CP vs. volunteer smackdown!!!! Booyah!

I had a little, how you say, "situation" this week. There was a 3-day project writing conference for COD volunteers and their counterparts in Chisinau, an event I'd dreaded because I generally find seminars mind-numbing, and because it meant three days sitting next to my counterpart. That's not the situation, but I'm getting there, I promise.

Day one was okay, my mental and physical resources hadn't yet been tapped and I had a small particle of hope that we would do something constructive. We were supposed to spend this conference solidifying ideas for a project with our counterparts, and various speakers were there to offer information on ways to write more effective and sustainable projects. I wanted to run up and kiss the speaker who said, regarding organizations who are created with the money from a grant and then either promptly stop working once the money runs out, or spend the rest of the organization's energy pursuing grants: "You have now become a consumer. You consume grants." ("Pffh, suck up is more like it," I thought to myself.) My counterpart is a bit of a showman, keen on getting attention and conveying her authority to others. I'm pretty much the opposite, and was busy contenting myself with drawing pictures of vampish women in awesome boots while I listened to the various speakers. We were given a worksheet where we were supposed to list our goal, then a sub-goal, then three concrete objectives which would help us meet it. Counterpart's project idea: International Youth Center, where our local young people can communicate with youth from our sister city in the US, we can establish a library of books and video clips etc of American culture...and sports champions from the two countries can communicate?

When the program manager asked if anyone would like to share what they came up with, my counterpart grabbed my hand and began waving it in the air. "Ooh, ooh, we do!" The horror. As I stood in front of that room of maybe 50 people I immediately began to squirm -- must distance self from this project! -- as was apparent when I began with the words, "What my partner would like to do is...."

I caught Bryan's eye in the front row, and tried to keep a straight face after seeing the evil glimmer there. No, no, please don't ask me any questions... His hand goes up.

"Yeah, I have a question. I don't quite understand the connection between a center for cultural sharing and the sports champions thing...?" Okay E., I'll think I'll let you field that one.

Before we'd presented E. had been making comments about how we needed to carefully defend this idea so it wouldn't be snatched up. Back at the table several questions later, she was obviously disgruntled at the crowd's lackluster response, that they failed to see her vision. She angrily muttered comebacks to the various questions we'd fielded, including one from the young counterpart of my site mate, a talented high school student in charge of a student organization. "How do you plan to inform youth in the community about your center?", he'd asked. Pretty innocuous, I'd thought. Wrong!

"Did you see the look in his eyes? Bah! He is just jealous of us and all our contacts. Who is he, anyway? Just some student. We are the best!"

Day two there was a bit of a meltdown when we were supposed to say concrete steps to take to achieve our project goal, and list specifically who would carry them out. Concrete. CONCRETE. Maybe it's due to our already crappy relationship, maybe it's just my counterpart's personality, maybe my Russian sucks, but she tends to become extremely defensive at my suggestions or even clarifying questions. I'm not opposed to her idea -- well, I think it's dumb, but if that's what she wants to do, very well, I'll try to help her achieve it. Anyway, she listed making a website as the first step to creating this international center. Seemed to me that it's more important for us to have our US connection, you know, the people our youth are supposedly corresponding with. I saw this as a pretty substantial step. She conceded this point, but for responsible party listed "the delegation in charge of setting up the connection." Okay, cool, who's that? "Oh, you know, the delegation." Okay, but now we need a step to create a delegation...uh-oh, meltdown again!

I took a perverse satisfaction in the comments of volunteers who came up to me throughout the remainder of the day with variations on the theme of "I'm going to kill your counterpart" due to, among other things, the following offenses:
1. Swiping a volunteer's pen as he wrote, then leaning over and using it to correcting spelling errors on the document he was writing;
2. Interrupting everyone as they spoke;
3. Her powerful lady-musk
4. Being the devil

Even my program manager, I think, was getting a little burned out on this blonde whirlwind when, with a half hour of seminar to go, the CP announced we had a meeting elsewhere.
"Uh, E., why would you make a meeting when you knew you had this seminar?"
"Gosh, sorry, I know. Well, Toodaloo!"
My PM (like all the acronyms? ah, government work) then asked if at least we'd finished the exercise.
We answered with, respectively, a nearly simultaneous "Yes!" and "No!" The PM demanded that we at least do the first part of it before leaving. My cp proceeded to copy down verbatim the example provided, point to the document and then triumphantly say "We're done!" I opted to stay behind and continue working on the exercise. My counterpart said it was homework, and that we could work on it later that evening.

I went to bed early that night, and when my roommate came in later in the evening, I guess she forgot to lock the door. This became important at about 8am the next morning when, snug in our beds and dreaming away, a strange voice came to me, speaking a foreign tongue...

"So Bridgett, did you get a chance to finish that paperwork?"

My brain still in sleepy fog, I squinted my eyes at the apparation before me. My counterpart, standing at the foot of my bed, chattering away as if this were a standard business meeting.

"Huh? Paperwork? Oh, no, I didn't...listen, can't we talk about this later?"

And suddenly, just as quickly as she'd appeared, she vanished, like some sort of smelly fog. I rolled over to look at my roommate. She had just one comment before we went back to sleep.

"I hate your counterpart."

Hours later, once I'd properly woken up, had some coffee, and begun thinking clearly, I started to get angry. Really angry. So angry I couldn't focus on anything other than what I wanted to tell E., and eventually left the room. Out in the hallway I ran into another volunteer having a cigarette. He asked me how it was going, and about two seconds later I began crying and spewing out the story. Crying may seem out of place in this little narrative, but you have to understand, I'm not the most "in touch with my emotions" sort of person. I often have a delayed reaction to things, and this ends up meaning that instead of reacting to events in the moment and getting things out of the way, I only figure out that I'm feeling hurt or angry or mistreated an hour or day or week later, and then have that much extra accumulated tension, plus I'm angry at myself for not standing up for myself properly when the situation occurred. Plus, well, I was feeling pretty hopeless about my prospects for working with this lady for 20 more months and trying to figure out why I was even in this country.

I stayed out there quite a while, long enough for the root of my frustration to come looking for me. I said I'd be in in a minute. I knew I needed to talk to her about her coming in my room, but I am quite honestly terrified of confrontation. Yep, ha ha, there's one definite personal growth thing I'm going to get out of this PC experience. Ample opportunity to practice dealing with confrontation.

***

I couldn't stay in the hallway forever, and I knew my self respect rested on handling bidness. Upon consulting with other volunteers back in the meeting hall, it was agreed that a situation of this nature must be dealt with seriously, an impression made. It was time to call out the big guns. It was time for Nu frumos.

Nu frumos -- or nyeh krahseevah, for me and the other Ruskie volunteers -- directly translates to "not pretty" or perhaps "unattractive". Its applications in the hands of locals, however, are seemingly endless. This little phrase carries some real weight here, and effectively chastises individuals in any number of situations. Dirty shoes? Nu frumos. Ripped jeans? Nu frumos. Using toilet paper as kleenex? Nu frumos. Wearing your purse strap across your chest? Nu frumos. Also interesting is its conspicious absense in instances of adults picking their noses and shooting snot rockets as they walk down major public thoroughfares, but then again I'm an outsider, and maybe there are subtle nuances of frumosity that I'm missing here.

Anyhow. By now it was breaktime, and I was busy confiding the morning's little wakeup call to the umpteenth volunteer, while my CP was across the room fixing herself a cup of tea.
"Sigh....I really need to talk to her about this," I said to him.
"Okay, well, there she is."
"No, not now, she's busy."
"Now."
By now the butterflies (or bats -- see previous entry) were furiously flitting around in my stomach. I began searching wildly for excuses to avoid the inevitable. "Maybe later, she's getting a pastry," I said lamely.
"Come on, I'll go with you."

Faced with a jolly, smiling CP, my reserve crumbled even further. As I too often do, I began second-guessing the worthiness of my complaint.
"I need to talk to you," I began. And then all thoughts of nu frumos and whatever else flew out the window. Spew!
"E, when you came in this morning while the other volunteer and I were sleeping and started talking...it...it is not okay to do that!"
"Oh, I apologize, I didn't know, I just wanted to discuss --"
"No. You had to see that we were asleep. Asleep. You can't do that. E: I do not think you understand the meaning of boundaries between yourself and other people."
Adrenaline flooded my limbs. I told you I'm bad with confrontation. My hands were shaking as I tried to make myself a cup of tea.
E. wore the expression I've come to hate, downcast eyes and patronizing lip pout. "I'm sorry, really -- like a mother to a daughter, I'm telling you, it won't happen again."

I left. Back out in the hallway I ran into a different volunteer having a cigarette. As we stood talking the conference ended, and E. walked out on her way back to her room. She came over to us.
"Sunshine," she began, pout in full effect, resting her hand on my arm.
"Nyet!" I shook her off and turned away. She wished us a good trip home and left.

So what now? Today I simply didn't go to work. I probably should have called, but...well, I didn't do that either. I justfied myself by saying she would probably be online so my call wouldn't go through anyway. I've discussed with my program manager what happened, my immense frustration with her and our lack of work, and I've decided that at least one day a week I'm going to work somewhere else. I don't know where, but I'm not too worried about that right now. Also on my desk at home I have a six page document of my questions and concerns for the organization, which I wrote with the help of my tutor, just waiting to be discussed with her and the organization's president (a wonderful woman who I really respect, by the way). Now what?

Now perhaps I need to do what I did so many months ago, when I knew I had some hard steps to take ahead of me (quitting my job, going to university full time and taking out the mountain of loans necessary to do that, joining the PC): tell everyone. Surely, the rationale went, if I tell enough people I'm going to do this, not wanting to look like a big-talking idiot will force my hand in the event that my determination gives out. It seems to have worked.

So what, dear reader, are you supposed to hold me to? 1. To typing up my list of...well, not complaints, that has such a negative ring to it...my list of constructive cricism to then discuss with my CP and the organizations president. 2. To going in to the office of the organization's president Monday morning, and discussing it with her. 3. To then discussing it with my CP. 4. To going to the organizations I have contacts with, and announcing that I am very much ready and willing to work with them, asap. 5. To studying freaking Russian so when I start volunteering at these places I don't sound like a doofus and I'm able to make a valuable contribution!

***

Last night, among other things, I dreamt my floor was dirty, and looked around till I found the vacuum cleaner in a corner behind a door. It was the same vacuum cleaner I grew up with, the one that resembles R2D2 and can probably be found this very moment in the hall closet of my dad's house. Thanks to the liberal rules of dream analysis, I think I'll choose to interpret this as a positive sign: my subconcious knows it's time to "clean up", to turn a new leaf, take action. And the floor of my bedroom is pretty gross.