My Favorite Person in the Village
Seeing as how he is, without a doubt, my favorite person in and around my village (as one of two Moldovan friends that I have), I decided that I would take a few minutes and a few lines of this space to describe my host-grandpa. I figured that, due to his eighty-years, he's earned some words from me.
He's my host-mom's dad and I first met him after I had been in my village only a few days last year when my host-sister and mom brought me along to his house in the next village over when they went to clean it out. I knew at once that I was dealing with a different type of person when he asked me if I had come to Moldova on a train or bus and was in a mild state of shock when I told him it was on a plane, ten hours from New York. That day marked the first of monthly-or so meetings in which we would go to his house to do various tasks that he physically can't do anymore. We picked grapes and made him wine – the 350 liters that he went through in six months – as well as apples that we picked and sold to supplement his monthly pension of thirty-eight dollars a month. His house is about a half-hour walk from ours and the last 200 yards or so are through one long continuous patch of mud, and one of the girls that I tutor sometimes lives only fifty or so yards away; as a result, when I would go to work with her my host-mom would often gave me food to bring along to grandpa.
Those types of treks to help him don't really happen anymore because, fortunately for me, he basically moved in with us here about six months ago after coming here off and on for three months before that. As I alluded to earlier, physically he can't do a whole lot. One year ago he could at least climb stairs, move around where need be, and while he did so slowly at least he was able. Now, however, his knees are basically shot. Even getting up and down in a chair is far from easy for him. And his hands aren't necessarily in the best of conditions too (I can only imagine what a geriatric doctor from America would say upon viewing his body and what needed to be done). He basically sits in one room of the house all day, listens to the radio, takes some naps with the cats laying on him. He's amazingly bored, to say the least. It's especially difficult for him to be here because of his physical condition – he sees the amount of work that my host-mom has to do every day and it drives him nuts that he simply can't do anything to help her, his only daughter. Once in a while she'll give him corn that he has to strip from the husk, a task he can accomplish during the day: I love it when I arrive home and see that he not only has finished the task but starts to brag about easy it was and how my host mom should have given him more to do, doing all with a cool confidence. And often, if given nothing to do, he'll tell me as soon as he sees me that his day was OK but that it would have been better had he had some work to do.
As I mentioned in the opening, my host grandpa here is really my only friend in the village. When I get bored I just drop in him and we talk a little – whenever I have problems with people or students and need someone to talk to I buy some beer and we sit and shoot the breeze for as long as it takes. He also really, really likes to drink (but my host mom consistently reminds me that while he has always liked to drink, he has never been a drunk who the likes of which stomp through the village, embarrassing himself and his family). He has told me that when he is home he would drink 1.5 liters of wine a day, but while he is here with us my host-mom simply just doesn't give any wine to him. As it stands, we end up drinking wine with dinner a few times a week or beer whenever I actually stick around my village for a Friday or Saturday night.
Apparently, my fondness for him is matched equally by his fondness for me – if I'm on vacation or somewhere he always asks when I'm coming back and when I do arrive home we shake hands and he immediately starts to interrogate me on what exactly I saw or experience during my time away. And he loves to see my pictures as I retell him everything. He's also fascinated by American life; one of these day's, if I ever figure out how, I'll record one of our discussions about how much things cost in America and how much money people receive, then translate it and post it on Youtube or something. His reactions are classic.
And speaking of classics, he told me last week about the time the Nazi Army was in my village during WWII. It wasn't that dynamic of a story – they told him in German to come over, he ran away – but I was amazed that he had waited so long to recount.
In closing, my favorite part of our relationship is this dialog that we've developed between us, this sort of language that comes with being surrounded my my host mom/sister for eighty percent of our time. It gets to the point that someone will say something odd or illogical or want him to do something that he doesn't want to and we just look at each-other and share a slow head-nod 'no', a little smile, or a shrug of the shoulders. Like I said, he's the closest thing I have to a friend in my village and when I leave here in a few seven-months time, he'll be the one I miss the most. No doubt about it.
Notes:
- I've been passing my free time recently watching the first two seasons of MacGyver, and while I won't waste your time by becoming a critic, I have to simply say that I've never seen something else that is simultaneously brilliant and brilliantly amazing at the same time. In a way it's shattered a little bit of something I had cherished since I was little.
- In Moldova they celebrate Christmas according to the Orthodox system, January 7th every year. This time, like last, we went over to my host grandma's where it was just my immediate host family, aunt, uncle, and cousin. Usually it's not a great time for me because everyone just sits around and speaks the Ukrainian dialect all the time. While I understand it well enough, I disagree with it's usage in principal around because I think it's a little disrespectful. My plan this year was to actually walk-out after a while and then, when asked where I was going, make a little speech about my thoughts on their using nothing but what they themselves refer to as “dirty Ukrainian.” But upon arrival I realized – something that I knew but had never hit me before – is that I'm fairly sure that my host grandma doesn't speak Russian at all; at least, if she does, I've never heard it from her. So I decided this year to just sit back, read the book that I had brought, and let them jabber away. Turned out to a really nice time too. I even answered a question right on Russian “Who Wants To Be a Millionaire” that everyone was impressed by.
- The last day before I left for vacation we had a man I didn't know, had never seen before, and will likely never see again, come by and asked for some wine when my host mom happened to be at work. The man who came was in really, really rough shape, a clear alcoholic who my host mom actually fed once before out of pity. He smelled really badly, had old clothes, glasses held together with wire, and rags over his hands instead gloves or mittens. He was nice actually and confused about who I was, where my host mom was, and why I was there. He was a little flummoxed when I told him that, in principal, I never give any wine to anyone. This actually has happened only once before, when my parents were here. That lady was nice too.
But my favorite part came when I went to see host grandpa, who saw the entire exchange but physically couldn't do anything. He was all fired up when I went to talk with him, loved my re-telling of the story, and had plenty of words to say about the man who had come – apparently, they know each-other.
- I also wrote before I left for vacation about the girl in my school who tragically died that week (apparently of leukemia, according to my partner teacher). Well, literally two minutes after I had posted my second-to-last entry my host mom came in and inquired if I wanted to go to the girls house for a memorial (or so I understood). While I didn't know the girl at all, I thought that the least I could do would be to go and pay my respects, especially in a community and school such as ours.
So I went outside and jumped in with the line of teachers all headed to the girls house (only a few minutes' walk away from mine). When we entered I saw in the veranda what I thought was the coffin itself and distinctly remember thinking that it was amazing that the girl was right there, underneath such a slim covering.
However, in entering the next room I was surprised to see that what I saw in the veranda was just a cover – the coffin with the girl inside of it was inside another room of the house where people had gathered around her. So I sat in that room with about fifteen other people for a good ten minutes, just us and the dead student who was wearing a beautiful dress; everyone drank a glass of wine and ate some crackers. It was one of the most somber moments experiences of my life.
- A month ago I bought a new phone off Ebay and had it shipped to my friend who was in America for Christmas. It's a Blackberry and it's amazing. I'm slowly trying to figure out how to get e-mail access on it (not so simple in Eastern Europe). But another volunteer got one a little while ago too and he's far more savvy than me. My goal: to send someone an e-mail from an outhouse.
- In closing, as I've written about before one of the main way's that I've tried to change things up in my life in this, my second year, is to try and take different modes of transportation back to my village (yes, not a large step, but what can you do?). Two Sundays ago I actually wanted to take the one bus that goes right home but, being the day before Christmas, it was standing room only two hours before departure, a yearly occurrence..
Wanting to minimize my discomfort, I took a trolleybus and a minibus to my regional center and in trying to get home ended up getting a ride in an ambulance driven by an off-duty driver to a village half-way to my own, knowing from the start that it would be fairly easy hitchhike the rest of the way home. After a few minutes of waiting a car rode by, seemingly ignoring me at first before I saw the red brake lights flash on and the horn blast.
So I ran over and, turns out, it was a girl from my school and her family. They not only picked me up but also drove me the mile or so past their house to my own because the weather was bad, then wouldn't take the money I offered. I thought that was not bad, and it certainly made my week for me.
He's my host-mom's dad and I first met him after I had been in my village only a few days last year when my host-sister and mom brought me along to his house in the next village over when they went to clean it out. I knew at once that I was dealing with a different type of person when he asked me if I had come to Moldova on a train or bus and was in a mild state of shock when I told him it was on a plane, ten hours from New York. That day marked the first of monthly-or so meetings in which we would go to his house to do various tasks that he physically can't do anymore. We picked grapes and made him wine – the 350 liters that he went through in six months – as well as apples that we picked and sold to supplement his monthly pension of thirty-eight dollars a month. His house is about a half-hour walk from ours and the last 200 yards or so are through one long continuous patch of mud, and one of the girls that I tutor sometimes lives only fifty or so yards away; as a result, when I would go to work with her my host-mom would often gave me food to bring along to grandpa.
Those types of treks to help him don't really happen anymore because, fortunately for me, he basically moved in with us here about six months ago after coming here off and on for three months before that. As I alluded to earlier, physically he can't do a whole lot. One year ago he could at least climb stairs, move around where need be, and while he did so slowly at least he was able. Now, however, his knees are basically shot. Even getting up and down in a chair is far from easy for him. And his hands aren't necessarily in the best of conditions too (I can only imagine what a geriatric doctor from America would say upon viewing his body and what needed to be done). He basically sits in one room of the house all day, listens to the radio, takes some naps with the cats laying on him. He's amazingly bored, to say the least. It's especially difficult for him to be here because of his physical condition – he sees the amount of work that my host-mom has to do every day and it drives him nuts that he simply can't do anything to help her, his only daughter. Once in a while she'll give him corn that he has to strip from the husk, a task he can accomplish during the day: I love it when I arrive home and see that he not only has finished the task but starts to brag about easy it was and how my host mom should have given him more to do, doing all with a cool confidence. And often, if given nothing to do, he'll tell me as soon as he sees me that his day was OK but that it would have been better had he had some work to do.
As I mentioned in the opening, my host grandpa here is really my only friend in the village. When I get bored I just drop in him and we talk a little – whenever I have problems with people or students and need someone to talk to I buy some beer and we sit and shoot the breeze for as long as it takes. He also really, really likes to drink (but my host mom consistently reminds me that while he has always liked to drink, he has never been a drunk who the likes of which stomp through the village, embarrassing himself and his family). He has told me that when he is home he would drink 1.5 liters of wine a day, but while he is here with us my host-mom simply just doesn't give any wine to him. As it stands, we end up drinking wine with dinner a few times a week or beer whenever I actually stick around my village for a Friday or Saturday night.
Apparently, my fondness for him is matched equally by his fondness for me – if I'm on vacation or somewhere he always asks when I'm coming back and when I do arrive home we shake hands and he immediately starts to interrogate me on what exactly I saw or experience during my time away. And he loves to see my pictures as I retell him everything. He's also fascinated by American life; one of these day's, if I ever figure out how, I'll record one of our discussions about how much things cost in America and how much money people receive, then translate it and post it on Youtube or something. His reactions are classic.
And speaking of classics, he told me last week about the time the Nazi Army was in my village during WWII. It wasn't that dynamic of a story – they told him in German to come over, he ran away – but I was amazed that he had waited so long to recount.
In closing, my favorite part of our relationship is this dialog that we've developed between us, this sort of language that comes with being surrounded my my host mom/sister for eighty percent of our time. It gets to the point that someone will say something odd or illogical or want him to do something that he doesn't want to and we just look at each-other and share a slow head-nod 'no', a little smile, or a shrug of the shoulders. Like I said, he's the closest thing I have to a friend in my village and when I leave here in a few seven-months time, he'll be the one I miss the most. No doubt about it.
Notes:
- I've been passing my free time recently watching the first two seasons of MacGyver, and while I won't waste your time by becoming a critic, I have to simply say that I've never seen something else that is simultaneously brilliant and brilliantly amazing at the same time. In a way it's shattered a little bit of something I had cherished since I was little.
- In Moldova they celebrate Christmas according to the Orthodox system, January 7th every year. This time, like last, we went over to my host grandma's where it was just my immediate host family, aunt, uncle, and cousin. Usually it's not a great time for me because everyone just sits around and speaks the Ukrainian dialect all the time. While I understand it well enough, I disagree with it's usage in principal around because I think it's a little disrespectful. My plan this year was to actually walk-out after a while and then, when asked where I was going, make a little speech about my thoughts on their using nothing but what they themselves refer to as “dirty Ukrainian.” But upon arrival I realized – something that I knew but had never hit me before – is that I'm fairly sure that my host grandma doesn't speak Russian at all; at least, if she does, I've never heard it from her. So I decided this year to just sit back, read the book that I had brought, and let them jabber away. Turned out to a really nice time too. I even answered a question right on Russian “Who Wants To Be a Millionaire” that everyone was impressed by.
- The last day before I left for vacation we had a man I didn't know, had never seen before, and will likely never see again, come by and asked for some wine when my host mom happened to be at work. The man who came was in really, really rough shape, a clear alcoholic who my host mom actually fed once before out of pity. He smelled really badly, had old clothes, glasses held together with wire, and rags over his hands instead gloves or mittens. He was nice actually and confused about who I was, where my host mom was, and why I was there. He was a little flummoxed when I told him that, in principal, I never give any wine to anyone. This actually has happened only once before, when my parents were here. That lady was nice too.
But my favorite part came when I went to see host grandpa, who saw the entire exchange but physically couldn't do anything. He was all fired up when I went to talk with him, loved my re-telling of the story, and had plenty of words to say about the man who had come – apparently, they know each-other.
- I also wrote before I left for vacation about the girl in my school who tragically died that week (apparently of leukemia, according to my partner teacher). Well, literally two minutes after I had posted my second-to-last entry my host mom came in and inquired if I wanted to go to the girls house for a memorial (or so I understood). While I didn't know the girl at all, I thought that the least I could do would be to go and pay my respects, especially in a community and school such as ours.
So I went outside and jumped in with the line of teachers all headed to the girls house (only a few minutes' walk away from mine). When we entered I saw in the veranda what I thought was the coffin itself and distinctly remember thinking that it was amazing that the girl was right there, underneath such a slim covering.
However, in entering the next room I was surprised to see that what I saw in the veranda was just a cover – the coffin with the girl inside of it was inside another room of the house where people had gathered around her. So I sat in that room with about fifteen other people for a good ten minutes, just us and the dead student who was wearing a beautiful dress; everyone drank a glass of wine and ate some crackers. It was one of the most somber moments experiences of my life.
- A month ago I bought a new phone off Ebay and had it shipped to my friend who was in America for Christmas. It's a Blackberry and it's amazing. I'm slowly trying to figure out how to get e-mail access on it (not so simple in Eastern Europe). But another volunteer got one a little while ago too and he's far more savvy than me. My goal: to send someone an e-mail from an outhouse.
- In closing, as I've written about before one of the main way's that I've tried to change things up in my life in this, my second year, is to try and take different modes of transportation back to my village (yes, not a large step, but what can you do?). Two Sundays ago I actually wanted to take the one bus that goes right home but, being the day before Christmas, it was standing room only two hours before departure, a yearly occurrence..
Wanting to minimize my discomfort, I took a trolleybus and a minibus to my regional center and in trying to get home ended up getting a ride in an ambulance driven by an off-duty driver to a village half-way to my own, knowing from the start that it would be fairly easy hitchhike the rest of the way home. After a few minutes of waiting a car rode by, seemingly ignoring me at first before I saw the red brake lights flash on and the horn blast.
So I ran over and, turns out, it was a girl from my school and her family. They not only picked me up but also drove me the mile or so past their house to my own because the weather was bad, then wouldn't take the money I offered. I thought that was not bad, and it certainly made my week for me.
posted by Andy Buchanan at 1:27 AM
1 Comments:
Andy,
Thanks for your snapshot of Grandpa. I remember when we walked over to his house to see him but he was fast asleep, not too much of a surprise considering his age, it was 90 degrees in the shade, and he probably had sipped a little wine earlier in the day. Yet, I was really looking forward to meeting him and I guess after reading your blog I can now say I know him a lot better.
Of course now everyone will wondering who your other Moldovan friend is. Having two good friends can be a rare occurance and while I don't see some of my friends, e.g., Mark & Mitch, all that often when I do it is like I just saw them yesterday. A guy here at 3M used to say it is easier to work with people "Who look like you & think like you." In retrospect I can't argue that, and it usually also applies to friends.
I am somewhat surprised that you were able to find some variations on travel, I think my imagination would have stopped at simple walking. Let's see, only four days to hike to the Peace Corps office and four days to get back, not enough time for that I'm afraid, so the brain starts to kick in with alternatives.
What a sombre funeral. Having it in the house instead of a mortuary certainly personalizes it all the more, and with her being so young and with such a promising future it just is on the edge of bearable.
Love,
Dad
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