Stairway to Heaven

As far as you know, the unpaved road is nameless. Pockmarked and wide, it slogs its’ way through farmland fourteen kilometers to the village of Cenac. It’s broken by a multitude of ditches, covered in uneven gravel and characterized by a vulnerability to the elements. You soon feel personally acquainted with every inch of your journey. Time drags as the kilometers begin to feel like miles - a five minute ride on paved streets anywhere else is a twenty minute sojourn here. Your driver tells you that in the rain or snow it could take up to forty minutes. You appreciate just how isolated the villagers are.

This seemingly insignificant stretch of dirt and gravel was the first thing I noticed about Cenac. But in many ways it would come to define my service in the Peace Corps.

Paved roads are sources of opportunity and prosperity, much as rivers were for ancient civilization. They provide the lifeblood of society. But when they’re deficient, like when a river runs low in a drought, society tends to stagnate. A lack of modern infrastructure has significant ramifications anywhere, and this fact is clear to me now after living in a place that’s future may depend on whether or not it’s’ infrastructure improves.

Our road connects Cimişlia, the regional center (comparable to a county in the United States), to Cenac, the first and largest member of a trio of villages 14 kilometers from the raion. Past Cenac several kilometers on is Topali, it’s closest neighbor. Six kilometers down a branch street (more of a path than a street, really) is Javgur. Javgur is the most isolated of the three villages, and consequently the least populated and least developed. The only other Peace Corps volunteer in the area before me, Johann, lived in Javgur.

Johann finished his service three months after I arrived in Cenac, but his impact on my service, especially in helping me adjust to village life, was significant. I knew him as a super-volunteer, and Johann came as close to achieving local celebrity status as I’ve seen. His impeccable grasp of the local Romanian dialect (known as “Moldovan,” it varies from village to village but incorporates Russian) made me realize how much more I had to learn after the end of my language training. Even today, to my chagrin, I’m pretty sure I haven’t reached his level of fluency.

But it wasn’t only his cultural integration which lent to his super-volunteer status. He also won a large grant to build a computer center in order to provide Javgur with better access to information. In a village of 900 people without a single paved street, this was a big deal.

Much like I did, Johann believed the unpaved road to be the area’s biggest impediment to development. But after initial research he realized the project was simply too large to tackle. He tried to tell me this, but for my first few weeks I obsessively researched the costs and options available for road improvement myself. In the end I found he was right; as Peace Corps volunteers we are simply not equipped with the resources to take on a project of that scale. Nor is it our duty – as Community and Organizational Development volunteers, our job was to improve the capacity of the village to improve itself. This was a disappointment. A paved road to the Raion center could provide innumerable benefits to all three villages.

One of the hardest parts of living in the area is irregular transportation. For the most part, Moldova has a very dependable public transportation system, a network of buses, minibuses, and private taxi’s which run at regular intervals. Unfortunately, the road to Cenac takes a toll on vehicles that use it. Cenac and Topali therefore share a single bus, a hulking beast from the Soviet era. The bus shuttles passengers to Cimişlia at 7 A.M. and returns at 1 P.M.. Those who wish to find work outside of the village but don’t have a car must either find a place to stay overnight, work half days, or hitchhike. This wouldn’t be a problem if the villages could meet the demand for jobs themselves. However, Cenac mainly provides seasonal agricultural work. It can’t meet that demand for employment without further investment, and unpaved roads are an significant barrier to investment.

There are other problems too. First, Cenac depends on bread from Cimişlia, and any other produce that cannot be acquired locally. In the winter, weather can make the road impassable for weeks at a time. Last year, for instance, snowfall shut us in for three weeks. The village ran out of bread! Grain is a staple in the Moldovan diet, so it was a very lucky thing when snowplows from the capital finally broke through. Moreover, when and if the bus breaks down, villagers have limited means to travel Cimişlia for market goods.

Second, the relative difficulty of travel compounds Cenac’s sense of isolation and interferes with people’s lives. Not large enough to for a High School, Cenac must send those students who wish to continue their education beyond the 9th grade to Cimişlia. Parents then must pay for dorm-style housing. The difficulty discourages students from finishing their education. Sports teams can’t travel, clubs can’t network, and access to information was limited to what could be found in Cenac’s modest library before the first high speed internet cable was put down in 2010. Due to the lack of opportunity, few of Cenac’s youth wish to stay and make their lives there. (Cenac has an official population of 2,000. Due to people living abroad, the actual number is closer to 1,200. The population has shrank noticably since my arrival in 2009.)

The road has impacted my service, but I've learned to adapt much like everyone else here. Many of my projects have been affected, and travel may not be as easy, but it's brought me closer to my host family and neighbors. It's also taught me a lot about development and the importance of sound infrastructure.

On the upside there have been several recent proposals to pave the road, working in collaboration with Romania, Ukraine and surrounding villages. Details remain vague and a timeline for construction has yet to be been set, but Cenac has weathered more difficult times in its history.

A paved road could provide many opportunities for the villagers. And if any place deserves that opportunity, it’s Cenac. People here, keenly aware of their situation, live their lives with spirit and a strong commitment to community. Cenac has great pride in its traditions, its history and its people. Its leaders work hard to ease some of the hardships people face, and it's my hope that their perseverance will pay off.