VOTE! (If I can, you sure can too!)

Rocking the vote from Moldova!

The Colorado Primaries were Tuesday, and after weeks of wrangling, I just barely managed to get my ballot sent in the nick of time.  Voting from overseas is no small feat – I had to be extra attentive to make sure the proper paperwork was filed before leaving the States, and there was a lot of back and forth to ensure that my ballot arrived in time.  Amongst my Peace Corps colleagues, I’m about as on the ball as it comes with voting from abroad, and still, it was in just under the wire.

For other overseas voters who may be reading this, I urge you to visit the Overseas Vote Foundation’s website for comprehensive state-specific information, including election dates (general and primaries) and filing requirements.

At this point, my generation’s poor voting record is borderline cliché, but what is less well known are that the barriers to voting abroad make this another demographic with consistently low turnout.  The irony of this story is that many of us overseas are engaged directly in some form of service to our country: Foreign Service Officers, military service members, and of course, Peace Corps Volunteers (to name just a few).

As a volunteer, voting is more than just a civic responsibility: I take an oath to promote the three goals of the Peace Corps.  The second of these goals is to “Promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served.”  For me, it’s hard to feel like I’m living up fully to the spirit of that goal without participating in what is arguably the most revered American political institution.  At my nation’s inception, voting (even if narrowly conceived at the time) went to the core of what set us apart.  Since then, it has occupied a central thread of our national narrative.  The right to cast a ballot has been bound up in America’s greatest national struggles and discourses: class struggle, the Civil War, feminism and women’s suffrage, the Civil Rights movement, and the Vietnam War.  (And today, perhaps the role of concentrated economic interests’ influence…)

My curriculum for Health Education/Life Skills this coming year includes civic education.  How am I to dig into this topic with my students if voting is treated like something one checks at the airport check-in counter, valued less than the luggage one would never fail to pick up on the other end of a flight?  Moreover, the issue takes immediate relevance in Moldova, where there's been an intense discussion in recent years between the leading parties, focused at least topically on the electoral method of choosing the country's president.

Fellow volunteers looked on with a bemused curiosity that failed to hide a decent amount of skeptical cynicism.  That’s okay though – I have another month or to get them to register for the general election this fall.  In the meantime, should my ballot fail to be counted, at least it is on account of a system ill-suited to handle the international voter, and not a personal disenfranchisement.

But rather than look at all the barriers, I prefer to look at all the help I received.  Big shout outs go to:

• The Peace Corps, which was extremely helpful in getting the required paperwork printed and scanned.
• The Denver Elections Office, which has an incredible staffer handling overseas voting, and
• The Overseas Vote Foundation, which is the excellent organization which first got me involved in overseas get out the vote operations back in 2008 when I was living in Budapest.

With so much conspiring to help the American abroad to vote, any excuse is really just that: an excuse.

Post Script for the Expatriate:

If you presently reside abroad, and are interested in voting issues, the Overseas Vote Foundation is in constant need of volunteers for its non-partisan get out the vote operation.  Visit their website, follow the org on Facebook, and help spread the word wherever you are based.  OVF also operates special branches:

Youth Vote Overseas

Military Voter Services

The Democratic and Republican parties both offer special sites geared toward members living overseas as well (Democrats Abroad and Republicans Abroad).

A Day in the Life (of PST)

Yesterday marked two months to the day since I left Denver, and also brought to a close the eighth week of Pre-Service Training (PST).  Incredibly, in less than two weeks I’ll be sworn in as a full Peace Corps Volunteer, and depart the comfortable routine of my summer in Bardar for a new set of challenges.  Which leads me to notice, most readers have very little idea of just what that summer routine has entailed, instead being lost in an eclectic assortment of anecdotes!

So, what has Zach been doing in Moldova this whole summer exactly?  Mostly learning.  For the past two months, my week has more or less been fixed to the following schedule:

Monday:

• Get up, go to 4.5 hours of language class.
• Eat lunch for an hour (bread, tomatoes, cucumbers, and cheese or salami).
• Go to 3 hours of “tech” training on the Health Education Program.
• Go home.  Be exhausted.  Butcher Romanian for my host family.
• Do homework.
• Eat dinner.  More butchering Romanian over glasses of house wine.  Occasionally watch the news (way over my head) or Bollywood films (dubbed into Russian) with Georghe (host-dad).
• Read/write for an hour or so.
• Collapse into bed, tired but satisfied.

Tuesday: repeat.

Wednesday: repeat again.

Thursday: Go to Ialoveni for “hub site” days with all PCTs (Peace Corps Trainees).  Basically, a day of admin sessions.

Friday: Repeast Monday’s schedule.

Saturday: Repeat again, except no tech, so we’re free for the afternoon.

Sunday: Exhaustion, homework, or mischief.  Often all 3.

This schedule has been interspersed with special trips, sometimes cultural, sometimes personal, sometimes PC related (like the visit to my future site a few weeks ago).  Sundays in particular have been a constant source of amusement and cultural integration, including some of my favorite days like birthday parties or helping in the fields.

The structure doesn’t leave much free time, and many volunteers find PST to be one of the most trying times in their service.  In combination with the presence of other Americans in my training class, however, it has provided a comforting cocoon of structure for the initial adjustment period.  After 7.5 weeks, I was able to achieve the required “Intermediate-mid” level in Romanian (a big relief as this is the level trainees are required to reach before swearing in).  Perhaps more importantly, I’ve formed a number of close friendships with my fellow trainees – the friendships I’ll need to make it through the next two years.

Please note, the past week (week 8), has not been fixed to the normal schedule, but rather to a pressure cooker the culmination of our training program: practice school.  But that’s a topic for a future post.

See the post below for the picture tour of “A Day in the Life (of PST).”

A Day in the Life (in pictures)

Pictures from my life in Bardar during PST.  See post above for the narrative.

The road to my door.

The beautiful house where I am a guest.

Door sill : detail.

Making rachiu (kinda like moonshine).

The hills around Bardar.

Another view from the top of Bardar.

Goodbye comrades! (Ubiquitous Soviet era statue to the victims of fascism)

Why I adore my host mom…

A few weeks ago I helped my host mom pick cherries.  We had done this the week before too, so there wasn't much low hanging fruit.  Now, I assumed the natural course of action would be to use a ladder.  Right?  Wrong.  I'm in Moldova.

Instead, we pulled the branches down, far past a point I would consider safe for the tree, and then picked the newly accessible fruit.  Twice during this process we heard significant branches breaking, and had to quickly let go.  Each time, my host mom looked surprised.  Both times, I asked myself how, if this is the normal way of picking cherries, this could surprise her.  Then I asked myself why after 58 years of this nonsense they hadn't bought a ladder.  Then I thought maybe they had a ladder and it's broken or on loan to a neighbor.  Then I looked at the poor tree, remembered I was in Moldova, and decided "no, they probably just break branches every year."

Then we went to go get a hoe.  A garden hoe.  An implement of destruction.  NOT harvesting. 

Debrief: Site Team Conference and Visit to Future Site

I returned from my first visit to my future home (“site”) about a week ago.  As I mentioned last time, my village is way off in the southeast, closer to the beaches of Ukraine than Moldova’s capital Chisinau.  It’s a little warmer there, which was a relief, because otherwise sitting in the sun during a bumpy 3 hour bus ride on a 95 degree day would have been just too pleasant a material experience for Peace Corps life.  (And no, they don’t open windows in Moldova, as any resulting “current” is well known to be the leading factor causing illnesses ranging from the common cold to death).

With the exception of a failed attempt at phone communication with the director of the school, I pretty much linguistically handled myself with my 5 weeks of Romanian during the visit (no sarcasm there).  The phone call went something like this:

While enjoying light conversation with host family on first evening, cell phone rings.
I answer: “Hello?”
Romanian Romanian Romanian
Me (in Romanian): “I’m sorry, what?”
Romanian Romanian Romanian
Me (still not understanding a word): “Ah, something about me you say?”
Romanian Romanian Romanian
Me: “Yes, I DO think you have the wrong number.” (Unclear whether this had been suggested.)
Romanian Romanian Romanian
Me: “Yes. My number is…hold on a minute, yes, it’s etc. etc.”
Romanian Romanian Romanian
Me: “You don’t have the wrong number? Well that just can’t be…”
Awkward silence
Me: “Okay then, well, have a good evening!”

After I hung up, the house phone rang.  My host mom told me it was the director of the school, and relayed instructions for the following day to me.  I thought, “Ah, good.  I was wondering about that, and was afraid what a phone call might be a bit tricky.”  I did not draw the connection till the next day, when my director explained that “Romanian Romanian Romanian” was actually being spoken by her, in an attempt to communicate important scheduling info to me.

Phones are hard.  I’m going to give it another month before I attempt anything beyond in-person communication.

Otherwise, it didn’t take long to fall in love with just about everything in my town.

Church Bells at my Future Site (VIDEO)

This goes along with the post above about my site visit last week.  Yup, they were that happy to see me!

Look close, and you can actually see people moving around, ringing the bells in the tower.

Site Announcements!

Tuesday was a very exciting day for PC Trainees in Moldova; after being here almost a month, we were given our permanent site assignments!

After swearing in as an official volunteer on August 18, I’ll be headed to Stefan Voda Raion.  (A raion, pronounced rayon, is the administrative level above a municipality; it is like a county or state in the U.S.)

Stefan Voda is in the very east part of the country, in the southern part of that “leg,” and is bordered by Ukraine on three sides.  (If you look at the shape of Moldova, it kind of has two legs; Stefan Voda is in the eastern leg).  The region is warm and sunny, renowned for its wine.  And this is a country renowned for its wine, so this is kind of the Bordeaux of Moldova. The region is only separated from the Black Sea by a sliver of Ukraine (that used to belong to Moldova before Stalin rearranged things).

In any case, I am spitting distance from Ukraine; in fact, I could easily hike to Ukraine and back in a day.  My village has about 3,000 people, probably a little smaller given that a lot of Moldovans work abroad.  It’s primary industry is agriculture; a farm coop employs about 500 people producing dried fruits, tobacco, and other products, and a winery employs about 300 people.  These are VERY big business ventures in Moldovan terms.