Thanks, Granny!

Salsa in a can? Gourmet to the PCV tastebud! Thanks, Granny!

In the Village with Bunica Luiba

There is another PCV that gives me a hard time for falling right into Moldovan gender roles...taking my place in the kitchen with a knife, making every kind of juice under the sun, and pitting cherries by the bucketful. But whatever, I embrace it. I love it when five women (and the toddlers on their hips) are gathered in our tiny kitchen to try a new recipe someone found. Even more, I love going out to the village to help Bunica Luiba (left) prep the winter stores of canned fruit and pickled veggies. 

As Maria and I pit the sour cherries, she teases about her mother in a quiet voice. She explains a russian proverb to me in Romanian, "You just can't please the old people." 

Later on I try to tease back, "I can't wait to come back to Moldova when you are the baba! We are to joke about you out of earshot."

 But as always, she wins, "You know, at that time, you will be 44 years-old." I quickly change the subject after declaring that will never happen and my host cousin chokes on his cherry pit, laughing and coughing.

Doamne fereste!

Celebrate Good Times

I don’t really feel the need to write a post about how it feels now that I have been away from home more than a calendar year; to have one year in Moldova.  Instead, I just have a few memories to share about all the things that happened around the date of that particular anniversary that made it memorable.

[+] A colleague and I gave a presentation to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), at its monthly technical coordination meetings. These are attended by all the local and international organizations working to combat human-trafficking in Moldova. Specifically, we discussed how Peace Corps Volunteers can serve as partners to Moldovan organizations in this effort. Whether that be with skills transfer, the facilitation of strategic planning, or translations, we have PCVs who want to help. Thus, our task is to advertise that desire to our host-country nationals.

 [+] We welcomed the brand new batch of trainees to Peace Corps Moldova! There are close to 70 of them, the most ever to come at one time to Peace Corps Moldova. I thought I remembered those first few hours in Moldova pretty well, until I saw all these new faces experiencing it again. Suddenly, details of those moments came flooding back. That conference room was HOT. I wanted fresh air. Moldovan money looked so little.

 [+] I got invited to play in U.S. Embassy versus Peace Corps Moldova softball game (slow-pitch). I actually ended pitching most of the game…haha…that was funny. But oh how fun it was to be in little America for a couple hours! We arrived in a hodgepodge of taxis and public transportation, while the embassy gang drove up in their Jeep Wrangler, unloading coolers. Coolers filled with ice! Moms and kids sat on the sidelines. The opposing team consisted of accountants, Foreign Service Officers, and Marines responsible for the security of the Embassy. All in good fun.

[+] Saturday night we headed to the city center and the various jumbotrons to watch the U.S. and England tie in the World Cup match. Surprisingly, Moldovans root for England! Either it’s a regional thing, or our homeland really has become the big and the bad.

"If we want it, we can get it"

This week I finally put to use some of the tools we learned last summer that aim to identify and solve problems effectively. I spent two days in a nearby village working with a group of youth that are active in their school's "student council." For the past couple of years, these youth have done countless garbage clean-up days and other one-time events. But now, they are looking to solve some of the bigger issues facing their community. Specifically, we discussed deforestation, ill equipped chemistry labs, and an unsatisfactory gymnasium.

Here you can see the results of one of our first activities--Problem trees. We first wrote the problems we identified on the trunks, followed by the effects of the problem on the leaves. This part was easy, but identifying the "root" causes of problems creates a lot more debate, and requires a lot more time. From this activity we discovered the deforestation in the village is possibly caused by people taking the lumber for keeping their homes warm in winter. The chemistry classes do not actually prepare and observe experiments because equipment is old or missing and a budget for acquiring chemicals was never established. They have no chemicals to create reactions and no beakers because after they were all broken, nobody had money to replace them. It's my understanding that no one in this village, since the fall of the Soviet Union, has learned about chemical reactions from more than just a textbook. Finally, the gymnasium is just something the youth would like to see improved and modernized. 

From this activity, we identified possible solutions to the problems and analyzed their validity based on internal strengths and weaknesses, and the external opportunities and threats that may be presented. This method is called SWOT. Some of the solutions the youth came up with were deemed insufficient after doing the SWOT, others deemed reasonable if the external threats could be attended to first. 

Clearly, this is why I am here in Moldova. This is what I wish I could do everyday. Build the capacity of others and organizations to solve their own problems without simply stopping at "we are poor." These youth want change, and from what I observed, are far more optimistic about their future than their parents. Sadly, I found the adults in this village among the more despondent. Yet, the ring leader of the group, Mihaela (blue shirt), has a theme for their work: If we want it, we can get it.

Go get it kids...and then get your cherry pickin' on!

Cake is to cool, as pie is to perfect.

Here is a snapshot of my first “American” pie in Moldova. Like my brownies, cakes, cookies, bread pudding, French toast, and sweet breads, it too is made in our all-purpose cast iron skillet. It’s as amazing as it is heavy. I’ll admit it took longer to pit the cherries than to pick them for this pie. These are sour cherries from the tree outside my window. Big shout out to all the other gospodine (bakers) back home that helped me modify my pie crust recipe! Thanks! I can tell when my host mom likes something or doesn’t based on how quickly she returns to it after she’s tasted it. Let’s just say, those were some CLEAN plates.

For comparison, these are Moldovan pies (placinte; pla-chin-te). My host mom makes the best placinte around and she knows it too. She makes them with chopped onions and potatoes inside, or cheese ( right now she is making them with cheese and fresh dill), apples, or cherries. In the fall, everyone seeks out the pumpkin placinte. Tomorrow is Saturday, so I know I’ll be waking up to a fresh batch.

Iron strike

Walking to work today I was waved down by a woman I don't know. "Melissa!" She called, "I am in need of your help. I bought a new iron and it's not from Moldova."

Well, I thought, I'm not sure what iron would be "Fabricat in Moldova." But for the next three minutes or so we poured over the diagrams and the user manual's English directives until I was able to clearly explain the answer to her question, "how can I clean the inside?"

I think it's no secret why she didn't ask me how to actually USE the darn thing.