There is no OSHA in Moldova

I have seen some of the most unsafe things since being in Moldova that I have ever seen in my life, and this week was no exception. I never realized how aware of safety issues I am, and have taken the whole safety thing for granted for years. I did serve on the Safety Committee for a while when I worked at Sweetser, but other than that experience, I have been blissfully unaware of how conscious we are as a culture of our personal safety. Here are some examples of things I have actually seen here in my village: At the construction site for the building where I will be working all of the workers wear flip flops, all the time. No closed toe shoes, much less steel-tipped boots; I have seen many people on ladders on uneven ground and hills, picking fruit out of trees and working on wires of some kind (I don't even want to know); I have seen six people riding down the road on a motorcycle with sidecar; I have seen an adult with up to three children riding a moped. I actually see this a lot, one or two toddlers standing on the floorboards facing the adult driving, with one or two sitting behind the driver. I have not seen an adult with four children, but two or three seems pretty common, and the toddlers are pretty young (two or three years old) who are standing facing the driver. I guess it is better that they face the driver and not the road, but come on! This week I was out for my walk one morning, and saw a young man stop on his bicycle at the gas station to get some gas. He put it into a 1.5 liter soda bottle and rode off. I then saw him stop and light a cigarette! Yikes! Not the sharpest tool in the shed, that one! There was no subsequent explosion, so I guess I had nothing to worry about!

Since I mentioned it, in general the construction site is moving along well, safety issues aside. The flip flops are just one example of things that just don't seem "right". The fact that the workers are living in the building while it is nothing but a shell probably would never pass OSHA standards either. The new windows are in, and the crew is now working seven days a week and clearly more than 40 hours a week. The plan was for the building to be done by August 1. I am not sure that they will be done in three weeks, but I do think we will be in there by the middle of the month. That is exciting!

I didn't write this last time, but I was in Chisinau on July 3 and had a really productive trip. My computer had "crashed" and I got it fixed. The PC IT guy, Andrei Rusu, worked on it for about 4 hours, and it is working just like new. Thank you, Andrei! The other thing that I was in for was that as the VAC (Volunteer Advisory Committee) rep. I was invited along with the rest of the VAC committee to the 4th of July Party (on the 3rd) at the Ambassador's residence. There is a new Ambassador to Moldova, and he was not in residence yet, but it was a big deal. There were lots of State Department officials, Moldovan representatives, and others. It was more of a reception than a party, with lots of speeches and schmoozing, but it was cool to be invited, and the perks were great. The down side of this trip was that there was another party that PC volunteers were invited to, but it wasn't taking place until Saturday, the 5th. That was just too much time for me to be away from my village, and the turn around time was too fast to make it back in to Chisinau for Saturday night. So I came back to my village on Friday afternoon, with a working computer and figured I just lay low for a while. I didn't realize how much I would miss seeing my friends here and how slow this week would go. I did get a nice surprise phone call from my mom which brightened up my week, but by Wednesday afternoon I thought I would lose it, I was so bored! I was like a kid again..."Mom, I'm bored!!!!" I was supposed to meet with my tutor on Wednesday afternoon, and he cancelled. I knew I needed to do something. I called my friend Teresa, who lives in a suburb of Chisinau and went for a visit yesterday afternoon, coming back this morning. I went to see her work site, met some Dutch women who are also volunteering where she works, went on some home visits with the visiting nurse type person and Teresa and the other volunteers, had dinner with Teresa and Jenna, another PC volunteer, met her host family, watched American TV, had a great time!! Just what I needed. See, I do know how to take care of myself! I still worry, but I can't stand to worry and be bored at the same time! I can only handle over-whelming emotion at a time, and things are back on track.