We are in Moldova – one of the poorest countries in Eastern Europe. We’ve been doing farm work including pulling carrots, weeding, and chopping down grape vines and trees. We’ve also been putting together care packages for the poor in the community, bringing potatoes, rice,…etc along with praying for them. The men in our group has built two buildings for the breeding of beavers (a source of income here) and have dug a well. We’ve also been running a children program consisting of songs, games, and stories.
This town we are in reminds me of the song “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” and looks like a ghost town. There are only a few small buildings- used clothing store and small grocery stores yet it is one of the larger towns in the community. The streets are completely empty and people live far apart from each other.
Social norms are very strong here (and maintained through saving face, shame, false responsibility, fear, gender roles…etc) so there isn’t much freedom to express yourself and your desires. For instance, there is the expectation to get married by the age of 19 and no later than the age of 23 otherwise there’s no chance of ever getting married here. It’s been difficult for me to adjust here because maintaining traditions and culture as means of control seems to be more important than liberty in this community. Of course, we’ve experienced this in other countries we’ve been in, but in those places- there were legal, economic, or physical penalties for doing certain things whereas most of the punishment here is social ostracism. I’m not saying that this doesn’t happen in the states as well, but our value for individualism and pursuing our dreams is so freeing relative to Moldova. Some communities here are trying to move away from legalism, but there is still a long way to go.
