O surpriza la primaria

Since summer, I have wanted to invite a non-governmental organization, Noi Perspective pentru Femei (New Perspectives for Women) to begin seminars in my village. The organization works with the disadvantaged, orphans and young women, teaching them about some of the unpleasant realities of working abroad, and building up their ability to be employed or start their own business here in Moldova. New Perspectives for Women is funded by both the Winrock Foundation and by USAID, and its funding allows it to conduct these seminars free of charge. The only thing they need before conducting a series of seminars are some statistics about the village.

That was why I went to the primaria, or mayor's office, on Monday. I spoke with the secretary, Tatiana, and asked her for the number of girls in the village aged 16-24, the total number of orphans and the approximate number of girls and young women aged 16-35 who are currently abroad. Tatiana was happy to help, but said it would take a few days; she would have to sort through the village's 12 record books for this year and calculate these statistics by hand.

"That takes a lot of time," I said. "It'll be much easier in two or three years when you have a computer in the office."

"Actually, we have one now," Tatiana said. "We bought it two weeks ago, but we haven't installed it yet."

I did a double-take that would have made a Saturday-morning cartoon character proud.

"You have a computer?" I asked, astonished. "Can I see it?"

Tatiana took me into the mayor's office and showed me the computer boxes. While I didn't plug it in to find out exact specifications, it looked promising. The computer was assembled by hand, not in a factory, and included several USB 1.1 ports, a floppy disk drive, sound and a 52x CD-ROM drive. This thing wasn't going to play Doom 3 at 100 frames per second, but it was powerful enough to crunch through Word documents, Excel spreadsheets and Access databases.

Without even thinking of how it would work into my schedule, I offered to teach all five primaria employees how to use the computer. Other volunteers, namely Brad Dakake, have had a lot of success with computer classes at the primaria. Unlike teaching the kids, these women have already seen their counterparts in other villages using computers and know that computer skills will make their jobs much easier. Mereseni is the last village in the county to get a computer, but hopefully I can help them make up for lost time.

Until then, poor Tatiana will have to count up my statistics by hand. And I'll have to wait a week.

Oaspeti noi

Last week was a new record in terms of hits to this page, so I want to send a brief message to those of you who may be finding my site for the first time.

My name is Peter Myers. I am a Peace Corps volunteer in Mereseni, a village of 2,500 people in Moldova, a former Soviet republic between Romania and Ukraine. I have taught English here for more than a year, and this year I have also become the school's computer teacher.

Please browse through the archives, as over the course of a year and a half, I have covered a wide range of topics, including daily life, transportation, language and some of the cultural frustrations and blessings I have found here.

Bine ati venit, si sper ca va plac povestile mele.

Cadre amuzante

Here are two of the funniest situations I've ever seen while walking around Chisinau:

A man and a woman, both in their late 20s, standing over an open manhole and looking down. In one of their hands is a dog leash.

A boy, not more than five years old, walking down the street at 7 p.m. with a two liter bottle of Chisinau beer in his right hand and money in his left hand.

Mesaje dintre doua autobusuri

Here is a sequence of text messages sent over the course of five hours several weeks ago, as I was traveling to Romania and another volunteer, Jess, was traveling to the Ukraine. The following is a window on the Moldovan bus experience.

November 1, 2006

Jess 18:13 I just got on the bus for Lvov and got comfy to relax and the driver, who keeps hitting on me, started blaring hora music. And wouldn't you know my seat is right under the speaker.

Me 18:28 At least your ride is short. I'm on a bus [to Bucharest] for the next 10 hours, with the exception of when I get to stand in the cold at the border.

Jess 18:33 Shut up jerk. I've got 18 hours ahead of me with a HUGE man next to me.

Me 18:35 Oh yeah. I thought "Ivov" was a strange shortening of Ialoveni. [Ialoveni is Jess's site, 15 minutes from Chisinau. Lvov is a Ukrainian city significantly farther away.] I forgot you were getting into a bad situation. Let's bitch until one of us leaves the country.

Jess 18:38 The driver keeps hitting on me. I told him I was meeting my boyfriend in Lvov and he said we could have 18 hours together. Eww!

Me 18:42 Describe the driver. If he's halfway decent, you should make out with him at a rest stop. No pressure, of course. I'll just be very disappointed if you don't.

Jess 18:45 He's tall, dark and handsome. Not overly creepy. I would make out with him but he smokes. Big turn off. I do have some altoids. Hmm...

Me 18:47 I'll give you all of my Romanian change when I get back if you take a picture of you two kissing on the lips in the driver's seat.

Jess 18:49 Interesting offer. I'll consider it. What about your driver. Is he a winner?

Me 19:05 Nope. He's a loser. Thankfully, loser drivers are only really bad after 12 hours.

Jess 19:10 True. My bus is hot and unpleasant. Like a dog's breath. There are creepy green lights that make everything have an X-Files like appearance.

Me 19:13 I have slightly creepy lights, but as I predicted, there aren't many people on the bus. I've got two seats to myself.

Jess 19:15 It's funny because our bus isn't at all full but we are all sitting in the front 15 seats. One woman tried to go sit by herself but the bus Nazi wasn't havin' it.

Me 19:17 Maybe you have to get to a second station before everyone's on the bus and you can move around. Or maybe the bus Nazi's just a real Nazi. "No comfort for you."

Jess 19:19 I think she's real. She made me salute her.

Me 19:20 Did you salute her back with the middle finger? Where's your rebellious spirit? It's time to stage a passenger revolt. Да ваи!

Jess 19:22 Why are these people always in the mood for hora music?

Me 19:27 My people are in the mood for Russian dramas with military men. It's on DVD, and it looks like there are at least eight episodes available. Thank God for my iPod.

Jess 19:30 It sounds lovely. Because of my future kissing partner's fondness for smoking, we've stopped already.

Me 19:33 After an hour? Impressive lack of endurance. He's probably not very good in bed, either. I picked a bus that goes south through Cahul, the long way to Bucharest.

Jess 19:35 Nice work. We'll see about that not good in bed thing.

[Message missing from me.]

Jess 19:39 Well honestly, who wouldn't?

Jess 19:41 I just looked at the man next to me and burped loud.

Me 19:43 That was his signal to the driver that the bidding war for make-out rights has begun. The bidding is entirely in Soviet rubles.

Jess 19:45 No need. It's a long ride and there's plenty to go around.

Me 19:50 An old lady just came from three rows back and asked me if the seat next to me was taken. Before I could respond, the middle-aged woman behind me told her it was occupied and shooed her away. Then she smiled, patted me on the arm and said, "Old people. They just want attention."

Jess 19:53 Haha! I am so jealous. Not only do you get two seats, but an army to defend them.

Me 20:10 How many times have you stopped so far to pick up packages or bags? I'm not sure if we've stopped two or three times.

Jess 20:14 We've stopped about eight times.

Me 21:01 Awesome. This Russian drama focused five minutes on a wide-angle shot of some woman and man flirting next to the pool. I'm totally lost. I'm gonna rest my eyes now.

Jess 21:12 Noapte buna.

November 2, 2006

Me 01:15 We've been at the border for almost three hours, and the Romanian guard just took our passports. Any better progress on the other border?

Jess 01:19 We've been here one hour and I think we're almost done. On the bad side, the woman in front of me just discovered her seat reclines. Real far.

Jess 01:20 How are you only at the border? I'm at the most northern border.

Me 01:23 Well it only took three and a half hours to get to Cahul, but we took an hour and a half on the Moldovan side and we're at an hour and a half hours now on the Romanian side.

Jess 01:25 Suckeroo. We were on the Moldova side all of 10 minutes.

Me 01:28 Which crossing are you at? Ocnita or Briceni or where? Romania's border is going to take longer and longer because they want to be strict and become EU.

Jess 01:30 Briceni. Darn that EU.

Me 01:33 Darn that EU indeed. Alright, since we're both at the borders and on our way out, I'll wish you a happy vacation. Don't forget to make out with the driver.

Jess 01:34 I won't. He's on break at 3. Happy trails my brotha'.

Antrenement

Although I am the co-organizer of the Peace Corps national basketball league this year, I had ruled out coaching a team for the 2007 season. Last year, I hadn't felt necessary in "practice," which was really just a scrimmage every night. I enjoyed hanging around with the kids, but in the end, I felt that they didn't care about playing in the league and that the whole experience wasn't fulfilling to me. As I approached my second school year, in which my schedule seems more packed (maybe it's teaching 50 percent more hours and also trying to learn Russian), I had given up basketball for this year.

That was before three girls from the neighboring village of Sarata Galbena showed up outside my classroom one afternoon and offered a challenge on behalf of themselves and the boys' team. Sarata Galbena had a volunteer last year, and Casey and I organized exhibition games in each village and Peace Corps league matches in Hincesti. I told Silvia, the English-speaking team manager, that I would talk to students and see if they were interested.

When I asked the ninth and 11th graders Wednesday, they responded enthusiastically and agreed to start practicing at the gym on Thursday night (when the 11th graders already had extra sports training).

I wasn't sure how to approach this new year of basketball. I didn't want it to be laid-back like last year, but I didn't want to make it too strict. Other than sports class at English camp this summer, I had never run a sports practice, especially one in my non-native language or at such an instructional level (a ninth-grade Moldovan villager is far less skilled at basketball than an average seventh-grade American). I planned it out in my head and walked to the school gym.

At 6 p.m., I lined up the 15 boys and eight girls who had come and gave a short introduction speech. I told them that the boys who played last year and graduated had played well, but not as well as they could have. They didn't play as well as they could have, I said, because they didn't want to involve other classes in the team and because instead of learning something in practice, they just scrimmaged. At one point, at a loss for words, I said in English, "They didn't do ****. They just ****ed around." Considering that the only English words a lot of these kids understand are the curse words and my best English students are girls, this may not have been the smartest or classiest choice of words, but what's done is done. The physical education teacher also took offense quickly at my description of last years' practices, saying that I was criticizing her. Granted, I chose my words poorly, but that exact moment was not when I wanted to discuss the situation.

I started the kids with a short warm-up run around the gym. The students at my school have been trained from an early age to run in straight lines, with the tallest student leading the pack and everyone following him in order of height. I yelled to my kids, "Don't wait for Iura if he's slow. If you're faster, pass him!" A few of the boys got the message and ran at their own pace.

Then I circled the kids for stretches. You'd think it was the first time they had ever stretched in their lives. Don't they see soccer players doing it on TV and wonder what the deal is? By far the best "cultural difference" moment was when I sat on the floor of the gym to lead the butterfly stretch and told the kids to sit down. Moldovans are very superstitious about sitting on the ground or the floor; according to them, it will cool your reproductive organs and make you sterile. The boys sat down rather quickly and got into the stretching position, after I told them that their balls wouldn't freeze. The girls remained standing, and the gym teacher told them they didn't have to "sit on the cold floor." Eventually, all the girls sat on the ground, but I think they remained worried.

I ran the kids through some simple dribbling skills, and they weren't bad. No one was approaching the level of an American high school basketball player, but they were better than I expected them to be.

Then I ran them through some passing drills, working only with chest passes. As I expected, they quickly reverted to the "Overhead Chuck-and-Pray" pass that populates so much of Moldovan village basketball. Something to work on.

At this point, the first boy misbehaved. He was shooting the ball and not listening while I was talking about something to the group. I told him to do five push-ups. He looked at me incredulously, but then did then. Over the course of the first hour, I handed out a good 60 push-ups to a handful of boys and one girl. One ninth-grade boy was doing lazy push-ups that made it look like he was humping the floor. I told him I didn't want to see what he did on Saturday nights at the disco; I wanted to see a good push-up.

I then demonstrated a lay-up and formed a line at each end of the court to practice shooting lay-ups. Most of the boys seemed to get it with the need of some minor adjustments. Most of the girls, however, kept stopping right under the basket, getting set, and then shooting with both hands. Once again, something to work on.

Lastly, I showed the correct form for shooting and we practiced it. The kids reverted again to the Moldovan Overhead Chuck-and-Pray. The crazy thing is that some of these kids can consistently sink shots with the Overhead Chuck-and-Pray. Nevertheless, it's a third thing to work on.

We scrimmaged for the second hour, with four four-person groups of boys and two four-person groups of girls. My basketball standards have lowered quite a bit since I was last in America, but nevertheless I was impressed by the effort, tenaciousness and sometimes even the skill that these kids showed. They seem to really enjoy the game, and that should help motivate them to learn it better. After about 40 minutes of scrimmage, the gym teacher said that the floor was too moist and slippery for the girls to play. The boys could keep playing, but it was time for the girls to go home. I asked two of the girls who were sitting on the bench next to me why the boys could play but they couldn't. They said that boys are more careful and tougher, so they were less likely to fall and wouldn't cry if they did. I told one of them, Nadia, that I had cried when I broke my knee playing sports, and then I asked her if she had cried every time she had fallen in her life, to which she responded no.

"So saying that girls can't play now but boys can is just talk, not fact," I said. The statement amused her, perhaps doubly so because she had been to English camp and had seen me treat girls no differently from boys during sports classes.

I'm going to train these kids for a December match against Sarata Galbena, and we'll see what happens after that. Maybe they'll want to join the Peace Corps league this year, maybe not. Either way, I'm thankful that the time that I spend with them is a chance for me to know and appreciate my older students in a way that I can't during school hours. Boys who don't seem to enjoy my English or computer classes are more comfortable talking to me during basketball practice, and that comfort translates to the classroom as well. I know for a fact, however, that with my two hours of computer class, one optional English class and four hours of basketball a week with the 11th grade, I will have a much closer and meaningful relationship with them than I did with last year's 11th grade. At the very least, I already know all of their names.

Bagaje in rutiera

Rutieras suck. They're cramped. They're either too hot or too cold. And most of the time when I'm on one, I have one or two bags with me. So here's the dilemma: where do I put my bags?

It's simple enough when I have a seat and only one bag. Sometimes on an inter-city rutiera, there's even room on the seat next to me for a second bag. More often than not, though, I have to put my second bag in the front of the van, next to the driver. In a crowded rutiera, I have almost no ability to keep visual contact with my bag, so I merely have to trust that the driver knows it's mine, that everyone on the rutiera is either a good person or afraid of getting caught, and that no one on the rutiera realizes that it's an American's bag. Sometimes the bag I leave in front has my clothes and medications. Sometimes it has my iPod. Sometimes it has my laptop. Sometimes it has my camcorder. The only way for me to check that no one is walking away with $2,000 worth of gear is by sitting on the right side of the rutiera and looking out the window at people as they get out of the van.

After living more than a year in Moldova, I don't even think twice about it. Even when I have something expensive, who among the strangers on the rutiera with me know what's in the bag? I make it a point not to show any signs of wealth (like listening to an iPod or speaking English) while traveling, so why would they think I had anything other than clothes?

I still remember the first public bus ride I took in Moldova, traveling about 10 km from Ialoveni to Costesti. I was returning to Costesti, my training village in summer 2005, with several volunteers and some of our host mothers, and had gotten on a bus with no more seats left. We crammed ourselves in, and I took off my backpack in order both to make room for other people and to make sure no one would steal from me. It was then that I heard my name. Gheorghe, a teenage neighbor of mine with whom I had only talked once before, was sitting in a seat near me, and he offered to hold my bag. I was hesitant to give my backpack to a boy whom I barely knew in a country whose customs I was just starting to learn. Would he expect some money for holding my bag? Would he maybe not give it back at all? Despite my reluctance, I handed the bag to Gheorghe, smiled, and thanked him. I told another volunteer standing next to me to keep an eye on Gheorghe, and he too was worried that I had given my bag to a practical stranger a little too quickly. Ten minutes later, the ride was over, and Gheorghe gave me back my bag, leaving me to feel stupid for not having trusted him.

I had no reason not to trust Gheorghe, and I have since trusted a handful of other Moldovans, perfect strangers, who have offered to hold my bag when I'm standing. Rutieras in Moldova, after all, are improvised communities in which people help each other. Passengers lucky enough to have seats often offer not only to hold standing passengers' bags, but even their children. I can't imagine getting in a van and standing while my two-year-old child sat on a stranger's lap, but I can't count the number of times I've seen trusting Moldovan mothers pass their children to anyone sitting in the first two rows.

It's refreshing to see an environment where trust, rather than the typical American suspicion, is the first instinct. And while I won't leave any future children of mine with a perfect stranger, I have no problem with having those same strangers hold a bag full of my most expensive possessions.

Borat

I'm eagerly awaiting a bootleg copy of the Borat movie. We Peace Corps volunteers appreciate it on a much different level than most Americans, since this is stuff we see every day. Obviously, Borat is highly highly highly exaggerated; I'm not saying any Moldovan thinks women have smaller brains than men, nor is Moldova an incestuous breeding ground that prides itself on its prostitutes, as is Borat's version of Kazakhstan. But the little things, like how Borat will shake every man's hand in the room and kiss him on the cheeks and not even acknowledge the women in the room, or how Borat offers his driving instructor a drink, or how his suitcase falls open on the subway to let several chickens loose, remind me of things that I see in Moldova nearly every day.

Borat's "Kazakh village" was in fact filmed in Romania, so it was fun to watch the first four minutes of the film on YouTube and know what all these villagers were saying to Borat. His "wife," Oxana, didn't say what the sub-titles say, but she did say some incredibly dirty stuff.

When I was in Bucharest the other day, I talked to a college student who said she was ashamed that Borat filmed in her country. This is one of the problems with the Borat character: he's picked an easy target. American audiences are bound to laugh at how "strange" traditions are in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, but they easily forget that some of the backward views held by Borat were widely held in America as little as 50 years ago, and are held by some in America even today. Sascha Baron Cohen has the chance to take his characters into the realm that Andy Kaufman did with his, but right now there is a major difference; Kaufman didn't think twice about insulting and offending his audience, whereas Baron Cohen plays it safe and exploits people that few Americans will ever come into contact with.

So yes, I think Borat has a step or two to go developmentally before he reaches comic genius. But without a doubt, the movie is funny, and I, along with practically every volunteer I talk to in Moldova, can't wait to see more than what we've caught on YouTube.

Yakshymash.

P.S. Borat's usage of the Cyrillic alphabet has no connection with the actual usage of the letters. I was very disappointed when I knew the alphabet well enough to realize it was all a sham. Not even the spelling of Borat's name on posters is correct. The Cyrillic letter used in place of an "A" is in fact a Cyrillic "D".