Sandwiched between Romania and Ukraine, Moldova doesn't spring to mind when one imagines a traditional Peace Corps site. Unlike the Philippines, for example, where 8,000 volunteers have served over the course of 40 years, Moldova and its Eastern European neighbors are relatively new to the Peace Corps lineup. But Sharon Hakim wants to dispel any notions that her site is somehow less challenging, or her experiences less meaningful, than those of volunteers stationed on remote islands or deep in the bush.
"Sometimes I get the impression that friends at home think I am in the 'fake' Peace Corps," she writes by e-mail. "'Who does the Peace Corps in EUROPE?' they ask. Yes, I can read by REAL light in my room, and yes, the people in Moldova are white, and yes, we watched Eurovision on TV. But this concept of the 'Posh Corps' can be really disheartening when I am having a hard time with something in my community."
Raised in New Jersey, Hakim had never left the East Coast until her junior year at Hamilton, when she studied abroad in Samoa. "Instead of curing my travel itch, it instilled a wanderlust in me," she writes. "Also, it broadened my perspective — thinking about how much I didn't know, and especially about how many perspectives exist on the world at large."
Hakim has recently begun her second year of Peace Corps service. She lives in the city of Singerei, two hours from the capital of Chisinau. While it has some infrastructure, the area is largely rural, with one main road snaking through town and various dirt paths branching off to either side. The weather is cloudy, she notes in a blog. "I would definitely compare it with Clinton, without the allure of the yellow Beinecke — but not quite where clouds go to die."
Hakim lives with a host family, a must in a culture where the family unit is paramount. "It is unacceptable for women (or anyone really) to live by themselves in a village in Moldova since families are systems of support." A wood stove provides heat, a well in the yard holds water, and electric power, though not completely reliable, keeps things bright.
Though she was assigned to work with a local nongovernmental agency as a community development volunteer, Hakim has also initiated an impressive variety of secondary projects. "Peace Corps does not send us into the community with goals or specific tasks to do, more like guidelines," she says. "It is understood that there is no 'typical day.'"
One mainstay of her schedule is teaching twice-weekly art classes at Dezdna, a center for handicapped children who've fallen through the cracks of the public school system. On other days she coaches a girls' basketball team she organized. Coaching in Romanian has posed unforeseen challenges. "How do I say, for example, such complex sentences as, 'If she cuts through here, pass her the ball and then move toward the hoop'?" She also taught the children in her Outing Club how to use a compass and is instilling in them an appreciation for the outdoors. Early in the fall, the club's pending three-day hike had Hakim especially excited.
Empowering youth is the daily fuel that drives her and keeps her spirits high. She yearns to inspire in the Moldovan children a sense of agency, a fire that will motivate them to set goals and work to achieve them. Whether it's through the Peace Corps-sponsored girls' leadership camp she directs or her many clubs and initiatives, Hakim focuses on boosting the youngsters' self-confidence.
The children are the agents of change in their own lives, she says, but they don't necessarily know it. If she does her job well, they may soon: "I see myself as more of a catalyst than anything."
