La Revedere, Moldova!

Well the end just went too fast for me! I have been home for over a month already, and I never managed to write my last entry. I don’t think anyone even reads this anymore, but I am someone obsessive compulsive and need closure, so I’m writing it now.

My last month was a whirlwind of visiting friends, packing (complicated by acquiring things to bring home and giving things away), tying up loose ends, and cooking food for parties that I hosted at work, school, the club, and home. I spent as much time as possible with the people in my village, especially my host family, ate as much food as I could, and danced and sang whenever I could find the company, which was often! I also reflected on my last two years.

As one would expect, this experience has been life-changing. It was full of successes and failures, joy and despair, understanding and confusion. I was the only American in a small village where no one speaks English. I had a vague job description, few resources, and little understanding of the complex political, social, and economic forces at work in the community that I was supposed to ‘develop.’ This meant I had to adapt, to strive to understand the culture of the people who offended me on more than one occasion. I had to be a self-starter, to create my own job, figure out what needed to be done and a way to do it. I had to learn on the fly about things like project design, sustainability, measuring impact, and participatory planning. I had to learn a new language! I had to constantly ask questions, read things, and seek out information. By the end of my two years I was integrated into my community: the villagers bragged to others about how I had made myself a ‘Moldovanca’. I had worked with over 200 adults and youth on business development topics. I had inspired over 150 women to become leaders in their communities. I became fluent in Romanian, and picked up a fair amount of Russian. I gained a tremendous amount of information (and generated an equal amount of questions), leading to a decision to go to grad school for international development in the hopes of going back to make an even bigger difference.

Most importantly, I became a meaningful part of people’s lives. The night before I left my village, I finished packing up my bags and went into the two girls’ room, where I had been sleeping the last few weeks because it was attached to the fireplace (my room was not, and therefore not warm enough to sleep in once the cold set in.). My breath was taken away when I saw their wall: it was completely covered with sheets of computer paper, on which they had written: ‘Katie is the most loving, generous, talented, smart...’ and so on, until the whole wall was covered with adjectives. At the bottom they said they loved me and signed their names in a heart. I looked over at the two girls and saw tears sliding down their cheeks. I don’t think I can accurately describe the emotions I felt that night, nor can I justly sum up my experiences, so I will just stop here and say,

THANK YOU MOLDOVA!!! I will miss you and never forget you!