Tuesday, August 29, 2006

15 ani

The fireworks lit up the sky over the Arc of Triumph while the fourth movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony played, delighting the thousands who had gathered in front of the Presidential Palace in the center of Chisinau. I was standing in the middle of the crowd, there with two students from this summer's English camp and a handful of their friends, all of whom had been wearing diapers when their country declared its independence from the Soviet Union on August 27, 1991. Today, as Moldova celebrated 15 years of independence, I was more excited about it than they were.

I started my day by coming into Chisinau and sending a text-message to my friend Lilia wishing her a happy Independence Day. She said that she had forgotten that Independence Day was today, but she was happy to be reminded.

At 5:30 p.m., I met up with Irina Nicorici, a university professor in Chisinau, Ryan Kennedy, a Fulbright scholar here, Ryan's wife, Allison, and a Frenchman named Camille who was working with a non-governmental organization here and had visited my village the day before.

I immediately noticed Irina's blue t-shirt with "Moldova" written across it and the national symbol covering a square foot of its front. Irina laughed and said that even just a year ago, she wouldn't have worn the shirt. "This year, talking with so many Americans, I've started to feel more and more Moldovan," she said, and with that sense of nationality came some pride in wearing a t-shirt that, paradoxically, she bought in Ukraine. I asked Irina how proud and excited she was for her country's anniversary. On a scale from one to 10, she told me she was at about five. After only 15 years, she said, there's no way for Independence Day to become as celebrated of a day here as the Fourth of July is in America after 230 years.

We walked to Chisinau's lakeside amphitheater, where the Ukrainian band Океан Ельзи (roughly transcribed from Ukrainian as Okean Elzy, or Elza's Ocean) was playing. The crowd was mostly teenagers and people in their early 20s, and a large amount of the people were wearing the black uniforms of youths who listen to hard rock and industrial music. In short, they were a lot like me and my friends when we were 16. Unfortunately, I spent most of my time at the amphitheater outside in a large crowd trying to file in through the one entrance. Crowd control and the concept of lines are not strong in Moldova.

Even outside the concert, it became clear to me that Romanian was not the event's preferred language. When I was asked at the security checkpoint to show what was in my pockets, it was in Russian first, although when I said that I didn't understand, the guard had no problem asking me in Romanian. When I attempted to not-so-subtly cut in the beer line, the girl behind me said something to me in Russian. When I responded, "Poftim?" she shrugged, since she had no way of explaining to me in Romanian that I was cutting. (I know that cutting in line is rude and awful, but sometimes you just want symbolic revenge after a 14 months of being cut in front of at every store.) I think my Russian is getting a little better; I can understand about 30 or 40 words now, although I don't have any of the grammatical knowledge that I would need in order to speak a complete sentence.

Because the concert was going later than I had anticipated, I had to leave Irina et al to go to the city's center at 8 p.m. There I met with three other Peace Corps volunteers, along with Nicoleta and Iulia, two girls from English camp who live in Chisinau, and a few of their friends. The main event for the night was to be Zdob si Zdub, Moldova's best band, playing on a stage in front of the Presidential Palace in the city's center at 9. We made our way into the crowd, which filled the streets of nearly the entire city block. The crowd here was very different from at the Океан Ельзи show, with much more Romanian spoken and with more brightly-colored clothing that fit with the warm August evening better than black. A traditional Moldovan folk ensemble was playing, and people in the crowd, including Nicoleta, Iulia and their friends, were dancing the hora.

I asked Nicoleta and Iulia the same question I had asked Irina about national pride. They basically shrugged off the question, but commented that it wasn't a very important celebration. Iulia said that because history is taught only twice a week in Moldovan schools, a lot of Moldovans aren't even sure what year their country became independent. I got the impression that for them, tonight was more of a Zdob si Zdub concert than an important birthday for their young country.

After the mayor of Chisinau addressed the crowd, the fireworks began. As I watched them, I thought about how I had arrived at this point. Here I am, 23 years old, already more than a year and a half out of college, living in a village without running water and with only one paved road in a country that I didn't even know existed 16 months ago, where I teach English and computers, speaking a second language for the majority of the day. That day, I had hitched a ride into the city on a bus that would have seemed highly disreputable to me if I were still living in America, and I had spent the day with a number of American, Moldovan and French acquaintances and friends, celebrating the independence of a nation younger than ourselves and fully realizing that Moldova still has many years remaining before it will truly be independent. At the exact moment of this fireworks show ("There goes the roads budget!" new volunteer Ren? exclaimed), I was standing with a group of Moldovan teenagers, speaking to them in English and eagerly awaiting a Moldovan band that we all loved. Suffice it to say, my life has changed more in the past year and a half than at any other time in my life.

The fireworks ended, and it was time for, as some of the Nicoleta and Iulia's friends called them, "Zdubii". The other volunteers wanted to move closer to the stage, so I was left with the girls and their friends. Even if scientists figure out cold fusion some day, nothing will ever match the energy of a teenage girl whose favorite band has just taken the stage. The jumping, the clapping, the screaming. And here I was with four teenage girls and four more stoic teenage boys.

"Buna seara, Chisinau!," called out Zdob si Zdub's lead singer, Roman.
"Buna seara, Roman!," screamed back the girls.

The band launched into over an hour of its most popular songs, including my favorites, "Nunta Extremala," "Everybody in the Casa Mare" and "DJ Vasile," and of course the Eurovision hit, "Bunica Bate Toba," (the girls knew all of the English lyrics to "Bunica Bate Toba," but I only knew the Romanian chorus). We barely looked at the stage, instead dancing in our own circle and jumping up and down during particularly rocking parts. By the end of the concert, the other volunteers had found us again and we all danced like madmen to my absolute favorite, "Buna Dimineata," which closed the show.

Nicoleta, Iulia and their friends left, and we volunteers met up with more volunteers, Moldovans and Camille, the Frenchman, for a few more beers, celebrating the independence of a country that we all, to some extent, now call our own.

The next day, when I returned home to Mereseni, I was still a little disappointed by Irina's, Nicoleta's and Iulia's low self-assessment of their patriotism. I was ready to chalk it up to the difference between an established country with its own national culture, like the U.S., and a young country that still has so many issues to deal with before it can feel truly unified and independent. Then I asked my host mom, Maria, and my host sister-in-law, Olesea, how proud they were of their country's independence.

"Somewhere between a seven or an eight," they both agreed. Maria began to talk about the opportunities that have opened to ethnic Moldovans in business and in government that had previously been dominated by ethnic Russians and Ukrainians. I asked Olesea why she was proud of Moldova.

"Because it's a young country," she said. "And every year, you see that it's getting a little bit better and better."

4 Comments:

At 8:40 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Zduby" is how Russians call the band (the final syllable is stressed), Moldovans prefer "Zdubii" (they have a song 'Zdubii Bateti Tare').

 
At 4:16 PM, Blogger Peter Myers said...

Tochnai! I was transcribing what I heard into English instead of Romanian. The change has been made. And yes, I know that "tochnai" is Russian.

 
At 1:38 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Tochno"'d be the correct spelling

 
At 9:39 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Not wanting to correct you ...just want to know if there are any PC volunteers in Floresti? I served 1997-1999! Thanks, Moldova V

 

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