Moldova RPCV Nicole Shets says the joys of homecoming are all in the plastic shopping bags
The joys of homecoming are all in the plastic shopping bags
Recently, I finished my Peace Corps service in Moldova.
How have I changed, you may ask, since I left my native mountains more than two years ago? Well, now my hair is pink, I have even less patience when waiting in line, I can wear the same clothes for several days in a row, I can make beet soup.
People have expressed concern for my safety while living and traveling abroad. "You know who likes Americans? Other Americans," I’ve heard. But I haven’t felt like a target, and I have encountered many bus, train and street angels who’ve helped me find my way -- the young woman in Paris, for example, who helped me lug my enormous suitcase up the stairs of the metro station.
Coming home, I realize afresh that America is a shopper’s paradise. I hear the siren song almost daily and push around a cart in a store not because I urgently need something, but just because I can.
I’m also struck by the number of plastic bags we use. At the checkout, I don’t think I’ve bought much, but suddenly I have four or five bags, none of them very full, to carry to the car.
In Chisinau, Moldova’s capital, plastic was a problem, too. In general, Moldovans are champions of re-using and repairing:
A soda bottle later holds sunflower oil or house wine. Plastic bottle caps stitched together become a car seat cushion or bathroom mat.
But when I would muster the gumption to ask the supermarket cashier in my halting Romanian if I might reuse my wrinkly grocery sack, she’d say yes but look at me as if I’d sacrificed all the dignity an adult with a 6-year-old’s vocabulary and a thick accent can have.
Even at the open markets, vendors would insist on putting my packet of cocoa or laundry soap in a little sack. It seemed an insult to refuse, and depressing, I thought, that a sign of affluence is having more disposable stuff in your life. Around apartment buildings and parking lots, white supermarket bags and small sacks blew around like weightless jellyfish the colors of butter mints.
I didn’t mean to write about plastic. I intended to write about who and what I missed: my grandmas, black bean burritos, free refills, etc. But I just got back from Wal-Mart, and I had to unload all the bags.
Nicole Sheets is a returned Peace Corps volunteer and a Barboursville native. She can be reached by e-mail at moldovanicole@yahoo.com. Her column appears on the Life page the first Sunday of each month.
