That Time of the Year
There are a lot of adjectives with which it is possible to describe Moldovans, and while it's generally not fair to use one word to describe a whole nation of people, there is one description that stands out above the others: hard-working. People here, both young and old and especially in the villages, are not afraid of hard-work and a lot of it. And this being the fall season, it's also the time of year (especially the months of September and October) where there is a massive amount of work to be done.
It usually starts with apples that need to be hand-picked from trees, brought to cellars in crates for winter storage or cut up and canned for winter eating. Depending on the house and the amount of apples, the amount of work also varies – of course, here we have a veritable orchard. Apple season is a lot of work but it's not too terrible difficult, just mundane.
Then comes grapes, which have to be hand-picked from the vines, brought by horse-drawn cart to various houses where they are loaded into a hand-operated crusher (like the ones they use to break up rocks in mines only on a much smaller scale) placed over a huge barrel-shaped container. They are basically crushed so their juice comes out, then they fall into said container which contains at the bottom a small tube with a guard over it, the tube leading to the wine barrels in the basement where the juice flows while the guard makes sure that nothing but juice falls. It's work that is physically hard but, on the bright side, it usually stats and ends in the course of a few days. And of course, in the course of a month the juice becomes five hundred liters of wine.
Finally corn comes, which requires strolling through the a field, stripping corn from the husk by hand and throwing the ears on the ground, then collecting them into eighty-pound sacks, then carrying the sacks through the bumpy field to a horse-drawn cart. This is, without a doubt, the most physically demanding of the three types of work that need to be done but fortunately, also the quickest, as it can be finished in a day. However, then comes the process, late in fall, of pulling up all the corn stocks so they can be fed to the animals. An exhausting and tedious process.
So where do I fit into all this? Well, one of the reasons my family really likes me is that I'm not afraid to get in and do whatever work they want of me – in fact, one of my pet-peeves here is that they don't ask for help enough. Last Friday I came home from school to find my host brother and host sister-in-law's brother setting up the large container and crusher with crates of grapes sitting in the street. So there I was, for two hours, hauling grapes, sorting empty crates, and adding grapes to the crusher. It was a fine way to end my work-week. Apples are coming along slowly but surly and corn, a royal pain last year, might be better this year because of the drought we were hit with last summer (which didn't, interestingly, really affect grapes or apples).
And of course, there is always a great silver lining to the work, especially when people come over to help or we go to host grandpa's a pick things for him: the post work feast. After a hard day we sit around the table, the four or five of us who worked, and eat a big dinner, drink a little home-made vodka or wine, and talk about life. I really like this especially because it's often the host sister-in-law and her mom who are over which forces the conversation to be in Russian rather than the Ukrainian dialect they usually speak in. It's just a great atmosphere to be in, and while I certainly won't miss the work here when I'm back in America, I'll certainly miss the reward.
Notes:
- You remember that when my parents were here we were eating dinner outside one night when some guy who I had never seen (and haven't seen since) brought a tiny cat. We, my parents and I and my host family, named him Charlie due to his Chaplin-esque mustache. My parents took off the soon after but the cat stayed around, becoming as little cats tend to be, a menace and a joy at the same time. My parents took such a liking to him that my dad actually asked how he was when we talked last Sunday night.
Well, on Monday I went to my regional center with one of my students and returned to the news that Charlie had died, ran over by a car in the middle of the day some time. Although it may sound odd to read this, it's a huge tragedy around here. My host mom and I used to talk about him all the time, how he was like a person trapped inside the body of a cat (really – he had an amazing character). I could actually drone on and on about him and make this entry just a eulogy for the cat, telling stories about him and the crazy stuff he used to do. Instead, I'll just leave it by saying that I really miss the little guy.
- However, the cycle of life lives on because on Sunday morning my host mom returned from somewhere at around 11:00 in the morning with a little piglet in-tow. The thing is tiny, about two and a half feet from end to end. It's really adorable, actually. And yes, as I write this thought a second thought runs into my head – I'll probably be out of here by the time they decide to kill it, although I would like to be around because it's such an interesting process.
- As alluded to earlier, on Monday I went to my regional center of Calarasi with one of my students. There is a program called FLEX (Future Leaders Exchange) that is run through the US government in which students from the former Soviet Union with the appropriated English skills can study in an American public school, for free, for one year. This program is holding tryouts throughout Moldova this month and distrusted flyer's to all schools in Moldova advertising this chance. About two weeks ago one of my kid started to take an interest in it and despite the fact that his English isn't nearly good enough (although he's one of the top five in my school), I couldn't shoot him down and encouraged him to do all he could.
So on Monday we went to a school in the Calarasi, one in which another Peace Corps volunteer actually teaches. At 10:00 registration started, actually led by an American who works for the sponsor of the program (he's based out of Belarus) as well as a Moldovan woman who's the program director for Moldova. My student and I registered then went to walk around for a while around the town to get his mind off the upcoming exam.
We went to a cafe, spoke a little, and on our way out we happened to run into three eleventh-graders from my school, odd because they were supposed to be in school at the time. Turns out, they hadn't seen the flyer hanging in the school – which had been there for two weeks – until the morning of the exam so they decided to come in and see try for themselves. I was convinced at the time that they wouldn't be successful because they came too late and missed registration and actually refused to talk to the American guy about it; because he spoke Russian and they were late, I told them they could ask him themselves which they accordingly did and, much to my surprise, were allowed to talk the exam (although it turned out to be just a big waste on their part because of the three, two were too old and one . . . well, seeing as he knows almost nothing I was shocked to see him there and figured he just wanted a free day from school).
As I predicted, my student didn't get past the first round, but as I told him later it was, 1)Great that he even tried, 2)He still has two more chances in the next two years, and 3)In general, I think it was a good experience for him to undertake.
- Finally, I realize I haven't posted anything in a while but I actually have reasons for that, ranging from the power going out an inopportune times to us eating later at night than usual to the amount of aforementioned work swelling up and thus, less time to write. But the main reason is that I wanted to wait until I got to Chisinau to post so I could also attach the following picture. As I've written before, I go for walks around our lake every day at dusk and I took this picture recently. You see the line of trees on the other side of the lake? Well, my village is amongst those trees. It gives a good idea of the quality of beauty in which I'm lucky enough to live in every day.
It usually starts with apples that need to be hand-picked from trees, brought to cellars in crates for winter storage or cut up and canned for winter eating. Depending on the house and the amount of apples, the amount of work also varies – of course, here we have a veritable orchard. Apple season is a lot of work but it's not too terrible difficult, just mundane.
Then comes grapes, which have to be hand-picked from the vines, brought by horse-drawn cart to various houses where they are loaded into a hand-operated crusher (like the ones they use to break up rocks in mines only on a much smaller scale) placed over a huge barrel-shaped container. They are basically crushed so their juice comes out, then they fall into said container which contains at the bottom a small tube with a guard over it, the tube leading to the wine barrels in the basement where the juice flows while the guard makes sure that nothing but juice falls. It's work that is physically hard but, on the bright side, it usually stats and ends in the course of a few days. And of course, in the course of a month the juice becomes five hundred liters of wine.
Finally corn comes, which requires strolling through the a field, stripping corn from the husk by hand and throwing the ears on the ground, then collecting them into eighty-pound sacks, then carrying the sacks through the bumpy field to a horse-drawn cart. This is, without a doubt, the most physically demanding of the three types of work that need to be done but fortunately, also the quickest, as it can be finished in a day. However, then comes the process, late in fall, of pulling up all the corn stocks so they can be fed to the animals. An exhausting and tedious process.
So where do I fit into all this? Well, one of the reasons my family really likes me is that I'm not afraid to get in and do whatever work they want of me – in fact, one of my pet-peeves here is that they don't ask for help enough. Last Friday I came home from school to find my host brother and host sister-in-law's brother setting up the large container and crusher with crates of grapes sitting in the street. So there I was, for two hours, hauling grapes, sorting empty crates, and adding grapes to the crusher. It was a fine way to end my work-week. Apples are coming along slowly but surly and corn, a royal pain last year, might be better this year because of the drought we were hit with last summer (which didn't, interestingly, really affect grapes or apples).
And of course, there is always a great silver lining to the work, especially when people come over to help or we go to host grandpa's a pick things for him: the post work feast. After a hard day we sit around the table, the four or five of us who worked, and eat a big dinner, drink a little home-made vodka or wine, and talk about life. I really like this especially because it's often the host sister-in-law and her mom who are over which forces the conversation to be in Russian rather than the Ukrainian dialect they usually speak in. It's just a great atmosphere to be in, and while I certainly won't miss the work here when I'm back in America, I'll certainly miss the reward.
Notes:
- You remember that when my parents were here we were eating dinner outside one night when some guy who I had never seen (and haven't seen since) brought a tiny cat. We, my parents and I and my host family, named him Charlie due to his Chaplin-esque mustache. My parents took off the soon after but the cat stayed around, becoming as little cats tend to be, a menace and a joy at the same time. My parents took such a liking to him that my dad actually asked how he was when we talked last Sunday night.
Well, on Monday I went to my regional center with one of my students and returned to the news that Charlie had died, ran over by a car in the middle of the day some time. Although it may sound odd to read this, it's a huge tragedy around here. My host mom and I used to talk about him all the time, how he was like a person trapped inside the body of a cat (really – he had an amazing character). I could actually drone on and on about him and make this entry just a eulogy for the cat, telling stories about him and the crazy stuff he used to do. Instead, I'll just leave it by saying that I really miss the little guy.
- However, the cycle of life lives on because on Sunday morning my host mom returned from somewhere at around 11:00 in the morning with a little piglet in-tow. The thing is tiny, about two and a half feet from end to end. It's really adorable, actually. And yes, as I write this thought a second thought runs into my head – I'll probably be out of here by the time they decide to kill it, although I would like to be around because it's such an interesting process.
- As alluded to earlier, on Monday I went to my regional center of Calarasi with one of my students. There is a program called FLEX (Future Leaders Exchange) that is run through the US government in which students from the former Soviet Union with the appropriated English skills can study in an American public school, for free, for one year. This program is holding tryouts throughout Moldova this month and distrusted flyer's to all schools in Moldova advertising this chance. About two weeks ago one of my kid started to take an interest in it and despite the fact that his English isn't nearly good enough (although he's one of the top five in my school), I couldn't shoot him down and encouraged him to do all he could.
So on Monday we went to a school in the Calarasi, one in which another Peace Corps volunteer actually teaches. At 10:00 registration started, actually led by an American who works for the sponsor of the program (he's based out of Belarus) as well as a Moldovan woman who's the program director for Moldova. My student and I registered then went to walk around for a while around the town to get his mind off the upcoming exam.
We went to a cafe, spoke a little, and on our way out we happened to run into three eleventh-graders from my school, odd because they were supposed to be in school at the time. Turns out, they hadn't seen the flyer hanging in the school – which had been there for two weeks – until the morning of the exam so they decided to come in and see try for themselves. I was convinced at the time that they wouldn't be successful because they came too late and missed registration and actually refused to talk to the American guy about it; because he spoke Russian and they were late, I told them they could ask him themselves which they accordingly did and, much to my surprise, were allowed to talk the exam (although it turned out to be just a big waste on their part because of the three, two were too old and one . . . well, seeing as he knows almost nothing I was shocked to see him there and figured he just wanted a free day from school).
As I predicted, my student didn't get past the first round, but as I told him later it was, 1)Great that he even tried, 2)He still has two more chances in the next two years, and 3)In general, I think it was a good experience for him to undertake.
- Finally, I realize I haven't posted anything in a while but I actually have reasons for that, ranging from the power going out an inopportune times to us eating later at night than usual to the amount of aforementioned work swelling up and thus, less time to write. But the main reason is that I wanted to wait until I got to Chisinau to post so I could also attach the following picture. As I've written before, I go for walks around our lake every day at dusk and I took this picture recently. You see the line of trees on the other side of the lake? Well, my village is amongst those trees. It gives a good idea of the quality of beauty in which I'm lucky enough to live in every day.
posted by Andy Buchanan at 3:07 AM
2 Comments:
it looks like that lake is rather large to be walking around daily. beautiful picture though. glad to hear you're still alive.
jake
Andy,
Great images, I can see the grapes, the press, the juice streaming out, the bottling,apples in their baskets, the ears of corn, and the sweat. Over there, the little pig, too young to be ugly, showing off its intelligence and eating away. And the family all pitching in to help, building up the great hunger for the evening feast. I wish I was there to help !
Dad
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