From Lenin’s Asylum: Two Years in Moldova, by A. A. Weiss (Everytime Press, 2018), Kindle pp. 16-17:
I was born in Ohio during the Cold War.
At that time Moldova wasn’t yet a country. Tucked between Romania and Ukraine, I’d never noticed it on the map during geography pop-quizzes or seen mention of it in National Geographic (my two childhood sources of world knowledge). Through pre-departure research I learned a recent civil war had ended, the president was a communist, and many outpost towns spoke Russian exclusively instead of the national language, Romanian. As the poorest nation in Europe, Moldova’s workers had little work—one in four adults left the country to seek employment. Those who stayed used their bodies for income and sustenance, working in the fields, yes, but also trafficking themselves to those trading in sex and human organs. It lacked an international marketplace for wine—its only export—so people tended to drink up what was on hand. It had schools without adequately trained teachers and politicians without scruples. Orphanages were filled with children whose parents had either departed the country or couldn’t afford to feed them.
Moldova needed a superhero, it seemed, not an English teacher.
I wasn’t the first American to be stationed in Riscani. Three other English teachers had passed through before me. Their site reports didn’t inspire confidence. “Kind of a ghost town,” and “very Russian,” one described Riscani. The mayor, a member of the communist party, was labeled “unhelpful and patronizing.” The schools were “terrible environments” which suffered from “daily disorder” and “undisciplined children.” Yet all the other volunteers had arrived speaking Romanian, and they’d clearly suffered for it. Each had recommended that future volunteers sent to Riscani speak Russian.
So there I was.
When I arrived at the Russian school for my first day of teaching, most people thought I was a parent dropping off a new pupil. I’d dressed in clothes purchased at the “professionals” section at the bazaar—a purple dress shirt with snapping breast pockets and a pink tie. Teachers asked if I was lost and told me where I might find my child. Sometime during the chaos of these first moments in the school, among the bodies of boys and girls and adults running to find the correct room, a small girl came up to me and complained that a boy had lit her hair on fire with a match. She showed me a collection of singed ends as proof. I understood nothing, patted her on the head and said, “Very good.”
I made my way to the English classroom, met briefly with the school director—a man with a naturally angry face attempting to smile—and was then alone with a class of fifth graders.
The look of serenity on my face was completely fake. Sweat rolled behind my ear down into my collar. I loosened my tie. I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. “Does anyone speak English?” I asked. Nothing came out of their mouths. I repeated the question in Russian, and almost immediately fifteen little hands began shaking in the air to indicate fifty-fifty. We did introductions in Russian and then in English and completed forty-five minutes of basic grammar and vocabulary. I could tell these fifth graders weren’t ready to write poetry. But they’d successfully introduced themselves and expressed their likes and dislikes. Nearly all had liked football and disliked mathematics. It seemed my new job wouldn’t kill me.
