Proiectul nostru de baschet

After a lot of hard work from the community, we finally finished our sports court project. The village school now has an outdoor court to play basketball, volleyball, and other activities like jump-rope during PE classes. Being that alcoholism and smoking are two of the biggest health problems in the village, this project was a big step for the community to take to promote a healthier and happier lifestyle to the youth. Check out my facebook page for an entire photo album of the project, from day one to the finished court.

Here's the sports court before our project.

Here's the finished court. Over 200 students, teachers, and participated in our opening ceremony. The mayor, school director, NGO president, and I all gave speeches thanking the community for working together to implement the project. This was my first chance to speak to a large crowd in the village, so I thanked everyone for accepting me into the community and for having the patience enough to help me learn their language and culture.

One of Moldova's national news programs did a short clip about our project and aired it on tv. Check out the video here:
http://www.trm.md/index.php?module=stiri_int&news_id=22216

Hramul Zguritei

This week our village celebrated "Ziua Satului", the Day of the Village. Each village has its own celebration, but different villages have different dates throughout the year. Each family prepares lots of traditional dishes and invites friends and family to come in for a few days to eat, drink, and celebrate. A former Peace Corps volunteer that served in my village three years ago flew in from the US to visit Zgurita for the first time since he left. He also lived with my host family, so it was a big celebration for them to welcome in their old friend. It was a lot of fun sitting with another American who knows everything about my family, my village, and most of the experience that I am going through. He had not forgotten any of his Romanian, so we were all able to sit around the table for a few days, eat, and tell some good stories with our host family about our shared American experience in Moldova.


My work partner/host mom to the left wearing red, making "galushi" with some of her friends.

Galush, also known as sarmale, are cabbage leaves stuffed with rice, carrots, onions, meat, and pepper. These take a long time to prepare, but they are a Moldovan favorite.

I'm putting a pot of the "galushi" into a traditonal wood-fired oven. We were able to fit five pots in the oven at the same time to cook for a few hours.

After a few days of prepping food, we're finally at the dinner table. Here are my host family (minus my old host dad), two current PC volunteers, and the former PC volunteer who came to visit.

My host sister, Lenutsa. I speak to her with a mixture of Romanian and English, her mom and dad speak to her in Russian, and her grandparents speak to her using a strong Moldovan dialect of Romanian. She probably thinks we've lost our minds.



Neal, Derick, and I took a hike out of my village to see the countryside. We ran into an 83 year-old lady who was coming back from gathering some nuts, and like most "baba's" in the village, she was not shy about stopping us in the field and asking who we were and what we were doing there. She then proceeded to hand us all kinds of food and said, "Why are you young boys walking to the forest without food? This old lady has a bag full of food, but you boys don't have anything. Here, take this food and eat! Be healthy!" Two minutes before we didn't know this lady, and two minutes later she's forcing her hospitality upon us. Gotta love Moldova.

Strengthening sports in the community

Two months ago the East European foundation, a subdivision of Eurasia foundation, partnered with the Moldovan Parliament to launch a grant competition called "Parteneriatul pentru copii", or the Partnership for Children. Both groups recognized that Moldova's youth was severely lacking in development opportunities and the childrens' free time was not be supported through community efforts. This is especially true in rural areas of Moldova, so their grant competition focused on improving recreational facilities in rural areas.

When I first arrived in Zgurita, one of the first thing I noticed was the lack of activities available for kids. I saw a lot of bars around, but no gymnasium, auditorium, cultural center, etc. There were two old basketball goals that were 30 years old left over from the Soviet days, but they were both leaning and broken. When you look at the basketball goal today, you can see the ground around the goal beaten down to only dirt, so it's obvious that the kids are trying to play and are interested. One of the first projects that my partner proposed we do in the village was to build a sports gymnasium at the school. Finding the resources to fund a huge project like that is really difficult, but we knew starting with a cheaper, outdoor court would be more feasible for us. This grant competition,"Parteneriatul pentru copii", was asking for applications to compete for grants up to $4,500, which was perfect for what we wanted to do.

My partner and I wrote a great grant to build a multi-purpose basketball and volleyball court at the school, and we were awarded the $2,900 assistance that we applied for. This Wednesday we will begin phase one by forming a group of volunteers from the school to cut the grass and weeds on the future site of our court and we should be able to start construction in about 2 weeks.

YouTube video

Check out a video we made in the village to help raise money for our amphitheater project:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdCtgJNDXH0

Guarding watermelons

I was recently the paznic at my host family's watermelon field. They have about 10 acres of watermelon and cantaloupes planted. The paznic is a guard/watchman who's job is to merely sit and watch the watermelons to make sure that no one sneaks up and goes home with a few in the trunk of their car or in their horse buggy. Their is a paznic at the field 24/7 during the summer months until all of the watermelons and cantaloupes have ripened and been picked to sell at the local market. After sitting out in the Moldovan countryside for 10 hours alone, I learned that there's not much to do except to enjoy the slow pace of time....

The Family Cow

Most of the families in my village have either a goat, sheep, or cow to produce enough milk for the entire household. From the fresh milk they also make cheese, buttermilk, and sour cream on a daily basis. This requires that a member of the family walk the animal out to different places in the village and leave the animal tied to a stake with a leash and collar so that it can graze on the grass all day. They go every evening and retrieve the animal because it must be milked daily and kept at their home overnight.

For the cow owners, there is a collective system in the village supported by public land owned by the local mayor's office. If the family chooses to participate in the collective system, each morning they walk the cow out to the head of the road, and from there the shepherds assume their duties to walk all of the cows to the field and watch them while they graze all day. For every cow you have in the collective system, you have to be shepherd one day in turn. Since there are about 70 cows in this system in our village, a family must send someone to be shepherd every 70th day. There is a schedule (not sure if it's verbal or written) that everyone knows about so they know when their day to be shepherd is coming up.

In the evenings the shepherds will walk the cows out of the fields and back to the head of the roads for the families to meet them. It's a daily routine for the cows, so they know their way home every evening and will walk unassisted into their gate and wait to be milked.

Seasons from a balcony

Mentors with Mustaches

On June 12 we welcomed in 68 new Peace Corps Volunteers in Moldova. I was selected to be a mentor, so I joined other Peace Corps Volunteers in the capital to welcome them on their first day. I waited at their hotel and we cheered them on as they stepped off the buses from the airport. Seeing them immediately brought back feelings that I had exactly one year ago when arriving in Moldova for the first time. For the past 6 - 12 months, these new volunteers have been preparing to leave their families, friends, and jobs behind to embark on a 27 month adventure on a different continent.

New volunteers arriving in Chisinau by bus from the airport. Day one of their two year service.

Mustache May: For the entire month of May, the guys in my volunteer group grew mustaches to have for the arrival of the new volunteer group to Moldova. My mustache, or lack of, was a joke, but lots of guys had some solid 'staches. Our plan was to play a prank on the incoming volunteers and have them thinking that a mustache is important for community integration in Moldova. As soon as the new volunteers stepped off the bus, the guys started making comments and asking questions about our mustaches. We told them that it is very important to grow a mustache for the villagers to accept them as one of their own. The truth is Moldovan men take pride in being clean-shaven. One guy said to me, "Vince, I'm not sure if I can grow a mustache" as he rubbed his fingers over his top lip.

More hellacious mustaches from our group.

Reflecting back on my past year in Moldova, I can say that so far this has been the experience of a lifetime. Because every day is a new adventure, there are too many stories to write about. I realize that one of the main reasons I left for the Peace Corps was to experience life outside of my comfort zone, to understand more about another culture, my culture, and myself. In Moldova, I see, hear, taste, smell, and feel different things than I did in America. From the language I speak, the village I live in, the people I meet, the food I eat, and the environment I see around me, my life has changed more than ever over the past year. Not only do I understand and appreciate the Moldovan culture more, but I also understand and appreciate the American culture much more than I did a year ago.

After being a mentor for three days and helping the volunteers get to their new villages, I went on a 4 day vacation with 9 other volunteers to Odessa, Ukraine. Odessa is a port city on the coast of the Black Sea and is filled with lots of cool architecture, good food, diverse people, and a nice beach. During the Soviet era, Odessa was sort of a bohemiam town that the artists living in the Soviet Union used as a vacation spot. Even though I speak Romanian in my village, I've been picking up on a little Russian as well, so I was forced to use the little Russian I knew while traveling around Odessa. After seeing Odessa, I'd really like to get to Kiev and L'viv, Ukraine since I live so close.

Opera house in the center of Odessa, Ukraine.

Government building with a few traditional village "babas" (elderly ladies) sitting in the shade.

Us taking a nice vacation in a developed eastern European beach town.

Donate please

After lots of hard work, we finally have one of our projects posted to Peace Corps' website. If you are interested in learning about our project and how you can donate, please find a summary by visiting the link below:

https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=261-197&

Eastern Orthodox Baptism

One of my work partner's wife recently had a baby, and they invited me yesterday to come to the baptism ceremony. I was also asked to be "cumetri" which is one of the godparents that are chosen (they chose 12 in total). Moldovans are Eastern Orthodox Christians, so I had no idea what to expect from a baptism service. For the record, there are 4 divisions of Christianity: Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Protestant, and Roman Catholic.

When I got there, I was asked by a nun to write my name on a list of the "cumetri" so that they priest could call my name during the service, but that's when we found the problem. I told her my name was Vincent, and she said that she didn't know how to translate that name to match one of the names in the Eastern Orthodox church. She threw out a few names like Victor and Ion, but we both agreed that I should ask the priest. When I asked the priest, he immediately asked, "Vincent, are you Catholic?" Ummmmmmmmmm, sure? "Well then, you can't be cumetri because you're not Orthodox", he said. I immediately wanted to say, "Of course I'm not Catholic", but I decided it would be better if I kept my mouth shut and just accepted that I couldn't be cumetri. Dangit.

The service was unlike anything I've seen. There are no chairs in an Eastern Orthodox church, so you stand for hours while the priest reads/sings from a book, which I'm guessing was a bible. At the beginning, the priest stood at the front of the church and starting giving everyone directions about how the service would take place, what everyone was supposed to do, and what I was not allowed to do. He told me that I was not allowed to walk a full circle around the bucket of water since I was not Orthodox. I was allowed to walk on three sides, but never should I step foot on the back side of the floor. When someone tells you that you can't do something, like step foot on a certain piece of floor, aren't you so tempted to stick your leg out and place your toe on it when no one is looking?



The cumetri (godparents) walking with the priest holding the baby around the body of water the baby was baptized in.



Several Moldovans asked me afterwards what did I think was the most interesting part of the service. I told them all that I've never seen a baby dunked in water, and that I got scared why I was filming and felt the sudden urge to take the baby away from the priest.

Eastern Orthodox church in our village

Lots of crosses everywhere in the village and all over Moldova

Two nuns who read and sang passages throughout the service

The priest....notice the bottle of champagne in the background.

After the service, the godparents came to the parents' house for another Moldovan tradition where they give money and hold candles over the newly baptized baby while they wish the baby a healthy and prosperous life.

Like all celebrations in Moldova, the day ended with a meal with endless amounts of food, vodka, and wine. I was glad to finally have the chance to wear the three-piece suit that I brought from the States. I was told by some people that I looked like I was going to a wedding, and told by others that I looked like I was going to a funeral, so basically everything except a baptism service.

Muzica la masa

I've recently made friends with a cool Moldovan couple who live in a village a little over 30 minutes from my village. I met the guy at a two day seminar I attended which was given in Russian, and he helped translate a good bit for me in Romanian. Justin, another Peace Corps Volunteer, and I visited their village of Pelinia and got a great tour of another classic Moldovan village. Their village is really different from mine, because everyone in their village is of Romanian decent, and over half of my village are from Russia and Ukraine. After a full day's tour of riding around with them and their friends and visiting the main attractions in the village, we were welcomed to a classic Moldovan masa, which is a meal served with an infinite amount of food and wine. To top it all off, Maria played us some Moldovan folk music on the violin while we ate. Check out the video:

Mr. Mayor is not a vegan.

Three of us Peace Corps Volunteers (Sam, Justin, and I) were making rounds around Justin's village talking to the many families that he's friends with. As we were talking to an Eastern Orthodox priest and his family, we noticed the time and realized the last bus from his village was leaving shortly. As we started saying goodbye and rushing away, the priest offered us a ride back to my village. He warned us though, we'd have to ride in his small car full of chickens. When he opened the hatchback trunk of his little car (about the size of a Geo Metro), sure enough, there were 5 chickens hopping around pecking dirt and such on the floor. The rooster looked at us and belted out a crow, as if he was welcoming us to hop in. It's times like these that I realize how awesome my experience is in Moldova. If you opened the trunk of my car in America, you'd probably find a spare tire, golf clubs, tennis rackets, dirty t-shirts, and an Accounting 102 textbook from sophmore year of college. However, if Peace Corps allowed us to have cars in Moldova, I'm pretty certain that I would drive around Moldova with live chickens. Way cooler.

When we got to my village, we all stopped by my mayor's office so I could introduce my friends and speak with him about our current project. We spoke a little about the amphitheatre we want to build in the village, and about our plans to raise the money. After 20 minutes or so of chatting about the project, we started talking with him about our plans for dinner. Two more volunteers were planning on arriving in my village that evening, so we wanted to have a nice dinner prepared for their arrival. Sam told my mayor we were looking for a live goose to buy, clean, and cook, so the mayor immediately starting calling around the village. He contacted about 5 families, but everyone told him that their geese count was low and they couldn't afford to sell one. After a few more attempts, the mayor gave up and told us we should just buy a rabbit from him instead. He said he raised rabbits, and offered to kill and dress the rabbit so that it would be prepared for us to cook for supper. Here's another fine example of why I enjoy my experience in Moldova: there is a fine line here between professional relationships and friendships. In the States, if I was speaking with my mayor about implementing a project in the community, I probably wouldn't have asked him/her to call around in the community looking for a live animal that I could eat for supper. However, this is a part of Moldova that probably will never leave me when I return to America. If I can't speak with a professional colleague about our project plans and rabbits in the same meeting, then I think we're missing the point.

Omatul se duce, ne vedem iarna viatoare. Paka.

Yo, what's up? I couldn't be more happier to type that the snow is finally melting. It's been a few months of a tough winter, and I'm coming out of hibernation with some speed. I don't know where I'm going with my speed, but get out of my way. Here's a few things that I experienced in the Moldovan winter that I didn't experience in the States:

- Making a fire twice a day to heat my apartment
- Convincing villagers, on a daily basis, that I know how to make a fire
- Wearing the same pair of long johns for weeks on end
- Wearing the same two sweaters all winter ( I think I may have also did this in the States)
- Fetching buckets of water from the well in -15 degrees F
- Forgetting to put the water I fetched from the well in the one and only heated room, only to come home to frozen buckets of water that are worthless
- Seeing everything in my kitchen frozen: olive oil, juice, conserved veggies, etc.
- Sledding down a hill with village kids that took a solid 5 minutes to reach the bottom, and then losing control and slamming into a pile of snow at the bottom
- Riding with Moldovans in a horse drawn sleigh on the snow for 5 kilometers, through rolling hills between a predominately Russian village and a predominately Ukranian village, speaking a Moldovan dialect of Romanian, and realizing again that I'm living in Eastern Europe and not in South Carolina

Here's the work that's occupying my time these days:

PCPP Project- The village mayor, my partner, and I have written a project to build an amphitheatre in the village center to host folk singing and dancing in an effort to give the village kids something positive to occupy their time, and to encourage more social interaction amongst all of the villagers. Don't worry, you all will be receiving plenty of information on this project soon, because money is something we don't have.

English club - I hang out with kids from the village every Tues and Thurs and I teach them English, how to be cool, how to stay in school, and how to say nope to dope.

Language booklet - With two other PC volunteers I am writing a reference booklet for the local dialect of Romanian that is spoken in Moldova. The Moldovan language is Romanian, but in many areas of Moldova has been mixed with Russian and Ukranian because of the Soviet era. With the input and help from many Moldovan villagers, we are collecting all of the common language that is spoken in the village so that PC Volunteers can get a better grasp on the spoken language. We learn textbook Romanian during our training, but the villagers speak very differently.

Moldova TiP - I am serving on the board of an anti-human trafficking organization that works to connect Moldovan organizations that fight human trafficking to PC Volunteers so that vulnerable people in Moldova, especially the young girls who are planning to work abroad, can be informed about the dangers they face. If you google Moldova, the first item that usually pops up is human trafficking, which is a shame. If you are interested to read more about the situation in Moldova, there is more than enough information you can read on the web, or you can just get in touch with me.

Investment seminar - Another PC Volunteer and I are writing a project to host a seminar (maybe multiple?) on the importance of understanding personal finances, and how to invest in your future and put your money to good use, which is clearly a problem in Moldova. Many Moldovans are forced to work abroad, but when they return to the village the money is not usually invested or saved. We hope to inform groups of people, for example, that houses are not assets, because they don't bring back a return on investment (not taking into account a real estate market).

As for fun, I kick it daily with the villagers, speaking Romanian some days like it's my job, and I'm planning my vacation to Italy in April and a hiking trip in the Transylvania area of Romania in May. The amount of free time a PC Volunteer has is plentiful, so sometimes it takes creativity to fill my time: running, poking and staring at my fire, sucking at the guitar, sucking even worse at the harmonica, and sucking even worse than that at studying Russian. Russian is a beautiful language, though, so I hope to learn enough to carry on very simple conversations before I leave Moldova. Spring is finally coming, so I can get back out to the gardens and fields with Moldovans while they're planting all their food for next winter. Who's coming to visit?

La odihnă

For almost two weeks, I traveled with four other Peace Corps Volunteers to Romania, Israel, Jordan, and Egypt. Being that the temperature in Moldova has been getting down to -28 Celsius (-18 F), it was a much needed vacation to be in some warmer temperatures. The adventure beat all expectations: the food, the people, the culture, the history, the sights, and the hookahs. The people of the Middle East were some of the nicest people I've ever met, so I hope I get to return one day. Each day and each country brought us new experiences, so I'd have to write for days to describe how awesome it was. I'll let the 200 pics in the below album tell the story:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2403070&id=12606643&l=ab71b26721