Capacity Building! Hip Hip Hooray!

My job is to build institutional capacity. To make my partner organization more effective and sustainable, that is the task at hand. Time and time again I get beaten down when my ideas aren't taken seriously, or allowed to come to full fruition. Or someone who once appeared to be excited to work with me starts to lose interest (or goes abroad!). Do I take it personally? Chalk it up to cultural differences? Or just move on and work with someone else?

Lately, I've been going with the latter. This is an old photo of Doina (the best 14 year old friend a 23 year old girl could have) and me. Back when I washed my hair three times a week instead of two, maybe I should start that again...

Anyway, on Saturday I spent exactly 90 minutes in my office and built more capacity than I had all week! Doina is responsible for the idea to facilitate youth leadership and volunteerism seminars in the villages, for which we received a grant to carry out from the "Open Society Institute." Monday afternoon we will be holding an open house to tell people in our town about the project and Doina will be giving a short presentation. We decided to create a Powerpoint presentation, a format Doina never had a chance to learn.

For the most productive 90 minutes of my week, Doina and I sat side-by-side, she in front of the center's Russian language-based computer and me in front of my laptop which runs in English and Romanian (when I want too), mimicking each others actions to locate the commands and features in Powerpoint that we needed. Ninety minutes and presto! Presentation complete (check!), skills transfer completed (check!), and lots of laughs in between (check!).

Hip Hip Hooray!

Soare cu dinți | Sun with teeth

Below zero Moldovan days that are accompanied by sunshine and blue skies are said to be days when the sun shines with teeth. I think I would like to both steal and amend this expression to apply to my next day on the ski hill (however far away that might be), I think we should say "sun with skis"...it was all I could think about today!

Saint John's Day | Sf. Ion

The last of the winter holidays, at least according to my host mother, is Saint John's day. Usually on these holidays that are named after a specific person, you only celebrate it if there is someone in your family that shares that namesake. For instance, on Sf. Maria day, everyone brings flowers to my host mother because that is her name too. But Sf. Ion is a bit different and as I walked in the snow showers with Maria to the cemetery on Wednesday morning we talked about the reason we celebrate Sf. Ion. She told me the story of John baptizing Jesus in the water, as if I was hearing it for the very first time. In many ways I was, because religious vocabulary is not something I hear that often in Romanian. It's difficult to tell what is going on in this first picture, but all those people are standing around a long table covered in the customary offerings (bread, candles, candy, wine). The priest is the young man with the beard in the center. Pretty much the only men with facial hair in Moldova are the men of the Church.

Since we arrived a little late, we stayed back from the big table and cleared Domnul Costel's (Maria's husband) grave of the snow and lit candles. When the second table was being prepared, Maria went to offer our bread and wine. As you can see, it was snowing pretty good that day, Maria said it deterred people from coming out to the cemetery. But to me, seeing a hundred people in a snowy cemetery on a Wednesday morning is pretty impressive. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, these Eastern Orthodox traditions are admirable. They convey so much respect for the elderly and the dead.

I have a friend that questions whether or not it is right that even people who lived life pretty inhumanly deserve to be venerated in death. It's an interesting question to ponder, but I don't care to comment on my opinion here. Though, I did have an interesting conversation with a Moldovan girl recently who criticized the Church for being extraneous. "I believe in God," she said, "but I don't need the priest to tell me how to convey my faith." I should have asked her if she just came of the Mayflower.

Anyway, later that day Maria and I went to a neighbor's house for dinner. We can't go empty handed and Maria had been asking me to make an apple crisp, so it was the perfect opportunity. My instincts were correct when I heard that the purpose of the meal was to get to know the two daughters who want to study English with me. They worked on English with another PCV over the summer. I have to be gone next week, so I told them the next week I would go back with my recently inherited scrabble board.

But in anycase, I am happy to get to know another family in my neighborhood. The wife works at a public office in town, making sure employers follow employment laws and the like. The husband is the boss of the local market where I buy (recently) oranges and pomegranates. The two daughters are 17 and 11 years old. Teenagers are teenagers all over the world, but the 11 year old still has an innocence that I adore. Quite the artist too. She crochets, cross stitches, draws, and made a collage out of pencil shavings. Reminds me of when I used to love to get those craft kits for Christmas, like the kind from Toys*R*Us.

Maria originally said she didn't want to stay long, but not until the nine o'clock hour did we finally start to say our good byes. The conversation was great, lots of hard questions that can't be answered definitively. Mostly about language, politics, and corruption. But even about how Maria's employer (she is an accountant at the bread factory) is struggling with competition--a focal point of the capitalism that Moldovans admire about America, but are still learning how to endure. I like these conversations a lot. Sometimes, if the conversation is not interesting, my mind wanders, and since it's not my native language, it's a lot harder to rejoin the conversation. I usually have to wait until the subject changes. I have a language exam coming up next month, so it's time to get my study on!

Colleague Spotlight

Click on here to check out the great photos from one of my colleagues in the Agriculture and Rural Business Development program. Neal did a great job capturing what Moldovans refer to as those "sun with teeth days." That's when the sun is out, but you are freezing because well, it's "iarna deverata acuma."

Praznic cel mai mare: The biggest meal in memory of a loved one

Moldovan traditions, as readers of this blog can attest, tend to rely on the presence of food and wine. But then again, that might not be all that different than ours. Although I attended a praznic back in my training village, this was the first one that was hosted in my home. On 8 January, 2010, we celebrated the life Maria’s husband who died six years ago. This tradition usually goes on for seven years after someone passes.

In the largest room of our house, though not very large indeed, 25 family members, colleagues, and neighbors came to pay their respects. Every inch of the table was covered in food. There was a lot of toasting in memory of family members, lots of house wine, and lots of leftover food. Which is why when the main guests left, Maria and I quickly rearranged the food to prepare for the second wave of guests. I vacuumed the same rug four times that day! There simply wasn’t enough room to have everyone at one table, one celebration of life.

I have known for some time that Maria’s husband was a well-respected man in town. When I tell people I live with Maria, someone inevitable will refer to how they knew her husband and what a good, honorable man he was. As you can see in the pictures, part of the tradition also involves going to the cemetery. Costel’s grave site conveys the importance the community placed on his life. His grave is the first inside the gate, and quiet large. I went with my “brothers” to the cemetery and here is a short summary of what we did:

-We poured wine (taken from the church) in the shape of the crucifix on the grave.

-We built a small fire to burn incense with, and carried the canister of fragrant smoke around the grave, clockwise.

-Each time someone walked by, we served them wine and candy (it doesn’t have to be candy, just some kind of food). The person drank the wine after saying a phrase that translates to “may God forgive him.” You can also pour the wine on the grave if you chose not to drink it.

-We lit a candle at the head and foot of the grave.

-We placed yellow flowers in the vase. Yellow flowers are only given for death related ceremonies.

-We took an offering of wine, bread, and candy to a home near the cemetery. The man of the house came out and kissed the bread, drank the wine, and extinguished the candle in the bread after saying a few words in memory of Costel.

I truly enjoyed witnessing this tradition. After helping Maria cook for three days and going to the cemetery with her sons, I feel much closer to Maria and her family. This is a tradition of much love and respect.

Sf. Vasile (Old New Year)

My colleague was quite accurate when he compared Sf. Vasile to Halloween. The traditions are somewhat similar. On the evening of 13 January, children come to our door and we dole out candy, money, and colac (a celebration bread). The following morning, the children come back to throw seeds at your door step and wish you a happy harvest in the upcoming year. This tradition is called "the sowing."

Moldovan Carols, Christmas Day

New Year's Fundraising

It’s not quite caroling, and it’s not quite serenading. The youth wrote the script themselves and each of us took about four lines from the poem. We marched around town and relayed our messages of good will to the institutions and businesses in our community. The poem also told a little bit about what the youth council is and what they do before asking for donations to support the youth in 2010. Here, the youth are shown with the mayor and vice mayor of our town. Along with their monetary donation, the mayor's office gave us candy, cookies, and the traditional bread too. We visited almost all the public institutions in our town, as well as many shops and private institutions. Despite the economic crisis, this year the youth raised more than ever through this activity.

Disaster in Haiti a reminder to all

A CHALLENGE TO MY COLLEAGUES IN MOLDOVA: USE THE STORY OF HAITI

Yesterday, my home town heard the news from Haiti it had not wanted to hear. A girl my age, in fact someone I had been friends with through elementary school, died in this week’s earthquake. Molly Hightower, 22, was in the middle of her year of service with an organization called “Friends of the Orphans.” You can read her blog here. We did not remain friends through the chaos called junior high, and I neither knew that there had been an earthquake, nor that someone from my town was in Haiti, until my Mom called me from the states. But as I know the family, friends, and communities Molly touched are grieving, and asking why these things happen, I felt at a loss for most appropriate emotions. Or at least, I didn’t know which one was appropriate. I have neither seen, nor spoken to Molly in years, but instantly memories of my first softball practice (her dad was the coach) and horseback riding at another friend’s house came streaming back.

To make a long story short, as I went into my session with my advanced English Club on Thursday, nothing but the earthquake was really on my mind. With my advanced speakers, we don’t do actual lessons, but just hold discussions. This week, we discussed the earthquake—the number of people that died, what makes the recovery difficult, and most importantly, what to do in an earthquake.

Where I grew up, earthquake and fire drills were almost monthly occurrences. Here, I found the youth having very little idea what to do in an earthquake—and yes, they are in Moldova’s history books. With the youth we discussed not only how to protect one’s self in an earthquake, but picked out specific locations to go in each room of our youth center. I think at our next youth council meeting I would like to run a full scale drill.

I still don’t know exactly how to grieve someone you once knew, but barely recognize in recent photographs. Yet, I know that Molly was doing some great things in Haiti. Certainly, this tragedy affected me differently than if I had been in the comfort of my own home, with my family. But I decided to write this post to foster a discussion among my PCV colleagues.

What lessons can we take from this tragedy? How can we honor the memories of the victims in a way that also serves our Peace Corps goals? Teachers—I want to know if it was just my particular youth who didn’t know how to respond to earthquakes, or a country wide phenomenon? Do you have fire or earthquake drills in your schools? Did anyone else have a discussion with their beneficiaries after the earthquake? If so, what did you discover about your organization?

I realize not all responses to the questions above will be appropriate to discuss in a blog media. So please email me if you have comments that are questionable.

La Multi Ani!

New Year’s is one of the biggest holidays of the year for Moldovans and I am so glad I stayed at site to spend it with my host family. Maria’s sister and 80 year-old mother were also here. I looked out my bedroom window and instantly recognized Maria’s mother opening our gate despite never having met her.
Most of New Year’s Eve Maria and I were in the kitchen preparing the masa (meals tend to be the most important parts of celebrations). As a new year’s gift (though, admittedly slightly selfish on behalf of my pallet) I prepared a fresh fruit salad. Maria’s mom had never tasted kiwi nor pomegranate. I know that the true value of that imported fruit is really in the carbon emissions to get it here, but the look on Doamna Luba’s face as she tasted her first kiwi at the age of 80 was worth almost every single banut.

I’ve mentioned before on the blog that I have the funniest host Mom in Moldova because she dances with kitchen utensils in the kitchen, right? Well, now I know where she gets it. Right as we were finishing our meal, a song came on the radio that must have particularly appealed to Doamna Luba because her hands went up in the air, swaying side to side as she hummed along to the tune and let out one of completely Moldovanca “eeeeeeee ya ya ya!”

One of my most memorable New Year’s ever.

Despite the fact that we were all awake at mid-night (because the phone, my cell phone, and both of Maria’s cell phones were ringing off the hook with New Year’s greetings), we did not open the champagne until the next morning at 10 o’clock, aka, midnight Pacific Coast Time!

I would be cutting the story short if I didn’t relay Doamna Luba’s toast here. She started off sending best wishes to my family, but then the last part became truly Moldovan…

“Many years with good health to Melissa’s family in America. You have o fata frumoasa and this year we are going to marry her off!”

La mulți ani! Sanatate! Bucoroș! Rabdare! Relezare!

Primul Craciun in Moldova

Since Moldovans primarily celebrate Orthodox Christmas in January, I had no hesitation about racing down south a bit for a more American celebration on December 25^th. Not only was there great food, wine, and company over the holiday, but showers too! Merry Christmas to me!

We actually had our celebration in one of our colleague’s work places—an elder care facility. On Christmas morning, the center and some of its beneficiaries put on a little Christmas concert…the grand finale…a special act in English language carols by Peace Corps Volunteers!

This particular gathering of volunteers was primarily attended by a group of volunteers who can count their number of days left in Moldova in two digits, their group finishes their service in April. The best response I’ve heard yet to the ever popular “ what are you going to do when you get back” question is only one word: “Drive.”