Little House

On the surface, village life isn’t quite Little House on the Prairie. Life can be difficult. Luxuries are scant, paying jobs are scarce and money is hard to come by. The winter is cold, and wood fires, used to heat the houses, do little to warm winter nights. Strange odors permeate. Roads are unpaved and muddy. Infrastructure is dilapidated.

And yet, one doesn't have to search much to find the quaint aspects of life that inspired myths like Little House. People are neighborly – it’s rude not to say “good day” to someone on the street, even to someone you haven’t met before. If you have met the person, it’s expected that you stop and talk (Imagine if you had to stop and talk to every one of your neighbors you saw every day. My bet is you probably don’t, I know I didn’t). These discussions add to Cenac’s personable nature. Romanian is an old language, and can sound almost gallant, reflecting a more gracious time, long past (“Good day, sir. I am called Matt, what do they call you? It is my pleasure.”)

Furthermore, mutual difficulty inspires a communal approach to addressing problems. For example, Cenac has communal clean-up days (it’s different from volunteer park clean-ups in the States. Moldovan villagers feel obligated to participate, as opposed cleaning up out of a sense of civic duty. There is a subtle difference). Birthday parties, or masa’s, are hosted by whoever’s birthday it is, and he/she prepares the food and drink for people attending. Villagers also share resources we normally would consider private, valuables that we might hesitate to lend out in the United States.

Another good example of Moldova’s communal approach to solving problems is hitchhiking, one of the main modes of transportation not only in the rural villages, but all over Moldova. In the United States, hitchhikers are the exception, and most people I know would hesitate to pick one up. Not in Moldova. If a Moldovan has an open seat in his car, and he sees a hitchhiker (he invariably will, and at multiple points during his journey), he stops without a thought to pick them up.

In the spring and summer, when flowers bloom and cherries blossom, Moldova can be picturesque. Right now, for instance, I can literally walk out of my room and eat fresh cherries, raspberries, strawberries and prunes. If I go into the garage, I can sample some of the freshly harvested, high quality honeycomb. If I wait another month, the watermelons will be ripe, and we will eat between 2 and 3 a day. Sounds amazing right? It is. But it’s also only 3 months of the year. During the winter, fresh fruits and vegetables are nearly impossible to come by. Instead we eat pickled versions that we spent the summer and fall preparing: Pickled tomatoes, pickled cucumbers, pickled cabbage, pickled peppers, and, yes, pickled watermelons. By mid-February you’ll have trouble telling them apart.

So yes, like anything else on TV, mass media romanticizes what rural village life is actually like. That doesn’t mean that villages aren’t quaint and can’t be great places to live. It just means that, much like the Peace Corps, village life isn’t a vacation. The secret to unlocking the real Little House is hard, back-breaking work. It’s a lifestyle that’s difficult to grasp through the Hollywood prism. But Moldovans know where to find it, at the end of a hot summer day, amidst the sunflowers and cherry trees.