(disappearing) Village Life part 3

The other day I was talking to my neighbor, Nicolina, while we were sitting at the soccer field watching the kids play and we were trying to figure out how many people live in Obedin.  We figured there are about 125 houses in the village and if each household averages 3 residents, that is around 375 total.  It seems like a remarkably small number;  I've lived in some tiny towns in my life but this wins the prize for the smallest.
Just about everyone who lives here was also born and raised here.  There are a lot of multi-generational families sharing one house as well as a significant number of grandparents raising grandchildren while the middle generation are off in Italy or some other place trying to earn a living.  If they aren't in another country, then they are most likely working at a factory in Craiova, the largest city near us.
Not many of the locals have cars so they take the buses to work early in the morning and return in the evening.  I know many families in the States can relate to this sort of life but there are a few significant differences between there and here.  One is that we in the States generally make more than $600 a month (don't fool yourself into thinking everything is cheaper here; gas is the equivalent of $7.00 per gallon) and when we return home after a long day of work we can throw our clothes into the washer and relax with a hot shower.  In Obedin only about 20% of the houses have indoor plumbing and the laundry is generally done by hand.
I don't say any of this to make people in the West feel spoiled and lazy (although I personally feel extraordinarily spoiled and lazy) I say this because it helps to explain the unfortunate trend here to abandon the agricultural life.
When we came to Obedin in '99 it seemed like you couldn't walk two feet without running into someone's cow, goat or chicken but through the years the sight of these animals is becoming less and less commonplace.  I mentioned this to Nicolina who confirmed that its not merely my imagination; within the past five or six  years, she said, there has been a radical change in the community.  Fewer and fewer families are keeping livestock.
I've had the experience of butchering pigs and I can tell you that after three days of that business I was ready to kiss the first butcher I met and I decided I never wanted to see or smell pork again as long as I live.  And that was just the butchering part; I wasn't involved in raising them (that was the task of the wonderful Don and Kim).  The problem here is that these days none of the strong, middle generation are available to perform the labor.  Its not that they disdain it or that they are eager to abandon traditional values; on the contrary, many of the people my age are sad to see these traditions slip away.  By and large they would rather not be miles away, they would prefer to be in their village with their families and their farms.  Maybe at one time they romanticized about a glamorous job in the city but these days they long for a healthier way of living.  But they can't sustain their families without taking factory jobs.
So the middle generation are gone and in their absence the elderly simply cannot shoulder the whole load alone.  Not when there is also the gardening and by that I mean rural gardening; not little pots of herbs on a windowsill but meter after meter of earth to tend and the rigors of four seasons to manage.  They make jams from the fruits, wine from the grapes, palincă (think moonshine) from the plums and can the vegetables.  In addition many now have the added responsibility of caring for the little children that are left behind.
These are some tough folks, let me tell you.

The grass is still cut by hand using a coasă or seceră.  Seriously.  These ladies were cutting the grass when I walked by with the the camera and they stopped just long enough to pose for my photo and to ask for a copy for themselves.  They were very disappointed to discover that its a digital camera but I am going to see if there is some place I can get a set printed out.  It will probably take 3 weeks and 4 different trips to the city to accomplish this simple task.

Fortunately not all the ways of pastoral life have disappeared just yet.  We are thrilled to still be able to have our milk delivered every other evening by the local dairywoman.  And the dairy farm is four houses down.  How's that for locally sourced?

Taking the cows in on a rainy spring evening; I wish I had a nicer shot but usually when I hear the melodic sounds of the cows coming in, I am too far away from my camera to reach it in time to get a photo.

Check out those udders; in a few minutes that will be on our doorstep

for at-home delivery,

not in quaint glass bottles or wooden buckets but at least we reuse these plastic water bottles!

Among the other sounds I hear in the evening (and throughout the day) is the soft clippity clop of horses' hoofs, the rattle of wooden wagon wheels and sometimes the call of the wagon driver.
With gas at $7.00 who wouldn't want to own a petrol/diesel-free source of transportation?  You can pile it full of hay or load it with kids or pipes or sheep or whatever.  No leather seats to tear, no mats to stain, no air conditioner to give you that odd, unnatural taste in your mouth and the resulting cough.
Sure its a drag to be behind one on a two- lane road with heavy traffic coming from the other direction.  And sure its pretty scary to come up behind one of these things in the dark of the night (many of them have reflectors and even licence plates but not all).
But over all, who wouldn't want the sounds of horse drawn wagons going up and down their road during the day instead of noisy, exhaust spewing cars with radios blasting EuroDisco?
Legislation was enacted recently that will ban the driving of all wagons in the city of  Craiova starting June 1 of this year.  We are pretty far outside of the city so our roads will remain unaffected but I wonder how much longer it will take before this sort of law spreads and applies to all roads in Romania.  I hope not any time soon.

 On Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 3 o'clock in the afternoon the boys and a group of their friends (including Alexandru, Nicolina's son) meet at the poiană, the field beside the schoolyard.  We don't have enough numbers or skill for a real futbal game so we usually start with Victorie and then improvise from there.  The day usually ends with Raţă, Raţă, Gâscă (in case you couldn't guess that's Duck, Duck, Goose).

As spring progresses, the weather is growing increasingly warm and the kids need to take frequent water breaks: we bring two bottles of water, one for drinking and one for pouring over our heads.  This practice is now a great favorite but it took some time to catch on since Romanians seem to harbor tremendous paranoia in relation to things that are cold, particularly when they come into contact with the human body.

Just talk to anyone whose child has recently experienced a cold, cough or fever and they will tell you that the day before the symptoms began, the child had ice cream, a drink of cold water or stood near an open window.  It doesn't matter if you personally witnessed the child in question being sneezed on no less than 12 times by another child with green snot spewing from every orifice.  It doesn't matter if four other children also ate ice cream under the exact same circumstances and none of them are ill because they are all in a different class room.  Believe me, I've tried this approach and no one is interested in my American theories regarding epidemiology, etiology or microbiology.  But since I realize that it makes no difference what I say and since I have a great deal of respect for the intensity of the labor involved in raising a child without indoor plumbing, I usually just nod sympathetically.
So the point is that on the first really hot day at the field when I threw a glass of water at Mircea's head to cool him down, you would have thought, from the reaction of the locals, that I had shot him.
But kids are kids, no matter what unscientific notions their grandparents harbor and it wasn't long before the bravest were asking for water to throw on themselves.  (I'm not crazy enough to throw it on them myself because you never know who might be watching and think I'm trying to kill the village schoolchildren)  Now water throwing is part of daily village life.
Also part of our days are the bouquets of flowers and other ornaments that the little girls make for me.  They like raţă raţă gâscă but not the other games so while the big kids do their penalty kicks and Victorie, the  little ones employ themselves by making me stuff.  By the time we walk home I'm usually decked out like the Queen of Sheba..

future jewelry designers of Romania

left: a bouquet. top: a crown which was surprisingly durable.  I think it lasted through 3 days of wear.

An entry detailing our daily life would not be complete without mentioning our across-the-street neighbor, Titel, who is also Nicolina's father (see how its all circular around here?)  While most folks in our village do not walk into the homes of other folks uninvited, Titel is not most folks.  Its not that he's nosey or pervy, on the contrary, with utmost politeness early each morning he removes his shoes at the door and tip-toes in his socks up the tiled stairs and then calls out "Domnul Director!"  I'm sure in Titel's mind this is not much louder than a stage whisper but we've got high ceilings and lots of tile and we are, after all, upstairs where the sound travels and reverberates....

We are trying to figure out interesting uses for alarm clocks since between Titel and the roosters, they have been rendered totally superfluous.  I'm thinking about turning mine into a flower pot.  Would Martha Stewart be proud or horrified?

Of course, he's more than just the Ionescu alarm clock  he's also Silviu's go-to handy-man and drinking buddy.  Generally if there is a home improvement project going on around here, Titel is involved.  Right now we've got a new fence going up and the construction of the last bedroom and half bath upstairs.  So we're seeing a lot of Titel these days.
While Titel speaks no English at all (okay, he knows one word: drunk which he says whenever he thinks it might be any where close to appropriate and often when its not) he's the sort of guy who seems to make language barriers melt away.  His blue eyes sparkle and he laughs and holds up whatever glass is handy and says "Hai, noroc!" to show you that all is well in the world or, if there are troubles and woes about, they can be easily brushed aside with a beer or palincă.  He's such a fan of this gesture that I once saw him say  "Hai noroc!" and hold up a roll of toilet paper because there was no glass or jar available.

A brief word with you all about photos:  We have a nice camera, a really nice camera.  And I try to remember to take this camera with me everywhere I go but because its that kind of nice camera, its heavy and awkward to carry around all the time.  Sometimes I have this camera but I feel rude snapping off photos of folks innocently going about their daily business.  I don't like being rude so I need to engage in some conversation first and sometimes I just don't feel like engaging in drawn-out conversations and struggling with how to say "a blog is like a newspaper that I am writing for my friends and family back in the States (and elsewhere) who are interested in the culture of rural Romanians..."  Really, it can be a pain, especially when people are responding to you in Italian and you are trying to make it clear to them that you do not understand Italian.  And heaven forbid you  make the mistake of saying that folks back in the States are interested in things that are "natural", oh good lord...
So sometimes I have the camera but don't take the photo because it feels, well, invasive if I don't ask first and sometimes I don't feel like asking because I'm mentally lazy.  And sometimes I just don't have the camera period because I just want to live in the moment instead of always thinking  "wow, this would be a great photo for the blog!"
But sometimes this results in missing some fantastic photographs.  For example the other day in Craiova I saw a horse-drawn wagon stopped at a light at a busy intersection, sitting there beside a couple of cars and a semi and I thought "this is so classic Romania!" but the camera was in the back seat and by the time I pulled it out and focused, all I managed to get was some horse tail and a street sign.
And yesterday morning on the way to school the cows were out grazing in the morning sun and the dairywoman was leaning on her pitchfork with the light surrounding her...yeah, no camera.
When this happens I spend no small amount of time trying to figure out how to kick my own butt which turns out to be harder than you would imagine.  Apparently you need to have really flexible quadriceps.  Who knew?