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Published: April 3rd 2007
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tin plates in villages noted what you had to bring in case of fire... Dear All,
It has been a while since our last update but in retrospect the pictures, until recently have been rather dull. But now that the dark and stormy months seem to be passing into a spring time we are coming out of hibernation and have some pictures and stories to share.
For the most part, life in Odorhei/Undvarhely is increasingly busy. Alecia is deep into the fruit project with Agora and we have had several meetings with various folks in the villages regarding re-vitalizing traditional fruit drying practices and creating some traditional product focused cooperatives. People have seemed quite excited. A cynic might say just because there is a promise of income (though even if this were the only case, who could blame folks subsisting on less than $140/month?) but I think the reality goes deeper than cash. Watching a room full of folks start licking their chops and breaking their usually stoic classroom etiquette to say things like “yeah, that was tasty stuff…” leads me to this conclusion. Not to mention the pride of sharing one’s best that seems abundant in the village hospitality. So, who knows? We may have stumbled onto something good here. We
full Szekely gate
traditional here. also hope to create a gene bank of traditional fruit trees, get youth involved in the orchard revitalization and selling aspects and rebuild several traditional fruit driers. One of the exciting things we have discovered is that the fruit was often smoked. The smoked fruit was then used for soups and stews (some with meat some without) which will be really interesting to try. Another local product which shows promise is a style of jam that is cooked down (no sugar added) over 48 hours until it is so thick you have to cut it rather than scoop it…
For my part, I have been working on several projects with Agora, doing fundraising and marketing trainings with NGOs around Transylvania and building a United Way/Combined Federal Campaign style community fundraising drive. This has been fun and promising as it has gotten about 20 NGOs participating right now, many businesses and media outlets etc… many of them working together for the first time. More than the money, this should help NGOs raise their visibility in the community which is fairly important here considering Romania’s NGOs are considered less trust worth than politicians and lawyers (and they trust the last two
less than American’s do). I am also working on this summer’s volunteer camps which has been interesting and we are looking forward to at least one full group. Speaking of volunteers, last week we had 130 kids out for a river clean up. Afterwards Alecia and I walked home with some members of the hiking club who neglected to mention that it was about 15 miles. Thankfully it was a beautiful day and we saw tracks from wild board, dear, elk, lynx, bear and wolf. I have also been editing some English subtitled documentaries and doing voice overs for a local documentary film company…keeps the theater side alive I guess.
We have also had several Peace Corps colleagues visiting which has given us a good excuse to get some exploring in. Three weeks ago we went out to Szekelyderz with one of our colleagues (a retired rancher named Kenny who works in a village of 400 in NW Romania) to check out the Unesco World Heritage fortified church. Upon getting out of the car we were greeted by a couple of the town’s more colorful characters. One was singing very loudly and the other really wanted to show us
ancient clock
old clock in tourism host home. his math sets… when I brought this up later someone mentioned the town is known for its outstanding brandy and that some years the crop is so good it is reflected in the corresponding crop of children. Interesting theory. After searching town for the priest we found him, and his motorcycle, at home and he let us into the church grounds. The church is a fortified structure to help guard against various invaders (mostly the Turkish) and served as the last line of defense. The Derz church also has the peculiarity of being a meat locker. Traditionally folks stored their meat in the walls of the church fortifications during winter. Each family came in, checked in with the guard, cut a chunk off their meat, put their stamp on the meat and went home. If they came back and the stamp was gone (read: someone swiped me bacon) the guard was up for the death sentence. Some people take their smoked pork fat pretty seriously. And they still do. Lining the interior of the walls are family meat lockers (now in big wood boxes and no more guard).
When we came back from Derz we stopped to get a
picture
photo of rural tourism host's parents snack and afterwards ran into our first real sign of the European Union - - parking control! People park everywhere here. Or at least they used to. Happily the police have started enforcing parking laws. Sadly they chose to start on our friends. The notice slipped under their windshield wiper said “we are sorry to inform you your car was parked inappropriately. Please come into the police station at your earliest possible convenience to pay the fine. Should you not come in by: 5 p.m. on: today the fine will double.” An interesting way to sugar coat a rather prompt command if you ask me…
Other recent excursions from which I have picked out included a trip to Vargyas gorge natural area which Agora helps to administer. This was the first time I had been really into the gorge and it was, well, gorgeous. We went out with a cinematographer who was working on a documentary and spent most of the days kicking around in some of the gorge’s 7 km of caves. We saw 3 of the 17 bat species that live there and got nice and covered in guano…
Well that is about all from our
end at the moment. Hope everyone is well.
Chris and Alecia
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