Moldovans have a lot of freaking work to do. You see this especially in Autumn, when the harvest is on. They have to put in full days under a still hot sun bringing in their corn, grapes, and other veggies for the winter. It is often back-breaking labor but they do it because they have to.
I went to the fields to help a few times this year and I noticed each time that Moldovans always bring an entourage with them. The morning before they go to the fields at least 3 or 4 people will show up, relatives or friends, and they go with them to help out all day. This is always a huge help for a household that only has one or two people, whether it’s an old couple whose children have left home or a widowed old lady like Doamna Efemia, MacKenzie’s host mother.
I was thinking to myself in my American brain that if this harvesting stuff were a reality in America, I don’t think I would help very many people. I might help my immediate family, but sometimes you look at who shows up and they barely know the person they are helping – so why do it? Why spend a whole day helping someone else do backbreaking labor while missing a valuable day to do your own back breaking labor? I was thinking about it kind of like helping friends move in America. It was fun the first couple times, but now if someone wants to have a “moving party” and offers me pizza and beer if I throw my back out shoving their couch up a staircase (Ehem, Adam), I usually tell them I’m busy. Then I proceed to do nothing that day except ignore their calls so I can show up with cupcakes a week later and tell them that the place looks great and that I’m so bummed I was too busy to help them set it up.
But if a person were to approach Moldovan harvesting labor in this way they would run into a very important problem. I noticed just this year that if someone calls you and asks you to help them haul their corn in, that means they are as good as giving you a contract to use them as an indentured servant for a minimum of however many hours they use you. It’s a guarantee. Talking to Moldovans, you hear things like, “Well, I have to work tomorrow, but I HAVE to go to the field with them because they helped me last week. What am I going to DO?” Like it would even be a question for Americans. But Moldovans, in my village at least, take the exchange of favors very seriously. It’s an honor thing. It may also be an acknowledgement that the system is what makes the village work. Too many households in the village are made up of too few people to really get the work done. To haul a whole field of corn with only your family, you’d need an able-bodied couple and they would have to have at LEAST 3 full grown, able-bodied children. That’s just not realistic in the village, where most of the able-bodied people are working in other countries. Sharing labor is how they make it work for everyone. And when you see that big picture, it’s really kind of touching that the backbone of society in the village, the thing that makes their whole way of life possible, is helping each other out when they need it.
Hats off to the villagers!
Noapte Buna!
