Lost

The moment of arrival in Moldova had a sort of surreal feeling to it. Knowing that this country was not only a former member of the Soviet Union, but would be our home for the next two years, inspired a strange mix of emotions. To combine that with burnt out exhaustion and jet lag, well, you get one hell of a potent mixture. So just a pointer for any would-be volunteers reading this - don't leave your wallet on the plane.

June 2009

We landed in the Moldova after a short, hour long flight from Istanbul. We were nervous and tired, but excited all the same. We stumbled out of the plane onto the runway and walked into the terminal. Having a propensity to lose things, I checked my backpack to make sure everything was in order as the other volunteers got into the customs line.

Phone: check.

Ipod: check.

Passport: had to dig around a bit, but check.

Wallet: …God. Damnit.

A frantic moment of searching ensued. My wallet was missing. Of course this would happen. After spending several arduous moments processing the last time I had seen my wallet, I came to the conclusion that I must have left it on the plane.

Fucking predictable. Fucking convenient. Fucking miserable.

The last thing I needed was to lose the only money I had brought with me to Moldova, not to mention my credit cards. Later, I would learn that most of what was in my wallet was relatively useless over here. However, at that moment, in my head, I needed my fucking wallet.

Making my way back outside, I looked over at the plane, and felt the blood rush to my head. It was beginning to roll away, to who knows where. Adrenaline and panic pushed away any thoughts of my hangover, and another volunteer and I ran to speak with one of the runway operators. Here, I would exchange my first words with a Moldovan.

Now, as conversations go, I’ve had more successful. In fact, I’ll go out on a limb and say that every previous conversation in my life has been more successful. Even the disaster that was the first time I seriously asked out a girl (the rejection wasn’t all that bad, but how was I to know that we were standing in a patch of poison ivy?). Suffice to say, this moment would become my primary motivation to study nightly during language training.

“Ce?” he asked as we came back out of the terminal.

Not having any idea what “ce” meant, and frankly not caring all that much, I blurted out a string of panicked words, probably along the lines of “stop that #$%#! plane! I need my #@$! wallet off that plane!”

Blank stare.

Right, this was Moldova, obviously the man wasn’t fluent. Maybe if I slowed down, spoke louder.

“LEFT WALLET ON PLANE. PLEASE STOP PLANE.”

The Moldovan lazily watched my wild gesticulations. With painful slowness, he looked from me, this wild-eyed maniac standing before him, to the plane, and then ever so slowly back to me.

Blanker stare.

Suddenly Peace Corps had become very, very real. “You have got to be kidding me,” I thought. In my heightened state of panic it seemed ridiculous to me that Peace Corps was actually serious about most Moldovans not speaking English. I began to think some very un-Peace Corps-like thoughts. Seeing as I didn’t speak Romanian, we had an obvious dilemma.

“This, he forgot this.”

A calm voice. A straightforward voice. Was that a hint of amusement? I turned and saw Ryne, the other volunteer who had come outside with me, pointing to his wallet and making motions as if dropping it.

Right. Smart.

The man, of course, immediately understood. As my chin dropped shamefully to my chest, he began hailing the pilots on his walky talky. The plane stopped, and the man started explaining (at least I think) the situation to the pilot. As we had some time to wait, I decided to calmly check my backpack pockets one last time.

You can probably guess what happened next. I’m not sure who designs these hiking backpacks, but for whatever reason they love putting pockets in the most absurd of places. There it lay, my prankster of a wallet, in an unchecked sidepocket, next my sunglasses. I slowly lifted it out of my pack and stared at it. The runway operator, still talking on the walky talky, stopped mid-sentence. The look on his face needed no translation.

“Sorry,” I shrugged.

The tension was broken by a loud burst of laughter. I turned. Ryne, of course. Ashamedly giving another shrug to my new Moldovan friend, I felt a sudden rush of relief, and turned around to head back into the airport.

“Great,” I recall thinking, as I joined the line of waiting volunteers “and I’m supposed to be here to help these people?”

Airplane

June - 2009

I arrived in Moldova on June 12th after an exhausting flight that took us through Istanbul to the capital of Chisinau. We had our pre-flight staging Philadelphia, where I would meet the 60 or so prospective volunteers who had come in from all over the country. On the day of our departure, we got up early after a night out on the town, and piled into a plane headed for Istanbul. I sat with Isaac and Cailin, two other volunteers who I would get to know well later. As we waited for takeoff, we talked excitedly about going to Moldova, of our lives back in the states, and whether or not the wine served on the plane was really free. We were comfortable, and preparing for the trip of our lives.

I forget which airline we took, which is unfortunate. Unfortunate because the free alcohol was a huge plus and, as a result, I can only describe my flight experience as being very, very drunk. This is a common result, I’ve discovered, when you mix (some) Peace Corps Volunteers and free booze.

Now, airlines are supposed to limit how much alcohol they give their passengers, for obvious reasons. I’ve always considered the idea to be logical. Any number of unsightly things may result from serving too much alcohol on a plane. However, for reasons undiscovered, we found our hostesses to be unusually liberal with these limits. Pleased by our good fortune, we took full advantage. Isaac and I took turns fetching armfuls of mini-bottles from cabinets in the back of the plane, distributing to those in need. I like to think that the hostesses couldn’t resist our charm, powerless to say no to these young, charismatic volunteers. More likely, especially considering my patchy memory of the time, it was pity that permitted us to get bombed over the course of our ten hour flight.

“Where was it they said they were going? Moldova?? No, for god’s sake don’t stop serving them. I don’t think you can spend two hours sober in that country, let alone two years!”

Luckily for the other passengers, volunteers are a mostly harmless group of folk, if not particularly quiet. Suffice to say, I didn’t sleep much during the flight.

If my flight to Istanbul could be summed up as “drunk,” then our ensuing layover in the Istanbul’s airport could be described as “miserable.” My stomach was hosting the Kentucky Derby. My head the Beijing Olympics. Suddenly everyone was my enemy. Diabolical airport authorities had specifically designed chairs for unsleepabilty. Those hostesses knew about this place, knew what they were doing to us. They could have at least warned us that Istanbul’s airport is the worst place on earth for hangover recovery. I couldn’t even muster a smile as wide-eyed asian tourists took pictures of us. A sight we were, I’m sure. 60 miserable looking Americans muttering angrily at the floor.

As time went on, I began to feel a little better. Nonetheless, while sleep may have come for some, it didn’t for me. We had 5 hours for another round of ‘let’s get to know each other.’ And, as sleepy and miserable as we felt, between the card games and the guitars, we did. We had only known each other for 3 days, but there was a sense of something in our conversations, a mutual apprehensiveness I guess, but also of understanding. Understanding that this was a trip unlike that which most of us had taken before, and it was sure nice to know that we weren’t doing it alone.

AYO Technology

I like thinking back to my first days and weeks in Moldova. Everything was such a blur, so overwhelming. Tired and mostly miserable, I'm not sure I understood it for the adventure it really was. Now, 6 months in and able to speak freely, things are more settled, if a bit more boring.

Some good news - I have a reliable connection to the internet. Better than reliable, it's DSL to rival the speed of any connection I've used in the States. We brought it in about a month ago and, despite connection difficulty's in some places of the village, it seems to work really well. I'll post some more thoughts concerning the internet and it's impact on my village later.

For now, though, I want to begin making up for a 6 month absence from my blog. I've kept a journal, on and off, and will make periodic posts of some of the more interesting entries I've made, and eventually catch up to where I am now.