27 Luni

Although I wish that I were clever enough to have conjured up this witty blog title on my own, the true credit goes to the smart young men of the week-long T.O.B.E. camp from which I just returned.  As a springboard for the upcoming semester and next two years of teaching English as a foreign language, Peace Corps Volunteers are encouraged to participate and contribute to various summer camps around their respective countries.  T.O.B.E. was my first camp during Peace Corps service and the first ever in which I was on the Camp Counselor side.  Although admittedly frustrating at times with sixteen-hour workdays and brilliant though distracted participants, the camp was a success for the organizers, educational for the students and incalculably beneficial for me.

T.O.B.E., which stands for Teaching Our Boys Excellence, is a program that was designed to help young high-school aged men to learn and practice leadership skills, team building and how to think critically in problem solving situations.  Each student submits an application ahead of time and once selected must pay a relatively small amount to participate.  The compliment to T.O.B.E. is G.L.O.W., Girls Leading Our World, which has a similar agenda, but as the name obviously gives away, it is geared towards young women.  As I understand it, this is the first year T.O.B.E. or G.L.O.W. has been held either in Romania as a whole or at least at this particular location as there are/were several going on this summer all over Romania.  I actually knew very little about any of this until the night I arrived.  Leading up to that, I only had the acronym for the camp, the village in which it was to be located and a phrase repeating in my head from other volunteers; “You are going to have a blast, they build stuff there and even have a zip line!”  Although a true statement, it’s also a vast understatement for how amazing a program like T.O.B.E. really is.

This whole adventure kicked off at Gara de Sud in Ploiești at 1:20pm on a Saturday with another Peace Corps Volunteer as we set off on our first long-distance ride on a Romanian “Personal” train.  The nearly eight-hour journey from Ploiești to Simbrea included forty-eight arduous station stops as we crept along the Romanian countryside, slowly moving from the plains in the south to rolling foothills of the Carpathian Mountains.  There are essentially four different types of trains in Romania, the Personal, Accelerate, Rapid, and Inter-City.  Listed here in order from slowest and most basic to quickest and most amenity rich.  The Personal trains are old, though inside are in better repair than I expected, they don’t have such frivolous things as air conditioning, the toilets are literally holes that lead straight to the tracks and the clientele patronizing this option do so out of monetary mandate or destination necessity, which leads to interesting people watching/interaction regardless.  In our case, this was the only train getting us from point A to point B, and despite the description I rather enjoyed the experience.  This particular train was not as packed as other Volunteers have reported in the past; the two of us actually each had our own school-bus styled benches in a facing configuration to stretch out on and fortunately no one in our wagon complained about keeping the windows open (despite the “death causing” Romanian “current”) on the hot summer day.  It was almost like being a traveler in the distant past where modern day amenities had yet to be invented; the trip was simple, adventurous and actually kind of refreshing.  The Romanian countryside was quite stunning with countless old World War era train stations and endless yellow fields of sunflowers.  The divide between rural and urban in Romania is stark; the concept of ‘suburb’ doesn’t seem to exist here as the landscape changes in the blink of an eye from city to field and from revving car engines to flute playing shepherds.  Towards the end of our journey we passed through two mountain tunnels and since the train’s lights had yet to be illuminated we were immediately and without warning engulfed in perfect and absolute darkness; a final ice water splash in the face that ubiquitously wrapped up our enlightening train ride.

Pulling into Simbrea at close to 9pm the same day, we were warmly greeted by one of the G.L.O.W./T.O.B.E. organizers; an incredibly dynamic and driven woman with a clear passion for doing her part to improve her country.  The event itself took place on her family’s property, who generously donated their entire backyard to make room for the necessary camp infrastructure of tents, campfires and latrines.  With our stomachs grumbling from the long trek Romanian hospitality kicked into high gear with more ciorbe and sarmale than we could eat.  Following dinner, we met with the two T.O.B.E. Program and Content Managers in an effort to break the ice and introduce us to the framework of activities that had been prepared.  In what was to become typical T.O.B.E. fashion, the four of us were instructed to select three things from our wallet/pockets that defined us.  Being a man who doesn’t like a lot of clutter I pulled out my phone, money clip and pen; the only three things I ever regularly carry in my pockets.  Surrounded by juxtaposing two inch thick wallets, we were each introduced to people we had never before met and yet by the end of it all are likely never to forget.