A Gypsy's tale in Moldova: April 2011

Saturday, April 16, 2011

Hai Moldova! April 16th clean up day.

Today, the school that I work at, participated in a clean up that happened throughout all of Moldova. When I first heard about this event I was extremely happy. One of the first things I noticed when I arrived in Moldova was the amount of trash that litters the streets. There is also a lack of trash cans around, so if there is no place to put your trash, it just goes on the ground. Also, coming from California, where there are extreme littering fines and most people do such a good job at recycling and being green anyways, it was hard for me to get used to.

The director of the school and I

I first heard about this clean up day at a meeting that we had in the capital about grant writing. My school director was with me and also heard about this event and I was shocked when I saw a poster hanging up at my school saying that we were going to participate in this event. Of course, I wanted to, but I thought I was going to have to ask my school director for permission to participate but she went out and signed up by herself. This made me proud.

Carolina and Valeria (my host sister)

We received around 150 sets of suits for the students to wear, which included a face mask, protective goggles, and trash bags. They ABSOLUTELY loved the suits. They thought it was so cool to be able to wear this suit that looked like something out of the movie Outbreak and took tons of pictures dressed in it.

We first did a clean up day on April 13th, which confused me since the clean up day was scheduled for April 16th. When I asked why we were doing it early, I didn't receive a clear answer. I showed up to school on wednesday, ready to teach my classes and was told that we weren't going to be having classes, we were going to do the clean up. It was raining all day long, but the students and teachers went out into the village and cleaned up a lot of trash. When I talked to my partner teacher about why she thought we did it earlier than the scheduled day, she said that they doubted the students would have showed up on a saturday to clean. If you ask me for my opinion, I think it is the teachers who didn't want to show up on a saturday.....and I am pretty sure I was correct since we then held the second clean up day today, saturday, the director of the school, one other teacher and I were the only staff there. That is one thing I am having a hard time with here, the lack of participation from teachers for events outside of school time. I have heard teachers say that they are just too tired to show up to school for events after school and/or on weekends and that they don't get paid to be there, so why come. I am extremely grateful to that one teacher who did come out today, my school director for deciding to still participate today, and of course to all the students who DID show up on a weekend. The sun was out today, and since it has been raining off and on for the past 2 weeks, it was a perfect day to be outside.

On a side note, one thing that confused me though was this....the clean up was focused on an area in the village by a creek. I understand that trash should not be by water and of course believe that cleaning up around the creek was needed, but I feel that other places around the village were neglected during our clean up. Students walked right past trash that littered the school campus and headed out to clean up the area by the creek. I stopped a few of them and said that there was a lot of trash on the school campus, and we should clean it up. They saw me doing this and participated for a few minutes, but then headed down to the creek. I feel that their definition of trash was large plastic/glass bottles, or other items that are big. Around the school, there were tons of ice cream wrappers, chip bags, candy wrappers and paper that they didn't seem to think needed to picked up. I also noticed some students discarding the items they were wearing when they were finished and leaving it on the ground. This made me furious. If you just spent 3 hours outside cleaning up trash, why on earth would you want to create more? I am coming to understand that this is something that they are used to and is a learned behavior and they don't really understand the concept of putting trash into a trash can, especially if there isn't one around.

This is an area that I would love to work on while I am here in Moldova. I would love to install trash cans around my village and the school and teach the students that throwing trash on the ground is not good for the environment, and it is not frumos (beautiful). I believe today's clean up was an awesome success but I would like to get a club started at school or some type of group organized where we could do monthly clean ups, or something on a regular basis. I just have to remind myself that it will take time, change doesn't come easily or overnight, but today was a step in the right direction.

*I will add pictures later

Monday, April 11, 2011

Doamna profesoara, va rog!

My partner teacher was out all week last week due to illness and I think it is a nice break sometimes when I get to teach bymyself....but sometimes it can be difficult. So on Wednesday last week, I was sitting at my desk getting stuff ready for class during the 10 minute break in between classes and one of my 11th form students comes up to me asking me for my permission to miss class. It's my experience here that if a student asks a teacher to miss class, for whatever reason and gets approval, they will not be marked as absent. No "a" will be written in the catalog for that day, they just won't receive a grade for that day....and here in Moldova, not every student recieves a grade everday. So she asks me if she can be absent and I ask her why. Sometimes if students say they are feeling sick or need to go home for whatever reason, my partner teacher will let them go.....so I figured I would give this a try. I would still put an "a" in the catalog but I wanted to hear her excuse/reason.

She then told me her reason was because she needed to go to the piaţa (outdoor market) to buy some shoes. I was kind of in shock, talk about being truthful...I mean, she could have said she was feeling sick and I would have never known she went to buy shoes so I will give her props for her honesty. I then ask her why she cannot buy the shoes on the weekend and she said that she goes to another village on the weekends to be with her mom and they do not have a piaţa. I tell her no, that she cannot miss class but then she puts her hands together like she is praying and begs me, saying, "Doamna profesoara, va rog!!" (Please teacher!) She continues to beg and I finally say to her in Romanian, "if buying shoes is more important to you than your education, go!" She left the classroom. A few minutes later the bell rang and she returned. I was really proud ....because maybe my words meant something or made an impression on her. I totally expected it to backfire and for her to skip class...but she didn't.

I later heard her talking to her friend saying that she could just go during geography class....so my victory was short lived....but at least she stayed for English. :)