Locuri nu mai sunt

I returned Friday from a full week of traveling and celebration during our week-long Easter vacation. It came complete with visitors in Mereseni (thanks Leigh and Shie), a trip up to the northern city of Falesti (thanks Levi, Priya and Mark), conversations with two amazing Moldovans who really have their acts together (thanks Irina and Sergiu), an evening in the city of Ialoveni (thanks Jess and her host family), some early birthday presents (thanks to my entire extended family), Shie's birthday party in Chisinau, bowling, the final tournament for the Peace Corps basketball league and the Russian card game дурак (durak).

It'll take me a long time to digest everything that happened this week, but first I want to write about something that happened on the way back from Chisinau yesterday evening.

I arrived at Chisinau's South Station at about 5:50 p.m. and began snooping around for a ride. A rutiera to Cahul looked like a safe bet, since it passes through my village, Mereseni, on its way south. I asked the driver what time he was leaving.

"In five minutes," he said. "Where are you going?"

"Mereseni," I said. "Do I need to buy a ticket?" This is a common question, since rutiera drivers sometimes don't want you to buy a ticket if you're not going the entire distance. It rarely costs more than buying the ticket at the proper location in the station, at
least for such a short distance as to Mereseni.

"To Mereseni? There's no room," he said. The driver, dressed completely in black and sporting a very short buzz cut, wrap-around sunglasses and an earring, went back about his business.

"What?" I asked. I peered through the side window. No one was sitting in the back row. Maybe he was holding seats for passengers willing to pay all the way to Cahul, so I asked him, "Not even standing?"

"No, not even standing," he replied. This driver was breaking the cardinal rule of rutiera capacity, enshrined in the joke:

Question: "How many people can fit in a rutiera?"
Answer: "One more."

So here was this bald guy with an earring telling me that there was no room, when his national culture clearly states that there is always more room. I had never had a problem like this before.

"There's a bus over there for Cahul. Try that," the driver said, not sounding as if he gave a damn about my situation.

"Well when does he leave?"

"I don't know. Ask him."

I walked 40 feet over to the bus, which was empty and not even in a loading area, and asked the driver when he was leaving. Seven o'clock. Great. An hour's wait. I returned to Baldy in Black, who, come to think of it, was the same driver who hadn't picked me up on the side of the road in Mereseni the day before. I told him that the bus didn't leave for another hour and once again asked him to let me on.

"There's no room," he said. He was accompanied now by a middle-aged lady who was checking his paperwork and writing down how many
passengers had bought tickets for this rutiera.

"Let me on," I said again, sensing how pathetic I was sounding with every repetition.

The paperwork lady butted in. "He can't take you to Mereseni. This is an express."

"Since when is anything in this &%$#!@#& country a #$&%@# express?" I screamed. Well, I screamed it in my head. To the outside observer, I just looked really angry for a few seconds, followed by a much longer period of being sad. I stood outside and Baldy in Black drove off
with my best chance to get home quickly.

I walked over to the next driver heading to Cahul, who said he was leaving in 20 minutes. I stood by his rutiera until he turned to me again and said, "Auzi?" which, although technically a question, is the Romanian equivalent of, "Listen up, buddy."

"The driver's down on the street," he said. "He's waiting for you. Run."

I turned to the street, about 100 feet away, and saw that the rutiera was indeed stopped on the side of the road and was taking passengers. I ran to it and climbed in.

Baldy turned to me and said, "Sorry I had to be such a jerk over there, but the paperwork lady would have killed me if I had taken you." Just kidding. Baldy said nothing. I was simply expected to have understood the situation, and I shouldn't have made so much noise at the station. I paid my 10 lei, and he folded my bill and fastened it with a paperclip to his documentation.

Five minutes later, as we were leaving Chisinau, the driver stopped. He got out of the rutiera, holding his paperwork in his hand. He ran out to meet the police officer who had stopped him and gave the cop the paperwork. The cop took the 10 lei bill that had been paperclipped to the documentation, handed the paperwork back to the driver, and sent us on our way.

When Moldovans and foreigners alike complain about corruption in this country, this is just one of many items on their list. But in this particular situation, it seems that the corruption was caused by the transit laws. If I had been able to buy a ticket for this so-called express rutiera, I wouldn't have had to travel illegally. If I, and others who were picked up on the side of the road, hadn't had to travel illegally, the driver could have shown the policeman correct paperwork and wouldn't have had to pay a bribe. If the police continued to check cars and saw only clean paperwork, they would stop needlessly checking the cars in expectation of a pay-off. Like in so many instances in which corruption takes place, if you make something easier to do legally than illegally, people will do it the legal way, and you will have one less instance of corruption in your country.

Cu internetul vine viitorul

Moldtelecom, the telecommunications monopoly in Moldova, has expanded broadband DSL internet access. It is now available in everyВ raion (county) hub, and an offer for the next month and a half includes free connection and equipment. The prices are as follows:

For unlimited 64 kilobits per second (kbps) access: 240 lei, or $18.50, per month.

For unlimited 128 kbps access: 360 lei, or $27.75, per month.

For unlimited 192 kbps access: 480 lei, or $37.00, per month.

By comparison, a dial-up connection is promised at 56 kbps but usually connects at 51 kbps (in the U.S. as well). A usual cable modem or DSL connection in America costs $40 and connects at 256 or 384 kbps.

This connectivity is still expensive, but it's a step in the right direction. I have privately vacillated in the past year about how much of a difference computers and the internet make in a developing country. Lately, I have become bullish again. The internet is the only window to the rest of the world that isn't programmed by a government television company, which is one reason why Val Popovici runs his Romanian-language news blog, as linked to on the right side of this page. It is also, as I am currently reading in Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat, a way for individuals and businesses in the developing world to connect with industrialized nations, their businesses and their universities.

From the stories that I read, it seems to me that Ukraine is a country that grasps the importance of technology and is on its way to becoming the next India. They are improving their infrastructure and have a large talent pool of young people with computer skills. Businesses are setting up operations there.

In contrast, Moldova doesn't seem to get it. Why, for example, are computer classes taught only beginning in seventh grade, and then only for one day a week? The average American or Western-European middle schooler has an instant messenger screen name, a blog and a MySpace account; the vast majority of Moldovan university students have never used e-mail. These computer skills, along with the international language of business, English, are absolutely vital for Moldova to move higher in the world. Why are they not receiving these computer skills?

As for Mereseni and other villages, DSL isn't here yet. But considering that dial-up internet in people's homes was a relatively new development in Moldova when I arrived less than a year ago and raionВ hubs already have DSL connectivity now, it seems possible that DSL could travel the six km from our hub of Hincesti to Mereseni over the course of the next year. If that happens while I am still in the country, I will be running around like crazy trying to find a private group of investors to fund a four-computer internet cafe in the village sharing a DSL connection.

Until then, I will have to be satisfied with the beginners' computer lessons that I will be giving teachers at my school after Easter vacation (Orthodox Easter is on the 23rd this year, and a one-week vacation follows). Lesson one? How to turn the computer on and how to use a mouse. It's just like when I taught my grandmothers how to use computers, except they spoke English. It can't be too hard, though. After all, the Romanian word for "click" is lifted directly from English, so I can still say, "Click pe acela," and not get lost in the translation. I figure that if Moldovans can understand the word "click," then using a computer, surfing the internet, and catching up with the rest of the world are just a few more clicks away.

La Fizica

On a whim today, I sat in on a 10th-grade physics class. A few
impressions:

1. I hadn't been in science class since I dropped AP biology two
weeks into my senior year of high school. That was nearly six years ago.

2. Class was taught in much the same way as I envision it in 1970s America. Grigore Fyodorovici, the physics teacher who should have
retired years ago but has no replacement in the village, knew his
material and explained it clearly enough that even I understood it.
He slowed down to ask questions, and at least a few students were
responsive to him.

3. The teacher stopped himself several times in the middle of class to retrieve visual aids from the back room. Today's lesson was about electrical circuits, so he had a transistor radio. Later, he
picked up a transistor to show the measurements written on it in ВµF (if I had taken electrical physics instead of mechanical physics, I would remember what unit of measurement this was).

4. Today there were only six students in the class of 16, and all
of them were girls. All of the boys had cut class. Grigore
Fyodorovici lamented to me after school about the fact that no boys
came, because "they're the ones who really need physics." Girls don't
need physics, he reasoned, because most of them will go into
languages or history. Boys aren't as good at learning languages, but
they are very good at math and science. I pointed out that my host
mother in Costesti worked in a science lab. He conceded that yes,
girls need science, too, because "in the kitchen, there are so many
electrical appliances. Or if they're ironing and they don't know how
to be safe about it, they could electrocute themselves or ruin the
table." If Lawrence Summers looking for a new school, he would be
welcomed as president of Chisinau State University.

5. I only saw one lesson today, so I couldn't gauge whether science classes in Moldova performed a lot of hands-on experiments. I remember that in all of high school, physics was the most difficult for me to grasp, with the exception of metal shop and computer-aided design classes, which were my lowest grades in high school. What
helped me understand physics were experiments and demonstrations. We had lab tables set up with computers and sensors, and we seemed to perform an experiment every other lesson. But today, I didn't see the room set up for experiments; the desks were in rows instead of in work groups, there were no scientific apparatuses in sight, and there were definitely no computers. Once again, I have no way of knowing after watching one lesson how often these students perform experiments, but it didn't look like that was a focus for the classroom.

So my observations today weren't shining, nor were they condemnatory. You can't make conclusions about the entire curriculum after seeing one under-attended class. Remember, this is part of the same country that launched Sputnik, so they have a history of teaching science well. Even if it is "more for the boys."

Journal Entries

In the past, I've shown some examples of poorly written or obviously copied journal entries. Today, I thought I'd treat you to some writing from my best student, a seventh-grade girl. Keep in mind that in the second entry, she was much more worried about getting her thoughts down than about her spelling and grammar. No matter what, it's good writing that's several steps ahead of most seventh graders' writing, especially in a foreign language.

April 2nd, 2006

I don't think I have many enemys. I know that some person don't like me, but I prefer to not observe that. I never hate anyone and when someone annoy me, that pass. Sometimes I feel me indifferent by all that.

April 4th, 2006

I never felt me so bad like today. It was the worst day in my life. I quarreld with all my frieds. I told them terrible things. That was the true. I'm not sorry at all. I think is time to change something in my live. Now I'm surprise why I don't saw the reality by long time ago.

April 7th, 2006

In this week I learned a lot of things for life: accepte the true. Many times I told what someone want to hear and my smile was false. Accept it, even that hurt.

Those who have tried to express their feelings in a foreign language know that it is difficult, especially for a 13 year old who has only three lessons a week and whose teacher has to spread attention equally throughout the class. Students like her and the potential they have are the biggest reasons I stay in Moldova. They're also the prime audience for my newest project idea. But more on that in the next day or two.

Vinul Nostru

Nearly a quarter of Moldova's gross domestic product is based in agriculture, and agricultural workers comprise 40 percent of the labor force, according to the CIA World Fact Book. Wine alone constitutes about $300 million in sales, according to Moldova's wine export association. Eighty percent of this, approximately $250 million worth of wine, is shipped to Russia. This sets up a possibly disastrous scenario: What happens when the Russian government decides to no longer accept Moldovan wine?

That's the exact situation in which Moldova, as well as Georgia, has found itself since April 1. The crackdown has come from Gennady Onishchenko, Russia's chief epidemiologist, claiming that Moldovan and Georgian wines contain traces of pesticides that make them unsafe for Russian consumption. Wine imports were stopped, leaving millions of bottles of wine to sit in Moldovan and Georgian cellars.

A few choice quotes from the Associated Press article:

The National Union of Wine and Spirits Producers and Distributors said its analyses showed no dangerous substances in imports from either country and threatened a lawsuit against regulators.

"We don't want to be hostages to political intrigues," said Vadim Drobiz, a spokesman for the Russian industry group.

Elsewhere in the article:

- "Of course you need sanitary rules. Everyone has them: France, Italy. But to ban all wines from one country like this? It's absurd. It's a fraud," restaurant manager Maria Markoziya said.

I have waited to comment on this for the past two weeks, because I try to keep this blog full of mostly first-hand experiences. But in order to understand why so many Moldovans feel that Russia is simply
too powerful to escape from, this story is essential.

The popular opinion of anyone outside the Russian government is that this is a political punishment, similar to state-owned GAZPROM shutting off the natural gas pipeline to Ukraine in January and Moldovans being required to pay American-level prices at the pump instead of the rock-bottom rates that more "loyal" CIS countries pay. I don't know the Georgian political situation, but this announcement follows Moldova's renewed efforts in February and March to negotiate with the break-away Transnistrian government. The Transnistrian government is held in power in large part by the Russian military.
Another article, this one on Moldova Azi, says that wines and cognacs from Transnistria "remain on the shelves of the Russian shops." This continues the long history of Russian political subtlety that began when Khrushchev banged his shoe on a desk at the United Nations and
yelled, "We will bury you!"

Thankfully, the Russian punishment does not seem to have made the desired effect; Moldovan president Vladimir Voronin says that the country needs to find more diverse markets for its wine in order to avoid another such economic hardship, according to a separate Moldova Azi article. Instead of succumbing to Russia's threats, Voronin sees the situation as "an original form of political education, and [Moldova] can draw the moral from this."

The Moldovan and Georgian governments are suing Russia in order to re-impose trade connections. Voronin and Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili are both in China this week, hoping the Chinese will help the situation.

The impositions with which Russia bullies its former partner states show how strong Russia still is; but reactions like Moldova's and Georgia's show how much weaker Russian international authority is becoming every day.

O Fata Gravida

The dreaded three bells rang. It was time for a faculty meeting.

Faculty meetings never occur before or after school. They happen during the school's 10-minute break periods, and they always run over. That leaves the students, without supervision, to run wild in the classrooms and hallways for 15 minutes or more, and it leaves teachers with even fewer minutes of class than the already insufficient 45. This was why when I heard the three bells before class with my favorite grade level, I cursed out loud. Luckily, no impressionable children or parrots were in my classroom.

Three minutes later, our director came in and we all seated ourselves in the teachers' lounge around the wooden tables. Even more teachers were standing, leaning against the windows. By this point in their careers, all of the teachers, even the younger ones, practically have their spots reserved.

Doamna Maria, the school director, rarely has anything mind-blowing to bring to our attention; usually it's just the mundane details of running a school. That's why I was surprised to hear the first words out of her mouth:

"We've had to expel a ninth-grade student because she is pregnant."

The girl was named, and the faculty clucked in unison. Doamna Elena, the gym teacher, had a notably sour look on her face as she stood near the doorway in a blue track suit with her arms crossed and her knees shoulder-width apart.

Although the girl is in ninth grade, she isn't a 14 year old like in the U.S. I believe my director said she is 17, but that seems way too old to me, so she may only be 16. Evidently, the lucky guy is also from Mereseni and has been living with the girl's family for a short while. Whether the pregnancy was planned or not was not brought up in our meeting, but since 16 is the age of consent for sex and marriage in Moldova, I can't see why this would be too surprising for my fellow teachers.

At this point, Doamna Galina, the old rotund librarian with her requisite babaВ mole, asked me if we had pre-schools in America. This seemed like a strange question to ask me at this time, which made me question whether I had understood the context. I said yes, but was shushed by another teacher before I could clarify. Two minutes later, the topic came up for the entire room.

"They have preschools in America," Galina said to everyone. "Peter said so. Isn't that right, Peter? Students just drop their kids off at preschool and then go to school? I read about it."

"Well, it's not exactly like that," was the best I could muster. "But we don't kick them out of school if a girl has a problem."

I can't stress that wonderful Moldovan law enough: If you're pregnant, you're kicked out of school. That's it. Doesn't matter how much potential the girl has. Doesn't matter if the grandparents are home and can watch over the kid once it's born. Your education is over.

No matter whether or not this law changes in the future, it won't help this particular girl. What interested me was the reaction of my co-workers, mostly middle-aged women.

My director told us she was planning to focus on the subject at tomorrow's assembly with students from fifth through 11th grade. The emphasis would be telling girls that they should stay away from boys and not engage in "this kind of behavior". Other teachers agreed with this idea, saying that they see some of the eighth grade girls at dances hugging the boys. I turned backward to look at my fellow English teachers, the youngest in the school beside me. Both of them were smiling, and Sveta, 25, was doing her best not to crack up.

"Oh no, hugging!" she said in Romanian, audible only in our young corner of the room.

I responded in English, "It's a generational gap." They both smiled even a little more.

Meanwhile, the room was still wondering how to save their female students from boys (note the assumption that boys are simple-minded beasts trying to corrupt these innocent girls). Doamna Eugenia, in her 60s but with an open mind that eludes many of her younger colleagues, mentioned that saying it at an assembly was not enough. This topic needed to be brought up in a smaller classroom environment, where it could be discussed. I seconded that idea.

"I think it would be better not to even mention it at the assembly," I said, although my Romanian was faltering because I wasn't sure what I was trying to say, even in English. "If a child hears something and has a question about it, he or she isn't going to ask it in the middle of an assembly with 150 kids around. It's something that needs to be done in small groups, where kids can ask questions."

I couldn't get a good sense of how well my suggestion was heeded, but at least I said my piece. Soon afterward, the meeting ended, already five minutes into class time. As I walked out, I turned to Sveta and said in English, "Just show them STDs. Tell them they'll get pregnant. Then show them how to use a condom. Done." I then repeated my earlier refrain, "It's a generational gap."

Out in the hall, I noticed who the first four people out of the room were: Sveta; Aliona, the third English teacher; Doamna Larisa, the life skills teacher in her early 40s, and me. We were the only people who knew that giving kids facts works better than just telling them no.

This incident has pushed me to do some things for which I had not previously seen a need in my community:

First, I need to make myself available for support to my students, even though my oldest students this year are only in eighth grade. Especially in a village, where everyone knows one another and one another's parents, kids don't have a person to turn to when they have a question about sex and relationships. Can you imagine being 14 and asking one of your teachers about sex? It's hard enough in America, let alone in a village where your teachers grew up with your parents and in a country where any talk about sex and condoms is taboo. In this sense, Peace Corps volunteers are one of the best resources for this kind of talk. We are strangers in the village, so our loyalty lies with the kids, not the kids' parents. We come from a culture where these topics are discussed relatively freely and where students are informed about these things starting in middle school, or even younger. We might also appear safer for the kids, since after we leave in two years, no one in the village will know what the kid's question or situation was.

But merely keeping an open door is not enough, as I realized today. I want to organize some sort of health seminar with the school's life skills teacher discussing the physical and emotional consequences of having sex at an early age, especially unprotected sex. Hopefully, Doamna Larisa will be willing to work with me on this; maybe I can pay her in the poker lessons she wanted.

Situations like that of this ninth grade girl do not go away by ignoring them. They need to be discussed, and today I realized that I need to break the ice.