Where is Moldova, anyway?

Is take a shower. But I can’t. And there are numerous reasons why I can’t, none of which are the lack of a showering facility, oddly enough. And surprisingly, or not surprisingly at all, the reasons why I am not allowed to shower when I want to, are intimately tied to the difficulties I am having living with my current host mother. Maybe some of these reasons rest in cultural differences about health and what casues a cold, it's definitely similar to "wives tales" in the US, but most of my difficulties have been lying in understand just what my host mother wants from me-- there seem to be so many rules that I don't know about, and it just gets frustrating. She defintitely wants me to shower (who wants a smelly house guest?) and she always showers, yet for some reason, I never can... or rather, for lots of reasons, like below...

1) You cannot shower now, it is cold outside. Yes it is true, if water touches your body when it is cold outside, you will definitely get a cold, get really sick, and if you are really wet, you might die. Or so says my mama gazda (host mother). And why would you want to shower when it is cold outside? Crazy Americans—didn’t your parents teach you that leaving the house with your hair wet will land you in the hospital immediately? Or leaving the house within 3 hours of showering is just asking for a disease equal in measure to the plague. The fact that I do not believe these “facts” leads my host mother to feel the need to overly protect me from the unknown.

2) You cannot shower now, it is too late. When it gets dark outside, you don’t want to be caught wet. Why not? Well first, you cannot go to bed with your head wet (see above reasons why this is bad), and second, you cannot be wet after dark (see above reasons, again.)

3) You cannot shower now, it’s not the right time. Or it’s Sunday. Or you showered already this week. Or we are using the buckets to collect potatoes. Or we have to go to a birthday party in 5 minutes (didn’t you know?)

4) You cannot shower now, you are going to leave the house later. (see above references to the weather and wet hair—this is effectively ruling out all the time I have to shower… because if I am going to stay in the house after a certain point in the day, that usually means it is night time, and dark…)

5) You cannot shower now, we have no water. If you have been reading my previous posts you would know that my family recently got running water in a sink in the bathroom. Sweet right? But as soon as we got this they stopped taking care of the well and it was left gross and uncovered. Then, of course, our running water stopped working… no idea why—and no one seemed to be worried by it. I thought I would go fetch water down the street, but like I said before, this task can really only happen between certain hours of the day. Good thing this only lasted a few days.

This is just trying to give you an idea of thedifficulties I have been encountering with day to day living here with my host family. Don’t get me wrong, this is just a highlight reel of the problems I have been having with my mother, I am having a great time here, and I get along with her most of the time—it can just be sooo frustrating when our cultural ideas, or personal ideas, of health and sanitation clash. And I think because I know so little of the language, she just assumes I know so little about everything else-- and need her to help me out. I know the intentions are good, but sometimes, obviously, it gets to me.

For example, if you are sick, it is not because of a virus, it is because you didn’t wear socks one day, or forgot to cover your throat with a scarf. My host mother also thinks I drink too much water for the cold weather, and that drinking water that is not hot (and not tea or coffee) is making me sick. (you see the water gets cold within your body and… ) Not all the host mothers are like this, mine just seems to be a little over protective… and she thinks she has to be based on her judgement of my "odd" behaviors of running down the streets, drinking water, coming home muddy, and not ironing my clothes.

And its not like living with your parents at home when you were littler where you can just choose to disobey them and deal with the consequences (sorry dad). Here, and especially with bath and health related issues, it’s not a choice. I have been physically prevented from showering before—by a blocked bathroom or a sudden disappearance of the buckets. But like I said before, I know she is trying to take care of me by doing this.

I guess my only recourse from here, and the way I have been dealing with it, is to just shower (or bathe, let’s be realistic here) and play the whole “I don’t understand Romanian” card.

Until then, I will continue to “sneak” showers while everyone is at work—and between my classes, just pray my deodorant lasts. One more week of this then we are off to our future sites… talk about the vanishing Americans. I might actually miss this game of "you can" and "you can't" with my host mother, because at least it makes me feel cared about. who knows though. Anyway, I miss you all!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 08, 2006 at 8:49 AM.