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Saturday, July 28, 2007
      Okay, so, some soviet stuff (we haven’t touched on this topic in a while). One of my Romanian tutors (yes I have two in my village; more on this later) invited me to go on an “excursion” on Saturday to an old Military Zone with her and her husband and kids. Bring a flashlight and some pants and good shoes, she says, we will be visiting one of the old bunkers of the Soviet Army, they go three stories underground and we don’t know what will be there. (I think this tutor sometimes feels bad for me living in a village in the middle of Moldova – she is always worried that I am bored! So finally she says, something interesting for you to see!)
I don’t know what is wrong with me, I’m still thinking like an American, because in my mind, I didn’t understand why I was brining a flashlight. I was thinking we were going to a Gettysburg / Fort Washington type place—an old war site where people now took care of it as a tourist / historical site. WRONG! Think like a Moldovan, Sharon… Also, I had in my head somehow that we were going to a battle ground, that’s the connotations, in my opinion, of a military zone, but rather we were going to a military base… or an area of land that was controlled by the military during soviet times (more on this later too).
Someone, was in fact, taking care of this historical site. But not the government. And this person was not repairing it, but rather guarding it. We drove a few kilometers into the woods, along a very good road (not for America, but a good road for Moldova, esp. one found in the middle of the woods! Picture below… They needed them for the tanks, apparently), and then our car stopped. My tutor told me I needed to get into the back of the truck (windowless), and not to speak. If someone opened the back of the car, just look at them, don’t say a word, in case, they think you are a spy or are dangerous. I don’t look Moldovan, but I didn’t think I screamed American. But apparently this is the case. (If you didn’t know by now, I scream DANGER and SPY!)
This is the first, and only time, I have been slightly afraid in Moldova (knock on wood). And honestly, I was more confused really than afraid. The former USSR, as I have encountered it so far, has just been a yearning for communism and the “old ways”, or as they put it here—the “before”—nothing very pro-active or militant. We drove up to a admittance station, where the people who are now guarding the base, live. My professor spoke to them only in Russian, and apparently said the right things and we were allowed to pass, and a few kilometers later I was allowed to speak again. Yippee! The gift of speech.
The people who guard this base, and look after it, are Soviet nationalists, or rather MSSR nationalists. Loyal to Moldova, but wanting what was (this is according to my tutor, not according to fact or our conversation—clearly I don’t understand Russian) I’m not sure with what goal they look after it, but they welcome people who are interested in how it was in “soviet times.” In fact, through my tutor’s translation, it seems they are very proud of this base. Thus they welcomed my tutor and her family, and unbeknownst, an American Spy!
We had free range to this base, completely hidden from aerial view by trees and rock formations—plus it was all, garages included, underground. If you didn’t see the entrance, you wouldn’t know there was a base here (ceramic stairs leading underground have now been uncovered from hiding for our “pleasure”, but other than that, nothing has been changed). The farthest underground the complex went was 3 floors, and that floor had just now begin to be filled with water. There was a lot of rusty metal, and it was easy to envision this as a working base—peep holes and tunnels surrounded the perimeter—shot gun holes they said.
Quite the extensive base, which of course, was still riddled with bullets (non-discharged) on the ground of the rooms. I’m not sure when it was last in use. There were giant craters in the ground (picture below) that my tutor’s husband said once held missiles. But I’m not sure if I believe him. We are planning to go back and explore further—my little maglite didn’t really get us that far. Anyway here are some pictures from our excursion—what I failed to take a picture of, and will the next time, is the clear as day Russian symbol for toxic. Very interesting.
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*** This blog post, updated*** Okay, some more on the soviet stuff. Can I say again, that this is all hearsay. In fact, consider it more like folklore. I decided not to update my post, just to add this onto the text. Make of it what you will.
Anyway, Sunday, after returning from this excursion I had Romanian lessons with my other Romanian tutor. (Why do I have two? Because I am anal about grammar, and because, when you are learning a second language in a second language, it always helps to have two different people explain to you the same little bit of grammar). Anyway, while she was getting ready to start our lessons I spoke with her mother, who had been deported to Siberia during the USSR, and who now speaks a smattering of Romanian but mostly in Russian. Using her son as a translator, I showed her the pictures I took at the base.
Simple act, no, not really. She proceeded to tell me the history of the base (she knew exactly where it was, in what village, and what it looked like)—and about how I had been misled. Now, she says, she will tell me the real story.
The base that I saw, she says, was only about 1/10th of the military complext that exists over there (where I visited). We were only permitted to see the “open” part—and even if we had wandered further off, we would not be able to enter the other parts of the base. Hence the use of the word “zone” that had thrown me off earlier. Anyway, she said that the zone was set up like a star, with a base at each point and a lot of important stuff in the middle. The sniper holes, which threw me off, because I was thinking there were no huge battles in Moldova, were not for starting war but for guarding the base against the population, the curious and upset population.
She also related to me her experience with the radio show “Voice of America,” which explained to her exactly why the security was so tight around this military zone. According to her, she heard on this radio show, despite the attempt to block the program by “someone” by sending out pulses on the airwaves, that here, in this same base, they had atomic bombs. And she claims that these bombs are still here today. Although very doubtful of a claim, it is interesting to see the perspective of the population, or of one person, who lived through the entire ordeal. Further she claims that this is the reason the base is still guarded and that we were not allowed to see the entire base.
This past month was GLOW Camp, and what a month, and what a camp it was! This was and is by far the most rewarding thing I have done in Moldova, as well as the most fun! Maybe you have heard me mention it before in an email or something, since I have been occupied by the planning of this camp since January, but if you don’t know G.L.O.W. stands for Girls Leading Our World. GLOW Camp was a joint effort between Peace Corps and The Forum of Women in Moldova. And of course, the camp is only for girls—aged 14-17. The goal of the camp is to help girls develop into leaders by providing them the tools, information, and skills to do so. While we say camp, it was really more of a summer school. We had lessons about first aid, sexual health, leadership, self-defense, dental hygiene, nutrition, breast cancer, music, drama, art, Frisbee, creative writing, domestic violence, communication and conflict resolution, team building, human trafficking, academic honesty, self esteem, STDs etc. Before the camp started, we had each girl take a “knowledge survey” on each of these topics. We then made them take the exact same test at the end of the camp so we can measure what exactly they learned at GLOW camp. While we have yet to analyze their responses, we know that some of the answers that showed up on the first round of surveys such as “getting hit in the breast can give you breast cancer,” or “paying a teacher for a better grade in school is not cheating” are close to non-existent on the second round of surveys, good job teachers! We ended GLOW camp by giving each girl a manual, (classes, as well as everything in GLOW was done in both Russian and in Romanian, in order to be inclusive of every girl in Moldova—to try and promote unity in this country), in her language of choice with all the information we taught at GLOW. This year we encouraged the girls to go back to their villages, where access to the internet or this information may not exist, and share what they learned with others. GLOW wasn’t just lessons though. We had a lot of fun! A talent show, a disco/Halloween night, and of course, no American-influenced camp can be without SMORES! Delicious. When I think about American culture, I am glad we shared with the girls two of my favorite parts: Smores at the campfire and HALLOWEEN! My particular role in GLOW was a co-director. Besides running around after supplies, people and campers—and settling disputes, working in 3 languages really lends itself to communication mishaps--- I taught classes in Art and Leadership, as well as ran the team building/spider web stations! Next year we are looking to change GLOW a little bit to make it more sustainable (we ran this year off of grants, because we want to keep the cost down for the girls who come), and we aren’t sure how we will change it. But I am sure as long as it keeps the energy it has this year, it will be fabulous. Below are some pictures from GLOW this year. The jam and bread mess was a demonstration we did on giving directions—how precise you have to be! The body painting was a free time activity I supervised—the girls LOVED it, and, because we had extra paint, many used it again on Halloween to improve their costumes. The night of Halloween I felt like I had many little art works running around the disco! Next to the display of artwork are myself and my co-teacher. We had the girls draw what they thought their life would look like in 10 or 20 years. So interesting! The spider web, go teamwork. And Halloween! (I was Stefan Cel Mare—the national hero of Moldova, while Anastasia was the Statue of Liberty--- we went as dates, of course!) All in all, so fun, but so exhausting. More updates will come when I get more photos, and throughout the year when we track what these girls are doing in their individual villages—hopefully using the agency we tried really hard to instill in them!  
..know no end to their misleading influence. Yesterday, while reading in my room, the neighborhood boys rang my doorbell, shouting, Sharon, come out! Show yourself! I go to the door to find them dressed as pictured, screaming “we are terrorists, hand over your money, be afraid!” Oye. 
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
 So far this summer has been a lot of fun, and has afforded me both the opportunity to travel around Moldova, as well as the opportunity to be active in some  once-a-year projects, and to do more activities with the youth of our village—who now are out of school for the summer! As far as my travels have gone, I have been to both Sorocca and Orhei Vechi. Sorocca is hailed as the “Gypsy Capital” of Moldova. There, exists a castle that was built in the 1400’s, as well as many “fancy” homes of the “rich Gypsys” ga  thered in this town on a hill. (also there lives the Gypsy king, who I, of course, did not meet) There still exists tensions between the Moldovan population and the Roma people, but I will leave that article for another day. The castle is one of Moldova’s only tourist attractions, or something that comes CLOSE to being a tourist attraction—I loved this sign on the front of the castle, it is very Moldova—no smoking, no bathrooms, and no eating sunflower seeds in the castle!  The city of Sorocca itself is very pretty and lies right on the Ukrainian border, with the river. Border patrol here is not as strict as one would think. While I got reprimanded for taking a picture of the border, and was forced to delete it from my camera, a Moldovan man later came up to us and told us we could just swim across the river if we said we needed to collect our cows (grazing on the other side of the river). Oh, Moldova. Orhei Vechi, literally Old Orhei, is an old settlement outside of one of the cities in Moldova. It has a system of caves and underwater fountains—some very pretty hiking, alt  hough definitely not “hiking” as we know it in America. One of the highlights of this trip was seeing the old Orthodox churches as well a  s the places, i.e. small holes in the wall, where Monks used to live. Tatie,  look at these choir lofts! Imagine trying to climb those… I was scared just trying myself. Also, living in Orhei Vechi, are beautiful horses rumored to have been left by Ghangis Khan himself. Rumor or not, it was interesting to here.   Back in Singerei, we have been working a lot towards an active youth community by holding sports days two days a week (so far basketball and ultimate Frisbee are the favorites of kids), a leadership seminar once a week, and many other activities grouped under a “Youth Initiative” for our village—with the goals being to make youth more active, as well as to empower them. My niche of this project, besides participating in general, is the formation of an “Outing Club.” It’s funny because this concept doesn’t translate into Romanian—and if I called it by a Romanian name, the title would need like 12 words to get to the point of an “Outing Club,” so we use the English words. And I described to them the focuses—to take trips outdoors, to learn to survive in the wild, to care about the environment, to be more active with our surroundings and to promote the appreciation of nature. We are planning a 3 day hiking trip for the end of August, but up until now we have started learning to use Compasses with scavenger hunts through our town! (of course, we end the activities with ice cream for all!)  As far as my “normal” place of work, Dezdna, we are having vacation for a month—summer vacation is kind of short for us! But that is okay. Before vacation we celebrated “Children’s Day”, which apparently is an international celebration—who knew? It was really fun and ended with a lot of arts and crafts, as well as me teaching the kids about freeze dancing—which they loved! Besides melting me, summer has been good to me. The sunflowers here are GORGEOUS, yet are not that tall. (who knows if they will grow to their real heights, with the heat and lack of rain!). Yesterday me and another volunteer took an hour bus trip to a town up north that has a swimming pool… Right now I am realizing how for granted I took it watching the yanks in the AC in the family room and rolling outside to take a dip in the pool. It’s watermelon season here, but our refrigerator doesn’t get cold enough to make the watermelon cool! It’s okay though, it is still delicious. 
Thursday, July 19, 2007
So I've been bad at blogging lately, but I have lots of stuff to update you all on! But not today...it's too hot! Right now, at 11am, I look out my window at the thermometer and it is 43 degrees celcius, in the SHADE! Oye! It's too hot to do anything right now... except inform you of an interesting tidbit I learned yesterday. The Olympic Torch on it's way to Moscow in 1980 passed down the main street of my town! Pretty cool, huh? We have this marker on the main street by our "track" that says Olimpiad and 80. And the pieces finially come together. I can't find a list of the places it went, and since Moldova has since became independent, can't verify this... but on the only map I could find http://olympic-museum.de/torches/torch1980.htm it looks to be pretty true. I hope the heat isn't as bad across the pond. :)
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