Planning the Halloween Sarata (a sarata is a presentation that Moldovan kids put on starting in middle school that is a combination of an after-school dance, a pep assembly, and a party) has been an interesting experience.
I learned a lot about organizing presentations with my club kids from last year when they put together a peer teaching presentation to the kindergarteners. I have learned even more about preparing with Moldovans this year as we plan the Halloween sarata and I can sum all of it up by saying that they never look ready to an American when, in reality, they are ready. This happens for a couple reasons in my experience:
1) Americans (not all, but in general) value having things prepared in 
advance, ready to go in plenty of time so there is no last minute scrambling. Thus, when I looked at my club last year and it was a week before their presentation and they didn’t have half their visuals made, I assumed that they were not going to be ready on time. Little did I know that they knew exactly what they were doing and no matter how far in advance we started preparing, they were always going to do that preparation the night before anyway.
2) I mentioned this in a previous post, but Americans tend to be big picture people. We like to bang out a basic outline, then move on to the general details of each step in the outline, then get to the minute details last. Moldovans (as least the ones I work with) tend to like to go in the opposite direction. The details are the first thing they want to talk about, and they could talk about those for weeks on end. They tend to want to put all those details together as a big picture last and this is something that my brain (partially because I’m an American and largely just because I am me) can’t handle.
3) Moldovans tend to yell over each other a lot when making decisions as a group. The adults do this too but the kids are absolutely on a different level. I have never walked out of a class or a meeting since my service began, and always wondered why volunteers ever felt the need to do it (it is a fairly common story around here). But in several of our meetings for planning for Halloween I almost did walk out because there is so much screaming that you literally can’t hear yourself think. My Romanian is at this point solid and I can basically get myself in or out of any situation and even if I don’t know the word I want I can use my other vocabulary to describe the word I want. I can understand all my students and all the teachers individually. But I can NOT understand ANYTHING is everyone is yelling at once. Part of it is the sheer chaos and part of it is that the noise level is overwhelming to me. But needless to say, I have a hard time feeling too confident in a group is all the do is scream and yell because in America that would mean they are dysfunctional, whereas in Moldova that seems to be just one way to get things done. The teachers do the same things in meetings.
I wanted to take these lessons from last year and apply them this year. So after the first meeting or so of planning when there was just non-stop yelling and no one could sit still long enough to explain what they wanted in terms of big picture stuff, I just sat back decided to let them yell it out.
This was partially, I admit, due to my own apathy and unwillingness to engage in a screaming match just to be heard over a din in a foreign language. But I also wanted to see what would happen if I just left them to their own devices. This is an important point in the service of any Peace Corps volunteer, I think. When you get to the point where you realize that you can’t make them plan and act like Americans in all things. If their methods (terrifyingly disorganized to my American eyes) get the job done, then it isn’t better or worse than the way an American would do it. It really is just another way of doing things. After over a year here, it starts becoming clear that I really am not here to change their cultural practices. My job is to help them learn to improve practices that don’t work (for example, new teaching methods to help kids learn better) but I’m not here to make them all act like Americans in everything they do. I can offer suggestions if they are interested in other methods, but ultimately, suggestions aren’t heeded if they aren’t solicited.
So I just sat back and gave up/let them figure it out their way and something amazing happened. They planned it all themselves. They didn’t even really need me except as a consultant as far as what activities we do on Halloween in America and what kinds of food they should have. They organized all the games and activities themselves, made all the advertisements, and got a schedule of events put together. In watching this, I realized that trying to impose my American order on the whole planning process was just confusing to them and that it was necessary and good that I stepped back a little bit.
The sarata is this Friday so we will see how it goes. Pictures to follow!
PS – I wrote this blog before the Sarata and am posting it a week later. Photos are from the party – it went pretty well!
This is an excellent example of letting go and trusting the process. I am having to do that a lot these days with my teenagers! Thank you for sharing.