Pumpkins

Autumn is my favorite season. I love the crisp chilly air, the colors, the smells, the food! And in rural Moldova, there’s another whole element: the harvest. October turned out to be a beautiful month, with as much sun as there was rain in September. Everyone was out on their pieces of land, gathering their corn, or grapes, or potatoes, or whatever they had out there. Busloads of kids are taken from schools to work in the larger orchards, and everywhere you look you see horse-drawn carts stuffed with corn stalks and some dude sitting way up on top.

I’ve been spending as much time as possible outdoors, whether running or just walking around the village, trying to figure out who I could help. I spent one afternoon helping an older woman shuck her corn. She was sitting there on a little stool, with a huuuge pile of corn stalks from which she was removing the ears of corn and building smaller piles of the remaining stalks. The corn will feed the pigs in the coming year, and the stalks will go to the cows. Anyways, I had finished work early for the day, so I offered to help her out for awhile. We talked about everything, but she mostly chattered on about her family, which I didn’t mind hearing about. I admired her large pile of beautiful pumpkins in the back yard (we all know how much I love those!). After we finished for the day due to darkness, she of course invited me in for a tea, and as I was leaving she gave me the best pumpkin of the bunch! Woo hoo!

I spend another whole afternoon collecting mushrooms with one of my counterparts. We just took a pocket knife and plastic bag each and marched off into the woods across the street. The mushrooms are a big deal here. Everyone is always asking, ‘oh, did you go collect mushrooms yet?’ or, ‘I heard the Alexander Bun forest has better mushrooms than the Voloave forest!’ They are all trading recipes and methods of preserving them. It’s funny to see all these babas coming out of the forest with big bags of ‘shrooms. Anyways, my counterpart and I went aways back, since the woods had been pretty picked over already, and she showed me the difference between the good and bad mushrooms, and gave me tips on where to look. Well, I struggled at spotting them at first, because the forest floor was covered with leaves and the mushrooms blended in. But I started to get the hang of it. I had about a quarter of a bag and thought I was doing pretty good when I went over to check in with my counterpart, and she already had a whole huge bag and was well on her way with the second! Jeepers. But by the end of the day I had a whole sack, and my host ma was so proud of me when I dumped them out for her at home!

Last weekend I went with the whole host family to my host dad’s home village about 30 minutes north of my village to help his brother collect apples in his orchard. This was also a (mostly) pleasant experience. The weather was perfect, and the surrounding countryside beautiful and colorful. The orchard was about 15 rows, each a bit longer than a football field. There were 15 of us, and after a full day’s work, we managed to cover about 2/3 of it. It went like this. About 3 people per row went down one time and just picked the good apples, putting them in buckets, and then transferring them to larger sacks, which were then picked up by a man driving around the rows in a Lada. He then brought the apples to the edge of the orchard where he dumped them all in a huge pile. The second time down the row, we picked absolutely everything, even the fallen ones half-eaten by rabbits. These apples are destined for the juice factory. The work wasn’t too bad, although the weeds hadn’t been controlled, so I had so many scratches and burrs and thorns, and it was hard to find the apples that had fallen to the ground. I banged my head on branches so many times, and a lot of the time someone would just shake the tree to make the apples at the top fall, and I didn’t always hear the ‘get away’ signal and was thus bopped on the head more than once. The overall atmosphere was jolly, and of course there was food and vodka involved! At noon they spread out the food on top of the old Lada, and someone asked me, ‘I bet you don’t have this sort of uncivilized eating where you are from!’ And I said, actually we do, but we eat out of the trunk! Later in the afternoon we were busily working when all of a sudden a large chocolate cake appeared and everybody just rushed over, over-turned their buckets in between two rows, and dug in. It was pretty delicious, and welcomed.

Halloween was nice. I turned down various volunteer get-togethers for some chillaxin’ at home, and a mini party with my English kids. I told them about our trick-or-treating tradition, gave them some candy, and they came over and we carved pumpkins outside my fence. They were all pretty proud of theirs, but they all agreed that mine was the coolest, hehe. Well, since we couldn’t actually go trick-or-treating, they decided to take their lit jack-o-laterns and walk around the village scaring people. Well, I had made the mistake of singing that dumb kids song, you know the one -- ‘trick or treat, smell my feet....i’ll pull down your underwear.’ I gave them a rough translation, and then made it clear that we wouldn’t actually sing that at anyone’s house. Well, at one stop, there were a few older teenagers hanging out outside, and one of my girls, who usually is very quiet, yells out, ‘give us some candy or we’ll pull down your pants!!’ It was so incredibly hilarious, especially coming from her. Ya, I'm a real good influence on the kids over here.

Another fall event was the anual Wine Festival. There were small celebrations in each of the regional centers, and one large festival in Chisinau. A rather large number of us volunteers gathered on a gorgeous Saturday, took over an area of tables set up in the park, and just sat around talking all day, buying wine and food from the numourous exhibitioners in their booths surrounding the main square, listening to the music being played by different groups on the huge stage, moseying around the arts and crafts exhibits set up in the park, and talking with people from all over. I was ‘cheers-ing’ in about 6 different languages that day. And so we celebrated Moldova’s most prized product. Good times.

Have I done any actual work this month, you ask? Well yes, as you can see from the previous entry, we’ve finally gotten the beekeeping class up and running. I begin my business lectures in a week, so I have been preparing those. I have been preparing a bit better for my English classes, now that we have manuals that we can work with. My kids brought me apples last week, it was so cute. What else...my co-directors and I have had some strategic planning sessions for our women’s camp. I’ve been doing the occasional research/advising for various community members who have come into the office asking for information. There are a few women who would like to grow mushrooms (seems a little less risky than just going out to pick them, know what I mean?). I’ve also worked out a deal with the Xavier (my high school) choir to trade Moldovan music and culture for a little bit of financial support for the children’s music group in the village. So I’ve been busy putting together music and information for them.

I’ve also been busy adjusting to life with parents again. As I mentioned last month, my host parents returned from the Czech Repbulic, so it is a full house. I had just started to be really comfortable with my life just me and Natasha, and then all of a sudden it was like I was back to being a guest. I no longer make dinner, wash dishes, sweep, clean stuff, feed the dog, etc, because they just do it all while I’m at work. So I feel like a lazy worthless bum at home. Sometimes I manage to convince them to let me wash the dishes. And it’s strange hanging panties out on the line right in front of my host dad, ya know? And if Natasha and I want to talk girl-talk, we have to switch over to English, which is strange since we never spoke English before. But I’ll get used to it all, I suppose!

Well that’s all for this month folks, thanks for reading!