Next Steps

Today, August 26, marks the date I was originally slated to COS (close service) from my third year extension with Peace Corps Moldova.  Seems like a good time for a quick update!

At the beginning of June, three years to the day from when I reported for Peace Corps staging in Philadelphia, I said goodbye to Moldova, rang the COS bell, and boarded a plane for Zambia to take an exciting position evaluating a USAID education project supporting early childhood literacy. I walked out of the office that had been my central grounding point of three years – and for the last year, my daily workplace – on a Friday, and on the following Monday morning was sitting in front of a Ministry of Education provincial head on a different continent, all of a sudden representing a $30 million project.

The decision to leave Moldova a bit early was a difficult one, but ultimately, this position was too good an opportunity to pass up.  I decided a while ago that program evaluation is a good fit for me within the broader sphere of development, and there is nothing I’d rather be evaluating than an education project.  At the same time, my employer EnCompass LLC is a great cultural fit – it’s filled with Returned Peace Corps Volunteers, is small and very mission driven for a private company, and is well known for promoting mixed methods and appreciative evaluation (two methodological commitments that are important to me).  The opportunity to work on a new continent was an exciting prospect and a smart career move too in a field where people are expected to have global experience.  And finally, this position offered a challenging technical role that makes use of my background in econometrics/statistics to measure the effectiveness of a very large and challenging project that is ultimately aiming to improve the literacy of half a million Zambian children.  Strictly speaking, the position is a fellowship, but it is very much a professional fellowship (as compared to an educational one).  In practice, what that means is that my employers get somebody at entry-level salary, and I get a level of responsibility a few years senior to what I would otherwise expect at this stage.  It’s win-win.

This job is not something I was planning on or for that matter, even necessarily looking for.  In fact, it’s only after a couple of other more academic fellowships fell through that I even started looking for other things.  But once I came across this position, things moved quickly.  I only applied in early May, and was on a plane to Zambia just over a month later.  This made leaving Moldova all the more hectic, but I benefited from the fullest support of my colleagues at Peace Corps and in particular my program manager, who worked hard to give me a good reference despite the fact that taking this position left her without my help for the June intake of new volunteers and summer training period.  Still, everybody who knew me in Moldova was unequivocal that this job was as close to a perfect fit as things come, and it was their support that made the quick turnaround possible.

At the same time this has all been progressing, last week, USAID officially invited Bill to join the agency as a Foreign Service Officer, where he will serve as a financial manager.  His training begins September 23 in Washington, D.C., where we expect him to remain for about a year before receiving his first assignment in the field.  Field assignments are typically 2 years with option to extend for a total of 4 years, and short stints in D.C. in between tours.

In an ironic twist, Bill is currently in Zambia (having followed me there in late June) and I am currently in the States, but I’ll soon be back in Zambia and we will have a couple short weeks together before we swap continents and he returns to the States to report for training.  My contract is through next June, which is around when we are expecting Bill to get his field assignment. When he does, I’ll follow him to wherever he’s posted.  In the meantime, we’ll do what we hope will be one last long distance stint. If given the chance, we’d love to stay in Zambia, but those decisions are still a bit of a way off and for the time being we have no idea what our location options will even be.

In short, what this all means is that we’re finally off and fully on our way.  That may sound strange to friends and family who have followed my global treks and travails for the past 5 years, but while identifying as a development professional for many years now, all of a sudden others are paying me to do so. Many of my college classmates have spent years doing grad school and fellowships and entry level jobs, and I’m noticing that a number of them are just now also entering the “real” paid work world.  So too, Peace Corps and grad school (and for Bill Fulbright and Global Sustainability and grad school) have been investments, and they’re finally paying off.  At five years out from college and four from grad school, it’s been a lengthy investment. And totally worth it.  That bears repeating: totally worth it. Looking at my classmates, it seems the nature of our generation that 5 years or so and another degree is about what it takes to break into the working world after college these days. They’re fun years, and the experiences have been fascinating, but until all that investment converts itself into a career opportunity, one is never certain.  An older friend from Peace Corps astutely remarked to me recently that that first job is always the hardest to get. Nowhere is that more true than the difficult-to-break-into world of international development.  So that feeling of finally being “off and on our way” is with a good deal of exhilaration – and more than a little relief.

I plan to continue the blog (why stop now?), and in the coming weeks, I hope to fill in some of its major gaps – reflections on finishing Peace Corps and leaving Moldova, the path that has brought me to evaluation over the past few years, and first impressions on Zambia and my new job.  But for the time being, international moves leave quite a bit to do logistically, so for now, I’m off!

The (Peace Corps Volunteer) Extension Decision: prelude

June, 2010; Chisinau, Moldova.

Every post probably has that crazy enthusiastic one; heck, most countries have a lot of them.  Within Moldova, I was put definitively into that category on day two when I turned to my mentor and asked “what’s the deal with extensions? I think I want to do that.”  She took a deep sighing breath.  It was a slow sigh, one commensurate with the blazing sun and groaning under the dissonance thrust upon her by ushering us through a jam packed arrival program in a country where the pace of life is otherwise decidedly slower.  Having spent a year tamping down her pace of life and expectations, all of a sudden she was surrounded by the height of American bustle and can-do optimism.  Without shaking her head, she gave a small smile that shook it for her, “Slow down dude.  You’re not even at your training site yet.”

Laughingly, I backed off, recognizing the apparent ridiculousness of the word coming out of the mouth of a person who had been on the ground for less than 24 hours.  That’s not to say I backed off of the idea; upon landing in Moldova in June 2010 I already had lived abroad longer, spoke more languages, and travelled the region more than many of the second year volunteers.  So I didn’t back off, I just shut my mouth.  (I said apparent ridiculousness, not actual ridiculousness).  Anyway, they had a point.  It was day two.  Of 800.  Plus or minus. 

In the 672 day since then – no plus or minus – there have been ups and downs on my feelings towards extension.  For most of the first nine months or so I was up on extension.  Way up.  So much so that my same mentor eventually decided I wasn’t just shot up on coffee and jet lag that second morning, but truly seem to suffer from an abundance of enthusiasm.

But then sometime last spring the idea lost its appeal as the hard realities of small and incremental contributions set in and the romantic sheen of service lost its luster.  It stayed that way for much of the summer.  Though occasionally punctuated by the enthusiasm of the new volunteers and the ideas gained from working with them, my down on extension was deepened by the palpable excitement of the older volunteers who were leaving, a dread of returning to the classroom, and a travel schedule that reminded me that my world outside Moldova moves very quickly and without regard to my absence. 

The fall fell somewhere in between: summer left me energized and a raft of new activities left me busier than ever at my site.  Meanwhile, one of my partners seemed to have taken on the appetite of Goliath when it came to any collaboration possible.  On the other hand, a sentiment lingered as I talked to friends who were finding increasingly influential posts that I was taking the long route, and reading job descriptions offered new adventures complete with a lustrous sheen still intact.

Ironically, it was just as I was preparing to go interview with Bosch in New York this last January that the pendulum swung back in the other direction.  It was exactly when other offers seemed most tangible that staying in Moldova began looking most attractive.  On the one hand, there were more potential collaborations than ever.  And on the other, it seems to be winter when I finally started coming to terms with the true meaning of incremental change on a deeper level.  This was a nice consolation when Bosch didn’t pan out.  Instead of extension representing settling for second best, it was a choice between a variety of attractive options, with pros and cons on all sides.  But that’s for Part II.

To be continued...

Moldova meme

For those living under a rock, this meme has been getting a little out of control this week. (Family that lives under a rock: log onto Facebook or Google "what society thinks I do meme".) So naturally, I thought I'd hop on the bandwagon before it dies.

In all seriousness though, given that a number of people don't even know where Moldova is, what better chance for a bit of Third Goal?  Should Moldova have to miss out on a good meme just because the Twittersphere is sick of it already?

Click to embiggen.

Millennium and Peace Corps win €5,000 HIA grant for simulation project!

Snuggled under every coat I own last night as my bus lumbered through our first blizzard of the winter on the three hour trek home from the capital, big news flashed across my phone: a team I've been coordinating just won a €5,000 grant from Humanity In Action to implement a project that will develop Moldova-specific simulation games for civic education!  With just four months to implement, it looks like I know what I'll be doing this spring in my spare time.

So what is this project all about?  From our application, the short version:

Moldova declared independence from the Soviet Union in August 1991, setting its course towards democracy.  After 50 years of Soviet rule, Moldova’s politicians struggled ministering a seemingly alien form of government as did its citizens in figuring out their role within it.  As markets opened, the cultural and ethnic diversity previously suppressed by Soviet culture came to the forefront of the political discourse, with formerly persecuted and silenced minority groups (such as the Roma and Gagauz) demanding justice, respect, tolerance, and in some cases increased autonomy.  Predictably, there were xenophobic, racist, and discriminatory backlashes as Moldova marched toward full-fledged democracy.  Such backlashes still occur and this march is not complete.  Thus, our project aims to develop and run Moldova-tailored simulation games that will compel its participants to address all these contentious historical points typical to nascent democracies transitioning from authoritarian rule. 

This project has two objectives:

• To create and run (24 times) a politically-oriented simulation game for Moldovan youth across the country 

• To create and incorporate a culturally-oriented simulation game in the trainings of newly-arrived Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) to speed their adjustment to the oftentimes confusing historical and cultural idiosyncrasies of Moldova.

Led by HIA Senior Fellows (SFs) and staff, who are experienced simulation facilitators, we will write the simulations during a five-day workshop that will bring together historians, civil society leaders and PCVs to design, test and translate them into Romanian and Russian. The project team will then travel throughout Moldova to administer the games.  Peace Corps Moldova has 120 volunteers, living in both cities and villages, both Russian and Romanian speaking, making it easy to identify seminar sites across Moldova’s disparate demographics.

This project is designed as a collaboration between three organizations: HIA, the U.S. Peace Corps, and the local NGO Millennium. With the network and expertise of Millennium, Peace Corps, and HIA, this project will promote deeper understanding of history’s legacy on democratic processes and civic leadership among its participants, a small but vital grassroots step along the slow path towards full liberal democracy.

Needless to say, I'm extremely excited about this project for a number of reasons.  As a national project and a collaboration between three organizations (a governmental agency, and international NGO, and a local NGO), this is undoubtedly the most far-reaching project I've found myself supporting yet.  At the same time, with its simultaneous objective of developing a simulation for Peace Corps trainees, this initiative also puts me smack in the middle of improving internal training and support. The implementation team is incredibly diverse, including people from all levels of the respective organizations: from MillenniuM and Peace Corps both staff and volunteers, from HIA both staff and Senior Fellows. Finally, the core project team includes some of the most talented PCVs I've ever had the pleasure to work with this past year and a half.  I may be the link between the funders and implementers, but none of this would have happened without those great PCVs pushing me all the way.

For those unfamiliar, a bit of background on the simulation games, courtesy of PlanPolitik, the German NGO that facilitated the HIA training I attended a few years ago that first introduced me to the methodology.

Politics is a matter of negotiation. Who gets what? And how much? The aim is to unite conflicting interests and to reach decisions concerning the distribution of money, power, security, autonomy etc. Usually, negotiations consist of tough and lengthy wrangling about what appear to be small steps of progress and minor compromises. Outside observers often find it difficult to understand why negotiations or attempts to settle conflicts succeed or fail. Which concessions have made an agreement possible or which demands have prevented it? Which strategic considerations are the actors led by? What scope are they given within institutional, domestic and other constraints? Which negotiation strategies are successful?

What can be learned through simulation games? The participants are asked to play a role. In order to do so as realistically and successfully as possible, they will aim to acquire the information they need about the given crisis or negotiation situation. Participants also gain analytic insight into the conflict or negotiation situation. On one hand, this involves analysing the conflict’s basic scenario, its relevant players and their interests. On the other hand, participants learn to contemplate the political options: which option is desirable, which one is realistic? They realize that there is a big difference between policy and politics, i.e. the actual implementation of policies is rarely congruent with the initial idea. Too conflictive are the interests of the relevant actors.


Secondly, the game inspires in participants a more reflective way of viewing the chosen conflict and indeed political decision-making processes in general. Players of the game gain concrete experience of how, in interaction with others, interests develop and how, depending on the other players’ conduct as the game progresses, these interests are subject to change. Moreover, participants learn just how difficult negotiating is: not all targets can be met and compromises are inevitable. One can gain insight into possible strategies for resolving conflicts in the “real” world. 

Finally, participants are confronted with a rigid time frame for making decisions, establishing priorities and implementing strategies. Being forced to cooperate with others, for example in a negotiation groups, is conducive to enhancing team work, negotiation skills, willingness to compromise as well as a culture of discussion.

Care ghiveci vreau sā maninc?

Translation: which ghiveci should I eat?  (Ghiveci is pronounced like kvetch but with a g instead of k.)

My host mom just told me to go down to the beci (root-cellar) and choose a ghiveci for lunch.  This is always a job I love, because normally I just end up choosing my favorite.

This is a section of our basement, with all its wonderful assortment of ghiveci, compote, and every kind of fruit preserve imaginable.  Did I mention this is only a section of the basement?  And winter is more already half over at this point.

Ghiveci, by the way, is a kind of preserved and canned (and maybe fermented?) vegetable salad.  My dictionary says the English equivalent is hotchpotch, but I have absolutely no idea what that is nor have I ever heard it before.  So, per Peace Corps custom re: words/concepts we have never heard before our service, I will continue to simply call it ghiveci.  (This also goes for things that are so specifically Moldovan that the English word just seems inappropriate.  In Peace Corps lingo, the market will always be the piața, and the speeding death traps mini-buses will always be a rutiera.  English rules of pluralization and declension still apply.)

This is the ghiveci I ended up choosing.  It's my favorite, a peppery mix of eggplant, onion, and carrots.  MMM!

SPA - Peace Corps' Small Project Assistance Fund

Many friends and family back home by this point have heard me talk about SPA, a USAID grant-making mechanism for Peace Corps Volunteers and one of my more time-consuming secondary activities.  As with almost all PC programming, posts administer their SPA programs separately.  I've been serving on Peace Corps Moldova's SPA review board since last winter, meaning once a month during the winter-spring funding cycle I get a stack of 8-16 grants to examine before travelling to the capital for a day of reviewing which will get funded.  Our total annual budget is $140,000 with the maximum grant being $5,000.  The money comes from US Agency for International Development, but can only be used to fund community-led projects that are conducted in collaboration with a volunteer.

Obviously, there's a lot of paperwork and minutia in reviewing grants, but it has nevertheless been one of my favorite secondary activities during my time here.  It's given me a chance to see the incredible breadth of initiatives volunteers support, from community youth radio stations to agricultural projects.  It's also proven true the maxim that the best way to truly learn something is to teach others - helping fellow volunteers through the grant process and continuously teaching the steps of project design and management has been great practice for explaining these steps to my own community partners.

As I spend more time around development organizations, however, I've also been gaining a deeper appreciation for the SPA program and the several ways in which it is unique.  Simply put, there is no other development program like it out there.  Because the overriding goal of the program is to teach project design and management skills, as compared to most grant-making programs which focus on particular priorities, with SPA there is no restriction on project domain.  We've funded initiatives running the gamut from democratization and technology to health and business development.

We just held our first meeting this weekend, and as always, I was impressed by the creative, sustainable, low-cost and community-led solutions volunteers collaborated with community partners to design.  I learned about rocket-mass heaters and the first school for the deaf and blind in Moldova, saw the most innovative reading promotion program that's probably ever been done in Moldova, and even got to see a high school student student give a very professional presentation to a committee of adults and foreigners.

The present entry here is meant for readers back home as a background companion post to this piece, which takes much of this information for granted.  But it's also an insight onto how I spent upwards of 25 hours this past week.  Seeing the great proposals we started the year off with yesterday, it was all worth it.

2011 in review

It’s the week of lists and reviews, the year in review, top 10 lists of the year past, and lists for the year that is just hours away.  Well, if newspapers can do it, then why not Embarkations?  So, forthwith and without pause, looking back on the past year.  (Skip to the end to see the most popular stories.)

Sparing for a last minute run-up in the numbers, 2011 saw:

·         3,385 visits from 2,346 unique visitors (about 9.3 hits/day)

·         The average visit lasted for a little over a minute and looked at 1.4 posts

·         68% of visits were from new visitors

Top countries of origin were as followed:

1.       United States

2.       Moldova

3.       Canada

4.       U.K.

5.       Romania

Although by far, the most interested readers came from Moldova, whose visitors stayed longest and visited the most pages.

Some surprises coming from the U.S., where I’m most popular in Tennessee, followed by California, New York, Texas, and then Illinois at #5.  Colorado came in ninth and Iowa fourteenth.  Overall, visitors represented 95 different countries and all 50 states.

In life, 2011 was a pretty awesome year, with a few strong highlights:

·         Friends: ringing in 2011 in Brasov with Amanda, Sinh, and Miranda.

·         Service: finishing my first year, and all of a sudden being the “experienced one” in the Bloc

·         Work (youth): Winning Plural+ Moldova with my students’ first short film

·         Work (medical center): opening our public showers and hygiene improvement project for the elderly who use the soup kitchen

·         Work (partners): seeing my partner teacher coach new partners through practice school and standing next to my nurse partner – who is terrified of public speaking – speak to a room of more than 80 women about breast cancer

·         Vacation: hard to choose, they were all so amazing, but I think I’ll choose Krakow and Berlin for the HIA conference.

·         Family: seeing Keith and Eugene get married in Korea (cheating, I know, it’s also vacation)

·         Integration: My host-sister Rodica’s wedding

·         For the Peace Corps family: Thanksgiving (integration points for killing a turkey)

I’m also critical of lists, of course, because they tend to wax over the daily flow of life and make it all about the big moments.  In reality, life, and most of Peace Corps, is what happens in between the big successes.  Still, when most readers are so far away, I suppose it doesn’t hurt to distill things down a bit.

And finally, what were the year’s most read stories?

·         Most read story written this year: Another Cup: follow-up on Greg Mortenson, with 523 views

·         Most read post of the year: My Peace Corps Aspiration Statement (posted prior to my departure with Peace Corps), with 1,467 views

The Mortenson piece also generated the most daily traffic I’ve ever seen, garnering 200 visitors in a day and earning first place as the most commented piece on the blog.  Maybe I should follow scandals more often in 2012. (Kidding)

This time last year, I had finished my first semester, and thought, wow, 25% done, looking forward to a productive year of new initiatives.  Now, I’m looking around and saying, wow, it’s almost done, but there’s still so much to do.  How am I going to tie it together?

So, with that, here’s to what has been a great 2011 of successes (and trials)! And here’s to a great 2012 ahead, a year of transitions.  And what could be truer to Embarkations’ theme than that?  Happy New Year and fiți sănătoși!

First place at Plural+ Moldova!

Our film, Casa Parinteasca, took first place at the 2011 Plural+ Moldova National Youth Film Competition!

First Place!

See this Embarkations' post for background on migration in Moldova and our film, which can also be viewed on YouTube here (click the Closed Captioning button in the bottom right of the video player to enable English subtitles).

Plural+ is an international youth film competition run by the International Organization for Migration, but because migration is such a pressing issue here in Moldova, the local country office also runs a national version of the contest.

The film was entirely made by my student film club I run with my partner teacher Olga.  The club's name is "Tinerii Operatori" (Young Camermen), but the kids publicly named our "production unit" Carahasani Studios. The club first started when I mentioned in passing to Olga my intention to post the call for submissions and ask some students if they'd like to participate.

The premier and awards ceremony was held last Friday, at Malldova, Moldova's first (and arguably only) rich-country style mall. (Malldova, Moldova, get it?) The IOM invited all participating teams to the premier ceremony, and even made it possible for teams such as mine to attend by paying for transportation costs.

One thing that seems to transcend Moldovan-American culture is the role of the mall in a teenager's universe, so I knew the event would be a big deal for them.  Still, it's hard to transplant oneself into the place of a rural teenager from a developing country, and even harder to imagine the culture shock they must feel when suddenly dropped right into the center of American consumerism, something only the most elite of the country have access to.  It really hit home for me when Dana, a 9th grader who sat next to me on the bus we rented, squealed at the site of the city.  Then she leaned over, and in a barely restrained whisper told me this was going to be her third time in the city.  Third.  I probably spend more time in the capital in meetings alone during an average month than Dana has spent there her entire life.

We spent a lot of time trying reign in students' expectations ahead of time, saying the cliche types of things that parents say, but that kids always wonder if they really mean.  "It's not about winning.  You've learned so much in this process.  Let's just go and have a good time at the awards ceremony."  I stand by all those statements, but turns out, yeah, adults still want to win.  In fact, watching my students beam after the ceremony, I realize adults probably want the kids to win even more, because winning something yourself doesn't even begin to compare to the feeling of watching your students win something they worked hard for.

Three students (left) giving an interview.

After the awards, our students were the stars of the show.  They took pictures, made friends with other kids, laughed, ate, and even gave 3 interviews (radio, print, and television).  Thankfully, they did not give their dear teachers heart attacks, who had been a bit nervous about chaperoning 24 6th-9th graders from a village around a 4 story mall in the middle of a bustling capital.

As a reward, we took them the the central plaza to see the national Christmas Tree and New Year's decorations.  They'd all seen it on TV, but most of them had never seen it in person.  For those readers who don't grasp Moldovan kids' obsession with taking poze (posed photos), the sheer joy this reward provided cannot be overstated.

Chisinau's National Christmas decorations!

While Plural+ was our initial impetus, once Olga got involved the group became about a lot more than this one contest.  We're already storyboarding our next couple films, a documentary about the village school and a public service announcement about a health topic.  It's incredible how much the kids have learned; in their first attempt, they were able to come up with a sophisticated metaphor where a house personifies the feelings of those left behind in a country that has fallen into disrepair.  Meanwhile, Olga is already planning how to continue Carahasani Studios after I leave.

Celebrating on the bus ride home, (dance party!)

Poze, at Moldova's National Christmas tree.

The Carahasani Studios team (well, most of it; some of them were
running around taking more poze...)

"Casa Parinteasca", our submission for the 2011 Plural+ Moldova contest!

UPDATE: Subtitles are now live!

The last month has been a busy one: a trip to Korea, teaching a 5 day In Service Training for the M26 Health Volunteers on Behavior Change Communication, and putting together a civic education grant in collaboration with Humanity in Action.  (Hence the short updates of late)

By far, however, the biggest success has been working with my students to prepare a entry for the 2011 Plural+ Moldova Youth Film Contest.  Plural+ is a film competition that challenges students to express themselves creatively on migration issues.  We finally submitted the finished product yesterday, and I'm awfully proud of my youth.

(for subtitles, hover over the player and click the "cc" button in the lower right corner)

Background

Moldova has one of the highest outward migration rates in the world, about 25% of the population is working abroad, and the economy is sustained by remittances.  This fact of life becomes one of the quiet themes of just about every volunteer's service in Moldova; I never give students homework to "go home and talk with your parents about ..." because about a quarter of them are living with aunts, uncles, grandparents, or other relatives.  Oleasa, who is like my host sister, is actually my host cousin, but she's been raised by my host mom, who's sister has been working in Italy for 10 years.  Rodica's wedding in September was the first time my host parents had seen their elder daughter in 5 years; she's been working in Canada and couldn't leave without losing her spot in the residency line.

I was deeply impressed with how my youth artistically confronted such a sensitive topic. The film above is entirely their work (with a lot of guidance from my partner and I, of course), from the story idea to writing the script to the filming and narration.  It's the story of a house, the home of your parents, that is abandoned when its new owner leaves to work abroad and earn money so she can buy a nicer bigger newer house.  Pretty good metaphor for a bunch of teenagers.  (Don't worry, it has a happy ending.)

Enjoy!

Goal 2.3: technology

The last goal of the health program refers to transferring ICT skills.  I sometimes think of this as the "goal of chance", b/c much like you can't force a cat to take a bath or get your parents to text, you just can't really force technology on somebody who doesn't want it.

I thought I had this goal all lined up when my medical center got a computer last spring, but 8 months later the regional health directorate has still given no instructions as to what, exactly, they expect anybody to be doing with that computer.  Also, their programmer still hasn't been around yet to install internet or any other standard office programs.  (It's okay, we've actually made very good use of the printer it came with for our health education activities, so it's all for the better.)

But early last summer, Olga - the most amazing and driven of my 4 partners - got a laptop.  (Or rather, her husband returned from working abroad with a laptop.)  And thus began my work on goal 2.3.

Fast forward five months and that's how we end up with me spending my Saturday night shouting back and forth over the phone for an hour as we try to work through the notion of an email attachment.  (Shouting is the culturally recommended volume for any phone conversation, there was nothing acrimonious about the call.)

Two 15 minute phone calls, 5 different explanatory strategies, one hour, and 10 synonyms for attachment in both Russian and Romanian later, and we figured it out.  On the other end of the line, I could hear her entire family trying to help, including her 20 year old son who is studying English and Geography at university. (The fact that he had no idea what an attachment is shows that this is more than your standard age gap here...)  Of course, it doesn't help that I don't interact with any of my partners technologically, thus I have absolutely no grasp of this vocabulary in Romanian.  Nor would it have mattered anyway, as my partner's email account is in Russian.  In the end, it took the paperclip symbol and some email attachments I had sent her a couple weeks ago, as well as an intimate familiarity with her file organization to succeed.  (On the upside, I know how to find everything on her computer b/c most things were put there by me.)

It's not as glorious as a multi-million dollar water project, but it's what we do day in an day out in the trenches of development.  Just another Saturday night.

Small Victories: my favorite moment of the week

My favorite moment of today happened when I was sitting next to my nurse partner, working on a plan for a health education program.  Laying open next to us was the book* where the Medical Center is required to record all of the health education activities it does, as health education is a required component of every nurse and doctors job.

The Chief Nurse poked her head in the door and started chastising my partner, "You haven't written in the book yet!"  To which my nurse partner Galena replied, "You all write, but we actually do."

SNAP.  Well said Galena.

*Most of what's written in that book is fiction.

Cross-Cultural Reflections on Professor's Day

October 5 in Moldova is "Ziua Profesorului", or Teacher's Day.  (Yes, the word for teacher in Moldovan is profesor.  As an American, it's great to be called Mr. Professor.)

What this firstly means is that I get lots of roses, sometimes gifts, many congratulations, and listen to many poems and a lot of prose about "The Nobel Profession."  Seriously, what could make one feel better?  (Okay, maybe societies that didn't continually cut teacher's pay, combine classes into ever larger unmanageable melees, and parents that didn't pull kids out of school to harvest...but at the superficial level, what could make one feel better?)

Secondly, at my school the way they run things is that the older students teach class that day, which means I don't have to prepare lessons, and instead get to sit back and watch students teach my subject.  Then I get some food and permission to go home early.  Awesome!


Though less stressful than my typical day of exercising as much magnanimity as I can muster while herding cats teaching the world's future leaders, it's no intellectual free-ride.  In fact, approached analytically, it is one of the best pedagogical learning experiences ever.

It's surprising how quickly as a teacher one can become caught up in the perspective from the front of the classroom.  Going back to sit in the kids' seat immediately renders teaching methods, personal styles, and subject specific information in a new light.  After watching an 11th grader teach nutrition using some techniques I myself used last year, it is clear I definitely have a lot more thinking to do about my methods before attempting that subject again.

Finally, there was this very intriguing cross-cultural nugget from the end of the day.  A group of my 9th graders had to arrange the following values in order of importance: education, family, health, career, citizenship, religion, liberty, and economic security.  This is what they came up with:

1. Family
2. Health
3. Citizenship
4. Religion
5. Education
6. Career
7. Liberty
8. Economic Security

In the notes scribbled to myself, I wondered:

• How would we as Americans arrange this list?
• How would I list Moldovan values based on behavior?
• How would American values be ranked if based on behavior?

It's one of the most felicitous activities for cross-cultural understanding there is, so I'm curious to hear readers' opinions.  Thoughts?

Nunta Moldovaneasca (Moldovan Wedding)

I finally got to a Moldovan wedding!  Last Sunday, September 18th, my host sister Rodica and her longtime boyfriend (a Moldovan she met in Montana) Andrei finally tied the knot in Chisinau.

I'm trying something new this time, and going to tell the story through video.  It's my first try at making a video, so, here goes!

Classroom Pictures

Finally, after a year I finally collected enough necessary materials to make my collage map to explain to my students
where I'm from.  Translation: "The native place of domnul (Mr.) Zachariah." (It sounds better in Romanian.)  It
also features such fun facts as state populations and industries, and the size of Maryland (comparable to Moldova).
Credit to Craig Laurie for the map, Oma and Aunt Jan for the Iowa postcards, Mom for the Mt. Vernon calendar, and
dad for the Colorado postcards.

The back of the room, with a table featuring magazines and the "anonymous health questions" box.

A new addition this year, a display to feature the best student work of that week.
The title reads "take joy in what WE have made!"

The Day of Monday, August 15, 2011

Written two weeks ago, but forgotten in the shuffle of preparing for the school year.

Sometimes one experiences one of those day.  The kind of day that captures wonderfully the rhythm of life here in Moldova, all the while betraying little idiosyncrasies that if understood, can show something much larger about the culture.  Today was one of those days – extraordinary for the normalness of its rhythm, and revealing in comfortable responses to a syncopated tune that is so different from the American melody of daily life.

So remarkably normal, it seemed worth sharing.  I try to point out the cultural aspects that might be amusing or illuminating to an American audience, but I certainly can’t explain them all. So, in simple bullet point form, I present the day of Monday, August 15, 2011.

• Woke up to an alarm.  Vague awareness that summer is ending.
• First morning revisiting my school year morning routine: drinking coffee while reading priority email/news, realizing it’s too late for breakfast, leaving late.
• Arrive at school, where we (the teaching collective) are all waiting for the district level officials to come so that we can choose a new director.
• Stand outside talking to male teachers about our summers for 45 minutes.
• Find out that the district officials won’t be coming today.  Modus operandi of the Education Ministry.
• Go inside, and almost get sucked into the teachers lounge, which promised to have been a 3 hour talkathon.
• Am saved by my amazing partner teacher, who suggests we go do some planning.
• We realize we can’t plan b/c classes haven’t been divided amongst teachers yet, which can’t happen without a director, which can’t happen without the district officials.  All teachers, however, are required to be at school, so we decide instead to discuss our general goals and ideas for this year, including new ideas my partner teacher received while being a mentor for the new M26 Health Volunteers, and various ideas I have that reflect health education theory.
• Brief aside in the Vice-Director’s office for plotting and gossip top-off.
• Back to planning.
• Convince my friend Victor (the art teacher) to come to our house to drink a ceai (tea), which is a pretext for a favor I have to ask of him (which he knows), which is itself a pretext for another favor I have to ask of him (of which he doesn’t know).  He accepts the concept of ceai, but refuses my offers of lunch.
• Victor fixes a painting I bought in Lviv, Ukraine, which had become somewhat loose on the frame.
• I meanwhile secretly communicate to my host-cousin who is more like a host-sister that indeed she should put out a full lunch.
• My host mother calls to inform that Vasile Kirilovici has asked for my cell phone number. Kirilovice (his patronymic) is the richest man in the village, running the agricultural firm that farms 2100 hectares (5000 acres) and employs 250 people (my host father included).  In a town where I enjoy incredible access – greeted by the traditional kiss and embrace from the priest, and being able to walk into the mayor’s office without an appointment – Kirilovici is the only key leader I’m not on regular terms with.
• As Victor finishes the picture, I insist he stay for ceai.  He accepts with the words, “well, as long as it’s just ceai.”
• I put as much food out for ceai as possible, including fruit, cookies, cheese, honey, lemons, bread, jam, etc.
• We sit down to eat, and I casually observe that a warm lunch has been set out us as well.  I proceed to insist he eat.  He is trapped b/c he knows I haven’t had lunch yet but can’t eat unless he does, and he knows I know he hasn’t had lunch yet.  I will later be congratulated on this maneuver.

Summer it has been – summer vacation it is not, PLUS: Haiducii vid!

Adam leads his students in a Zen Walk.

If I was expecting summer to be somewhat more relaxing than the school year – I was – then I was clearly mistaken.  While there have been two nice vacations, they have only managed to condense the amount of time remaining for a chaotic eclectic assortment of tasks.  There has been teaching PST, a project at the soup kitchen, ongoing work at the medical center, and enough political intrigue in the village to require numerous visits to shore up friendships amongst the two main factions.  There was also a great 50^th Anniversary Concert in Chişinău that I MCed (credit to Ohad Sternberg for the post and photos linked to there).

While I like to stay busy, one downside of this is that there has been less time than expected for Haiducii, a secondary project I joined last spring (when still expecting a lot of free time in the summer).

Quoting from that last post:

Probably the coolest of my groups, Haiducii (pronounced Hi-do-chi) is a Robin Hood like character in Balkan folklore.  In Moldova, we are an injustice-fighting band of PCVs who go around teaching teamwork and leadership skills to youth through outdoor teambuilding activities (the type common in U.S. summer camps and low ropes courses).  We won’t really ramp up until the summer season, but as a throw back to my Boy Scout days, I’m looking forward to this group.  It involves lots of hitchhiking around Moldova, but then, isn’t that how Robin Hood travelled too?

Finally, with most of my partners now on vacation, I was able to lead my first Haiducii session up in Edineţ this past Monday for fellow volunteer Adam's Leadership Summer Camp.  Working with fellow Healthy and Haiduc Melissa – aka Yoga Mama – we made the 4 hour trek up there to meet a great group of future Moldovan leaders who were willing to brave the cold and rainy weather for our outdoor activities.

The Spider Web

It was a great group of kids to work with for my first session, and dare I say, after we made them repeat Spider Web three times, they even seemed to draw some lessons about teamwork.  My favorite moment was when we came to the conclusion as a group that without Alina – a very bright but shy girl – they never would have solved the mental puzzle to what is an otherwise rather physical activity.  They even got the take away – after a little prompting – that sometimes, good leadership means listening, because if you just shout and only the leaders get to say their ideas, the best solution might be drowned out, because sometimes the quietest person has the best ideas.  Now, if only our politicians back in the U.S. could come to that same conclusion…

Melissa debriefs. Alina, work done, yawns.

Then we played Jedi Knife Fight.  Theoretically, there’s a lesson in that game too, but mostly it just involves letting the teams whack each other with foam noodles after a hard day’s work while we try to enforce the games rules.  A casualty of that enforcement tends to be getting whacked yourself.  So, for all those readers who’ve been wanting to wallop me with a noodle but can’t because I’m here in Moldova, poftim (enjoy)!

Graduation Ball Waltz Video

On June 18 the liceu (high school) where I work hosted its annual Graduation Ball, which is the Moldovan version of a Graduation Ceremony rolled up in prom.  It is for all the graduates, as well as teachers, families, and the rest of the village in general.  The evening begins with the Ball, which includes speeches, flowers, and a releasing of the doves, and then moves on to a feast at the local banquet hall (normally used only for weddings), where the feasting, dancing, and toasting go until sunup, at which points the graduates depart their parents to watch the sun rise over a lake on the outskirts of town, and continue their celebration with barbecue and more feasting well into the next day.

Not so different from American Prom, this is the occasion when many boys buy their first suit, and the gown shopping for the girls, well, I guess some things just transcend cultures.

This year, the graduates decided they wanted to perform a waltz at their ball.  For reasons still unclear to me, they also decided I was the most qualified person to teach them how to waltz.

The trophy, erm, statue, I got for teaching.

So, beginning back in May, we started going over the basic waltz step.  A month and a half later, after most of the class became casualties and the traditional Viennese Waltz was declared "insane and impossible" due to its speed, the remaining four couples danced beautifully to the first waltz I've ever choreographed.

One of the beautiful things about Peace Corps is that one inevitably ends up teaching things one is dramatically under-experienced in and has little relation to the primary program assignment.  Prof. John Riker and Marcia Dobson, wherever you are, I'm glad I dropped in your ballroom dancing classes during that last month of college.

Oh, and afterwards, they embarrassed me with a far too gracious speech and this statue.  Very Moldovan.

Another beautiful thing about Peace Corps is that even when you don't fancy yourself a dance teacher, it doesn't make you any less proud of your students at the end.

So, without further delay, the Waltz of the Graduates.

(Email viewers will need to enable images to see video)

One Year

I just got back from a post-school year vacation in Odessa, and suddenly lots of 1 year anniversaries are crashing over me, much rougher than the gentle waves of that Black Sea port.  Today, June 8, marks one year to the day since I reported to staging in Philadelphia.  Yesterday marked my departure from Denver, and the day after tomorrow will make 1 year in Moldova.  It’s still 10 more weeks until the August 18 anniversary of taking my oath and officially becoming a Peace Corps Volunteer, but with the school year now over and the new trainees arriving in a couple hours, those 10 weeks seem more like a formality.

It’s half over.

Soon, there will be fewer days in front of me than behind me.

I’m more about metaphors than theories of physics, so I’m not sure what the Theory of Relativity has to say about the actual passage of time, but it feels a lot like reaching the peak of a roller coaster: the first half of the ride, the climb, goes much slower than the plunge back down.

This could provoke all sorts of reflections; hopefully in the weeks to come some will make it into this space.  But for the time being, perhaps in the most telling sign of reaching the halfway point, there is little time for reflection.  Despite classes being over, I have a full roster of community projects to implement and training sessions to design for the new volunteers.

So, here’s to the first year of memories and the plunge into the second!

Small Successes: the Mahala Boys

Mahala is a word deceptively simple given the complex construct it houses.  In fact, it is probably this complexity that makes the word so thoroughly Moldovan.  In Moldoveneşti, mahala means neighborhood.  It is descended from the Turkish (and in turn Arabic) word mahalle, a term introduced throughout the Balkans during the period of Ottoman rule.  In literary (i.e. Romanian) Romanian, however, mahala has come to mean more of a slum.  Before even arriving at the complexities of the actual Moldovan mahala then, the word itself is a signpost showing the historical fork between Romania and Moldova.  It is a very Eastern European dark irony that the word for neighborhood in Europe’s poorest country means “slum” in the same language spoken by its richer neighbor to the west.  If Romanians often point out politely that Moldovan Romanian is an archaic and rural dialect, then the word mahala captures the subtler unspoken chauvinism between these richer and poorer neighbors.

Even in Moldova, however, a mahala is so much more than a geographical boundary.  It’s an agricultural system, a living map of generations of familial histories, and a complex network for the exchange of gossip and information.

One never really leaves their mahala in Moldova.  The village knows where you grew up, and if you move, somebody has relatives there too.  Even if one moves to the city, they might well choose to live in an apartment next door to somebody else from their village – it simplifies the flow of fresh produce coming in daily from relatives on the morning bus from the village.  Our own small village has a mahala reaching as far as Billings, Montana.

We volunteers, on the other hand, come from outside the system – we arrive mahala-less.  So often, we are reminded of the frustrations that implies when trying to work with our adult colleagues – not knowing the right person to talk to in order to cut through the red tape, not knowing a particular history that prevents two potential partners from working together.  But our tabula rasa also grants us some potentially powerful freedoms, particularly with students.

Secondary Projects

In PC lingo, a “secondary project” is any project that falls outside of one’s primary program goals and partnerships.  In my case, that would be anything outside of the health education domain.

Most, if not all, PCVs worldwide have secondary projects.  For many, in fact, secondary projects often become primary projects, if not formally at least in the amount of time they take up.  There are a number of reasons for this.  First, it’s often unclear where a program ends and a secondary project begins.  At my site, for example, my work at the mayor’s office and the soup kitchen are both outside of the primary assignments at the school and health center that the HESC program manager set up for me.  But both include a significant health promotion component.  So is it primary, or secondary?

Second, the very nature of long-term intensive grassroots work in rural communities is such that the partnerships Peace Corps arranges for a PCV before they get there are often not the most fruitful collaborations.  Sometimes the organization doesn’t have two years of work, sometimes the local counterpart didn’t fully understand that a PCV normally means more work, or sometimes everybody just agrees there’s a different local organization the PCV can better help.  Peace Corps understands this, and it’s one of the reasons the organization is flexible and encourages secondary projects as a way to find the best uses for one’s time.

Finally, contrary to popular opinion, PCVs are human beings, and few human beings find total life fulfillment in their work life.  It just so happens that PC is so all-life encompassing that just about any non-work non-familial social activity is likely to be a secondary project, whether it’s playing basketball with community members or playing with kids at the pre-school.

There are two main categories of secondary activities: the kind one does at site, and the country wide Peace Corps activities.  Posts tend to have a number of these activities, which are run by volunteers and tend to focus on key national level development priorities.

Besides working at the soup kitchen and mayor’s office, I’ve also been working on a number of the country wide initiatives.  It’s fun to work with other volunteers, as it so often seems much more straightforward and there’s no language barrier.  At this level, my main secondary activities have been the Gender Workgroup (GWG), the Small Project Assistance Program (SPA), Girls Leading Our World (GLOW), and Haiducii.