Where is Moldova, anyway?

Often enough, people ask me why I included an apparently-nonsensical word in my blog url address. “Palagi,” pronounced ‘Pah-langh-gii’ is actually the Samoan word for “other” or “outsider.” (For those of you who don’t know me, I spent 6 months studying in Samoa while I was a junior in college – I know, I know – I guess I like living in small, relatively unvisited countries with three-syllable names).

Thinking back, I would have to admit that this word was the Samoan term I heard the most frequently while living there. Whether it was said about me in the context of an introduction, whispered behind my back as I walked by, or used in a greeting to get my attention (somewhere along the lines of “hey you, palagi, come over here!”– It was crystal clear that we (my classmates and I) didn’t belong – weren’t Samoan and definitely weren’t “from here,” AND that it was perfectly acceptable to draw attention to these facts.

(Side bar: At the beginning of our time in Samoa we were under the impression that the word Palagi meant “white man,” but our language teacher later explained to us that this was more of a connotation – the Samoans used the word also while observing other Pacific Islanders, etc. It’s just as an island in the middle of the Pacific, most of the “visitors” that come are white – you don’t get as much of the border crossing / population mixing as you would in Europe, for example, while living on an isolated island).

As Americans we tend to think towards assimilation; it’s considered rude to call people out on their differences – the fat one, the one who talks funny, the one who isn’t “ours”, especially publicly. The entire time we were in Samoa we remained palagi – living with host families, eating the same food as Samoans eat – integration was never the goal, cultural learning through immersion was. There is a difference. (In fact, the reason I chose the SIT - School for International Training in Samoa program was its focus on immersion, that many study abroad programs didn't have). Through this focus, we became the Palagis who could speak Samoan, the Palagis who stay here for more than a week, the Palagis who knew not to walk in front of elders but behind them— but that term always stuck with it, and colored what we did.

So why did I take this Samoan word and apply it to my Peace Corps service in Moldova? (Before I even showed up in Moldova, before I took part in any Peace Corps training events, and before I met even one Moldovan…) Because I understood from the beginning that the Peace Corps (anywhere in the world you are working for them) is about being different, being a stranger, being aware that you are the odd one and being more of an American than you ever thought you were, or ever identified yourself as.

This is not to say the Peace Corps is about not-belonging… in my personal understanding, the job of a Peace Corps Volunteer, at its core, is about coming to belong to a place you once were an outsider to.

Belonging to another place doesn’t mean giving up the place where you used to belong – you probably still belong there too (and they hopefully want you back). Coming to shed the outsider status doesn’t necessarily entail having to shed your cultural identity or personal beliefs - I never expected to not be referred to as "American." But it does mean dividing your loyalty, your heart, your home, your attention span, and essentially yourself.

How many of us ever belong somewhere other than our home? College I attended, but never called my home – it was always, “where I was studying away from home.” (I personally, was never one to call “home” – anywhere I lay my head, anywhere I live – “home” to me is my HOME. I’m very careful about how I use that word.) Perhaps as we grow older, move around and establish families, we create for ourselves new homes, in fact I know we do, we have to. But in those cases it is usually somewhere in America, with Americans – and while you may have felt like it, you probably were never a real outsider, just a neighbor from a different part of town, who talks a little funny, or uses a different amount of mayonnaise in potato salad. Living in America, talking about partisan differences, the Christian right, regional dialects- you lose sight of how much you have in common; perhaps you can’t realize how uniting the factor of “being American” is until you have lived abroad.

Being in the Peace Corps is accepting the fact that you are an outsider, but going with it anyway. It is adapting yourself, not trying to change the world/culture/host family around you. I always compare my time in Moldova with my time in Samoa because they are my only two living experiences. But honestly, they shouldn’t be compared. We lived and observed, respectfully, life in Samoa. In Moldova, we live life, are a part of life, make our own life - even if we didn't expect to, even if we used phases when leaving America such as "taking a break from life" or "leaving it all behind", even if we knew it wasy always temporary. We have a life here now, too.

This feeling right now, as I am thinking about the last 2.5 months I have in the Peace Corps, is new to me – it is a feeling of not only having two homes, but of really belonging two places.

So while I still am “the Americanca” which I guess is equivalent to “the palagi,” I am now “our Americanca” to the people of my town. And that one little, three-letter word is the result of all my two years Peace Corps work – officially towards “the promotion of peace and friendship” but ultimately towards “understanding and mostly, belonging.”

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I only fear that continuing my life here - comunicating with my friends, family and neighbors - will be a million times more difficult when I leave, than communicating with you in America is now. And i'm not ready to completely give it up. I like the double life. :)

So, having been at this blog for 2 years already, it is interesting to me who is actually reading it. My tech-savy computer tells me where my readers log on from, how long they read my blog for, and how many times they come back.

The following is a list of places where I have readers that I can't figure out who they are... Please drop me a comment on this post and let me know who you are, where you are from, and why you are reading! :) I made it so you can post anonymously and respond - without having to leave your email or anything! Even if you aren't from one of these places, just let me know you are reading!

Peace,
Sharon
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(these are locations where people have logged onto my blog more than once)

Bucharesti, Romania
Centerville, Virgina, USA
Altoona, Pennsylvania, USA
Holland, Michigan, USA
Seattle, Washington, USA
Istanbul, Turkey
NYC, New York, USA
Houston, Texas, USA
Reston, Virgina, USA
Boulder, Colorado, USA
Chisinau, Moldova
Sydney, Australia
New Jersey - all over
Plainwell, Michigan, USA
Atlanta, Georgia, USA
Plano, Texas, USA
Ames, Iowa, USA
Washington DC, USA
Barcelona, Spain
Salt Lake City, Utah, USA

People constantly ask me about life in America - the differences, the similarities. But Moldovans constantly frame the question in a biased manner. "It's better over there, isn't it?," or "Life in America is so much easier, yeah?" or "How can you like it HERE when you live in AMERICA?" Granted most of these people have never been out of the Soviet Union - and their perceptions of American come from Russian propaganda, and now TV and magazines.

My answer to these questions is always that life is "different" there and there are pluses and minuses of each place. My pluses for America are always proximity to mountains and ocean, free (and well-stocked) public libraries, and my family, of course. The minuses for America are a huge gap between the rich and poor (something the average Moldovan does not see or hear about), the fact that our country is split on almost every important issue, the lack of hospitality/feeling of community that exists in most of our neighborhoods (I remember being angry at people for not speaking English, instead of going out of my way to help them - as Moldovans have helped me) and I know more people in my village now than I know in River Vale, seriously, too much sacrificed for career, and the fast pace of life. For example.

Would I ever pick up and move to Moldova for good? Nope. I can live here (or anywhere else) for a few years, but I don' t think the ex-pat life suits me. I miss the open, say-anything, be who you are atmosphere of America. It's something in the air, something in the water, that reeks of possibility - of change - of momentum. Something that makes you feel like anything can happen in America, you can be who you want - if you just work towards it. (Okay maybe these Horatio Alger stories are few and far between - BUT - outside of economic talk, rags to riches - talking about forming a club, starting a sports team, writing a letter to the editor, taking an art class just because you want to - you have the freedom to do that). And it is a freedom we take for granted. To not be judged by our whims or our differences.

In Moldova, the air is more stagnant. You feel tied down by processes, bureaucratics, and in a way - tradition. "We do it like this because this is how we ALWAYS have done it" is not a rare response. Also, close ties to your neighbors can lead to competition, jealousy and nosiness - and a lot of social pressure to conform. I feel it and I don't even really live here. Moldova isn't an ethnically homogeneous society - there are Ukrainians, Romanians, Bulgarians, Turks, Armenians, Russians, Roma and Hungarians all living within this small country -- yet somehow things are generally the same across the country. Yes there are regional and ethnic differences. But go to a celebration in one house in one village in Moldova, and go the next year to the same celebration in a different house across the country and most likely you will do the same things, and eat the exact same food. I'm talking EXACT same. Sometime it is suffocating the lack of diversity of thought, and action. I know the youth feel it too - when they try to do something new, and get pulled back by people who say they can't - that it won't work that way - naysayers that have never even tried.

These youth I'm afraid will leave Moldova - to Romania most of them to do studies. And I don't blame them. Sometimes I feel like there they will have the best chance for personal improvement. But it's too bad for Moldova - who needs this new innovative generation to stay here and fight. But it's hard, sometimes too hard - when no one listens, and you have to fight a year to gain an inch, only to have half the inch taken away from you with one back room deal. People talk about you as you fight, not admirably - like you are crazy. And for a place that values community so much - to be the odd one out - you do not have a great life, and are constantly on the defensive - I see this with a lot of my students who are different - and who are not afraid to be, who express themselves differently, and although I am proud of their self-expression, I feel bad for the treatment they receive from their community. It's almost like scorn. I know they are torn - between leaving and staying. Moldova needs them. It just needs to realize it needs them.

A few months ago, I read a blog post on the "Freakonomics" website about finding a new, 6-word motto for the United States. The motto that won the contest, "Our Worst Critics Prefer to Stay", speaks, in my mind, to this very issue.

One can't describe life in America in any fixed terms, because life in America is different for each of its citizens - based on socioeconomic status, geography, race, age, religion, profession, gender, etc etc. Everyone has their own experience and interaction with the principles that shape our country. However, I think it is something to be proud of - this motto - and the truth of it -- that our society, despite all its problems, partisan fighting, and ethnic/religious bickering, makes people feel at home, like they want to stay, like they can do something to change it. And that, in my opinion, is what makes America Great - the fact that our worst critics prefer to stay, and to fight to change (and improve) our country.

America is an active process, and the fact that we admit to this, and accept it, is amazing.

I have been writing this blog for 2 full years now. Wow. Who woulda thought...

Those of you (Aunt Carol, Aunt Joanne, Dad...) who make up my reliable blog audience may have noticed that I haven't written in awhile - that is becuase I have been gone for 3 weeks helping to run leadership camps for young Moldovan girls. The camps are called GLOW (Girls Leading Our World) and are definitely one of the more meaningful things I've done in Moldova. I will write all about the camps after a few nights sleep. But in the meantime, I figured, I owe you, my admiring public, something since I haven't written in so long - so here it is, some Peace Corps Volunteer humor -

A pessimist sees a glass of water and says "the glass is half empty" -
An optimist sees a glass of water and says "the glass is half fully" -
A Peace Corps Volunteer sees a glass of water and says "A shower!".

In America, if someone was to tell you - "You'll wait to the cow's come home for ________ to happen," you get the sense that you will be waiting a loooooooooooong time.

In Moldova, you can almost set your clock to the cows coming home, every night - at 9pm, or at the start of the sunset. They walk home, everyones' cows in a large pack led by one villager, and each cow stops at their own gate - or at side streets where their owners are waiting to escort them home. Traffic stops (if there is traffic) and there is a mass cow-street crossing.

Here, the cows come home daily. You wait for them, yes - but you know when they will come.

Judging by the traffic coming on my blog yesterday, I concluded that many of you readers have ended up here through your search for information, in English, about the flooding in Moldova. So, here is an update. Keep in mind I am not an official news source, nor am I the government, nor do I live in an area of Moldova affected by the flooding - everything I am reporting to you I either heard somewhere, or saw on tv -- consider this a tertiary source of information.

Yesterday, my host mother and I went to a neighbors house to watch the news, specifically "Moldova 1" - the National Moldovan television station, report on the flooding. It seems like the Northern regions were hit the most - both on the sides of the Nistru (Ukraine) and the Prut (Romania). Many houses are completely submerged in water. Many people have been evacuated, in some cases whole villages. Kids and students who were at summer camps next to the river were evacuated to nearby schools. Right now, the government is worrying that the levels of water will rise further in Vadilui Voda, a village next to Ukraine and right on the river Nistru -- in this village the water supply for the capital is located, and if waters get too high, the whole system will go out.

It seems like the army and national guard are doing a good job of housing and evacuating people. Most people were able to get out on time - and people are volunteering with their boats to patrol the danger zones. Right now, they are just waiting to see what the weather does. But it seems very orderly. We also saw on the news that the newest worry associated with flooding was the diseases that could be transmitted by the dead animals. They are vaccinating people, but the report was in Russian, and I didn't really understand what, specifically, they are vaccinating people against.

From drought to flood. No one understands the weather this year.

How many years have I sung this line, and never really understood what it meant...

New Jersey may be the "garden state" - we have jersey corn, jersey tomatoes, cranberries, etc. But you definitely don't come across too many wheat fields in New Jersey. Nor have I ever been in any farm-land states (I need to travel the USA better when I get back, definitely.) I know what the line is referencing - miles and miles of rolling hills, covered with wheat - I just had never experienced it.

Moldova, with it's rolling hills, beautiful sunsets, and glowing fields of wheat, provided me with the perfect example. Riding my bike home from a nearby village last night, I stopped to take a picture of the amber waves of grain... but couldn't. I tried to snap a few shots, but the pictures weren't coming out nearly a 1/5 as beautiful as the scene was. So I gave up. You will have to either imagine it, drawn on your own experience, or visit some grain fields. :) Maybe this scene was so beautiful to me only because I'm not used to it... but I don't think so. The Moldovans I was with stopped to admire it as well.

If only Moldova could get some "purple mountains majesty" I'd be content. Rolling hills and countryside are beautiful, but I need some mountains to break up the view.