Anniversaries, Three
Disclaimer: The contents of this website are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the U.S. government or the Peace Corps.

TOMORROW, August 24th is my mom’s birthday so, Happy 57 Mom! I hope it feels good to be 57 and I hope you call me at ten to six in the morning on my 57th birthday to remind me how good it is to be 57! Interestingly – to I don’t know, no one, no one finds this interesting - but there’s some controversy in my family over my parents birthdays because for some reason I always thought my dad’s was the 23rd of June and my mom’s was the 24th of August and then last year when I told her I couldn’t remember if her birthday was the 23rd or the 24th and she emailed me “they’re both the 24th” - I, then, for some reason thought, My God, I memorized my Mom’s birthday wrong! And then rememorized it as the 23rd – which is wrong. So I was right before and then I spent a whole year thinking it was wrong. So apparently I’ve been dabbling in not knowing either of my parents birthdays, but I suppose it’s ok because everyone who knows me knows I can’t remember numbers. And like I said it’s not that interesting!
Hope you have a good birthday, Mom!

Another anniversary which deserves much less fan fare is the 22nd of August which was my 6 month anniversary in Romania! It doesn’t feel like that long. Probably because the first three months were of training and the last three months were on site. Probably it’s also because of the three care packages I’ve received since moving to Deva filled with all the comforts of home. Or maybe it’s because I have a razor sharp memory and can turn to my friends and say “remember that day in training when you said “ ” and I said “ ” recalled with absolute clarity that makes PST feel like it was yesterday. Plus the fact that the first two months I was at site I still lived with a host family so it’s not like I’ve been “living the life” all that long.

However, there are still some friends I haven’t heard from since I left. Some of you have never emailed me in six months! What did I do? Are you pissed off at me? Are we still friends? In that respect six months is a long time. But I’m not talking about you if I haven’t emailed you - if I haven’t emailed you shame on me, but I think I have. I email a lot of people. I email people I met one time. I email people I don’t even know. Hell, since I’ve been in Romania I’ve even gotten back in touch with people from high school and college who I haven’t talked to in years! But if I haven’t heard from you, don’t be a stranger. I miss you, I really do and I want to know what’s going on in your life. Chances are I sent you a postcard too, even though maybe you never got it. Why don’t you email me to find out?

For those of you keeping score, this means I’m 3 months into my two year service because the first three months were training, right? So for three months in, how’s it going? Not bad. Things are just starting to happen. They’re happening slowly, but that’s to be expected, but more on that later.

August 25 – the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Let me just say before I could finish this part of the post I had to go and clean the toilet. I wanted to get my thoughts together about what I was going to say and some things if you’re going to think about them you may as well be looking at a toilet while you think about them.

Earlier this week my counterpart at my organization said something about how when a community goes through a tragedy it sometimes makes people act more like a community and care for one another. That’s when I started talking about hurricane Katrina. (Talking? Me? I know!)But I talked for probably about an hour just trying to describe the enormity of the situation to this Romanian woman. How much damage was done, how much work there is to do. It’s hard for me to wrap my head around it, yet get someone whose whole country is the size of Oregon to imagine a storm that touched three states.

In a lot of ways I would rather discuss hurricane Katrina with Romanians than Americans. Romanians are eager to understand, and curious about the situation. They don’t have any preconceived notions that New Orleans “deserved to be punished” for anything. All they know is New Orleans is a city in my country, and when I tell them about Mississippi and all the damage that was done there that wasn’t on the news they say “why?”
I try to explain to them that New Orleans had a unique history and culture. It’s where the Africans, Spanish, and French came together and mixed and it was a place that had its own ways and music and food and language until recently and now all that may be lost. That’s not something some Americans understand. I have little patience for the “they shouldn’t even rebuild” “what did you think would happen with a city below sea level” knee jerk reaction of some Americans who don’t take the time to appreciate the richness that was there but see the disaster as a moral issue or worse – a financial issue.

As I talked about Katrina and all the problems it created for so many people I felt monumentally sad, but not just because of what transpired or how the aftermath was handled. I thought about my experiences in Mississippi both times, and the time I spent in Louisiana in 2005. I had good experiences working on the Gulf Coast. I made friends that I’m still in touch with now that I hope to keep in touch with. Looking back, I have many great memories of my time in Ocean Springs. It was a wonderful experience and I’m glad I had it, but I have a hard time finding where I did any work?
Who did I help? What did I do?

And that’s when I realized for the first time how hard it was for me to leave my volunteer position in Ocean Springs Mississippi. It wasn’t hard at the time because it was Christmas and I wanted to go home and I wanted to see my friends and nothing was going on at Camp Victor anyway, but now I feel sad that I couldn’t stay and continue. Why did I leave? Wasn’t there enough work to do? Why did I come to Romania when there are people at home who need food and care and support?
They still need someone to rebuild their houses and they still need people to listen as they describe what happened that day two years ago when the worst natural disaster to ever hit the United States hit their town. (And I’m not just saying that, it was declared by the people who declare these things…the disaster people).

I’m sorry I had to leave and come to Romania because there is still work to do on the Gulf Coast. And almost more important than the work is the understanding that needs to be shared. Whenever I talk to Romanians about the storm I say the same thing I said to the people I met on the coast “in the north, where I’m from, people still don’t know what happened. Some people think, it’s six months…a year…two years…it should be cleaned up by now.”

In many ways I wish I could still be working on the Gulf, but my path brought me to Romania. I’ve always wanted to do the Peace Corps and now was the time. Delaying it wouldn’t have helped me and maybe it wouldn’t have helped the people of the Gulf that much either, but I don’t know.

I could say I came to Romania with a job to do – but in some ways it’s harder than that because I’m still figuring out what that job is. There are challenges here I need to prepare for, and things I need to learn before I can return and help anyone. So, I still think Peace Corps is the right thing for me right now. But I can’t help but feel bad for all the work that still needs to be done so this part of my country can heal.

And maybe that’s all I can do right now – from several thousand miles away I can say to the Gulf Coast of the U.S.A. I miss you, and I’m still thinking about you.

This angel is part of a mural on the outside of the building at Camp Victor, Ocean Springs Mississippi where I stayed as a volunteer October 1st 2006 - December 15, 2006.