duminica
(Sunday) June 9 2013
If you had
tried to tell Flat Stanley that one could be awake for 27 consecutive hours,
and that those hours would include only two or three incidents of fitful
dozing, and that they would include, during the last 10 hours, classes where
you were given crucial information while sitting in uncomfortable chairs in a
theatre-style classroom, and that this could all be successfully accomplished— Flat
Stanley would not have believed you.
And yet. The
27 hours concluded with being bussed to our hosts’ homes in a small bus/van
stuffed with luggage crammed in without order, so that we (all women, all in
dresses or dress clothes) had to clamber over seats to excavate suitcases
(50-60 pounds each), then disembark onto narrow streets in strange
neighborhoods where every square inch of yard is dedicated to flowers, fruits
and vegetables, where every home is closed in by an imposing fence and guarded
by two or three ferociously barking dogs, and where host families speak Russian
or Romanian or both, and a rare few know a little—very little English.
The village
of Stauceni (STOW-CHEN,
rhymes with cow-chen) is an upscale village, and Flat Stanley’s host is
about middle class. This means that we have running water and that we can
probably drink the water without problem, though we are advised not to. FS’s
host mother is a 65 year old woman, Galina, (her birthday was June 6). Her
younger sister Paulina lives here too, and together they are renovating the
house.
They do not
run down to Home Depot or Loews for supplies. Houses here are built block by
block by the family without aid of power tools. The blocks are of a crumbly
sandstone material mixed by hand. If there were to be an earthquake, FS thinks
the entire country would collapse into rubble. The kitchen is an efficiency,
with an old-fashioned tiny gas stove, tiny sink, tiny cupboards, tiny counter
space, tiny table tucked in corner, tiny four-legged stools on which to sit. We
eat food from the garden and everything is drenched in butter or oil made from
sunflower seeds. The butter and oil taste strange and FS is probably losing
weight while adjusting to the strange flavors.
FS walks to
language classes every morning except Sunday. It is about a half or ¾ mile walk
along narrow, rutted streets where manhole covers are missing (stolen for the
metal), goat droppings lay randomly scattered, a car or three careers at crazy
speeds while fog lifts from the vineyards down below and across a narrow valley
and every dog warns you to not mess with the property. It is uphill both ways,
seriously, because the street crosses down into the valley and back out again
to get to class. The wild dogs are generally well-trained enough to leave
people alone. Then we board local bus #190 (called a rutiera) to travel to the
Peace Corps training site in Chisinau (Kee-See-Now), then back home again.
You know
those scenes you see of busses crammed with people and chickens sticking out
the windows? We don’t have anything hanging out the windows because Moldovan
culture believes that air from a window brings ill health. No animals on the
busses here, not sure about elsewhere, and we are happy happy happy that the
rutieras have roof vents that are kept open. Jammed busses are prime spots to
be pick-pocketed, so our guide warns us loudly in English to BEWARE OF
PICKPOCKETS once we have boarded.
This coming
week we get to do this without our guide. Oh boy.
There is so
much new that FS does not know how to convey this experience. FS will say that
seeing scenes in a book or a movie is not the same as being part of the
scenery. Outlying villages are much poorer than Stauceni and if assigned to one, it is probable
that FS will stay with the host family there during the entire service. Here’s
why: In smaller villages, families eat from the garden because there are no
stores. For a person to live on their own, they would have to grow their own
food for the year (and learn how to preserve their vegetables) and manage all
the other tasks that come with living without conveniences we in the US take
for granted. This would leave little or no time to work on our assigned
projects.
Today FS has
the house to herself so will indulge in a bucket bath. She’s been taking spit
baths all week because she didn’t know how to manage either the bathroom or to ask
how. Got to study, study, study the Romanian and FS is already much more
accomplished than she thought possible in this time.
Last thing:
Is FS homesick? Well, along with several fellow “voluntari in Corpul Pacii, consultant comunitari” (Peace Corps volunteers, community
consultants) we ask ourselves first thing each morning, last thing each night,
and several times in between just why we did this, And
then we each remember, this is what we signed up for—that opportunity to be
dumped into something so strange and so new we could not imagine—and the
privilege to have the safety net of the Peace Corps providing structure and
purpose while we figure things out, And when that's too abstract, FS says, "Hey! FS is gonna be conversant in Romanian!"
