Job creation and Village life

Last weekend I went to visit my Peace Corps Volunteer friend Katie in Gura Bicului, the village where she’s volunteering for 2 years. After a scenic 90-minute bus ride, I hopped out in her 6000-person village, ready to experience local life. I discovered that there aren’t many young adults, as most people in their 20’s leave to go to college in Chisinau or (more likely) to work abroad. 25% of working-age Moldovans (10% of the entire population) are working abroad, which leaves small villages full of old people taking care of their grandkids. There are educated people in Moldova – even from the small villages, as infrastructure’s not too bad so people are fairly mobile within the country and there aren’t too many extremely remote places – but there just aren’t enough good jobs to keep them here. Why be unemployed (or a small plot farmer) when you can work for minimum wage in Italy and send home enough dough to support your whole family? This is a problem, though, because Moldova will have a hard time pulling itself up by its bootstraps if nobody’s here to pull. The solution needs to include some sort of job creation here in Moldova, but this is obviously easier said than done.

I’m working on several projects that have the potential to create these jobs, such as our Internet Translation Platform Project. This project brings a Moldovan call center company with experience in working with international customers together with various Moldovan translation companies that have lots of language skills (Russian, Romanian, English, French…) to create a one-stop online shop selling low-cost, high-quality translation services abroad. Moldovan translators make about $250/month, as opposed to the $80/month many of the other (limited) young-but-educated positions (e.g. teachers) are paid, so these quality jobs are really needed. Hopefully this project will be a stop in the right direction toward giving Moldovans opportunities to stay here in Moldova and be successful.

So anyway, back to me. :) What does one do for fun during a weekend in the village, you may ask? Well, I can tell you how I spent my 40 hours there:

• 20 hours sleeping/napping

• 4 hours sitting on the porch, watching kittens play

• 1 hour procuring ingredients for placinta, (pla-cheen-ta), a delish typical Moldovan dish – imagine a dinner-plate-size deep-fried empanada you cut into wedges and devour. Ingredient procurement included figuring out who in the ‘hood had cows and thus would be a good source for our filling of choice: “brinza de vaca” (cow cheese). I think this was difficult because you wouldn’t normally attempt to get an ingredient like that on demand – you’d either make it yourself or else wait for it to come to you during the weekend market.

• 1 hour learning to make placinta

• 2 hours eating a gourmet dinner featuring our homemade placinta, homemade chicken noodle soup, and the ubiquitous homemade red wine. When I mentioned that I’m not too into the homemade wine here, I neglected to mention the method of consumption: you shoot it. That’s right – your host fills everyone’s 2-oz glass cup, you toast, you down the whole thing, and then 10 minutes later you refill and repeat. Like I said, people here like their alcohol.

• 1 hour learning to play the accordion. Natural talent can apparently be augmented with homemade wine consumption. (Or maybe wine consumption just lowers musical standards…either way, I sounded fabulous!)

• 3 hours sitting in the kitchen talking to Otilia, the woman who owns the house Katie’s living in, and Luba and Dimitrash, the grandma/grandson who are also living there. Otilia is a psychology professor in Chisinau, and Luba’s a workaholic employed by the government in a nearby town.

• 1 hour buying snacks to eat by the river. This takes a while because the shopkeepers love to talk. This woman spent 15 minutes bursting with pride that Katie was conversational in Romanian – “Those Russians have been here fifty years and they still can’t speak our language!” (Although she was one of the only shopkeepers with a high-tech electronic scale instead of balance scales, she still rocked the abacus for adding up our total.)

• 6 hours chilling on the banks of the Dniester River with a beer in hand, watching Moldovan kids in speedos splash around on one side and Transdniestrian kids in speedos splash around on the other. I almost swam across to Transdniestria but got too lazy.

• 1 hour at the Saturday market, which Domna Otilia recommended we should check out because “it has everything today!” “Everything” consisted of 10 people selling a narrow range of produce and other items – Katie bought fresh milk (boil before use), flypaper, and plastic sandals, and I bought a made-in-China shirt for $5. It was really supposed to be a little girl’s dress, but whatevs.

Wanna come visit?