The wine season is upon us. Moldovans are picking their grapes and turning them into home wine. In the fields of the kalhouz, school children from the 8th grade and up get out of school for two weeks to go pick grapes. The kids have mixed feelings about this: on the one hand they get out of school and earn about 50 lei ($5) a day, which is usually handed over to the family's budget; on the other hand these are longer, more physical days than they have in class.
I'm pretty certain that this is required work. If you're not going to participate, you must have a doctor's note to say you're sick. I know several people who have scheduled doctor's visits or operations during this time. Perhaps a coincidence, perhaps not.
I'm reminded of the cotton production of Uzbekistan, which "required" school children to help harvest the nation's cash crop. Unfortunately, I wasn't there during the fall and late summer to be able to fully understand the process.
To better appreciate the process in Moldova, I decided to work a day in the fields. The kids meet at 8am at school. Everyone brings a bucket, clippers, and lunch. A bus takes different classes to different fields. In pairs, students walk down the rows of grapes filling their buckets. When done, they dump the grapes into a large trailer at the end of the rows. Their homeroom teacher stands by the trailer and records how many buckets each student picked.
I had only been there for a little while - enough to pick 2 buckets - when the skies opened up and the rain came down. At first we worked through it, but when it didn't stop we decided to call it a day.
About that time, Oleg called and said he needed my help for a road project some villagers wanted to submit to IREX. I got a ride home, quickly changed out of my soaking clothes, and headed into the office.
While helping with the grant application, two people from LGRP showed up to install 1C (link in Russian or English), an all-encompassing municipal accounting program, on our computers. So I began helping with that too.
All in all, a good productive day that definitely didn't follow the plan.
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