All posts by djarmul

I am a Peace Corps volunteer in Moldova, in Eastern Europe, serving in the small city of Ialoveni with my wife, Champa. We are from Durham, N.C., where I was the head of news and communications for Duke University. You can follow our adventures on my blog, notexactlyretired.com.

Peace Corps: Now vs. Then

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Can you guess what question I’m asked most often in Moldova, especially by other Americans?

It’s this: How have I found it different being a Peace Corps volunteer now compared to when I served in Nepal four decades ago?

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My short answer is that the experience feels very familiar. As before, I’ve left my family and America to serve people in another country, learning their language and sharing their daily lives.

But serving in Moldova has also been very different from my stint in Nepal in the late 1970s. Here are six of the biggest changes I’ve seen:

  1. I am much more connected to the outside world. I have a smart phone, a laptop and a Kindle, all linked to wifi. I talk regularly with my family. I am following the U.S. election campaign and other news. I interact online with my Moldovan partners and Peace Corps colleagues. In contrast, when I served in Nepal I did not call home even once. The Internet did not exist. I was very alone.
  2. Safety and security have become a much bigger deal. Neither terrorism nor street crime are serious problems in Moldova, yet our training was filled with security briefings. We were given detailed emergency action plans. I can’t leave my post overnight without notifying the staff. I can’t even enter the Peace Corps office without passing through a locked gate, a guard and a metal detector. In Nepal, I used to ride my bicycle past a front gate nominally staffed by a guard, then strolled inside.
  3. The infrastructure is more elaborate. My desk is piled with Romanian language workbooks, brochures on Moldovan culture, a “volunteerism action guide” and more. I have dozens more resources on a thumb drive Peace Corps gave me, not to mention the documents we received before we arrived here. There are detailed protocols for everything from paying a language tutor to taking a trip. In Nepal, our training was also excellent, but we had fewer resources and a lot less red tape.
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  4. I’m in a different country. Moldova is in eastern Europe, with an agricultural economy best known for wine. Its population is almost entirely white and Orthodox Christian. Nepal is in the Himalayas and mainly Hindu, along with Buddhists, Christians and Muslims. Both countries have delicious food, interesting people and fascinating customs, but they are as different as can be, except for the fact they are both landlocked — Moldova between Romania and Ukraine, Nepal between India and China. Inevitably, the Peace Corps experience is different, too.
  5. The world has changed over the past four decades. When I served in Nepal, the country was ruled by a king, who had not yet been murdered by his son. Now it’s a struggling democracy. The United States was still in a Cold War with the Soviet Union, which included Moldova. China was poor. Personal computers were new. Gay people could not get married. The idea of an African American or woman president back home was almost unimaginable. After four decades, the world is a different place. Peace Corps has evolved with it, such as by launching programs to combat HIV/AIDS or to “let girls learn.”
  6. I have changed. I saved this one for last because it’s the variable that affects everything else. When I joined the Peace Corps in Nepal, I was two years out of college, single and eager to save the world. Now I am a father and grandfather, serving with my wife of 37 years, who I met in Nepal. I am older and hopefully a bit wiser. In any case, I’m in a different place in my life, and not only geographically.

So, yes, I can now watch YouTube videos instead of fiddling with a shortwave radio to find a signal from the BBC or the Voice of America. But at least for me, Peace Corps still feels like “the toughest job you’ll ever love,” with the same beating heart. Once again, I’m working alongside a wonderful group of Americans who have taken a break from their lives to serve others and represent our country. Once again, I feel privileged to be among them.

Who knows? Perhaps there’s even a new form I’m supposed to fill out to confirm this.

All of That and More

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If a playground were being dedicated in America, you might see a child cutting a ribbon, a mayor shaking hands or a reporter interviewing happy parents.

img_9570On Sunday, we attended a Moldovan version that offered all of that and more: a priest sprinkling holy water on the equipment, a wrestling tournament and a couple of giant mice.

The new playground, which is beautiful, is in a park in the center of Ialoveni, the town where Champa and I moved on Thursday. We attended its dedication with two of our new Peace Corps neighbors, Michelle and Cynthia. The mayor welcomed us enthusiastically as things got under way, making sure we got pieces of the ceremonial bread to eat. He then helped a boy cut the ribbon and declared the playground open.

img_9515As the children raced inside and a television crew spoke with some of the parents, an Orthodox priest lit candles, chanted prayers and walked through the crowd to sprinkle blessings on people and equipment alike. The mayor, who is wearing a blue shirt in the video, carried the water beside him.

img_9615The festivities then moved down the street to the Casa de Cultura, or cultural center, where people watched as wrestlers competed to win a ram tied to a nearby staircase.

img_9601The crowd included Igor Balaur, a local wrestling hero who competed in the Olympics years ago and was now visiting with his family, which lives in France.

The dedication was part of a larger “diaspora day” honoring Igor and the many other Moldovans who reside abroad. It also featured two other notables from another country, both with big ears, with whom you can see us posing in the photo. Perhaps you recognize them.

Peace Corps has trained us to be open to new experiences, although that didn’t quite describe Mickey and Minnie. Still, we all managed to be culturally flexible. It was a beautiful afternoon. The kids were happy. The parents were happy. We were happy. It was all of that and more.

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Seeing With New Eyes

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Before I joined the Peace Corps I wouldn’t have thought twice about eating a bowl of cereal, waving goodbye to my wife and walking to work. On Friday morning, all three things made me happy.

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I had corn flakes for breakfast with a cup of coffee and a banana, as I sometimes ate back home. Here in Moldova, though, for the past two months my wonderful host families served me breakfasts of kasha, sausages, eggs, chicken cutlets, spaghetti or hot cereal. I enjoyed the food but yearned for cold cereal and a cup of coffee. On Friday, that’s what I had.

A day earlier, Champa and I moved to Ialoveni, the town near Moldova’s capital where we expect to serve as volunteers for the next two years. We’re staying with a local family but are cooking for ourselves. The corn flakes were included in the first three bags of groceries we bought for $16 at a nearby market.

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After breakfast, I waved goodbye to Champa, who stayed home to finish our unpacking. Once again, that was unremarkable, except that she and I are now together again after being separated through most of our training. We knew in advance we would live in different villages during training, since we work in different programs. We made the best of the situation but, after 36 years of marriage, we really missed each other.

Similarly, it doesn’t sound like a big deal for someone who has worked for four decades to get up and go to work. Yet it’s been more than a year since I left my job in North Carolina to pursue a new life of adventure and service with Champa. Friday morning was my first “go to work” day since then. Peace Corps has assigned me to assist Ialoveni’s county government with development projects and to help the local community in other ways. This time around, I’m not wearing a suit. I don’t have a staff. But it’s important work and I’m excited to get started.

In these and so many other ways, being “not exactly retired” has helped me to see my previous life with new eyes. On Friday morning alone, I savored things as unremarkable as a bowl of cereal, the shower I took before breakfast and the cool morning that followed a long hot spell without air conditioning.

Such simple pleasures were there in front of me when I lived in America. It’s only after I came halfway around the world that I noticed them again. I’d feel foolish if I weren’t so grateful for the nudge.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Video: Student Performances

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Champa and her fellow members of the English Education group in Peace Corps Moldova 31, along with their partner teachers, wrapped up their practice teaching on Friday with performances by their students in Costesti. I made this short video so you can enjoy the fun, too:

The Romanian Word Is ‘Dificil’

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Did you struggle in high school or college to learn Spanish, French or some other foreign language? Great! This question is for you:

I learned Nepali when I was a Peace Corps volunteer four decades ago and am now learning Romanian as a volunteer in Moldova. Which language do you think is harder?

Keep in mind: Romanian is related to many other European languages and to our own. It shares many words with English. Its syntax is similar. Nepali, on the other hand, is a Sanskrit language. Its alphabet, Devanagari, is completely different, as is its syntax. In Nepali, the sentence “What is your name?” literally translates as, “Your name what is?”

Maybe you’re thinking this is a trick. Maybe I’m encouraging you to say Nepali is harder but I actually think Romanian is harder.

Well, I do think Romanian is harder. But the problem is that I’m not sure it really is harder. Perhaps I’m just not as good at learning languages as I used to be.

img_9221To be sure, Nepali was harder for me at the outset. Its sentence structures seemed so bizarre that I walked out of my first language class, ready to quit in despair. Within a few days, though, I got the hang of it. By the end of our training, I was able to have a simple conversation. Today I still speak it easily, if imperfectly.

When I first encountered Romanian, it reminded me of French, which I studied in high school. I was relieved so many words looked familiar. For instance, here are some Romanian verbs whose meaning you can probably guess: discuta, studia, dansa, telefona and permite. I am a voluntar who is activ, sociabil, inteligent and optimist. Right now it’s August. Next month is Septembrie.

See what I mean? How hard could it be to learn Romanian, right?

Well, it’s been plenty hard. Accent marks change the pronunciation and meaning of s, t, a and i. Adjectives and verbs must be conjugated as masculine or feminine. Verbs fall into multiple categories, each with their own conjugation. There are endless exceptions.

During our language training, which wrapped up last week, we blasted through lessons on how to describe our families, order food, ask for directions or describe our work as Peace Corps volunteers. We learned how to use present tense, past tense, future tense, reflexive verbs and things like “genitive case” whose meaning I’d long forgotten in English, much less Romanian. We memorized lists of foods, clothing, furniture and more.

I’ve found it much harder to cram all of this into my brain than when I learned French or Nepali. I mutter “Damn you, neural plasticity!” to myself while I study before and after our four-hour classes, make word lists, then make new lists of words I still can’t remember.

img_8923Fortunately, I had an incredible teacher, Diana, who was skillful and tireless in helping my classmates and me learn everything. That’s her in the flower dress with us. With Diana’s help, I ended up with a good score on the exam they administered before we swore in as volunteers last week. She kept telling me I was doing fine, and I guess she was right.

In any case, this is just the first lap. I recently moved in with Champa while her group finishes its training, and I’ve been using the time to keep studying. Whenever I need more motivation, I remind myself I’m moving soon to a post where my partner doesn’t speak much English.

There’s a Romanian word for what this has been like for someone 63 years old. You can probably guess its meaning: dificil. However, I am doing my best to stay focused on another Romanian word: succes. Regardless of how your own language class turned out, please wish me luck.

Video: Park Cleanup and Culture Festival

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A few days before we swore in as volunteers for Peace Corps Moldova, our “community and organizational development” group helped clean up a local park and hosted a cultural festival. It was our way of thanking our host families and communities in the two villages, Rusestii Noi and Bardar, where we lived during our training. Here’s a video I produced about the events.

Maria’s Kitchen: Sour Cherry Pastries

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img_8567It’s time for another edition of Maria’s Kitchen!

Today we join my host mother as she shows Champa how to prepare sour cherry pastries for a birthday party. The cherries come from the family garden, which has also been abundant with sweet cherries, peaches, apricots, strawberries, raspberries, apples and pears, as well as a rich variety of vegetables.

img_8582This recipe is simple and delicious, with a taste more sweetly tart than sour. Here are the steps:

Roll out a pastry dough on a surface covered with flour. Your own favorite crust recipe will work fine for this.

Cut the dough into long triangles and place a dab of sour cherry filling on each triangle. The filling is just sour cherries and sugar, to taste, heated in water.

img_8584Roll up each triangle from the long side towards the opposite point. Place them on a metal tray and bake for 30-40 minutes at medium heat.

img_8590Remove the pastries from the oven and let them cool. Then roll them in powdered sugar.

Eat and enjoy, like Maria’s granddaughter shown here. (She is also named Maria, as are many of the women in Moldova.)

img_8604You can search on this blog to find some of Maria’s other specialties. If you’re interested in learning more about Moldovan cuisine, check out this excellent blog produced by two previous Peace Corps volunteers, as I’ve noted previously.

Trust me, these pastries are yummy. If you’re picking cherries or berries this summer, give Maria’s recipe a try and then post a comment about how your pastries turned out!

Peace Corps After 50

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[An edited version of this post also appears on the PBS website NextAvenue.]

Before Champa and I joined the Peace Corps at the age of 63, people asked us how we’d feel to be surrounded by volunteers younger than our two sons.

Well, many of our fellow volunteers are indeed in their 20s, and most of them are smart, enthusiastic and fun to be around. Yet Champa and I are hardly outliers. Fourteen of the 58 people in our training group — nearly one in four — are 50 or older.

IMG_8252Worldwide, Americans over age 50 comprise about 7 percent of the nearly 7,000 Peace Corps volunteers now serving in 63 countries around the world. With its better medical facilities and programs in fields such as business development that attract people with lots of real-world experience, Moldova attracts higher numbers.

Whatever their reasons for choosing Moldova, the older volunteers here are impressive. They’ve worked as professors, attorneys, IT managers, nonprofit leaders, teachers, city administrators and management consultants. They come from across the country, including two other older volunteers from North Carolina. They are single, widowed, divorced or, as with us and one other older couple, married and serving together. Like the volunteers here generally, they are also diverse, reflecting the country we represent.

IMG_8174We differ from our younger counterparts in some ways. Learning a new language may be tougher for us, although many of us are doing fine in our Romanian classes. We may run slower in a group soccer game, if we participate at all. When several younger friends went to get tattoos recently, they knew better than to invite me along. They also may party harder and make surprising cultural references. When I was in the Peace Corps office the other day, a Carole King song started playing and the young woman next to me said, “Hey, it’s that song from the Gilmore Girls!”

On the other hand, they’re usually polite when we make our own references to people and events from before they were born, so it tends to even out.

In Moldova and other Peace Corps countries, there are advantages to being an older volunteer. Many of these countries show great respect towards older people. Similarly, having children and grandchildren has provided Champa and me with an instant bond with older members of our new communities. Our experience enhances our credibility in our workplaces as well; my future colleagues have already checked me out online. Older volunteers can share their hobbies, too, as Champa hopes to do with art and gardening.

Peace Corps has a special website for older Americans interested in becoming volunteers. The site reviews the application process, which is competitive and includes an extensive medical clearance process.

One of my reasons for writing this blog, and this post in particular, is to encourage older readers to consider the Peace Corps or some other new challenge for themselves. It’s not as strange or exotic as they might think and shouldn’t just be dismissed with “Oh, I could never do that at my age.”

Obviously, many people have family obligations, medical problems and other constraints that make Peace Corps unrealistic. Nonetheless, it’s a proven program through which more than 220,000 Americans of all ages have served their country and the world — and had a great adventure in the process.

Personally, I’m already wondering what it will be like in two years to be back in America and surrounded by friends who are mostly older than the ones I’ve made here.

The Memorial Outside My Gate

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This memorial honoring local heroes who died fighting for the Soviet Union in World War II is the first thing I see when I open my host family’s gate every morning.

The memorial’s base shows the names of the fallen. There are several men named Sava and several others named Tonu. I now live with a family named Sava and previously lived with the Tonus. For their extended families, as for people across Moldova and the rest of the former Soviet Union, the war brought unimaginable suffering.

img_8140When most Americans think of World War II, they think of Normandy, Iwo Jima and other battles where our soldiers died. My own father fought at D-Day, navigating a plane that was shot and almost didn’t return to England. He was part of the “greatest generation” whose enormous sacrifices kept our country free.

The war’s impact on our own history was huge. Yet many Americans don’t know that the Soviet Union suffered more than 50 times as many deaths as we did, according to some estimates. It’s hardly a surprise, therefore, that the war’s legacy here is profound, even after Moldova broke away from the Soviet Union in 1991 to become an independent country.

My current village, Bardar, is hardly alone in having a prominent meimg_8403morial. They are everywhere in Moldova. The second photo shows one in Dereneu, a small village we visited a few weeks ago. In Chisnau, Moldova’s capital, one of the main tourist sites is the Victory Memorial and eternal flame, five giant marble pillars representing the five years of Moldovan involvement in the conflict.

In Ialoveni, where Champa and I will soon be living, there is a memorial outside her school honoring a local soldier who died in Afghanistan. Across the street is the town’s World War II memorial, imposing with its dark stone, shown in the photo below.

Adjacent to that memorial, though, are two smaller memorials in white stone. They are topped with crosses, which tells you they were built after the Soviet era. These newer memorials honor the Moldovan victims of Soviet repression under Joseph Stalin. Large numbers of intellectuals, political opponents and ordinary people were exiled to Siberia and elsewhere.

I knew almost nothing about this history before coming here, but Moldovans have been eager to share their stories with me. I avoid local politics since I am a Peace Corps volunteer. Still, the history of this country, so unknown to Americans, is proving fascinating.

When I open my gate every morning I know I am just beginning to learn what it all means. So far, the impression is monumental.

Our International Agreement

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International agreements are often excruciating — look at how long they’ve been trying in the Middle East — so I’m pleased how smoothly my Moldovan partner and I came to terms on Wednesday.

We started discussions on Tuesday and reached an understanding before noon the next day, just in time to join our fellow Peace Corps trainees and partners for a pizza party.

img_8481Peace Corps brought all of us all together in Chisinau, Moldova’s capital, to align our plans and expectations over the next two years. After reviewing the history of the Peace Corps and its activities in Moldova, the conference leaders reminded our partners that we are volunteers with a special role: We’ve come to share our skills and perspective, empowering our colleagues and others to blaze their own paths after we leave.

It also reminded the trainees that we need to listen to and learn from our communities. We are here to serve, and our success depends on mutual trust and respect.

img_8447These ideals were fundamental to the Peace Corps when I served four decades ago, and they remain so today. My service in Moldova differs in so many ways from what I experienced in Nepal, from the local food to the speed of communications, but the mission is unchanged, still reflecting the original vision of President Kennedy.

My partner at the meeting was Igor Condrea, shown in the top photo with the Romanian version of our agreement. He will be my primary liaison at the Rayon Council, or county government, in Ialoveni, the town near Chisinau where Champa and I will be living. Even though my Romanian language skills are not yet good enough to communicate easily with him, we’ve already begin to form a close relationship. He’s a talented and thoughtful person.

img_8465The other trainees in my “community and organizational development” group came to the conference with their partners from across Moldova — mayors, village librarians, NGO leaders and others. Each pair worked together to clarify how the volunteer will learn about his or her post, develop a work schedule and deal with inevitable disappointments.

Together, we discussed how we might use tools such as community mapping, surveys and SWOT analyses to focus on which problems most concern our neighbors. We taped some of our findings on the wall, much as in a U.S. management seminar.

It was a good meeting. I felt like Igor and I came to know each other, laying the groundwork for a successful collaboration. I will now return to my final month of training with even greater motivation, which was already substantial.

In other words, I’ll be busier than ever. If anyone wants to recruit us to help out with the Middle East, though, just post a comment here and I’ll be happy to get back to you.