our first tournament

Sorry, no pictures, I forgot my camera, but our first real baseball tournament we won 2 games and lost 0. I'm proud of my kids, I think they played good ball and made very few mistakes. The other teams also played well but I think our main advantages are our pitching and batting and our improved awareness in the field that comes from being a second year team. Next tournament I'll take some pictures so you can see our team, and hopefully in Tiraspol our regional all-star team will play as well as I know we can.

That's it for now. By the way - if there are any baseball teams (little leaguers) in the US that are interesting in sending us uniforms, gloves, bats, balls, etc (especially uniforms and ball) we'd really apprecaite it - we also have a lack of good equipment and it improves the play and confidence of our kids. Leave me a comment if that's possible.

bell pepper seedlings

This is a group of people planting bell pepper seedlings grown in a greenhouse starting in early february. They are some of the nicest that I've seen in town, though he got them in the ground a bit late. The soild here is increadibly fertile and black.

Our water bottle

This is a story that exemplifies the difference between American culture and Moldovan culture, especially in small villages.

If you read the previous post, you know that I was at the opening day for the sports season. I knew that I was going to wrestle, so I took with me a 2 liter bottle of water. As I approached the mass of people surrounding the wrestling mats placed in the grass, I held the bottle in my hand, near my hip. Most of the people were village folk or kids from the school. I stood on my tippy toes to watch the match between two 8 year olds (the winner gets a rooster) and a man who I’ve never met asked me for some water. Well, you can’t really say no, so I gave it to him. Undestand that most people in moldovan villages have minimum 1 gold tooth and do not have the best hygiene (oral or otherwise). As a result, I immediately decided that I was not going to drink anything more out of that bottle. A fat man asked me for water. I gave him the bottle. A skinny man asked me. I gave him the bottle. Another random person asked for water for his young son, and I gave them the bottle. They both drank. When I saw only a little remained I said they could have the rest. He gave me the empty bottle back.

This probably won’t happen in America for a couple of reasons: 1) we know that if someone has something, they probably want it, 2) it is generally impolite to refuse if someone asks and 3) it’s especially unusual to ask for something from a person with whom you haven’t met formally. As a result, most people who would go to such a gathering in America would go prepared with their own water or other things that they would need because they would feel uncomfortable asking for it. If they didn’t come prepared, they would probably just suffer through it or at the most ask someone they know for water. However, in Moldova, there are other rules in this situation: 1) if you have something you are basically obligated to share it, especially men with men (if you don’t, you’ll be considered egotistic). As a result, no one brings anything because they know if they do they probably won’t even get to eat or drink it before they give it away. So no one brings anything and everyone is thirsty.

It’s a funny outcome. It seems that sharing is good, and even the fact that being open enough to ask for something from a person with whom you haven’t met formally is also good. The fundamental problem is the assumption that you MUST give something if you have it. If that assumption didn’t exist and I could say “no, I need this water” then the outcome might be different. But instead you end up with a lot of thirsty people and no water.

I think that any social interaction which ends up one party having to refuze, even politly, are avoided. In our culture there is a built in shame in asking for things that aren’t ours, and as a result we avoid interactions that could end in someone saying “no, this is my water”. However, in Moldova, there is no problem with you asking me for my water, in which case I end up having to avoid the situation of refuzal. The only way out is to accept and give you my water.

Final thought – humans are weird and impossible to know without living with them.

Me and my berbec (ram)

Moldova is a country full of traditions, good and bad, like anywhere. When it comes to sport, there is a great tradition concerning the the deschiderea sezonului sportiv (opening of the sports season) which occurs in villages and regional centers across Moldova. Because inter-village play basically doesn’t exist, except a couple small tournaments for soccer, you can’t really say there is anything like an actual “sports season”, but it still manages to open with a bang. Many impromtu soccer and volleyball games occur, but more importantly there are certain competitions which have prizes. One is a race of about 100 yards in which the winner takes home a rabbit. The other is without doubt the most talked about event of the day – the wrestling tournament. Greco-Roman wrestling and other modern forms of wrestling exist in Moldova, but Moldovan wrestling – as occurs on the opening day – is pretty simple. A few mats on the grass, completely surrounded by spectators, no punching or poking or choking, and that’s pretty much it. Though the rules for winning vary, this year we played single elimination and as soon as two shoulders touch the mat the match ends. For kids, the winner takes home a rooster (cucosh), and for men the winner takes home a ram (berbec). Keep in mind that rams here are pretty ugly looking creatures, they lack the pretty, almost perm-curled hair of bred rams – they’re greyish colors and their dirty, oily hair is permanently in tangles. In any case, they have horns and can be made into soup and so they’re an acceptable prize for men.

Last year I tried for the ram (in romanian you say “ma iau la berbec”) and won my first match, but lost the second against a 200 pounder who I found out later spent time in the looney bin because he threw rocks at people from the top of the crane that’s been building the “new” school in our town for 16 years. Thanksfully, this year there was two classes – bigger than 80 kilos and small than 80 kilos. I’m 76 kilos (about 165 or so) so I fell in the lighter class, so meeting with my 200 pound friend from last year was out of the question.

Most of my best friends in town are kids, and they all asked if I was going to try and were great support when I wrestled. My first match was with a 38 year old fella who was pretty strong, but I managed to control his head and after a tiring couple of minutes I took him straight to the mat with a pin. The cheers from the crowd were loud and high pitched because of all of the little kids. The mayor shook my hand, surprised. In villages, if you work with computers, it’s pretty much implied that your weak and generally don’t know how to work, and I think that was his opinion as well. I said “I got a couple more to win” and he said good luck.

My second match was also tough and I was almost pinned, but luckely we fell out of bounds. Not long after, I managed to his head close enough to his knees that I locked my hands and turned him over. Another high pitched “huraah!” from the crowd.

The last match also ended pretty quick. The guy was smaller than me by 10 kilos, so I controlled his head and ended up locking my hands and turning him over like the second, and that was it! He was the last, I won! I took the berbec! Everyone congradulated me, kids and adults alike – they seemed surprised, partly because it is implied that Moldovans are tougher and stronger than Americans because they have a harder life and work harder. Hopefully I proved that wrong. I hoisted my berbec on my shoulder, took a picture, and sent him off to be made into soup. As is traditional, I invited all who wrestled to eat the berbec soup with me at another fellas house – since I don’t really have a house of my own.

In any case, there should have been better competition for the prize, but lots of people don’t participate for one reason or another, which is unfortunate. I’m happy that all that practice in high school paid off, even if I never really managed to win all that much back then, it turned out to be important. When trying to integrate into any community, especially more closed communities like small towns, gaining respect is crucial. Gaining respect means proving yourself (mentally, physically, socially) day after day while maintaining the values most important to that community. On the path to forming your personality in the eyes of the community you learn who they are, who you are, and how you can find practical solutions. Because of this, all of the little things I’ve learned add up to who I am and what I have to offer, both in terms of information and earning respect. Nothing learned is wasted – everything can come in handy, and you never know what that might be – so the more you do, practice, accomplish, learn, memorize, and understand, the faster you will earn the respect of those around you. Without people who respect you, you can accomplish only as much as a single person which is not much (if you’re not a genius). So even if I only won a handful of matches in high school, it wasn’t time wasted.

Complicated world

I’ve been told that the more you learn the more you realize you don’t know. I think I understand that better now than any time previous. It’s more than just not knowing something, it’s a difficulty in even taking specific stances on various issues because you realize the complexity of them.

I think it’s unfortunate that the world is so complex that a normal person is completely unable to make well informed decisions about the wide range of issues that face us today. The average person can maybe make one or two well informed decisions at the national level, decisions in which our values coincide with the choice we make. However, most of the time we are most influenced by politicians, personalities, or parties – while the rest of the time we just don’t care. I feel that our democracy is in it’s infancy when it comes to making the right decisions on the basis of our true values. This assumes that our values are fixed, which in fact is not reasonable – we change our values on the basis of our experiences – another important issue for the development of ourselves personally and of our democracy.

It seems unreasonable to ask everyone to know everything. Perhaps we need to think a little more about the structure of our democracy – it seems to be an issue that is not seriously discussed. The are some issues that should be in discussion right now like the idiotic electorial college system or simple alternative systems of voting (as simple as the run-off). Others that might be more extreme, like multi-point systems of voting, or a completely changing the strcture of the exective, adding or removing elected posts, or overhauling elected positions (from top to bottom) all together. Without getting into specific ideas, at the very least these issues should be discussed seriously at some level without. Unfortunately, we are happy (or complacent) in the US because we have faith (and pride) in the system of our founding fathers.

If we should take pride in anything, it should be in our ability to learn and adapt and our realism. The reality is, our current system is fundamentally limited in it’s response to both short-term and long-term events because it depends on a public that is limited. We do it economically and socially and even our judiciary system is very adaptable. Perhaps it’s time to remove the do not cross tape from the some of the most fundamental aspects of our democracy and begin debating them more seriously in order to adapt, improve, and move forward.

Any ideas?