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Published: August 14th 2006
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We are now real volunteers! After 10 weeks of training, Alecia and I swore in (upon the constitution, we vowed to “protect America against all threats foreign and domestic” “so help us God” - which was interesting) at the Tomas Caragiu theater in Ploiesti. In attendance were the Mayor, gazdas, newspapers, radio and 3 national TV stations. The American Ambassador is usually in tow but he was working on a state visit in Washington. Opening the state visit, maybe making US headlines though probably not, Bush addressed the Romanian president as the Prime Minister, someone the Romanian Pres. hates…
Swear in was quite nice though personally a bit stressful as I had been elected to speak as representative of the non-english teachers, in both Romanian and English. 3.5 minutes of Romanian was a bit of a challenge but everyone seemed impressed. On the other hand, most Romanians are impressed (usually pleasantly) when any of the limba Romana issues forth from America lips. I can’t wait until we can pull similar stunts in Hungarian (Magyar). Afterwards, Alecia and I were interviewed by a newspaper and Christian Radio station. Why the Christian one I have no idea. I had no idea there
Building
this is part of the building where we work was a Christian one…we are often shocked (usually pleasantly) at the amount of religion that issues forth from Romanian lips.
Interesting side note on religion - The Romanian Orthodox church was never really suppressed during communism. A couple of examples: Ceacescue’s reconstruction of Bucharest happened around many churches so there are now beautiful spires nested in the grey bloc vaults of the capital city with, sometimes, literally inches separating the ancient and the new. And the head of the orthodox church (his official title translates as “the big happy”) sat on the head committee. There is a lot more one could say about the orthodox church here - like how they do not do outreach or social service work b/c they believe the people should come to them, but on to Odorheiu.
After swear in and the ensuing party until 2 in the morning, we got on a train at 7 a.m. after saying good bye to Aurelia and Maria. We will miss them though there was something about the cold liver send off breakfast that was indicative of our continued lack of communicative challenge with those two… The train ride up was a bit of a challenge
with all of our bags. Two other new volunteers who are nearby caught the same train and between the four of us, our bags took up the entire side of an 8 person compartment with the exception of about 2 sq. feet. We rotated through this spot on the 5 and a half hour journey and made a mad dash off the train in Sighisoara, throwing our bags, miraculously losing nothing.
Since arrival, we have been living with Zsolt and Ildiko, seeking an apartment, seeing a lot of the surrounding area and trying to figure out what we are going to be doing for the next couple of years. Alecia’s office has been largely on vacation and they have not had internet so her time has been focused more on the language than mine. Most of my time has been field trips with my counterpart as we assist some of our partners in their research. Last week this meant trips to various parts of the county in search of rare plants. There are many that we found (some that had not been recorded here for more than 200 years though, frankly, I wonder who was looking) and some that
we missed. Ecological hot-spots we visited included mountain tops, salt marshes, steppe-like areas and some that more closely resemble tundra. The area has a lot if incredible diversity and my organization (Agora) helps people do their research and then uses the research to help get places protected. We also visited the Varghas Gorge area where I will be doing rural-ecotourism. Some websites to check out if you are interested are www.green-agora.ro and www.homorodvalley.ro. There is a lot of work I am still doing on the Agora site but there is some good info. The other site is one that we built for a partner project.
Another project I am working on while I try to learn everything from NGO tax structure to EU law is a virtual tour of the historic buildings in Odorheiu in an attempt to garner some civic pride for these structures. And yesterday, Alecia found out we got some money from the EU to collaborate on a flood protection program. Last year there was a major flood in the area that killed 11 people and did a lot of damage to some villages. Civitas (Alecia’s NGO) applied for a grant to do some work on
flood control and Agora will be putting some of it into place (reforestation and the like). Something I hope to add to the project (if budget allows) is a reed bed restoration aspect. Endemic reed beds have largely been destroyed here. My thought is we could work with communities to replant reed beds (helps with erosion, flood control and cleans their water supply while providing habitat) while teaching the benefits of reed beds, and how to selectively harvest to sustainably build/rebuild the local reed weaving craft industry. There are a lot of elderly people in the communities who need extra income and if we can get some money to help them organize some weaving groups, they can sell through local vendors, earn some desperately needed supplement to their pensions and have some social time. We shall see how it goes. Alecia and I have a lot of ideas but we both also have a lot of learning to do before we can work on putting them into place.
Other highlights of being here so far have included the first weekend spent with our gazda at a Hungarian rock festival and their summer cabin. While at the cabin we ate
a local favorite - smoked bacon fat grilled over a fire - surprisingly good though horrible for the system I am sure. We have also been invited to come and present a workshop on sustaining environmental education efforts next week. This means a couple of firsts - - our first night train, our first trip to the Black Sea and our first foray into this field. Wish us luck.
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