A Kalhouz, Frost, & an Earthquake

Here are some photos of my (busy) mayor, Oleg; the advanced members of my English Klub, from left Natasha, Evdokia, Ludmilla, and Anna; the local graveyard and my shadow; and the first real frost from this morning – it was quite beautiful. [Will upload the pictures at a later date when I'm in the capital- it's taking too long on my dial-up.]

This afternoon I was sitting in my room working on an advertisement for my English Klub when it felt as though someone dropped a heavy object in a neighboring apartment. I thought nothing of it and continued with my work. About 30 minutes later Krista called (to ask me the words to “Jingle Bells”) and asked if I felt the earthquake. “What earthquake? Oh, that was an earthquake?!” So there you have it. I doubt it will make the news in the States – it may not even make the news in Moldova since some many in Chisinau didn’t feel it – but now I’ve lived through an earthquake.

There are two main organizations in this village – the mayor’s office and the kalhouz. Similar to the wrangling between the American Congress and President, Copceac’s mayor and the kalhouz also have their fights. Recently, there was some kind of suit filed by my mayor against the kalhouz about tax evasion and I’m not really sure who is right. As a Volunteer based in the mayor’s office yet serving the whole community, I am anxious not to be perceived as for or against one side or the other. [Good news – my language tutor just offered to introduce me to her uncle, who happens to be the head of the kalhouz. Maybe I’ll get a tour of their building.]

I should probably explain what is a kalhouz exactly… In the days of the Soviet Union, all farmland was owned collectively by kalhouzes. The kalhouz employed hundreds if not thousands of people – some took care of the tractors, others were in charge of the grapevines, some corn, etc. When the harvest came, the kalhouz sold the produce and paid its workers in crops and cash.

In some parts of Moldova this practice continues; others broke up their kalhouzes and distributed the land as private property among the local citizenry. It is difficult to decide which is the better system. The capitalist American within me says give the land to the people, let them sell it if they want, and allow some farmer to buy it and apply his own ingenuity to farming and see how it goes. But the Moldovan side of me sees that if I were a teacher I certainly couldn’t farm the land myself and few here could afford to purchase my land for a fair price and renting it would just involve too many headaches and how will I eat if no one farms the land and why should I want to change anything anyhow?!

A recent conversation highlighted this attitude. As those of you who have been following this sordid blog know, I want to teach the people in my office MSExcel. Basically, the anti-Excel argument I heard was if they learn the program then the work it now takes a team of accountants to do could be done by one or two people – you’ll put people out of a job! The antagonists of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged made the same case: don’t let technology advance or don’t let one person’s hard work and intelligence allow him to succeed in a way that would force some to go out of business. Let’s all just stay the same so everyone can get a piece of the pie; let’s all move forward together. But if that argument held true, then we should never have attempted to move beyond the Stone Age. I’m sure some poor buggy drivers were run out of business when the automobile came on the scene, and some candle-makers went under when Edison invented the light bulb, but we (or at least I) don’t begrudge those inventors for their genius. [And I look forward to the day when cleaner industries antiquate the polluting combustion engine and inefficient light bulbs.]

I certainly don’t want to force anyone into unemployment (which incidentally if it ever did happen would not be for years), but part of my job is to help this place move forward. Instead of spending literally days on pointless busy-work computing down to the tenth of a penny what every teachers’ salary ought to be, they could focus on the real needs of this village – creating incentives for small businesses, paving roads, getting water into every home, caring for abandoned children, creating economic incentives to keep locals from leaving families to earn money abroad, etc. And if my mayor has his wits about him (which I believe he does) then he won’t fire anyone but set them to work on these bigger issues.