Beşalma

This Monday, I went with some European volunteers to a village about 20 km outside of Comrat called Beşalma. We went because this village is home to Gagauzia's ethnographic museum and we wanted to check it out. I took some pictures because it seemed like a nice example of a Gagauz village to show everyone.

Disney movies...they are everywhere, including the gates in Beşalma.

To quote one of my students, "I never saw such interesting cars before I came to Moldova." These Soviet vehicles keep on truckin'.

The village's medical center.

There are crosses and shrines like this everywhere in Gagauzia.

Ah, agriculture.

A lot of villages and towns in Moldova depend on well water. This is one of the less picturesque wells.

A small store with a tile pattern that I found interesting.

I don't really get how these villages depend on well water but have fountains! But here's a nice fountain. They really loved building fountains in the USSR.

A super-cool fish.

A much more picturesque well.

This one is for my dad: Beşalma's city hall. The flag on the left is Gagauzia's, the flag on the right is Moldova's.

A statue outside the ethnographic museum.

Beşalma's church, which was built in the 1840s. Beşalma isn't a large village, but it still has a gorgeous church. I am always impressed by Gagauz churches. They have great paint jobs.

I love these cupolas, it's so cool to see them as you look at the country landscape.

The museum at Beşalma was really great. It is normally closed on Mondays, but they were awaiting a delegation (which never came) so they were open. The museum was founded by the work of one man who single-handedly decided to put construct a museum in this small town. We got a great tour from a very competent guide and learned a lot about the history of the region.

Now I am cursing myself for not taking pictures of the cool ethnographic displays, but rest assured that they were pretty sweet. It was really interesting to see things like a pair of shoes that were handed down from generation to generation because real leather shoes were so rare among the peasants. It was also interesting to see a traditional stove, which people used to cook, keep themselves warm, and sleep on. Another nice display for me as a former knitter was a large loom and several examples of homemade textiles. The amount of work that had to go into one dress was amazing.

We also learned about events in the 20th century here. Moldova was a battlefield between the Nazi-allied Romanians and the Soviet army. They had a display of German helmets and other accoutrements found in the fields here after the war and a pair of shoes that were worn by a concentration camp escapee who ended up in Beşalma. I didn't know that collectivization affected this region so much. More than half of the residents of Beşalma died in the artificial famine caused by a drought and the appropriation of food by the Soviet government. Then there was a display about the second half of the 20th century, which our guide said most people remember fondly because they felt economic security. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the entire agricultural system collapsed and still hasn't really recovered. During Soviet times people didn't have to leave the villages to go на заработке (na zarabotke) abroad in order to make money. There were also pictures and articles from the times when Gagauzia gained its autonomy (they declared independence, but it never really caught on).

I think it's a great thing that such a museum exists to preserve Gagauz history. It's definitely a treasure for this community and I was glad to have visited.

The 10-Day No Water Challenge

The water stockpile

Apparently (and I say "apparently" because I only hear about this stuff through word-of-mouth), from May 10 to May 20 residents of Comrat will not have any water. Every year they clean out the pipes through a chlorination process. So far the water has been mostly shut off, but some people have reported having extremely green chlorinated water flowing through their pipes off and on.

What really knocks me out is the fact that there's no official way of notifying people about this. There's no signs, notices, whatever. I don't read Comrat newspapers because they tend to be pretty boring official government stuff written in a quite Soviet style ("Respected Students, we congratulate you on the first day of the new academic year!"), so I can't say if they put something in the paper. Actually, I don't watch much of the local news either, so perhaps it's my own fault I don't know anything. Still, in the U.S. they'd at least leave a flier for you or something.

It reminds me of a sociology class I took in the Global Studies department, where our professor explained that in traditional societies, all interactions function to strengthen community ties. In a way it's sort of logical. If the only way to get information is through your relationships, you will probably cultivate better relationships.

(As if to prove this point, as I was writing this, Jen, one of the Peace Corps Volunteers here, messaged me on Facebook to tell me that there will allegedly be water tomorrow. This is exciting news.)

Thankfully, I heard about the water situation beforehand from the Turkish girls and was able to stockpile water and do three loads of laundry before it got cut off. There are certain interesting challenges of living without running water. I saved about 50 liters of water, but it's really not enough. Without water, you can't flush the toilet, do dishes, take a shower, wash your clothes, brush your teeth, etc. You can do some of these things with bottled water, but some of them take up a surprising amount of water. I swear it takes a liter to wash one small pot! And don't even get me started on how much water it takes to flush a toilet. I may have to buy myself a bucket and use well water.

I'm already disgruntled and it's only Day 3. I may have to escape to Chisinau this weekend in order to bathe.

Making Water

Practically the first thing travelers seem to become aware of in any country is the water quality. Everyone knows, for example, that you shouldn’t drink the water straight from the tap in Mexico unless you are jonesing for a case of Montezuma’s Revenge.

Arizonans who travel abroad sometimes tend to generalize this to all foreign countries. My mother once had a student ask her if it was ok to drink the water in France. My mother, bemused, assured the student that the EU had higher water quality standards than the U.S.

What is interesting to me is how much water quality varies among developing countries. Water purity seems to depend more on accidents of nature than infrastructure development. In Armenia, where the water comes from sources high in the mountains, everyone drinks tap water. The water in Armenia tastes better than Tempe tap water, and I don’t think I ever got sick from it. My friend Derek says it is the same situation in Kyrgyzstan, which is also a mountainous country.

Meanwhile, Russia, which has a per capita GDP about three times that of Armenia and twelve times that of Kyrgyzstan, has famously toxic tap water. Even in St. Petersburg you can get girardia (a wicked parasite that will have you running for the bathroom for several months) from drinking the tap water without boiling it. The Russian woman I lived with seemed to think there was something inherently wrong with drinking water from the tap, no matter how hard I tried to explain that in lots of other countries you won’t get sick from the tap water. (Of course, her solution was boiling water and putting it in a little jar with a silver spoon in it. Never quite figured that one out, but it seemed pretty gross to me, considering all the strange sediment that collected on the bottom of the jar.)

I think that one can entirely explain the Russian obsession with tea with their poor water quality. People there seem to think it is actually unhealthy and even weird to drink plain, clean water. (I know!!!) Meanwhile, tea is the elixir of life. Go figure.

The situation in Moldova seems better than Russia, but not by much. Locals and foreigners alike avoid drinking the tap water, opting for filtered water or store-bought water instead. Today I finally bought myself a water filter so I could stop lugging 5 liter jugs of water to and from the store every week.

Once you have a water filter, you must do the activity that Stephanie, my fellow Fulbrighter, calls “making water.” First, you have to boil the water to kill all the critters. Then, you have to wait for the water to cool and the pour it in the filter. Ta-da! Potable water.

I consider myself lucky to live in Comrat, actually. In Ciadir-Lunga, the next town over, water apparently comes out of the tap yellow. People have to go to special taps in the city center to get free water that you can actually drink. Yikes.

Against the Arizona Immigration Bill

Dear Governor Brewer,

Hello, my name is Erin Hutchinson and I just wanted to write you to express my concern over the recent immigration bill. I am currently serving as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in Moldova, but the news from my home state of Arizona has been worrying me lately.

I had the opportunity to study in Russia in the summer of 2008. Overall, I enjoyed my visit very much, but one thing that disturbed me was the right that Russian police officers have to ask anyone for their documentation. It creates an atmosphere of fear. I personally avoided even looking at police so that they wouldn't bother me--even though all my documents were in order. The ability of Russian police officers to ask anyone for their documentation on the slightest pretext is frequently used to harass dark-skinned people from Central Asia and the Caucasus. When I was living in Russia, I was proud that such things "couldn't happen in America."

I hope I won't be proved wrong. Please don't sign the immigration bill!

Best wishes,

Erin Hutchinson

Graduate of Arizona public schools, 2004

Graduate of Arizona State University, 2009

(For more information on this bill, read this editorial from the New York Times.

To read about how John McCain has completely reversed his stance on the issue, read this blog post.

For a Catholic perspective, you can read the Cardinal of Los Angeles' blog post against the immigration bill.)

Buyer Beware

At today’s department meeting, war was declared on grade inflation.

Why?

One of the schools in Comrat hired a graduate of Comrat State University to teach English. Apparently, she’s not very good at it. Since then, officials from this school have been blackening the name of the university, saying that they won’t hire any more CSU graduates based on the performance this teacher.

So, people at the department are reasonably upset and trying to do something to stop this. They seem to think that grades are getting out of whack and so subpar students are graduating. What this means in practice is that nobody should give out perfect scores on tests anymore.

The problem?

Apparently the school that hired the CSU graduate in question never actually looked at her grades. If they had, they would have seen that they weren’t so good. They never thought to ask for references from the graduate’s professors. If they had, they would have heard that she wasn’t exactly a stellar student.

Now, I don’t want to say that the university shouldn’t put more effort into quality control. Of course we should be trying to improve the level of English instruction. That is obviously a worthy goal, and there’s certainly plenty of room for improvement in the English department (yours truly included).

But if you are going hire someone to work for you, you should do some due diligence and actually see if this person is WORTH HIRING. You can’t expect that every person holding a university degree is going to be a good teacher. If you’re not willing to go out there and do a little research on the person you’re going to be putting in front of a bunch of captive students, then it’s your own fault when the person you hired turns out to be less than what you expected.

Any time you’re going to be paying somebody money, whether it’s a teacher’s salary or a used car or a new computer, it’s best to remember what the Romans figured out 2,000 years ago: Caveat emptor.

Little Easter, Part 2

The stirring conclusion of Little Easter, Part 1!

Still waiting for the priest to come and bless us!

Once we received word the priest was on his way, everyone stuck candles into the food and lit them.

The cross bearer, a little older than they usually are in the States...

Get ready for some serious holy water.

Priest #2, doing his holy thing.

These priests take the holy water sprinkling very seriously. They get as much water as they can on their branches, and then they wind up and let it rip.

These people are recovering after getting hit with a blast of holy water.

I attended this ceremony with one of the European volunteer's host family. They were very friendly and gracious. This is a family grave. You can see the little pan with incense in it. (I snagged the shot while it was still burning.) They put flowers all over the grave and pour some water on it. It's sort of like the rapper tradition of pouring out a 40 for the deceased. Check out the little candy someone has left on the cross.

You can see people enjoying their post-holy-water meal. It's very much like the Day of the Dead in Mexico as Mary Beth has described it to me. People give food to each other in honor of the deceased. I, for one, appreciated all the wine I drank in honor of their grandmother. Thanks, babushka, where ever you are!

A close up of the Little Easter meal. The liquid in the Gura bottle is homemade white wine. You can see some dyed eggs in the bowl behind the bottle. The cakes are special Easter cakes called "Paskha" (пасха: which is the same word as Easter, actually). They stuck the candles in the cakes for extra holiness.

The family I was with put out a real spread. We had dolma and cutlets and candy and lots of cake. It was quite delicious. I got to talk to many of the family members and it was quite a lot of fun. Comrat is really small, so you always run into people you know. One of the family's kids had a friend studying at a high school in Tempe. I had heard that there was a kid from Comrat in Tempe, and now I have confirmation! I've gotta find this kid.

I decided that I like this holiday. People weren't sad, they were just happy to be generous in the memory of their loved ones. Having been to a few All Souls Day services, I can definitely say this compared favorably! It seems like a healthy way to remember the dead by symbolically sharing a family meal with them. As they partied in life, so we party with them in death.

Little Easter, Part 1

Today is "Little Easter," the day when everyone goes to Comrat's main cemetery to celebrate the dead. It's like Dia de los Muertos without the skull heads. I took some pictures for my own little photo documentary.

People walking to the cemetery. With all the cars piled up it looks like parking for a Cubs spring training game at HoHoKam Stadium.

People plant flowers, especially tulips, on the graves.

As you can see, the cemetery was abuzz with people. I think everyone in Comrat was there.

The graves usually have little fences around them, but I'm not sure why.

Here we have the priest doing a ceremony. I think he was blessing the holy water. It took over an hour.

The ladies from the choir singing.

The holy water, soon to be doused on everyone.

Food waiting to be blessed. I brought a little cake and that got blessed too!

Everyone lined up along the main drag of the cemetery, waiting for the priest to come and bless their food. It was sort of like a parade route.
End of part 1...

My Workplace

I thought I'd post some pictures of the American Center (and one of the British Center). We had a photo shoot this last week and as you can see, we had a lot of fun.

The other model besides myself is Masha, who is the hardworking lab assistant in the American Center. As you can see, from the pictures, we both have futures in American politics. We just look so good in front of an American flag.

The stuff in Greek is Happy Easter greetings from our Greek Center.

Let's see...you can also see in one of the pictures below our new flatscreen TV. Tragically, they gave us a DVD player that only plays...Russian DVDs. So, we can't really use it.

We have a lot of books. I read them. If you look above my left shoulder in the last picture below, you can see the Obama propaganda we have in the Center. He he he.

Apartments

An interesting fact I found out from talking to the European volunteers here is that landlords and -ladies have the legal right to come into the apartment you are renting from them at any time.

Luckily, my landlord understands the idea of privacy and always lets me know when he needs to come by and arranges a time when we can both be there. And anyways I have a chain on the second door (why do all Soviet apartments have multiple doors? for this reason?) so it's cool.

Unfortunately, a lot of the European volunteers have had serious issues with unannounced visits from landladies, who then pitch a fit about (of all things) unwashed dishes in the sink. Of all the things that will cause permanent damage to an apartment, unwashed dishes are definitely not one of them. (Thank goodness the Goode family, my AZ condo landlords, didn't have this rule!) It's such a weird concept that it's actually acceptable for someone to come into your home and tell you how much you should be cleaning. Very different mindset than in the U.S.

I can see that landlords and -ladies might want to have this control because in Moldova the whole idea of an advance damage deposit wouldn't work. Who would enforce the return of the money? Everything is so informal here, and good luck going to the cops. (Brief tangent: The market right across from the police station in Comrat was robbed last year. As one of my colleagues said, "This is the shame of our city!") At the same time, if you're not willing to see things in your apartment get a little roughed up...don't rent your apartment!

The strangest thing about this whole situation was the attitude that the European volunteers' organization took to this when one of the current volunteers said they should inform future volunteers about this problem in advance.

"Well, I thought you were all adults and I didn't need to tell you to clean up after yourself."

Ah, parochialism. Something we won't have to worry about disappearing from Moldova any time soon.

I have found my Kryptonite...

...and it is Star Popcorn, specifically the oddly-titled "Cheese Bond" flavor.

I think there's like 24 grams of fat in a hundred gram serving. Which makes it 24% fat. It seems like that can't possibly be true, but would Moldovan ingredient labels lie to me?

I really need to stop eating it, but I can't. One handful is just never enough.

Baked Beans

I was recently rather annoyed by the fact that I don't have anywhere I can go to satisfy my taste for American food in Comrat. The Turkish students here have the Turkish Kitchen and Café Istanbul where they can go whenever they like to have food from their native land. Sadly, due to the lack of Americans here (there are 3 of us), there's no such spot for us Yanks. Then I thought, "I have a kitchen. I am American. My kitchen can be the American Kitchen!"

So when I woke up very late today (11:30), I decided to make a project of cooking some baked beans from my mother's delicious recipe (available upon request). Thankfully, Fourchette, the grocery store here, carries a variety of essential Heinz products such as Worcestershire sauce and barbeque sauce. Everything else is a pretty basic ingredient (assorted canned beans, peppers, ketchup, etc.). So I took a walk in the glorious spring weather down to Fourchette, ran into 3 students (which made me feel happy that I know people in Comrat), picked up all the ingredients, and got cooking.

Here's my BBQ sauce (note the Russian label) and my hot sauce. I am holding the scary, Looney Tunes-esque can opener that I had to fight with to get the cans open. It kind of scratched my hand in the process. I think my tetanus shot is up to date. I'm pretty sure.

Beans simmering on the stove.

Full-on stove shot. I'm very happy that the owners of the apartment left a whole bunch of pots and pans for my cooking enjoyment. You can also see my little fancy ($8) Italian coffee-maker thing on the left. I'm very pleased with it so far.

I can't report on the taste of the finished product yet, but my kitchen smells pretty delicious!

Since this Moldovan cooking experiment has been successful so far, I'm thinking of tackling homemade macaroni and cheese and homemade spaghetti sauce next weekend. I'm tired of being held hostage by the expensive Barilla pasta sauce at Green Hills (one of our other supermarkets)! Four dollars for a jar of bolognese sauce that feeds no more than two people is absurd! I'm gonna cook up a big mess of sauce and then freeze it. Mmm mmm good!