The Gas Chamber

Well if this doesn't qualify as a Moldovan Adventure, I don't know what does: Today started out pretty much like every other day here in Recea. I woke up around 8:30 or 9, and lay in bed for about an hour trying to mentally work myself into getting up and getting ready for the day. Finally, around ten (I know, how lazy am I? But I work late so it all balances out in the end, OK?) I decided I couldn't stall any longer and HAD to get up. I went outside to use the outhouse, and noticed that the pig (its pen is right by the outhouse) that usually squeals its morning greetings to me as I make my outhouse run, was unusually silent this morning. I looked in on her, and she was just laying there looking at me. She hadn't even eaten her breakfast, and I started to worry that she was sick. I went in and informed my hostmom that, although I'm no pig expert, our pig was acting strange. She concurred that she had noticed the pig wasn't her normal self either, and decided we'd better get medicine for her (we had to butcher our last pig not too long ago, because it had gotten sick, and the vet said if we butchered it before he got a fever, the meat would still be edible as it would mean the meat itself was not infected. Sounds a little suspect to me, but I did eat some of the meat and I'm still alive, so maybe there was something to that after all. Anyways, that was a really long side note. Sorry. On with the story). I volunteered to go to the animal pharmacy, and set out on a morning adventure to find this place. It took a bit of walking, slipping and sliding on the icy roads, slushing through the muddy side routes, asking for directions, and backtracking, but I finally found the place, and bought the medicine. By the time I got back, and had breakfast, there was no time for my daily exercises. I'd like to say I was disappointed, but honestly I was more relieved than anything as I was feeling lazy anyway. So, I got ready for the day and then headed to the NGO that I work with. My counterpart, and her colleague were planning on going into the bigger city of Balts for the day to run some errands, so I was left in charge. Basically, my job was to monitor the computers that the kids payed to play computer games on. When the time they had paid for was up, I would tell them and make sure they stopped. Simple enough, right? Well, you'd think so anyway. So, everything was going pretty well for a while. Except for the three or four hyperactive boys that were always there when they weren't at school. These boys are funny, but also low-level juvenile delinquents in my opinion. They like to talk to me about America, and ask about English words, but they also like to see how much they can get away with, especially when they think I'm not looking. They always try to sneak onto the computers and play games that they haven't paid for. So, I spent three or four hours telling the same kids over and over to get off the computers, and to leave if they weren't going to pay, and to stop saying those words in English because they're really bad and offensive, and no, they don't need to know what they mean, and no, I'm not going to spell it for them, and stay away from the computers, and so on and so forth. I was getting tired, and my patience was wearing thin. Every so often, someone would come in to use the internet or the printer, and I would clumsily converse with them in Romanian, and try to help them out. Around five in the evening, a guy came in who wanted to burn music from one CD to another. I tried to help him, but I'm just so darn computer illiterate!!!! So, for about an hour, we struggled with trying to figure this out. The whole time, kids are coming in and out, playing computer games, watching other kids playing computer games, and just hanging out. Six-ish, I was getting tired, but finally getting the hang of this CD burning thing, when I started coughing a little. At first, I didn't think anything of it. Then, I heard another kid coughing. I started getting a strong tickle in my throat, and was coughing a bit harder. Then I realized more kids were coughing. Suddenly, everyone was coughing, and the tickle in my throat had grown to a constant sandpapering sort of feel, and I couldn't stop coughing. The guy I was helping was coughing too, and he was also sneezing a lot. It started getting harder to breathe, and all the kids were experiencing similar symptoms. Then my nose was running, and then pouring and then gushing, and my coughing was getting so strong that I was almost dry heaving. The whole room had turned into a coughing, hacking, sneezing, wheezing frenzy in a matter of five or ten minutes, and it was only getting worse by the second. At first I thought maybe there was some problem with the soba, and some sort of invisible ash particles had blown into the room when kids were walking through the hallway and into the room. But I didn't see any ash anywhere in the air. Then I thought maybe it was carbon monoxide or something similar, because I've heard that sobas can sometimes let out excessive amounts of carbon monoxide. But whenever I've heard of carbon monoxide poisonings, symptoms seem to be more headache and dizziness-related, not the respiratory symptoms that we were all experiencing. The dillema was that in order to get outside, we had to pass through another room, a looooong hallway, go down two flights of stairs and through another little hallway before we could get to the door leading outside. And the room and hallway we had to go through had an even higher concentration in the air of whatever was giving us these symptoms in the first place!!! I went around to see if there were any windows we could open, but they had all been pounded and then taped shut in order to keep the cold winter winds out. That was when I realized that I had been given keys that morning to all the doors, and there was a locked door next to us that led onto a periculous second story ice-encrusted balcony. So, I got the keys and started trying them in the lock. But I was coughing so hard (almost to the point of hurling at that point), that I couldn't get the key to work. Finally, I handed it over to the guy I had been helping earlier. He wasn't having any more luck than me, and every time he sneezed (this is gross, so don't read it if you're easily disgusted), his nose erupted, and he would cough harder. Meanwhile, the kids are still trying to play their computer games while they're hacking away. They were pulling their sweaters up around their mouths and nose to filter the air, but still trying to get their money's worth of computer games. Some of them are such computer game addicts, it's amazing. So, while the one guy was trying to unlock the door, I decided to venture the other way, and see if I could air the room out by opening all the doors to the rooms and hallway that eventually led to outside. In the next room, and the hallway, the airborne whatever it was was much stronger, and by the time I made it through that room, down the looooong hallway, down the two flights of stairs and outside, I was on the verge of throwing up from coughing so hard. The air was so much easier to breathe outside. So, I stood there for a few seconds to gulp some fresh air, and decided that I needed to go back in and make all the kids evacuate the building until we could figure out what was going on. As I was getting ready to go back in and up, I heard footsteps pounding down the stairs, and five or six kids came tearing out of the door with their turtlenecks pulled up around their faces, and coughing like ashmatic fifty year smokers with bronchitis. When I got back up to the room, again coughing and hacking away, I noticed that the guy I had given the keys to, had finally gotten the door open, and almost everybody who had not already gotten out the other way, had poured out onto the balcony, and they were all inhaling the fresh winter air, and trying to get their coughing under control. That was when my counterpart and colleague walked in, and they too were coughing like crazy, and looking very concerned. A few minutes later three policemen showed up. Apparently, what had happened was that several juvenile delinquents, deciding that they had nothing better to do, opened a gas nozzel (what kind of gas? I'm still not very clear on that detail), and flooded the building with this mysterious gas. As we all inhaled it, we started developing the respiratory problems described above. The police questioned the kids who had been at the NGO, and ascertained that it was two boys in particular who were responsible. All in all, quite an ordeal, and my throat is still raw and burning from it, five or six hours later. Hope I don't start growing strange tumors, or losing my hair or anything. We closed the center early and headed home because even after airing the place out, it was still difficult to be inside without going into coughing fits and spasms. Well, that was my excitement for the day, and like I said before, I think it qualifies as a Moldovan Adventure. Glad you could all share it with me, but be glad it was by email and not in person. :) Don't worry, I'm fine now, but it was pretty bizarre when I was in the middle of it.