winter is knocking

11.24.08
Thought 1.

Today I was just sitting out on my balcony getting some fresh crisp winter air in my lungs. The first time I did this today I realized im not unhappy here. It is a good feeling to have. I am happy here. I do feel a little unproductive but im content. I have been for a while now I guess. I drafted a plan of action to get myself better aligned and prepared to take on this next year, hitting the ground running. I call it my Peace Plan for the Winter. I feel pretty good about it. I did a little goal setting exercise to improve myself and then how im going to go about making any sort of impact here as a peace corps volunteer.

Peace Plan Winter 2008

There is two categories for my plan this winter. The first is actions that will better myself as a individual to make better use of free time. The second addresses my work for the Peace Corps.

Self Improvement Plan
Total time put towards self improvement 1,515 minutes or 25.25 hours a week

Music (45 minutes a day, 225 minutes a week)
· Practice playing the guitar no less then 30 minutes a day on week days
· Practice or have fun playing the harmonica 15 minutes a day on week days
Body (90 minutes a day 3 days a week, 270 minutes a week)
· Go to the gym 3 times a week
· Stretching for 30 minutes a day
· Hydrate
Mind (Totaling 15 hours)
· Listen to the economist audio edition every week to keep up on world end economic events. (easily accomplished during long bus rides to and from Chisinau) 7 hours
· Language Development
o Study with Rosetta Stone Language program Russian
§ 3 lessons a week or 5 hours in total.
o Go to my language tutor twice a week for 3 hours in total.
Miscellaneous ( 2 hour a week )
· Cooking proficiency 1 new dish a week
· Learn recipe 30 minutes
· Find ingredients 30 minutes
· Cooking of the dish Variable average 1 hour


Work Plan
(No less then 3 hours a days spent on any of the following ideas or a minimum 15 hours a week.)
Divided in 4 parts
Agriculture
· Develop a plan for promotion of soil testing before the use of chemical fertilizers, carrying out the promotion at agriculture supply stores to address the issues of over fertilization or improper fertilization. As a side advantage promote correct usage of fertilizers to receive maximum yields.
· Research the possibility of growing a type of Marigold as a type of cash crop to be sold to a Netherland Pharmaceutical company. Pilot test plot, and logistics work for what to do with the yields.

Community Organizational Development
· Youth Action Group
o Facilitating and Promotion of youth community development activities.
§ Student Disco (student initiated)
· Mayor’s office Website
o Design and instruct on how to develop site
· Networking NGO Site
o Project involving data basing Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and posting their needs so that international organizations, churches, or volunteers looking for places to lend their aid or resources can make an informed decision.

Business and Rural Development
· Working with the “COMMUNITAS” Association in the south of Moldova through their chairman of this organization to spread information on the steps needed to take in planning a business plan and finding financial resources to implement the plan.

Peace Corps
· Volunteer brainstorming sessions
o Organize interested volunteers for monthly brainstorming sessions, get volunteers working together and sharing experiences. Idea sharing and group think sessions will give volunteers feeling ineffective an environment where they can gain ideas they can use to become effective or strengthen current project ideas.


Thought 2.

So after finishing my list I went out to the balcony again just to kind of reflect on my goals. Its cold outside. Cold enough to freeze some puddles from a rain we got a few days back forming some nice little ice sheets. The little kids coming home from school begin to play on them running and sliding across them. I notice they are playing a little violently as they push and shove each other out of the way to get their turn to run and slide. More kids show up and they begin shoving harder and yelling at one another in Russian. I am far enough away not to catch any words but I can see they aren’t being all that kind. These kids are ages ranging from id say 7 until maybe 10. They are not just shoving but punching, with clinched fists aiming for the face. Soon enough all hell breaks loose. Kids begin choosing sides and they shoving matches and punching matches ensue. From here kids begin to grab clumps of dirty frozen leaves and throwing them at one another. Then one kids goes over breaks a smaller patch of ice, grabs this shard and throws it at another. After this escalation both sides being doing the same picking up anything from sticks to pieces of fragmented asphalt to chunks of ice and dirt. Throwing and fighting go on right out in my apartment complex courtyard area. Its violent. I thought about going down to stop them but its not my job, I don’t think I could even begin to solve this problem.

It saddened me. What can I do to alleviate this? The Answer is nothing. All I can do is observe and report. What are the causes of this problem? Is it the lack of work in this country or poor standard of living? Is this causing domestic violence at home teaching this kids to be this way? Is it the lack of supervision of these children? Is it just in human nature to be violent and mean to one another?

I am doing fine

This is from left to right, darren, phil and me. they come up to my sight to hang out and see my awesome pad.

This is what we in the family call "west chicago". thats for you dad. i even did the whole west chicago voice when my and my roomate were cooking it. so whenever we fry random things on the skillet he asks if we are going to be making some west chicago.

Thats my roomate on the far right. to his left is his friend, and then two other volunteers david in the plad and andrew at 12 o'clock. just enjoying a nice dinner at our aparment

look at the joy west chicago brings to his face!

October 16, 2008

First of all happy birthday dad. You’re a great man and I am happy to have you as a father. So just to clear some stuff up, no I am not dead. Sorry I kind of fell off the blog universe for a while but in all actuality I kept waiting cause there wasn’t really anything I wanted to say. I Am done with recapping my day to day and try to just put down thoughts as they come. To be honest they just were not coming. It was kind of the same old same old day in and out. Start the day, go to work, research some stuff for any kind of project that I could do with my organization and coming up empty.

Quick ideas I was bouncing around on involved dabbling into some cash cropping. This type of marry gold that is being purchased by a pharmaceutical company that uses the oil for different types of medicines. They offer to buy the oil at a set price so there is no risk about the price falling at the end of the harvest. It had some promise to it only it just ran out of steam. I had my partner all sold on it to a skeptical point but closer then I have sold him on anything else. Finally I convinced him enough to peak his interest to the point he asked me to do a forecasts on the profits that could be had. He also made it clear this would not be a seminar to that we would show others how to do this but would be a business for him. The project ran out steam once we hit our first obsticale that we need a plant that can process the seed from the mary golds and turn it into oil. We assumed we can use this plant in Balti to the south of us but we were unclear if we could use the same machine that would do this with sunflowers and make it work for our needs. It’s a Russian company and I can’t talk to them in Romanian. My partner just kind wussed out on calling them and we left it at that.

Also tried to push for combining three different crops on one plot of land. The first would be a walnut orchard. In between the walnut trees would be plumb trees along the same rows. And in between the rows would be the mary golds. In the plan it would allow a person to take out credit to pay for the different inputs. Because to take out credit requires you pay it back really quickly if not in one year be able to pay it back you need a quick returning investment. So you use the cash crop of mary golds and get your investment back and use that money to fund your orchard, where after 4 years you can begin recouping your investment. If that whole thing doesn’t make sense I am talking with my host brother about how he needs to cook these cookies in the oven and he keeps interrupting me. … [end thought]

10.24.08

Ok im back on board. Today is moving a long a good pace. Let me see where I last ended… uh huh. Ok so I was explaining some of the things im trying to do at my work without success. Ok well recently im really starting to pick up pace on this whole composting idea. I have been bouncing around with this for sometime and only receiving crap from my partners. I decided against including them. I have this book lasagna gardening by patricia lanza that my wonderful mom sent me that has some great tips on composting and then sheet composting. Sheet composting is just like using organic materials used in composting put layering them where you are going to have your garden. You start with we newspapers as the first layer then build up from there, using things like peat moss, yard clippings, leaves from trees (in the fall) and so forth. You alternate the layers and as long as you use a decent ratio with the high carbon (green things living or were living) and low carbon (dead things like fallen leaves, corn stalks…) your little compost pile decomposes by heating up then leaving you with wonderfully fertile soil.

On top of this wonderful “black gold” as it is referred to by some, it helps reduce landfills by up to 60% all organic materials were disposed of properly by composting. I hope to encourage its use by using high school students as the median. I started carrying around my book and having people ask me what it is. I tell them and then give them my pitch to hopefully get them excited and so far its working. I am going to start collecting materials this week. I have found news papers, and going to buy garbage bags so I can rake up all my ingredients for my compost pile from the park. I also found out where I can buy peat moss or hopefully can and will be going to there to check on the price. I will fotograph my experiment and document how I did it with the kids. Then wait for the garden to do its thing this winter and wait for the spring to have freshly decomposed fertilizer. We will compare the yield from this fertilized organic composting gardening with normal gardening and see if there is any difference. If there is we log results and show others how.

Also I have started finally volunteer groups at the highschools. Plenty of stress and adventures to be had just getting the attention of the kids, and putting up announcements and talking to classes all in Romanian to get them interested. Really difficult but im glad I did it! There is about 20 kids showing up from one school. We meet on Sundays at 2 and from another school we will see as in we have our first meeting tomorrow. But with this brings promise of doing good by empowering the youth to develop their own ideas and projects and them we will implement them. I learned a lot since my last group and I hope to have even more success with this one.

That’s really all I have going on. Im researching butterfly farming for my partner.. there is not even one here in moldova that we have found out about, and we would raise them like a cash crop to sell at weddings kinda like throwing rice you release them at weddings for good look or something. It would be interesting to say the least if it would take off.

I love living here in this apartment. My day to day life is much improved, im happier, independent and enjoy having a roommate who I can cook with and play games with during down times. I started doing sprints again to get back into shape. My partner dropped the news that he might be going to Moscow this spring for a few months to find some work and money because its just cutting it where we work now. He will also take a month vacation in November so my life will get a whole lot slower at work, if that is even possible.

I dunno what life has in store for me in the coming months, but as long as I have more good days then bad I call them a success. That will come with positive thinking, and a drive to really be content with my life as it is. I have a guitar now, I will begin picking that up as a hobby, and then starting in the next couple of weeks I will take harmonica lessons twice a month.

I am done feeling sorry for myself.

Lesson Number One of Leadership: .
For the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence. The next best, the people honor and praise. The next the people fear, and the next the people hate. When the best leader's work is done, the people say, "We did it ourselves."
Lao Tsu
.
First Rule of Project Design: .
If you fail to plan, then you plan to fail.
Anonymous

Lesson Number One of Management: .
There are only two things in life: Reasons and Results. (Reasons Don't Count)
Robert Anthony
.
Lesson Number One of Planning: .
If you do not know where you are going, then any road will do.
Lewis Caroll
.
Lesson Number One of Self Reliance: .
If you blame others, you give up your power to change.
Robert Anthony
. .
First Rule of Awareness Raising .
A good message must be:
Kept very simple, and must
Reach all people.
Phil Bartle
First Rule of Management: .
Do not work hard, get results.
Bill Owen

I will stop wallowing around in my own self pitty and do somthing. May those be my famous last words. Eye of the Tiger baby! I hope to have somthing of use to report in the following week or two. For if I don't it's because I didn't try hard enough. That is just somthing I will not accept.

8.27.08 brutally honest.

Drinking is culture here. It is everywhere, from the celebrations, to mid day work shots, to dinner shots with whisky or wine. You see it in drunks walking the streets stumbling by, or breakfast shots at the local bars as you walk by and there are a handful of men standing around a small table doing straight up vodka shots at 7 in the morning with guys all around them just sipping on their beers going about their days.

Word to the wise for future volunteers, this should have been stressed to all volunteers thinking about coming here. Its part of the culture and if you are not comfortable throwing down with the men you will have a very hard time fitting in or even enjoying yourself here.

I know some volunteers who in coping with their environment, may it been low productivity, a hopeless situation, homesickness, or just plain boredom are drinking more then maybe they had in the past or more then they should. When volunteers are put in a situation that is stressful and unknown like we are in then throw in a culture that you have to refuse drinks at ever corner if you don’t want to be drunk it can be a hard thing to say no. I remember in the winter, as I was being offered glass of wine after glass saying come on one more, “I don’t like to drink alone” you give into it and maybe you fall asleep at 8 that night ending a possibly boring or stressed out day early... Once you realize you are doing it you have the choice to stop it or continue it. I stopped it once I realized what I was doing and feel in control of myself. This summer has allowed me to escape it given in the host family I just left to live alone they ran out of wine and I was not forced it every night like I had been before.

Our peace corps doctor here in Moldova who is a native Moldovan said on this topic…You have to understand this is the culture this is our culture and society and if you reject it we reject you. He tells of times he knows of friends who refused to drink that wer fired from their jobs, there is this feeling of if you don’t drink with us you want something from us, your not our friend maybe you’re a spy.. (going to the extreme there but he was honest in what he was saying)

That makes me think about those days at work I would refuse to drink because it was a work day maybe my partners thinking less of me or don’t include me in things because I don’t take to drink as they do. It puts a whole new dynamic to saying no the drink and as that doctor was insinuating … you can’t really say no if you expect to be integrated in your community.

I am not saying I don’t drink here, I do, but I try to do it where kids would not see me or even high school students who are potential students of mine if I get any of these project groups off the ground here in the future.

Its not an easy job we do here, and with this added element of alcohol pressed on us on top of everything else it makes it that much harder.

I live without a host family now. I have an apartment. I will be sharing it with a 15 year old boy who is going to the local high school so he doesn’t have to commute from the village about 45 minutes away every day. His mom bought the apartment and I am renting a room from her. I am looking forward to having a roommate, even if he is so young. I hope this will help my conversational skills because he is a Romanian speaker.

I am also feeling alone at work. Given the level of corruption and inherent problems with my organization I don’t see myself really writing a project with them. I also don’t even know if I have the possibility to write a actual project that might leave any kind of lasting impact on them. This realization is a scary one because it mean what I do might be me doing this on my own.
I will focus on the youth because they are more receptive to making a difference or working for others without this “I work for only one person and that’s me” mentality. I have been planning my next year and have some ideas. I am in the process of making an action plan and we will see where it takes me.

I don’t want to just do a project so I can say I did something here. I don’t want to write a grant that my friends and family from back home fund either because I feel im forcing a project here that might necessarily be needed if the only funding I can find is with my own resources. I am here to learn, I am here to teach, but im not here to force anything on anybody. If someone comes to me for help may it be ideas I might have about a project or the a broken communication link I will do it with open arms. What I am not here do do in my perspective is force change, force things on people as things I want to accomplish but the inherent ideas need to come from locals, from there I will just capacity build.

For anybody out there who I might be letting down with these goals… sorry. I am over the expectation I will come here and change the world for the good as the realization has set in that I might be getting more out of this then anybody else here and that the Peace Corps helps the volunteer to a greater extent then the host country nationals.

8.27.08 Picking grapes making wine… and then squash..

Luckily for me I have been homeless one of the things I was able to experience was working in the fields with the old host family from Peresecina. They all went to the fields to go collect grapes to make wine and I was invited then told to reconsider. I was like heck yea ill go to the fileds and collect grapes to make wine! They said it wasn’t fun but I just wanted to help with something.

So about 18 hours later ill tell ya this, its not horrible but its not exactly fun either ;-). Spent the entire day the first day from 7 am until 9 at night working. There was about 15 of us in total and we had this little process going on where we would have pickers and bucket carries with the grapes. I made sure to do every job, from the picking, to the carrying, to the delivering the grapes with car and trailer and dumping them into barrels through this hand crank grape smasher. This wonderful time was finished off with a Masa or meal where we filled our mouths with watermelons, soup, bread, beer and of course some whisky. ( given I had run out of my store bought water I was forced to resort to drinking the well water like everybody else) I got lucky having little side effects after the consumption.

SQUASH!

Now for the squash. So I was homeless for a bit so in my travels I stayed in a this village with another peace corps volunteer near my site. I woke early one morning and forced myself to be able to go to the fields do to whatever they were doing. Turns out we were picking squash and throwing them into this truck trailer. Just had to throw that story in because I had never picked up a squash before I don’t think having only seen them at thanksgiving festivals next to pumpkins who dominate that holiday.

8.27.08 I bought a bike, but there was nothing easy about it …

So I purchased a bike. I have this friend here where I live who was very adamant about buying a bicycle and convinced me more or less that I wanted also to buy a bike like he did. I convinced myself I could ride all over the place to the different villages surrounding our town without the need to pay for transport or wait for transport, I can just bike anywhere no problem its easy!
So to get a better selection of bikes so we could get more for our money we decided to take a bus taxi to balti (pronounced belts) to peruse the second largest city in moldova for a bike that we could afford and wouldn’t fall apart.

We left early searched the city in all the largest outdoor markets we could find, an indoor bike shop then settled finally on two that looked the part even if it was a little more expensive then we had budgeted for but not enough to really break us. So its now about 2 in the afternoon we have our bikes and the only thing that stands in our way is the 70km back to Edinet. Why not in the heat of the day just ride back right? Good Plan!

We made it around 30 km before my legs refused to go anymore. I am going to blame it on me being out of shape, lacking on sleep the night before and last but most importantly least my bike was riding with resistance and we lacked the tools and know how to fix the problem. It felt as if I was riding with my rear brake on the entire time giving me constant resistance even on level ground.

We left our bikes in my buddies cousin’s village and took a car the rest of the way. Our bikes followed the next day, still not sure hoe it was arranged but they made it here. I am also not sure who designed the seat but if was to thoroughly bruise my tail bone (so much so that after nearly 3 weeks after the event it still is tender) they accomplished their goal.

8.27.08 International Work Camp.

That little girl was my best friend at camp even if she did abuse me with that racket.

What is that? In short it is a 2 week extravaganza of learning how to work with others giving some children something to do in a poor country in Europe. Here is the down and dirty.
It began on the 4th of August. The first of august I moved out of my house where I was living with a host family for a more comfortable environment of living on my own in an apartment. It really was my goal from the first day I did come to site was to get back to some normalcy for myself and live on my own again. It is quite a shock to not only move into another country but also move into another family. I mean I had fun living with my real family in the state but once I hit 18 I was ready to get out and do my own thing! So being forced to live with a family was a good experience but I was ready to move out once I could.

Any way, back to the camp. I left my house the first of August only to find out my apartment that I was going to be moving into was going to take a few extra days to finish before I was going to be moving in and living there. No problem, I took off down to the south to where my old host family lived and stayed with them for 3 days or so expecting to come home to an apartment ready for me.

Unfortunately or fortunately it was not completed and they quoted me a few more days. (lets just say this quoting 3 days into the future goes on for nearly 4 weeks before I was finally able to move in… last night).

So I needed a place to stay in the mean time… Farina my German site mate had space at her house but it came with a catch… I am not working full time with this camp her organization put together for 2 weeks and sharing her accommodations with 12 other volunteers from all over Europe plus Azerbaijan.

I had a really great time all in all and made some good friends from countries all over the place. The camp taught me a lot about how to go about planning a camp, and team work, and managing expectations.

The scenario was this… 12 volunteers with a a description of their 2 week service was working with disabled teens ages 18-20 somethings… and what they were brought into was a 2 week summer camp working with kids ages 7-14. Quite a surprise for a few of them but they took it well and we put on a sporadic camp from 9-4 every day then spent the evening planning for the next day and cooking for ourselves. We did this with no running water (water was out for the city for the first week and a half) so bucket baths and one outhouse for all of us. I slept on the floor on a few blankets and we all were mercilessly attacked by mosquitoes who feasted on all of our foreign bodies like it was thanks giving.

Nearly everybody went home happy and we all learned about each others country and culture such as … nearly all of them didn’t like America for various reasons and in the end they all liked me so they thought America can’t be all that bad ;-)