Paște Ferecit! Happy Easter!

Last night as we walked to the Easter vigil, we could hear Gregorian chants, in beautiful male harmonies, from the Orthodox Cathedral two kilometers away.  Walking in the beautiful night air at 10:00, the haunting rhythms and harmonies of the chants created a mysterious, magical feel in the darkened streets.
We passed six churches on the way to the Central Plaza, and each one was either finishing their Easter vigil or getting ready.  Those leaving the Easter vigil carried lit candles with them on the street.  The streets were deserted except for families walking together to bring the light of Christ to their home.
We attended the Easter vigil of two churches, the Greco-Catholic and the Romanian Orthodox.  The Greco-Catholic Church in Romania comes from the Greek Byzantine Orthodox rite that came under Rome in 1687 with the Hapsburg conquest of Transylvania. Since these services began at 11:00 and midnight, respectively, Our son said we were "church-hopping instead of bar-hopping."  We planned to visit the Roman Catholic vigil in St. Michael's Cathedral, but the Greco-Catholic was filling up fast for the 11:00 service, so we took our seats. 
We sat in the dark sanctuary while the priests dressed in black robes chanted the liturgy.  After 20 minutes or so, the bishop and priests, dressed in white and gold vestments came out from behind the screen.  The bishop wore a jewelled Byzantine mitre --looked like a Byzantine crown--with cameos of the patron saints around the band.  The congregation prompted rose to the feet and exited the building.  The bishop and priests, carrying the icons, the bible, and several golden standards, flags and banners, followed the congregation outside to carry on more liturgy in the street. 
As the bishop and priests exited the building, the congregation gathered around them to light their candles.  Soon the entire area in front of the church was light by candelight.
After 20-30 minutes of more readings and chants, the bishop and priests, followed by the congregation, processed to the side of the church, following a waiting police car with flashing lights.  Next was a procession around the block--a very large and irregular block in the old medieval section--with everyone singing.  Police escorts were at each intersection to stop traffic as we passed by.  The lead priest carried a wooden board, probably 6 feet long, which he and the other priests banged in a rhythmic way for the entire procession.
When we returned to the front of the church, the bishop ceremoniously and loudly knocked on the front door with a wooden hammer three or four times.  Between each knock, the priests chanted some liturgy.  When the doors finally opened, every light was on in the church and all the lenten coverings had been removed from the statues and icons.  The Bishop turned to the congregation and said a liturgy welcoming everyone to the resurrection church.
We decided that at 12:30am, we needed to move to the Romanian Orthodox church, so we stayed on the plaza until we could discreetly slip away.  Down the block, another church was emptying out with their priests in white and golden vestments, so we stopped to watch their liturgy until they all processed around the corner. 
On to the Romanian Orthodox church. We got there for the sermon, lost interest, got cold, and decided that we had adequately welcomed Easter. 
Paște Ferecit!
Alleluia! Christ is risen.
He is risen indeed. Alleluia!

Doing what you were put on this earth to do

I cannot believe my Romanian experience is coming to an end.  My project here has been a case study in social networking and in "doing what you were put on this earth to do" (personal mission -> work impact). 

Speaking at Social Enterprise conference

Example of both: In addition to teaching in the social work department, my project is to provide technical assistance to local social service agencies in strategic planning and service delivery (family therapy techniques with children and families).  My first job was to network with social service agency leaders and find out what they need in the way of consultation. On average, I met with one NGO per week for October and November.  I quickly discovered that social service leaders here are pretty overwhelmed and dispirited, from the hardships of the economic crisis (more needs, less funding), but also from 15 years of outsiders telling them what they were doing wrong (15 years of development preceeded Romania's EU accession in 2007). So here is another "helpful" outsider who want to tell them how to do things better.  My first task was to position myself as a friend, not a critic.

I was not finding many takers in my offer to provide free strategic planning.  The response  "yes, that's a great offer" never got converted into action (wouldn't return my emails and phone calls, missed appointments, no-show a class presentation, contact me about events after they occurred, etc.).  I kept offering to help, kept working on my needs assessment, and kept meeting people.  I concluded that the "outsider fatigue" meant that I needed to have my new Romanian friends do the talking for me, so I invited NGO leaders to talk in class.  I was setting up a NGO Resource workshop in which NGO leaders would tell other NGO leaders what works for them.  Building social capital like this is a stretch for many Romanian NGOs, who tend to look at one another like one dog with a bone looks at his peers.

Romanian Social Enterprise Conference

I finally got an invitation to present at a high level social entrepreneurship conference at the US Embassy in Bucharest with leading Romanian NGOs that have in the past received USAID funding.  The same week a NGO leader told me of an upcoming conference in my own town, Cluj, that involves over 200 Romanian NGOs. The format is for NGO leaders to tell other NGO leaders what works for them.  Since there is power in collaboration, I dropped my NGO workshop idea and pursued helping them with their NGO conference idea.

I went on "full court press" to meet leaders at the organizing NGO (began as an informational interview, but I ended with a trial run of my Bucharest presentation) and to get them to invite me to speak at their big NGO conference.  Which they did, but with the condition that I have Romanian co-presenters to give a case study of my main point.  So a couple of phone calls and a day later, I had two really effective Romanian NGO friends lined up to co-present (networking pays off).

So now, in a two month period, I have four presentations at major conferences (two down, two to go) where I talk about one really good idea that NGOs here can improve their services. I illustrate that good idea with Romanian NGOs that are doing it, and US NGOs that aren't. I don't want to criticize my Romanian friends, but I want the audience to learn how to critically analyze NGO mission and activities. So in criticizing foreigners, I'm hoping they can transfer that skill to critically analyzing their own NGO in the privacy of their own office.

from L to R: me; Hon. George Teseleauna, Romanian Consul; Prof. Antonio Panico, Rector. LUMSA Univ.; Prof. Riccardo Rossario, LUMSA Univ.

In my last presentation I was surprised with how big a deal it was: I shared top billing with the Romanian Consul to talk about social service needs of Romanian immigrants.  I did my talk about what NGOs need to do and say to communicate what good they do for Romania. It resulted in a potential research collaboration to do a needs assessment of Romanian immigrants in the EU.  I am writing a grant application, could be really big $/Euros, for a multinational collaboration between three universities (StMU included) to do the research project.

So "what am I put here to do?" I want to nurture good ideas and the people who have them.  By making connections between people and their ideas. By focusing on the good idea, clearing it from all the organizational clutter that distracts.  By showing the impact of the good idea and giving it legs to stand on.

Yeah, that’s what I’m all about.

Erica Lock with Mark Gitenstein, US Ambassador to Romania

Speaking at the LUMSA International Social Services conference

Prof. Antonio Panico, Rector, LUMSA University

Cornell Blajan: He was a good and honorable man; may he rest in peace.

 We came home from our recent Prague/Italy trip to discover that our landlord, Cornell, had passed away quite suddenly.  The graveside service was the morning after I returned, a day before Nancy and the kids returned. 

Cornell always had a twinkle in his eye

One of the last conversations I had with Cornell, he invited me for "o mic," a little tsuika, he said with a twinkle in his eye while holding two fingers about a centimeter apart.  Of course, he always served me more than a centimeter of tsuika... and a beer and water to chase it all down.  We sat in the kitchen and talked about his life, in Romanian, of course.  I've learned enough of the language that I could understand and keep him talking ("înteleg...sigur...da da").
He pointed out to the garden and around the house and said, "this is my life.  Everything that is important to me is right here, my family, my garden," and pointing around the neighborhood, "and my friends." He talked with pride about how successful his daughter and son have become, and how big his daughter's new home is, and how proud he was of his two granddaughters. He talked about how he could walk around the neighborhood and say hello to everyone he meets because they are all good people and he knows them well.   I wanted to ask him to introduce me to his friend who makes the tsuika from the apples in his garden, but I thought that could wait until later (after I practiced how to say that in Romanian).

Thanksgiving Dinner with Cornell, Luci, Bailey and Paul

We invited Cornell and Luci for Thanksgiving dinner with two American students who are learning Romanian.  They had heard about American Thanksgiving and knew that it was a big deal, but Cornell was worried about spending an entire evening together without having conversation (we couldn't do anything in Romanian then).  The students were capable translators and conversationalists.  When we shared what we are thankful for, all three Ratliffs  told Cornell and Luci how much living next door to them has made our experience of Romanian culture enriching.  I can confidently say that knowing Cornell and Luci and being included in many of their family customs has been the highlight of my cultural exchange.  Living in some apartment in the center of the city, I never would have harvested grapes and apples, grilled sausages in the fire pit, fed the chickens, killed the Christmas pig (well, actually they killed it at the farm and chopped it up in the kitchen), celebrated birthdays Romanian style, shoveled snow.

One of the "Cornell-isms" that I won't forget is his playful sense of humor.  He had a way of ending a story about "Romanian life that didn't quite go as one would want things to turn out" with a gesture: a shrug, his palms would turn up, and his eyes would bulge out, which seemed to be a gesture of resignation, "What do you expect?" or "So what can you do?"   One of my favorite stories he told went something like this: The Turks came in Romania and took what they could; the Hapsburgs came and took what they could; the Soviets came, now the EU and the the multinationals come... Then the shrug, "What can you do?"


The last conversation we had with him was when he came over to the apartment to ask us if we could help him with a surprise for his two granddaughters.  He asked our advice on how to buy laptop computers, a sizable purchase by Romanian standards, and we planned to go shopping when we returned from our trip.  He wanted to surprise his son and daughter with the gifts as much as his granddaughters. When we asked if his daughter could help us translate some of the technical details when we went shopping, he responded, "No, then it wouldn't be a surprise!"

Cornell's birthday party

Pressing grapes on the back porch

Cami enjoying the fresh grape juice

Cornell, Luci and family

Learning the language

Can I buy a vowel, please?

The biggest challenge in learning Romanian is that the language uses vowels in very precise ways.  My Southern twang never met a vowel that doesn’t have at least three sounds. So I am forever trying to get the exact pitch on the vowel: a (as in groggy; ah) is different from ă (as in grub; uh), â (halfway between grave and grieve; eeuw), and its close relative u (groove; ooh).

I have my numbers down pretty well, and I can recognize when cashiers tell me how much to pay.  They say it really fast.

I recognize words spoken around me, but I can’t come up with the right word in the right conjugation to be able to make much conversation.  I had a beer and a tsuika with Cornell, the retired gentleman who we rent from, and we talked about his work in the garden that day. I could understand mostly what he was telling me, but all I could reply was “good, good (Bun, Bun).”

Romanian taxi drivers aren’t accustomed to hearing foreigners mispronouncing their language.  They will look at you quizzically and repeat what you said.  Our language teacher says it is because they don’t have frequent contact with foreigners.  I blame the Southern accent.

 

I don’t ask for lemons in Romania

Every language has the words that sound like scatological terms from another language.  Americans traveling in Germany or Austria snicker when they see “Gute Fahrt” on the highway entrance ramps. And years ago when we travelled in England my mother insisted on calling out the name of the sunflowers that lined the road, “Rape.” And Brits ask for “a rubber, please” to clean the chalkboard, which led to great embarrassment of a Scottish exchange student in my high school.

A Romanian friend of ours let us in on a local joke, that foreigners often mispronounce the word for lemon to say instead a crude term for a sexual act.  It is only one vowel difference, and if you have trouble enunciating vowels exactly, you could end up with a… well, let’s just say, you won’t be squeezing lemons.

...with the refreshing taste of lemon.

not a refreshing taste

Jewish life in Romania

Last week I had lunch at "the Jewish Canteen." The Jewish Canteen is a kosher kitchen and dining hall that serves the 200 or so of the Jewish community in Cluj.  Talk about a small market segment!  You can't just go there on your own.  Non-Jewish people have to be invited by someone in the community.  You have to call in your reservation the day before, they only cook enough food for the people they have coming.

Nancy, Kent, Eleonore, and Jake at the Synagogue, Botoșani

   You walk down a street, turn into a parking lot for a TV production company and auto repair shop.  Walk around to the back of the building where there is a courtyard, and you will see the dining hall.  Go in the door, check in with the porter, pay, get your disposable yarmulke, and go sit down for lunch.  They bring it out for guests, but it looked like the locals went back in the kitchen to get their own.  The food was tasty and filling: a chicken broth, a bean puree with beef cutlet, pickle salad (murați), and a white cake for desert. 
     Jake Shulman-Metz and I were meeting with members of the Cluj Klezmer band to discuss venues for Jake's concert tour in June.  My department chair, who is Jewish, introduced us to a young man who is doing his doctoral dissertation on Jewish music,  he took us to the Jewish Canteen and introduced us to the members of the Klezmer band.

Jewish Transit House, Cluj

    Back in October, Duncan McDougall and I went to the Elie Wiesel Musuem in Sighet.  It was sobering to learn the extent of the Holocaust in Romania.  In the 1930 census in the county of Maramures there were 39,000 Jews, less than 4,000 in 1948.  At age 15, Elie Wiesel and his family were deported to Auschwitz where his mother died. Just before the Allied troops defeated Germany, the Germans moved the entire Auschwitz prison camp to Buchenwald, "The Long Walk."  Elie's father died from exhaustion on the walk.
    When the allies liberated Buchenwald, Elie, a 16 year old orphan, felt that he had no home to return to, so he chose to emigrate to Paris where he completed a degree in philosophy at the Sorbonne.
     A quote of Elie Wiesel from the museum : "Indifference is not a beginning; it is the end. And therefore, indifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits the aggressor--never the victim."

Recent Travels, Part 2

This continues my overview of our Romanian travels with Kent, our son.  

• Traveling to Șigișoara with former exchange student Eva

Another Austrian exchange student, Eva, and her boyfriend, Joffrey, came to visit.  She wanted to see Romanian castles and rural villages.  We extended our car rental and went to Șigișoara, Brașov, Bran, and Sinaia; put them on a train to Buchureșt and we explored the Faragaș mountains. On the way to Șigișoara we passed through the village where, last November, we stayed with the Roma family (Staying with the Roma).  We recognized the house, turned around and pulled into the driveway.  We didn't know what kind of welcome we would get; Dan was ready to commence greetings and introductions if the father came out to see who was in the driveway, and Nancy was ready if the mother came out.  Gabi, the father, came out, and immediately recognized us and invited us in.  They remembered our names, welcomed us warmly, and Ghizi, the mother, couldn't stop hugging Nancy.  We had coffee and showed them pictures from our last visit.  Our Romanian was good enough to carry on a conversation.

The Gabori family with Kent, Eva and Joffrey

     Ghizi called Bertie, their daughter in 2nd grade, at school and told her to come home.  Ghizi wanted her to see us and practice her English, probably more learning activities than she would have at school. Bertie is taking English lessons from a neighbor in the village, and she showed us her English picture books and her drawing book of vocabulary.  She colors in a picture of every English word that she learns.
      While we were visiting, Ghizi went back in the guest rooms to get a hoodie that Nancy had left onthe previous visit (laundered and folded, waiting for a chance to return it), and some accessories that Ghizi had made to go with the gypsy dresses that the girls had bought during the last visit. More hugs as she presented the gifts and for whom each was intended.
    Sometime I will blog all the negative reactions that we have gotten about our gypsy home-stay from Romanians and ex-pats who have "gone native."  For now, all I'll say is: the life we experienced last November is pretty much the life they live; they are not an ordinary Roma family, in that they are open to outsiders, value education, and see that there is a wider world out there; and they have shown greater hospitality to us strangers than anyone else in our Romanian experience.

• Visiting castles, palaces, and fortified cities

In Șigișoara, our fortified city, we went to the Clock Tower museum, which has a good exhibit on the medieval guilds, and you can see how the tower clock works.  Amazing what engineers in the 1600s can do. We walked the wall and ate lunch.
     We visited Bran Castle; we were more interested in Queen Maria, who lived there during WWI, than in Dracula, who never lived there, and maybe once attacked the castle in the 1600s.
     We visited Peleș Palace in Sinaia, the summer palace of King Ferdinand and Queen Maria. We put Eva and Joffrey on the train to Buchurest and went to a rural homestay in Bran, where we ate well and watched a foot of snow fall.

• Nancy's High Adventure  Travel

The next day as we awoke in a winter wonderland, we decided to look at the Râșnov (rɨsh-nov)  Citadel that we had seen towering over the plain the day before.  It reminded us of Minis Tirith in the Lord of the Rings movies, a fortified city high over the valley nestled into the surrounding mountains.  The citadel was built about 1215 by the Teutonic Knights. Since it was a Saturday, the local volunteers were dressed in their best medieval reenactor costumes. So did we.

















  There was a cave nearby, so we decided to explore it before lunch.  We walked up an icy vehicle road for 1.5 km to get to the cave, and had a wonderful English-speaking guide for the cave tour.
  On the way out, things got interesting.  We decided to walk back down using a footpath because it had a railing to hold onto.  As we entered the footpath, Nancy slipped on some tree roots and fell on her back, bouncing down the path.  Kent was in front, reached her first, and put his boy scout training in Wilderness First Aid into practice.  He immediately immobilized her, treated her for shock, and started to monitor her breathing and consciousness.  Fortunately, she never lost consciousness, but because of the fall, we had to assume some sort of spinal injury, so we called the ambulance.  Because we were 1.5 km from the parking lot, on a mountain trail 30 meters above the icy road, they had to call the Mountain Rescue team to get her off the mountain.  She was in a great deal of pain, she thought she had broken ribs and punctured her lung, but Kent kept talking with her to keep the panic at bay and help her breathe.  After 20 minutes, the emergency medical personnel arrived and carried her down the mountain to the waiting ambulance.
    The crisis turned out better than we could imagine (let me tell you, our imaginations on the mountain were impressive): no fractures, no punctured lung, only one seriously sore lady.  The EMS and the Brașov emergency hospital were helpful and efficient: she was stabilized on oxygen and a glucose drip in the ambulance, and was in radiology for x-rays within 30 minutes at the hospital.  We got the good news from the doctor that there were no fractures at 5:00, and we could go home when she finished the IV pain meds, about 8:00pm.
    Nancy has been impressed with the quality of the medical care she has received in Romania. The facilities are old and some are shabbier than others, but the doctors are well-trained and knowledgeable.  The biggest difference from the US system is the access and attention she gets from a physician; there aren't as many support staff as we have in the US so the doctors do almost everything.  This wasn't her first encounter with the Romanian health care system, she needed her blood pressure medication adjusted and she had a recurrent infection.  So, she has seen a private medical office, the public medical system, and now the emergency medical system and a rehab doctor. 

Recent Travels

By recent, I mean, since I last talked about traveling in this blog.  The university had a break for the Christmas/ New Year's holidays, then final exams in Jan, and a break between semesters in Feb.  So, here are pictures (one or two for each place) and commentary (one or two sentences, unless something really outstanding happened) of:

• Christmas trip to Austria and Germany to see friends
• Dan to Monahans, Texas, to celebrate his father's 100th birthday
• Dan and Nancy canceled their trip to Egypt to see Kent Feb 1, while Kent came to Romania
• Showing Kent Romania: trip to Bucovina and Botoșani to meet Jake and Eleonor
• Visit to Fundatia Inocentia in Bistrița
• Traveling to Șigișoara with former exchange student Eva
• Nancy's high-adventure mountain experience
• Kent and Dan to Bucharest for the Fulbright Mid-winter Orientation

As Kent told a friend, "I've only been in Romania three weeks, and during that time I've only been home three days!"

• Christmas trip to Austria and Germany 

We rented a car and drove to Vienna to stay in a former exchange student's home, just happened to be the worst snowstorm in Hungary.  For three hours around Budapest, we could not drive more than 40 kmh (that's 25 mph).  At each town, we'd decide, "Do we check in and wait it out or go on to the next town?" Well, at 150 k from Vienna, we got through the storm, the highways were cleared, and it was 5:00.

The best part of the trip: OMA!! Zandi lives in a Danube valley wine village outside Vienna in a large farmhouse with her grandmother on one side of the house and her parents and sister on the other side.  Everyday, Oma would cook goodies for us!

• Dan to Monahans, Texas, to celebrate his father's 100th birthday

I went to Texas for 8 days, and talk about jet lag.  The birthday celebration was a great success. Dad was in the FBI during WWII, and this picture is an agent presenting Dad a certificate from the FBI.  Dad is the oldest known former FBI agent in America.  

• Dan and Nancy canceled their trip to Egypt to see Kent Feb 1, while Kent came to Romania

Kent was in Egypt on a US State Dept scholarship to learn Arabic and experience the culture.  Talk about experiencing the culture!!  He stayed with a host family in a suburb about 45 min from all the demonstrations, but got to observe plenty of neighborhood anarchy from his 9th floor balcony.  His host brother was manning the barricades on the street in front of the apartment to keep the looters at bay. While Dan was in Texas, Kent got the evacuation order from the Embassy, and got to Romania where Nancy was waiting before Dan got back.

So, of course, we had to show him around Romania!

• Showing Kent Romania: trip to Bucovina and Botoșani to meet Jake and Eleonor

At the Botoșani Synagogue

Jake Shulman-Ment is a fellow Fulbrighter who is studying traditional Jewish, Roma, Moldovan, and Romanian music  in Botoșani, in the northeast of Romania. We had been wanting to visit him and his girlfriend, Eleonor, also a musician.  On the way we visited the painted monasteries of Bucovina.
Botoșani had the worst wind storm in 50 years while we were there, so we just stayed in and listened to Jake and Eleanor play music. They showed us the contrast between traditional Yiddish music, Roma music and Romanian music.

Moldovitsa Monastery

We  visited the painted monosteries at Humor, Voronets, Moldovitsa, and Suchevitsa. A cool thing to do next time: the monastery at Putna offers guest rooms.

• Visit to Fundatia Inocentia in Bistrița

with Tibi, the Outreach Worker for Fundatia Inocentia

One of my "things to do" in my Fulbright project is to visit NGOs that serve children and families.  I had arranged to visit Fundatia Inocentia/ Romanian Children's Relief in  Bistrița on our way back from Bucovina and Botoșani. I've discussed my visit in other blog posts. Nancy, Kent and I visited a children's ward of a hospital, a special needs orphanage, a group home for special needs children, a school for disabled children, and a foster family. We met the staff of Fundatia Inocentia and high school volunteers from The American School in England, who have been coming to Bistrița on their winter break for over 10 years.

OK this posting is getting long enough.  It's time to make it into two parts.  Don't go away! More travels to come! Recent Travels, Part 2 Don't miss Nancy's evacuation by Mountain Rescue team!