In our village there are two or three wells that are dry and there is a spring that normally runs all the time but they have recently turned it off in an effort to save water. There is a village about two miles from mine, a small one of 200 or so people with one well, and that one will is dry. The problem's with the heat and the cost of food will be troubling for people, but unless we get a fair amount of rain to fill the wells – and we get it soon – there will be nothing to drink. I think everyone knows what will happen if that takes place.
The depth of the heat fully hit me last Thursday, when I was trying to go to my regional center to meet up with another volunteer there. The driver of the last transportation option out of the village usually goes right in front of my house so I need only to stand in front of our gate and he'll come by. That particular day, however, was a new driver who took a new route, not going down the road in front of my house and instead taking the (one) other road out of the village. There is no worse feeling than looking up, seeing the (one) only transport option that I needed going by, and realizing that I couldn't take it and that I had no other option. As a result, there was only one thing to do – walk the twenty-five minutes to the sanatorium (more on the sanatorium in a second) and hitch-hike out of there. Making things further difficult were the facts that 1)Due to space concerns I was wearing jeans and a black t-shirt, and 2)I was carrying a full backpack with clothes as well as a bag with my computer and two books. Needless to say, it was uncomfortable wearing all that, carrying all that, while walking along a asphalt street in 105 degree weather. To make matters worse, I waited there over an hour and a half at the sanatorium before someone came and took me with them and I stood there with nothing to drink, fearing that if I took off even for two minutes a car would come by and I would miss my chance.
Notes:
- When my friend was visiting me a week ago we went to the sanatorium (where a lot of people live) and he asked me if, should I want to, there was an open apartment that that I could live. I quickly brushed him off, telling him that nothing was free, and then forgot about the conversation. It should be noted, we as volunteers are required to live with a host family for our first six months of service but after that we are welcome to set out on our own. And I've been here almost a year, so I'm more than free to take off should I feel like it.
Well, turns out, my friend was a bit prophetical. Because last Thursday, when I went to visit the volunteer in my regional center, she told me that her host family owns an apartment in the sanatorium in which they live for four weeks a year and wanted to know if I want to live there the rest of the time.
At first I was a little incredulous and dismissed any thought at leaving my host family, with whom I have minimal problems. But the more I thought about it the more I realized that living alone might be better. A lot better. It's not that I don't like my family – indeed, nothing could be farther from the truth, as they're great. The main thing is, I'm kind of bothered here. If I want to invite friends over I need to get permission. I need to eat when my family eats, what they give me to eat. And there are a lot of things along the lines of the following example: last Tuesday night I had one goal, to take a 'shower.' I wanted to at 8:00 at night, but my host sister had the same idea and was in the bathroom. At 8:30 I tried again but we had guests over and I couldn't really go into the kitchen. Same at 9:00. And and 9:30. At 9:45 they had left but my host mom was again washing up in the bathroom. Finally, at 10:45 at night, the chance came.
Like I said, this isn't a huge problem but more of a nuisance, the type of which I could easily live with for another but the type of which, if I can avoid by living alone, would clearly prefer. Of course, I told this to my host family, that I have a chance to move out to an apartment and that I might take it and at first they kind of brushed me off, but on Wednesday of this week when I told them that I was going to the sanatorium to look at the place they became nervous. At first my host sister, in speaking to me for the first time in a long while, asked me (not rudely, just politely) why I want to move out. Then later my host mom, right before I left, told me she wanted to talk with me and asked me about my options to live. I told here that I had not decided anything and I was still thinking but she responded that, if I was going to see the place, I was serious about moving. Then she dropped the bomb (again, not rudely but instead matter-of-factly): if I move out and take my 160 to 220 dollars a month with me, them my host sister will not be able to study at a university in Chisinau next year. That was a shocker. And when I got back we again got into a big discussion about what they will do if I move out. I brought up the scenario about what they would do if, tomorrow, I got a phone call from America saying something happened and I needed to be on the first plane out. She said that would be a totally different situation. Not sure if I agree with that but I didn't want to get into a big discussion with them about it.
And as for the apartment itself, I have to say that while it's pretty small, it's not bad. There's gas and water and some amenities like dishes and things like that. There no TV but, with the money I would save by living alone, I would probably get DSL installed there. It's definitely livable.
The reasons for moving out are simple – here, in my village, I'm totally alone. I don't really have any friends, I don't really talk to anyone. It's ridiculously boring, especially in the summer. Behind the gates of our house I really like everything and everyone, but outside the gate . . . it's rather brutal (it's to the point where I've already decided that I'm done with weekends in my village. Finished. I've tried it for a year and have nothing to show for it in-terms of a 'community integration' standpoint. So I'm out). I told this all to my host-family and they don't really follow what I'm getting at. I tell them that, in a different place of residence, things maybe will be different. They clearly can't get any worse.
In a way, I'm already mentally out of my current place. Like I said, if I had no other option I would, with pleasure, stay here for another year. But knowing that I could live there . . . it would tough. But as I told my host-mom, I want to live alone but I also don't want to destroy their family here. Now my goal is to think of a way to move out and still help my family. Right now I'm thinking of a system in which I would pay them something like 800 lei a month (sixty-five dollars) and come to eat lunch with them every day after school. I would eat and talk with someone to maintain my language (so I would receive something) while they would receive something too, money to help support my host sister in Chisinau.
Needless to say, I have something to think about. It'll help fill the fourteen hours of free time I have every day.
- Quick note: A friend of mine from Russia is coming to visit me on Friday and we'll be stomping around Moldova for a week or so, so please forgive me in-advance for not posting for a while.
- Last Friday, in an effort to beat the heat, I took a bus three hour bus-ride to the north of Moldova to visit a friend of mine who lives close to a city in which they have a swimming pool. That's right, a swimming pool. Actually, five of us volunteers were there, paying a dollar an hour to swim (a bargain when the weather is in the triple digits) for two hours.
We had such a great time that, at noon the next day, we returned, although only for an hour the second time. We spent those sixty minutes doing running jumps into the water, doing the stupidest tricks we could think of while in mid-air. We laughed until we cried and it felt like we were in junior-high again, which, incidentally, was the last time any of us were able to have a full summer off without work or something to do. Frankly, in summer in Peace Corps Moldova, it doesn't get any better than that.
The above quote is from the first pages of my favorite book (one in which I'm in the process of re-reading), The Grapes of Wrath, but it could easily describe the summer of weather that we're having now in Moldova. We're in the middle of a drought, the worst that has been around since 1946, by all accounts. In my village there is a little stream and a little pond, both of which are totally dry and both of which, according to my forty-eight year old host mom, are dry for the first time in her life. Just walking around it's possible to see cracks in the ground that are literally, in some places, two and a half inches wide and eight inches deep. The land is, in a word, parched and it's not too much of an exaggeration to say violently. And it's an absolute, almost indescribable disaster. My host grandpa, when he is here, spends literally six hours a day outside, just looking at the sky and repeating, “There's no rain.” And the crops are suffering as a result. The corn is growing but the size and overall quality will be far lower than in normal years, and apples as well as grapes are in the same boat. Tomatoes and cucumbers are not growing really but can be found in the markets in the various regional centers, but at prices three to four times normal for this time of year.
The real problem, however, will come with potatoes, the staple food for Moldovans in the winter. As a woman told a friend of mine the other day, “we can live without tomatoes and cucumbers. We can't live without potatoes.” My host mom told me that ours here are coming in but with great difficulty, that they are far smaller than in normal times and that in the winter we'll have to buy them, likely – as already with tomatoes and cucumbers – at prices three to four times higher than usual. As a result, my host mom has already gone to my local regional center with the hopes of buying potatoes already, hopefully ahead of the pack, wanting them to just put them in the cellar until winter. She's stuck out until now but she'll likely succeed in the near future.
The people who are going to really suffer from this, however, are the same who usually suffer in times of crisis such as these – the poor. People will need to buy potatoes to eat, but if the cost of potatoes – again, the staple crop in the winter for everyone – will shoot up to three or four times higher, it will almost certainly break people. For example, my host grandpa eats only potatoes and bread at home. Literally. That's it. Normally this isn't a problem because everything he eats comes from his own garden while bread costs one dollar a week, but this year . . . and considering that his pension is 400 lei (around 33 dollars) a month, with prices shooting up – I can't imagine what he'll do. And there are literally ten's of thousands with him in the same boat.
To make the issue of weather worse, we are, in the last ten days, in the midst of the hottest weather that, by all accounts, has ever been here (at least people remember the year of the last bad drought – no one has ever seen this heat wave). When I wake up in the morning (embarrassingly, no earlier than 10:00AM), the temperature is usually in the mid-90's and climbing. Last Tuesday the temperature in the afternoon was 105 degrees according to our thermometer in the shade, with reports of the temperature in the sun being as hot as 112. In my room, I go to bed and the temperature is around 85 degrees, and I wake up and the temperature is still at 85 degrees (my friend in Chisinau has me beat – it's 95 in his room when he goes to bed). I go for walks – short ones at that, maybe forty-five minutes to an hour – and when I get back I'm so sweaty that my host family asks if I've been swimming. Having to sit in full mini-buses, with that many people crammed into such a small area when the temperature is in the mid 100's, should be investigated as a human rights violation. The cats just sit under bushes all day, doing what they can to beat the heat. It's unimaginably hot, and it's a wave that has actually struck all of Southeast Europe (I actually heard them talk about Moldova on the BBC on Sunday, saying the the government has called out for international aide in helping to deal with the effects of the heat).
The situation, as my host mom told me literally one hour before posting this, is getting literally deadly in many villages because of the lack of water in the wells. Our well is low but should have enough water to carry us forward for a while, but others are in big trouble. In our village there are two or three wells that are dry and there is a spring that normally runs all the time but they have recently turned it off in an effort to save water. There is a village about two miles from mine, a small one of 200 or so people with one well, and that one will is dry. The problem's with the heat and the cost of food will be troubling for people, but unless we get a fair amount of rain to fill the wells – and we get it soon – there will be nothing to drink. I think everyone knows what will happen if that takes place.
The depth of the heat fully hit me last Thursday, when I was trying to go to my regional center to meet up with another volunteer there. The driver of the last transportation option out of the village usually goes right in front of my house so I need only to stand in front of our gate and he'll come by. That particular day, however, was a new driver who took a new route, not going down the road in front of my house and instead taking the (one) other road out of the village. There is no worse feeling than looking up, seeing the (one) only transport option that I needed going by, and realizing that I couldn't take it and that I had no other option. As a result, there was only one thing to do – walk the twenty-five minutes to the sanatorium (more on the sanatorium in a second) and hitch-hike out of there. Making things further difficult were the facts that 1)Due to space concerns I was wearing jeans and a black t-shirt, and 2)I was carrying a full backpack with clothes as well as a bag with my computer and two books. Needless to say, it was uncomfortable wearing all that, carrying all that, while walking along a asphalt street in 105 degree weather. To make matters worse, I waited there over an hour and a half at the sanatorium before someone came and took me with them and I stood there with nothing to drink, fearing that if I took off even for two minutes a car would come by and I would miss my chance.
Notes:
- When my friend was visiting me a week ago we went to the sanatorium (where a lot of people live) and he asked me if, should I want to, there was an open apartment that that I could live. I quickly brushed him off, telling him that nothing was free, and then forgot about the conversation. It should be noted, we as volunteers are required to live with a host family for our first six months of service but after that we are welcome to set out on our own. And I've been here almost a year, so I'm more than free to take off should I feel like it.
Well, turns out, my friend was a bit prophetical. Because last Thursday, when I went to visit the volunteer in my regional center, she told me that her host family owns an apartment in the sanatorium in which they live for four weeks a year and wanted to know if I want to live there the rest of the time.
At first I was a little incredulous and dismissed any thought at leaving my host family, with whom I have minimal problems. But the more I thought about it the more I realized that living alone might be better. A lot better. It's not that I don't like my family – indeed, nothing could be farther from the truth, as they're great. The main thing is, I'm kind of bothered here. If I want to invite friends over I need to get permission. I need to eat when my family eats, what they give me to eat. And there are a lot of things along the lines of the following example: last Tuesday night I had one goal, to take a 'shower.' I wanted to at 8:00 at night, but my host sister had the same idea and was in the bathroom. At 8:30 I tried again but we had guests over and I couldn't really go into the kitchen. Same at 9:00. And and 9:30. At 9:45 they had left but my host mom was again washing up in the bathroom. Finally, at 10:45 at night, the chance came.
Like I said, this isn't a huge problem but more of a nuisance, the type of which I could easily live with for another but the type of which, if I can avoid by living alone, would clearly prefer. Of course, I told this to my host family, that I have a chance to move out to an apartment and that I might take it and at first they kind of brushed me off, but on Wednesday of this week when I told them that I was going to the sanatorium to look at the place they became nervous. At first my host sister, in speaking to me for the first time in a long while, asked me (not rudely, just politely) why I want to move out. Then later my host mom, right before I left, told me she wanted to talk with me and asked me about my options to live. I told here that I had not decided anything and I was still thinking but she responded that, if I was going to see the place, I was serious about moving. Then she dropped the bomb (again, not rudely but instead matter-of-factly): if I move out and take my 160 to 220 dollars a month with me, them my host sister will not be able to study at a university in Chisinau next year. That was a shocker. And when I got back we again got into a big discussion about what they will do if I move out. I brought up the scenario about what they would do if, tomorrow, I got a phone call from America saying something happened and I needed to be on the first plane out. She said that would be a totally different situation. Not sure if I agree with that but I didn't want to get into a big discussion with them about it.
And as for the apartment itself, I have to say that while it's pretty small, it's not bad. There's gas and water and some amenities like dishes and things like that. There no TV but, with the money I would save by living alone, I would probably get DSL installed there. It's definitely livable.
The reasons for moving out are simple – here, in my village, I'm totally alone. I don't really have any friends, I don't really talk to anyone. It's ridiculously boring, especially in the summer. Behind the gates of our house I really like everything and everyone, but outside the gate . . . it's rather brutal (it's to the point where I've already decided that I'm done with weekends in my village. Finished. I've tried it for a year and have nothing to show for it in-terms of a 'community integration' standpoint. So I'm out). I told this all to my host-family and they don't really follow what I'm getting at. I tell them that, in a different place of residence, things maybe will be different. They clearly can't get any worse.
In a way, I'm already mentally out of my current place. Like I said, if I had no other option I would, with pleasure, stay here for another year. But knowing that I could live there . . . it would tough. But as I told my host-mom, I want to live alone but I also don't want to destroy their family here. Now my goal is to think of a way to move out and still help my family. Right now I'm thinking of a system in which I would pay them something like 800 lei a month (sixty-five dollars) and come to eat lunch with them every day after school. I would eat and talk with someone to maintain my language (so I would receive something) while they would receive something too, money to help support my host sister in Chisinau.
Needless to say, I have something to think about. It'll help fill the fourteen hours of free time I have every day.
- Quick note: A friend of mine from Russia is coming to visit me on Friday and we'll be stomping around Moldova for a week or so, so please forgive me in-advance for not posting for a while.
- Last Friday, in an effort to beat the heat, I took a bus three hour bus-ride to the north of Moldova to visit a friend of mine who lives close to a city in which they have a swimming pool. That's right, a swimming pool. Actually, five of us volunteers were there, paying a dollar an hour to swim (a bargain when the weather is in the triple digits) for two hours.
We had such a great time that, at noon the next day, we returned, although only for an hour the second time. We spent those sixty minutes doing running jumps into the water, doing the stupidest tricks we could think of while in mid-air. We laughed until we cried and it felt like we were in junior-high again, which, incidentally, was the last time any of us were able to have a full summer off without work or something to do. Frankly, in summer in Peace Corps Moldova, it doesn't get any better than that.
posted by Andy Buchanan at 2:26 PM
2 Comments:
Andy,
I guess that Oklahoma during the Depression with its dust storms isn't the perfect analogy but in some respects its pretty close. I don't expect to see County Agents foreclosing on your farm and bulldozing the place into rubble. But the incessant baking heat and clear blue skies wear away at one's wits, especially when you're a farmer.
But remember your oath to keep upbeat ! Now is the time to lend a hand and pray for some relief, for surely it will come. Imagine 1946, drought right after the war, the Red Army settling scores with the Fascist's ally, many people dead and missing, not much to look forward to. Yet, it changed.
I personally hope you stay on the farm and in the village. I sense a real affection there while the Sanitarium is by its very nature more sterile. And the sulfer water ! Certainly it takes time for people to break through as there is a kind of a normal hesitancy to talk to someone new, heck, after 14 years I don't know but two or three people on this block. And you threw them off with your clothes, etc., it was all new to them. Blend in, compromise, wait, just like Corporate America !
The side trips sound like great fun, the pool scene reminded of the time in the Dakotas where it was 100+ Fahr. in the shade and we went to a pool. But my vacation was shorter, I had to go back to work the next week !
Dad
Hello Andy.......your stories about Moldova are very interesting. My email is sgomolka@gmail.com and I would like to communicate with you this way. Please drop me a line.
Thank you.
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