Vacanta

I'll be on vacation from June 1st through 20th, so I'll probably be posting here less often, if at all. I'm trying to get a couple other volunteers to write about Moldova on this blog while I'm gone, but I don't know if anyone is interested.

Wish me luck as I travel in Romania, the Czech Republic and England and visit my sister and friends from both high school and college. With the exception of starting the trip on a 13-hour bus ride, I can't wait.

Ultimul Sunet

Today was the last day of school in Moldova. The morning's Last Bell ceremony was very similar to the First Bell ceremony from September 1st, although there was no speech from yours truly this time around. Instead, I worked like a regular teacher, collecting overdue library books and late fees for the English library, shushing talkative students during the assembly and talent-show like contests afterward, passing out boxes of chocolate and cookies to each class and dancing with the fifth graders after the ceremony.

My first year of teaching is over, and now I know how not to teach. Nevertheless, I will look back at this year thinking of the successes and lessons learned and all the kids who brightened (and every once in a while clouded) my day.

With that in mind, I've posted some new pictures on Flickr, both of today's ceremony and of the earthquake drill we had at the school two weeks ago. As you can tell by the pictures, they take the earthquake simulation a little further than we do in California, including purposely leaving children behind with fake injuries so that students acting as medics can "rescue" them. At the end of the pictures are photos of each of my classes from this year.

La revedere scoala, si bine ai venit, vara!

Putin de Shakespeare

"O thou invisible spirit of wine, if thou hast no name to be known by, let us call thee devil!"
- Cassio in Shakespeare's Othello, II.3.287-8

"Come, come, good wine is a good familiar creature if it be well used. Exclaim no more against it."
- Iago, II.3.313-4

I think Moldovans would tend to side with Iago in this argument. Moldovans are also just as likely as Iago to say racist things about black people. Moldovans say it out of ignorance; Iago says it because of jealousy and a racist inferiority complex.

I guess the similarities between Iago and Moldovans stop after the wine.

Mozart face baiateli mai destepti

Olesia, my host brother's wife, is visiting our house with their six-week-old son, Gabriel. Diana, my 19-year-old host sister, turns on some Russian pop radio in order to soothe him into sleep. Quickly, I grab my Mozart compilation out of my CD collection and say, "This is much better for babies than that noise." She says I can put it in the stereo system, and I do.

Why do I feel like an old man telling a 19-year-old girl to stop listening to that no-good junk she calls music and stick to the good stuff? Because that's what I'm actually saying. Someone's got to save the kid's ears. Plus, doesn't Mozart make babies smarter?

Si in locul al-109-lea in lume, Republica Moldova

Some recent research on the number of internet users worldwide brought me to this ClickZ Stats web site that not only lists the estimated worldwide internet population at 1.08 billion in 2005, but also lists the population and number of internet users for 215 countries, using data from the Central Intelligence Agency's World Factbook.

Seeing this web page, I began asking myself a couple questions. First, how connected is Moldova? Where does Moldova's internet connectivity rank in the world? In the region? In the Commonwealth of Independent States? Among countries with Peace Corps volunteers?

I downloaded the web page and formatted it into an Excel spreadsheet. Then I began to play. The best determining factor of internet connectivity, I judged, was number of users per capita. I created a field in the spreadsheet to calculate the number of internet users per 10,000 people in each country. The spreadsheet contains the data for 215 countries (10 more countries are listed with only population data, and Lithuania is completely missing from the chart). Out of these 215 countries, Moldova ranks 119th with an internet connection rate of 908 internet users per 10,000 people.

Obviously, this 9 percent connection rate pales in comparison to ninth-ranked United States (6,830 users per 10,000 people) and top-ranked New Zealand (7,843 users per 10,000 people). It is also below the world average of 1,557 users per 10,000. Among European countries (including Russia and Turkey), Moldova ranks 43rd out of 47. But how does it fare among CIS countries and Peace Corps countries?

Out of 14 CIS countries (Lithuania data, as previouslyl noted, was not listed), Moldova placed sixth. Estonia and Latvia blew away the competition with connection rates of 51 percent and 36 percent, respectively, and I assume that Lithuania's access rate is similar to those of its Baltic neighbors. We can assume that with Lithuania included, Moldova would drop to seventh out of 15, which is rather respectable. The Central Asian countries were deplorable; if you're reading this blog from Tajikistan, you're not quite one in a million, but you're at least seven in 10,000.



The final comparison I made was among Peace Corps nations. Moldovan Peace Corps volunteers often hear that, in relation to volunteers in other countries, we're pretty well connected. The statistics I analyzed bore that out, as Moldova placed 17th out of 70 countries (no data was available for the small island nation of Palau). It's nice know that, at least in terms of internet access, I'm much closer to Jamaica (3,877 per 10,000) than to East Timor (nine per 10,000).

I am making my spreadsheet available for anyone who wants to work with it and analyze the rankings more closely. I began placing a continent tag on each country, since there are interesting ways to analyze this data continent by continent. My current continent tagging is rudimentary, and if I were to work any further on it, I would create separate tags for the Middle East, the West Indies and the Pacific Islands. As it stands, countries in these sections of the world are simply placed in Asia, North America or Asia, respectively.

So best of luck to anyone who wants to play around with this data. Whatever you do with it, keep me posted via e-mail; because I'm in Moldova and not Liberia (three users per 10,000 people), I'm 300 times more likely to receive your e-mails.

La Multi Ani

A year ago, I threw a party in my Boston apartment for about 50 people to celebrate my birthday, my friends' graduation from Boston University and the rapidly approaching beginning of my Peace Corps service in some far-off country called Moldova. Pizza and cake were eaten. Alcoholic beverages were served by me, my roommate and any other friend who wanted to take a turn behind our apartment bar. A Russian acquaintance of mine (who informed me he was already in double-digits for shots of vodka that evening) advised me that Moldovans were bad people and that I would be robbed there every day.

That was just a year ago.

Last Friday, May 12th, I celebrated my 23rd birthday and my first in Moldova. Of all the Moldovan traditions, birthdays are possibly my least favorite. No matter what, whether it's for a 70-year-old man or a 13-year-old girl?and I've been to both?a Moldovan birthday party comprises a bunch of people sitting around a table, eating only half of a feast that the birthday woman or the birthday man's wife has spent two days preparing. The Moldovan social pressures of drinking come out in full force, and unless you drove to the party, you are obligated to drink more than you want. At about half of the birthday parties I've been to, people have danced.

Birthdays are even worse at my school where I teach. Every teacher feels compelled to cancel the sixth class of the day and drag his or her colleagues into the faculty lunch room, where I have no choice but to sit, eat, drink and listen to all of the middle-aged women I work with talk about people in the village whom I don't know. It's a waste of my time, especially since I'd much rather be teaching my students.

This was why, weeks before my birthday, I told my host mother, Maria, that I didn't want to do anything at the school. I just wanted to invite the 10 teachers with whom I converse regularly (about half of the faculty) to our house for a few hours one evening. We would serve the traditional Moldovan fare, along with some wine and champagne. Maria said that would be fine and said that she would prepare the food.

The day was approaching. On Wednesday, Maria gave her husband, Dumitru, a list of groceries that he needed to buy in Hincesti, the county seat. They included pork, chicken, all kinds of vegetables, fish, and all sorts of other foods that I can't remember now. I gave Dumitru 400 lei ($30) for everything and left for school.

When I returned, the food filled the kitchen. Dumitru had overspent by 160 lei and had borrowed money from a friend. I gave the family another 200 lei, bringing my total to $46. That means that I spent over a sixth of my monthly salary on food for my birthday party.

Maria and my host sister, Diana, cooked all day on Thursday, fitting it around their other chores. I invited a couple of the teachers on my list, asking them not to talk about it with others, because I wasn't inviting everyone and I didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings. Of course, since I don't know the Romanian phrase for "hurt anyone's feelings," the message was simply, "Don't tell other people because it's a secret."

I left for school Friday morning, with Maria and Diana toiling away in the kitchen. I invited my vice-principal and the school's secretary to my house after the evening's meeting of the Parent-Teacher Association (more on this in another entry). Violeta and Maria revolted, telling me that they didn't feel comfortable going to my host family's house and that very few of the teachers would want to go. They insisted that I celebrate my birthday at the school after the PTA meeting. I said that would be fine, and I called home to tell Maria.

When I went to the PTA meeting that evening, I brought a backpack full of wine, champagne and water. During the meeting, Maria and Diana came into the school's back entrance with the food and set out the masa. As the meeting closed, I grabbed as many teachers as I could, as well as the mayor, and invited them to my party. We went into the faculty cafeteria, a narrow room with several tables set out end-to-end, able to seat 20 people. Every inch of the table was covered with plates of food.

My principal, Maria (do you see the naming trend in Moldova?) was the first to present me with a gift, a green decorative knitting of a face with a long, flowing beard. It's a great gift because it's prototypically Moldovan, it has masculine colors that I can proudly display in my room and it looks like an ent from the Lord of the Rings trilogy. A few other teachers gave me flowers and kisses on the cheek.

Slightly overcome with emotion, I wasn't overly articulate:

"Ce pot sa spun? Va multumesc tutoror. Sincer, eu nu am cuvinte acum. Nici nu am bauturi, pentru ca le-am uitat la mine in cabinet. Acus."

"What can I say? Thank you all. Honestly, I don't have any words right now. Nor do I have drinks, since I forgot them in my classroom. One second."

And with that, I left. Three minutes later, I was pouring champagne, although it wasn't a big drinking crowd because Saturday was a make-up school day. It was a Moldovan birthday party, complete with several uncomfortable silences. And although I would have liked it, there was no dancing.

The next day at a faculty meeting, I wanted to apologize to one of the teachers with whom I talk most, Doamna Ecaterina, because I hadn't seen her the night before to invite her. Ecaterina is one of the Romanian teachers at the school, the mother of my best student and the diriginte of one of my worst classes (a diriginte is a sort of homeroom teacher that stays with the same class throughout their years at the school). Because our classrooms are next to one another and three of her students are flunking my class, we have had plenty of occasions to talk. I wanted her to be at my birthday, but simply hadn't seen her after the meeting ended.

"I'm sorry I couldn't find you to invite you to my birthday last night," I said as I sat down next to her.

"It's not a problem," she said. Then she leaned toward me and said in a hushed voice, "I heard it was a secret invitation."

"No!" I denied in a loud voice, showing that I had nothing to hide. I wanted to explain the entire situation to her, but then my principal began talking, cutting short my attempt to mollify her. My American attempt to have a smaller party restricted to the people who I know had backfired; now one of the people I wanted to invite thought that I didn't think highly enough of her to invite her.

There's a lesson to be learned here: In Moldova, and especially in a village, you either celebrate the Moldovan way or not at all. If you're going to celebrate your birthday, you must have a feast at the school and you must invite everyone. You must make your host family slave away in the kitchen for two days and you must spend a ridiculous amount of money. If you're not going to play by their rules, then just don't do it.

This weekend I'll be celebrating my birthday with Americans in Chisinau. My apartment will be rented by the day instead of the month and I won't serve my guests from behind my own bar. But in an apartment full of Americans in their 20s, it'll feel much more like my 22nd birthday, before Moldova changed my definition of what a birthday is supposed to be.

Vocile Succesului

This blog has not only provided me with a place to comment on Moldova and on Peace Corps service, but also a way to meet and communicate with some very impressive Moldovans who find me online. Conversation builds from a first e-mail or blog comment, and soon we are regularly checking each others' blogs, sending e-mails or meeting face-to-face.

Such has been the case with Irina Nicorici, a professor at the State Institute of International Relations. She was directed to my blog by a Fulbright scholar, Chris Grant, and she e-mailed me asking if I could write for a publication her students were compiling. I declined, but passed her the names of some other interested volunteers, all of whom wrote in the newsletter. From that point, she has helped me in planning a sexual education seminar and in organizing my new project, "Vocile Succesului," or "The Voices of Success".

The premise for Voices of Success is simple; Moldovan children, especially in the village, have few good role models in terms of career success. In the village of Mereseni, there are, by many villagers' estimates, fewer than 10 people in their 20s and 30s who were born in Mereseni and now have a good career. The majority of adults work in a job that doesn't pay enough for most of the year and often go to Russia, Italy or Spain to do manual labor that pays better than their Moldovan jobs. The majority of kids in my school have a relative working abroad. Even Mereseni's school director left to work a better-paying job in Italy. When the adult that school children are supposed to most revere leaves her job because she'll make more money cleaning houses in Italy, the system is profoundly out of whack.

Children who see this broken labor situation will emulate it in the future because it is what they perceive as normal. The goal of Voices of Success is to have the children meet people who were born in villages and are on solid career tracks. Any profession will do: economists, businessmen, doctors or, in the case of Irina Nicorici, university professors.

Irina was born in the northern village of Drochia and has participated in many national and international programs, including America's FLEX program, which sponsors students from the former U.S.S.R. to study for one year in an American high school. She came to the school Wednesday with a small entourage: two of her students, named Irina and Alina; Fulbright scholar Ryan Kennedy and his wife, Allison. With the exception of Irina Nicorici, this was the first time anyone in the group had been to a Romanian-speaking village, and for Ryan and Allison, it was the first time since they had arrived in Moldova a month ago that they had been outside of Chisinau. Needless to say, they had a lot of questions for me about village life, and Irina told me that her students were "freaking out a little" about being in a village where Russian was not the first language. I told them that not all of the students understood Russian that well, so they should try to do the majority in Romanian. Irina assured me that her students, who are, after all, linguists, would be up to the task.

We started our assembly at 1:15, when the approximately 200 students from grades 5-11 piled into the cafeteria/auditorium. I gave a brief introduction, then handed the reins to Irina and her posse.

Irina began by telling a Moldovan folktale about a boy who sat under a cherry tree one day. The boy wanted to eat some cherries (visine, for those concerned Romanian speakers among you who want to tell the story in your own language), but he was so lazy that he would not even extend his arm to reach up and pick them from the tree. Instead, he just sat under the tree, tilted his head back and opened his mouth. The cherries never dropped, and he didn't get to eat any.

Too many modern Moldovans are like that boy, Irina said. To have success in life, you must be willing to extend your arm and put in the necessary effort to achieve your goals. Having set that as the framework for our talk, we set off on a long discussion. After the 45 minute period ended and the crowd seemed to have grown restless, I announced that those students who needed to go home now could. The noisier and less attentive half left, and those that remained discussed with our guests for another hour.

The topics were wide-ranging, and I was very impressed with both Irina's ability to steer the discussion and my students' ability to ask wonderful questions. Some of the topics we addressed in our non-formal discussion included:

- What three goals do you have in life?
- What is your ideal salary when you grow up?
- What is the right age to marry and have children? The consensus among students was that it was before 25, but I mentioned that my mom was 29 when I was born. One of my seventh-grade students asked me how to ask this in English, so he could say it to Ryan and Allison.
- Is it okay to disobey your parents if it's to fulfill your life goals?
- How is university life different from living at home? Irina's students were especially talkative on this issue.
- What does it mean to volunteer? Alina, one of the students, does a large amount of volunteer work, and was a good source and role model for the students.
- Do villagers have an obligation to return to their village after university to make it a better place? Svetlana, a 10th grader, got into a polite yet heated debate with Irina about this. Svetlana argued that villagers should help other villagers, since 50 percent of Moldova's population remains rural. I sensed some defensiveness from Irina, who returns to her home village about once a year and envisions living outside of Moldova in the future. Irina made the point, though, that if we improve ourselves, then we improve whatever place we live in, and the improvement will radiate from us. I don't know where I stand on this issue; I applaud any Moldovan who works a good job abroad and then returns to their country with the aim to help those around him, but I also don't think that any Moldovan should consider herself chained to her village or a poor country that is less than 15 years old.

Irina's students, as I implied earlier, are native Russian speakers. Their Romanian grammar was fine, but they were constantly scanning their brains for the correct word and checking with Irina if they had said it correctly. After 20 minutes of feeling insecure in their Romanian, they switched to Russian. They did it politely enough and asked the students if they could still understand. The students, wanting to be good hosts, said that they did. I asked one of my eighth graders next to me how much the students were actually understanding what was being said, and she guessed that it was about half.

Afterward, Irina described the language switch as "so Moldovan." It's certainly not American. I can't imagine a motivational speaker coming to an American school and switching to Spanish midway through because it was the language in which he could better express himself. But in Moldova, it works.

After the discussion ended, about 15 students asked for our speakers' names and contact information. It was at about that moment I realized I had forgotten my camera in my classroom, so I don't have any photographical evidence that anyone came to the school. Nevertheless, I was very happy with the turnout and the level of interest.

On Thursday, I began each of my classes by asking students what they thought of the assembly. They gave it a resounding thumbs-up, and gave some interesting feedback. Many of them thought Ryan and Allison were spectacular; odd, since Ryan talked for about five minutes and Allison didn't speak at all. One of my fifth graders liked Irina the best, since she "spoke our language". One of my seventh graders said she didn't think she could be happy with Irina's life, and that having a career shouldn't override having a family; I told her class that they will have to balance work and family for the rest of their lives. As homework for each class, I had them write (in Romanian) three goals for their lives. I'll find out in the next few days what kind of goals my students have.

Overall, I was blown away by the amount of discussion that we generated over the course of nearly two hours. I'm very thankful to all of our guests who came, and I'm proud of my students for asking such good questions and being much more interested than I ever was when a motivational speaker came to my middle school. I can't wait to have more of these next school year.

Spuneti, Domnule Cheney, Spuneti!

"And no one can justify actions that undermine the territorial integrity of a neighbor...."
- Vice President Dick Cheney, May 4, 2006

This direct reference to Moldova's Transnistria problem (as well as a similar situation in Georgia) in Vice President Dick Cheney's recent speech in Latvia highlights one of many disagreements the U.S. has with Russia. Cheney has been criticized for his speech, and other politicians have tried to soften his tone in hindsight (Senator John McCain has backed up Cheney, and probably not just because of his calculated political moves to court Bush supporters as the 2008 election appoaches). I'm happy to say that, for once, I can agree with something the Bush administration has said.

Russia is politically dangerous to its neighbors. It backs Russian-friendly political groups throughout its former empire, most notably in Ukraine and Belarus. Its pro-Putin media floods nations of the Commonwealth of Independent States, so much so that Russian state television, complete with its nationalistic news, is often the most-watched channels in Moldovan homes. Because most CIS countries remain economically dependent on Russia, Russia is able to impose absurd trade restrictions on them, such as in the current confrontation over Moldovan and Georgian wine, which financially punish smaller nations because their politics are too European for Russia's liking.

When I was in middle school and high school, I had a faint inkling that the Soviet Union had been a bad thing. When I was in college, I held the view?similar to that of many American college students?that communism was good on paper, but too many things went wrong in Moscow to make it work in the Soviet Union. After six months of living in Moldova, I firmly despised the Soviet past.

Now, after nearly a year of living in Moldova, I see not only how the Soviet empire shackled Moldova for generations, but how Russia's political behavior continues to harm economic, social and political development in the CIS. I hate Russia as a political entity and immediately distrust anyone who advocates for Russia.

I want to emphasize that my hatred for Russia is based only on political terms. Russians and ethnic Russian speakers in Moldova are people just like everyone else and I evaluate them on an individual basis. Russian people are not the problem; their authoritarian political system is.

In regard to Russia, my Peace Corps experience is very different from that of Latin American, African or Asian volunteers. The major difference is in Eastern Europeans' perception of Americans, compared to in other regions of the world. In Latin America, there is a long history of Monroe Doctrine interventionism, especially in the 20th century; Americans can often be viewed there as a political enemy.

In Moldova, middle-aged people sometimes talk about how important Reagan was for their country, and by "their country," they don't mean the U.S.S.R. In Moldova, America is viewed enthusiastically because in contrast to Russia, Turkey and, some would argue, Romania, America has never invaded Moldova. Moldovans are often ready to challenge their own assumptions about America after Pravda and other propaganda demonized the U.S. for 40 years. Unlike in Latin America, the U.S. is not Enemy Number One. The U.S. is more like Boo Radley; Moldovans had heard bad things about us for so long, and then found a friend and guardian angel when they finally met us.

Although I don't know, I feel this may be similar to the situation in south-east Asia, except in place of Russia, there are the behemoth powers of China and Japan. Thailand and Nepal, for instance, are much more affected by China than by the U.S. As for the situation in Africa, I have to claim ignorance; maybe they still hate the colonial powers, but I think internal conflicts ravage most of the continent much more than outside forces, and Americans are viewed in a positive light.

I would love to hear more about this from any readers from these areas. My e-mail box and comments fields are always open.

And as if he needed encouragement, I want to tell Mr. Cheney to keep talking. Words are much more effective than bird-shot.

Blog-ul tatalui meu

Although I posted a link to it on the right-hand side of the site, I want to highlight my dad's new blog. He has written about his visit with my mom to Moldova in March, and has some interesting impressions on the things that even I have taken for granted in this country and not mentioned in my blog. It was great to relive some of the bewilderment that I had experienced in June 2005 by watching my parents try to navigate Moldova in March 2006. I never got them on a rutiera, though.

My dad is also now writing about his travel in India, where he is currently on a business trip. I talked to him this evening using voice over internet protocol (VoIP), and his initial impressions make me hope even more that my vacation plans for *Muslim Country that will Remain Nameless for Security Reasons* later this year are approved by Peace Corps.

Antrepenori la Falesti si la Mereseni

In part of my travels during the week-long Easter vacation, I visited three volunteers, Levi, Priya and Mark, in the north-western city of Falesti. Falesti is a county seat and a relatively large town. It has its own restaurants, monuments and internet cafes. It seems more developed than my county seat of Hincesti, most likely because Hincesti is only 30 minutes from Chisinau, as opposed to the two- to three-hour ride from Falesti to the capital; when it's not as easy to slip into Chisinau for your fun, you have to create everything in your own town. From a volunteer's perspective, having sources of entertainment, not to mention other Americans, in Falesti makes for a very different Peace Corps experience than my village life.

Mark, one of the volunteers in Falesti, specializes in business and agriculture. It has allowed him to meet both agricultural businessmen and younger entrepreneurs in other business sectors. One such entrepreneur is Sergiu, who served us some excellent barbecue and played baseball and American football with us on my first evening in Falesti. The next day, Mark, Levi and I went to visit Sergiu's business, an internet cafe. There were 12 computers, all with LCD monitors, Windows XP and fast enough processors to play the newest games. Two customers were using the internet, one kid was playing a first-person shooting game, and Sergiu's son was playing a Starcraft-like war game. This was a better set-up than at the public internet access terminals at Moldtelecom, the government-owned telecommunications company.

My first question to Sergiu was, "How did you have the money for this?" He told me he had done it with help from a World Bank program for entrepreneurs under age 30. With $1,000 of his own seed money, he was able to obtain a grant for $5,000 and another $4,000 as an 18.5% interest loan over the course of three years (the maximum-term loan legal in Moldova). He charges one leu, or about eight cents, for 10 minutes of internet usage or 15 minutes of game playing. His current overhead cost for DSL scales with usage, so by my estimate, he breaks even or makes a slight profit on internet, and will make more of a profit on it when the infrastructure improves and costs decrease. Where he really makes his money, however, is in kids who play games. If you're a kid who has 3 lei in your pocket on your way home from school, you can either buy half of a candy bar or blow up your friends in Unreal Tournament for 45 minutes. And what are the
overhead costs for Sergiu when kids play games, which, like it or not, are all pirated? Zilch.

"The real money is in online role-playing games like Everquest," Mark told me as he sat at the main computer. "When someone gets hooked on one of those, he's in here every day using the internet for a couple
hours." Mark often runs the internet cafe in Sergiu's place for a few hours, and in exchange he has free rein of the place.

I was very impressed with Sergiu, and knew that if I could find someone like him in Mereseni, I could bring modern computers and the internet to my village much faster than trying to find grants to bring computers to the schools. Having this technology at an internet cafe also would make it more sustainable than at the school, because an entrepreneur would have an economic interest in keeping the computers in good condition and in providing as fast of an internet connection as his customers demanded. I got the number of Sergiu's contact at the World Bank's Chisinau office, left the cafe and began thinking of my next steps.

This Tuesday, I went to the primaria, or mayor's office, described my project to the mayor's secretary and asked her if she knew of any villagers who would be interested in this project. She gave me the name and phone number of a man named Nicolae, a 28 year old who owns his own construction company and has recently purchased the old dilapidated bath house. Sure, he was a stranger to me, but she told me where he lived and who his mother-in-law was.

I talked with Nicolae's mother-in-law, a teacher at the school, and she told me to come to their house on Wednesday evening. As I was walking the final 50 feet to the house that evening, a car pulled up to me and a man whom I recognized stopped next to me.

"You're coming to my house, right?" he said.

"Oh, that Nicolae," I thought to myself. I had previously met him at Ziua Absolventilor, the high school reunion, a few months ago. It had been his wife's five-year reunion then, and he and I had talked for a while. We had met another time at my vice-principal's house. Suddenly, this "stranger" whom I was going to meet was someone with whom I had already had a couple conversations. I
hadn't been sure how to choose my words in selling this idea to him, but now that he wasn't a stranger, things were much easier.

He invited me into the kitchen of his house, which was the nicest house I've been inside of in my village, complete with running water and a radiator system running through both stories of the house. Houses in Moldova have two types of doors: the homemade slabs of wood that never quite close correctly, and the new, clean, manufactured doors that you find in houses made or remodeled in the past five to 10 years. Nicolae's house had the new kind, and those doors announce that the person living there has made good money at some point in the last decade.

Over a cup of tea and some coffee cake, Nicolae told me about his plans for the building he had bought, which is next to his house. He estimates that construction on most of the building will be completed in a month, at which point he can open a construction materials
store. Needless to say, there is no Home Depot in Mereseni, so when villagers buy construction materials (which is often, since nearly every family here builds its own house and does its own renovations), they have to pay to transport the materials back to the village, significantly adding to their costs. Because Nicolae already buys
materials in huge quantities from Chisinau for his construction company, he can sell extra materials to villagers for a profit. It's a win-win; he gets to make a profit selling materials that his company might not otherwise use, and villagers save money by buying locally and saving transportation costs. There's even a third win, since the money is not going to a businessman in Hincesti or Chisinau, but rather it is staying here in Mereseni.

In another two months, Nicolae told me, the other parts of his building will be complete, containing a cafe/bar that he hopes will have a nicer atmosphere than the one other bar in town, and yes, an
internet cafe. The internet cafe will be a huge money-earner, he reasons, since it is practically next-door to the school. When students finish school at 2:05 and have an hour before they're expected home, they'll plop down two lei for a half-hour of Counter-Strike without thinking twice.

I gave Nicolae the phone number of Sergiu's World Bank contact, and we also exchanged cell phone numbers. Regardless of whether the World Bank helps him, Nicolae will eventually have an internet cafe in his building, and I look forward to helping him with the process.

America prides itself on its entrepreneurial spirit, and President Bush consistently notes that much of the growth in the American
economy in the past 20 years has been from small businesses. Because of Moldova's communist past, that same spirit is lacking in this country; Moldovans like to grouse about how the government never does anything right, but they accept authority from the top and rarely innovate from below or plan at a grassroots level. I was sucked into this idea for nearly the entire first year of my service, thinking that the improvements that would serve the village best would be bringing heat to the school or other large infrastructure plans. In short, public works. Working with a primaria that is strapped for cash and reluctant to invest in a project without guaranteed results is very difficult. Thus, my efforts to bring gas heating to the school has comprised me suggesting an infrastructure project, my principal and
mayor telling me that they had found an non-governmental organization to help, me saying that they needed to find a specialist to price out the project and them telling me for the past two months that they're still trying to find someone.

Talking with an entrepreneur like Nicolae has me optimistic. Here is a man who has seen an opening for a business (indeed, three businesses) in his community that is not being filled elsewhere in the community. He has figured that he can make a profit in these businesses, and has found the capital with which to begin. Maybe Nicolae will be my Sergiu and, like Mark, I'll find myself working at his internet cafe this summer. Either way, his attitude is a sign of things to come in Mereseni and in Moldova.

Cum m-ati gasit?

One of the cool thing about having a web counter (courtesy of StatCounter.com) is that I can
tell how people found my site, including what they searched for in
Google to find me.

Here are some searches that have landed people at my blog:

i got kicked out of school because in health class i yelled out thats what the government did to my people (I'm third on the results list)

Peter Myers Moldova (x3)

moldova returned peace corps

Costesti Moldova

MOLDOVA CLOTHES

moldovan whore (this one from Istanbul, surprise, surprise)

BLOG of moldova

Vania Myers

Chisinau step tease

Alexander Culiuc

watch the cafeteria lady dance by adam sandler

kyrgyzstan industry graph

vrei sa pleci dar nu ma nu ma iei (x2; these are O-Zone lyrics)

don dumitru

muzica mea

moldova peace corps blog

hancesti moldavian

moldovan jokes

peace corps moldova

lenin moldova

enemy at gates romanian subtitles

moldova dsl

short pcv

train budapest to chisinau moldova

student diary

moldova vacation sex

victoria plamadeala

moldovan students studying in usa

how much a computer in moldova

moldova tourist blogs

Moldova muzica

journal writing for 5th graders

neuter names

bury the United States economically quote Russia

french cedille

journal samples class

going outside wet hair is bad

10 facts of moldova

romania and moldova's eating habits

Well, however you found me, it's nice to have you here. Oh, and extra-
special thanks to the Pentagon agent who scans my blog every once in
a while to check that I'm not publishing state secrets. You won't find any here unless you carefully examine the first letter of every word in the selected Google results. Didn't find it yet? Hmm... I guess you'd better start tapping my phone calls.