Visiting a Moldovan Village

The last few days have been extreme and ridiculous. Thursday I met a 100 year old woman to interview for my project. She looked about 80 and was totally sane. (Photos coming soon). Unfortunately her 70 year old neighbor who comes in to help her once in a while, since she doesn't really have any family left, came in and took over our conversation and insisited on talking at me and telling me her autobiography for the next 2 hours while she sat there quiet, and frustrated, unable to hear much of what he was saying through her hearing aid. Only after I promised her that I'd come back next week and have her correct everything I wrote down did she calm down about it.

After the interview I prepared to visit a Moldovan village. From Kishinev I was invited by a Peace Corp volunteer I met last week to visit him in his village of service, called Zguritjza (about 3 hours north outside of Kishinev, the village is situation at almost the very northeast corner of the country). I thought I had seen farms in Ireland and America, but this was a whole other world. Here people transport themselves and their agriculture produce (wheat, fruits, vegetables, meat, and milk) on horse drawn sleds, which work remarkably well (unlike cars) on the un-cleaned snowy and muddy streets. In the winter, since there's nothing to do on the farm, the men and teens drink all day. Some go to the vocational boarding school I visited, whose principal the volunteer is trying to nab on blatant corruption.

The volunteer is living in a total shithole apartment. No heat except for a coal stove which he has to spend hours warming up and filling with wood, then coal. No running water or plumbing - he shits in a bag when it's too cold to visit the outhouse and throws the waste in the wood stove . Apparently he lived with a host mom for a short time, but couldn't stand her because she was insane. If he prefers his present living situation, she must have really been insane. Luckily, I spent both nights and had my meals at his counterpart's house, probably the richest house and most functional family in the village, still a far cry from rural life in America. This house had a nice bathtub, plumbing, hot water, a washer machine, a refridgerator...all the modern amenities. The family consisted of the mother and father, their daughter and the daughter's husband, and a 3 year-old-grandaughter, all of them living under one roof with one bathroom which could be reached only by walking through one of the bedrooms. Still, they seemed super happy and functional, and all insisted they couldn't live any other way, without each other. The mother explained to me that some of the villagers don't appreciate the way that the family lives. They think it's too extravagent to OWN all of these things; according to her, most of them want Communism back. And it's no surprise considering how much more functional the agricultural industry and villages in general were. People apparently lived really well on these communal farms during Soviet times, and when the government fell apart no one knew what to do with themselves. They simply weren't used to making decisions or figuring out what to do and when, and they had no idea how to take care of a farm themselves. They all threw their hands up in the air almost instantly and gave up - that is all except for a few of these business-types who saw the opportunities they now had.

The mother is a serious business-woman and brings in probably almost all the money for the household (the father works at the flour mill). She's running around (or being driven around by her personal chauffer) to surrounding towns and cities taking care of her multiple businesses and taking care of her NGO. She also runs a wool factory on the side. Her son follows her around not doing much. It's funny that although the mother so clearly monetarily takes care of the family, her husband controls all of the monetary resources; before she leaves for work in the morning (no vacations or weekends) he gets out of bed and gives her money for the day, she says thank you and either goes back to bed or to the mill. The daughter (mother of the grand-daughter) is the house wife. She's expected to have dinner and breakfast ready for everyone and to serve the men when they ask for a fork or for some tea, or a sandwich. She never sits down with everyone to eat. It's like she's constantly at the job - and her job is to serve the family, particularly her father and her husband.

I spent Friday followoing around the volunteer while he tried to meet people for consultations and such for her NGO and for his side prjects. Each meeting ended up either being cancelled or cut short due to the incompetance of the people he was trying to meet and their horrible lack of any sense of time. I have no idea how people here get anything done. It must be so frustrating for these niave American volunteers who are used to functional organizations and some level of efficiency.

I was mildly interested in how the Moldovan family viewed the Jewish question, but didn't really want it to be the focus of my visit. Unfortunately, it came up from the very beginning since the volunteer told them ahead of time about my project and my family, and they were very interested and intent on mentioning every Jewish person they knew in the village before they all left. Apparently there's only one or two left now but it used to be a Jewish colony in the czarist times and there's a pretty cool old Jewish cemetary there that I visited (photos coming). This family seemed to have very good feelings towards Jews, but they didn't seem to really understand why my family would want to leave the Soviet Union and not come back so badly, or why they never learned Romanian. It also surprised me that they had never heard of Birobidzhan, the Jewish Autonomous Republic that was set up by the Soviets in eastern Siberia. Turns out my host grandfather in Kishinev was born in Birobidzhan - his parents were some of the idealistic activist settlers who tried to set up another Palestine there in the 30s.

More soon about my rich second cousin Moldovan businessman rotary club member who's only 18 years-old and took me out to a restaurant today. Definitely a contrast with the village experience. And hopefully photos coming Tuesday.