Notes from a Small Country
(with apologies to Bill Bryson) |
| Our Moldovan home |
Добро пожаловать в
Молдову!
Well, the hiatus has ended, and tour
#2 has now begun. Incredibly, I’ve been
here – on the ground in Moldova – for a month already. Recently, we also celebrated four years in
the Foreign Service. Truly, I have no
idea how this happened. But here I am,
and so: Welcome to Moldova!
Notes from a Small Country
In 1995, Bill Bryson, one of my
favorite authors, published Notes from a Small Island, a volume of
stories about the life and people of Great Britain he wrote after twenty years
of living there. (I highly recommend it,
by the way.) I’ll have two years not
twenty, and while I’m on an island of sorts, I’m also in a small European
country with a rich and interesting history.
Of course there are any number of
ways to measure the relative size of a country (by area, population, number of
working Ladas per person, like that), but no matter how you measure it, Moldova
is a small country. It’s landlocked
(therefore a bit like an island) and sandwiched between Romania to the west and
Ukraine to the north, east and south. A
former republic in the old USSR, it declared independence in late August 1991,
shortly after the attempted August coup d’état failed to unseat Soviet
President Mikhail Gorbachev.
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| One of many old Soviet-model cars still in use around Chisinau |
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| Moldova in Eastern Europe (wikipedia.com) |
As you can see, it’s quite a small
country. Slightly bigger than Belgium
and Haiti yet smaller than the island of Taiwan, it sits at about 136th
in a ranking of countries by area out of nearly 200 nations. It was the second smallest republic in the
Soviet Union, ahead only of Armenia. It
is slightly larger than the state of Maryland, and the United States is about
290 times bigger. It’s so small that the
mighty Danube River, which is like the Mississippi of western Europe, touches
Moldovan soil at the southern border for less than 400 meters, effectively
giving the country one water route to the Black Sea, and which is smaller than many
actual port facilities in Europe, North America or Asia.
There are about 3.5 million people
here, also ranking it around 132nd in the world. Minnesota has about 5 million, give or
take. Most people are ethnic Slavs, a
majority speak Romanian or Moldovan (virtually the same as Romanian) and are Orthodox
Christians. With one of the worlds’
lowest fertility rates and one of the highest negative net migration levels in
the world (more people leave than arrive), the overall population is aging and
declining.
Chisinau is the capital city and has 750,000
people or so. Pronunciation of the city
in English is a bit problematic, depending upon which language one uses as a
base in the first place. (National
language plays kind of a big role here, as you’ll see momentarily.) If you use Russian as the base (Кишинёв), the city is pronounced like “kee-shi-NYOV,” but if you use Romanian (Chișinău), it’s pronounced “KEE-shi-now.” Either way, the “ch” at the beginning has a
hard “k” sound, and the “s” has a “sh” sound.
It sits at about 47 degrees north latitude, almost the same as
Minneapolis-Saint Paul, which is at 45 degrees north latitude. The climate is roughly the same, too,
although with less severe extremes in terms of temperature.
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| The Republic of Moldova (CIA World Factbook) |
A Frozen Conflict
There is an interesting “frozen
conflict” here in an area called Transnistria, a small strip of land between
the Dniester River in the east of Moldova and the western border with
Ukraine. It started in the waning years
of the Soviet Union when people in the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic (as
Moldova was known when a state within the USSR) began the discussion about
changing the national language from Russian to Moldovan/Romanian. A group was then formed in Chisinau to
protect the interests of the ethnic Russian people in Transnistria as well as
the Russian language (sound familiar?), the official language of the Soviet
Union. The war of words, general strikes
and competing legislative efforts (like the declaration on August 31, 1989 by
the Supreme Council of the MSSR that Moldovan would now be the official language)
continued to escalate, meaning confrontation was perhaps inevitable. As the MSSR began enacting more and more laws
and policies indicating an equally inevitable split from the USSR, like a new
flag, a new name for the country (the Republic of Moldova) and a declaration of
sovereignty (meaning Moldovan laws were to supersede Soviet laws), periodic fighting
began, and continued as a low-grade conflict from autumn 1989 until March 1992. Complicating things, more factions arose
(like a group advocating unification between Moldova and Romania, and decisions
by local authorities in Transnistria for the local police to ignore the
government in Chisinau and obey only their orders), and that low-grade conflict
became full-scale war on March 2, 1992, the same day the United Nations
formally recognized Moldova’s declaration of independence from August 27, 1991.
With support from several former Soviet Republics
and some remnants of the Soviet Red Army, Transnistrian authorities, armed separatists and
volunteers battled with Moldovan police and a nascent national army supported
by arms and advisors from Romania for just over four months in three principal
locations along the Dniester River.
Something in the neighborhood of a thousand soldiers, police and
civilians were killed during the war, until a cease fire was agreed to in July
1992. This is a frozen conflict because it
is this cease fire which remains in force, and a Joint Control Commission under
the auspices of the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)
is now the peacekeeping force maintaining the status quo in a kind of buffer between
the two nations. Technically a
demilitarized zone, the force is made up of about 1,300 Russian regular Army
troops as well as several hundred soldiers each from Moldova, Ukraine and
Transnistria. Russia has agreed
periodically to return munitions and soldiers back to the Motherland over the
years, but those 1,300 or so will remain until the conflict is finally
resolved.
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| Flag of Transnistria (euractiv.com) |
Coincidentally, I arrived in Moldova
on Independence Day (August 27), and what was to be my first day in the office
was a national holiday, National Language Day (August 31).
Жизнь и Pабота – Life and Work
One month into a two-year tour is not
very significant, but in my short time here I have done and observed a few
things.
Firstly, our house is super
cool. Three bedrooms, hardwood floors
throughout (with beautiful parquet floors in the living room), a nice-sized
enclosed yard with a dozen or so fruit trees (apple, plum, sweet as well as
sour cherries), a number of nice gardens (with a preexisting strawberry patch)
and our very own mature grape vines are some highlights. Moldova’s economy is dominated by
agriculture, and that sector is dominated by wine production. So far I’ve been very satisfied with the
quality of wine available, and for very reasonable prices! Did I mention we have our very own wine
cellar? No? Well we do!
And a colleague mentioned recently that he felt we had the best private wine
cellar he’d seen other than the Ambassador’s.
So that’s cool. I feel as if our
time here will be a constant struggle between filling the wine cellar and
emptying it. This house seems made for
hosting parties, which we fully intend to do, so come join us and make use of
those extra rooms and get ready to help us deplete our wine stocks!
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| The House! |
About ten minutes’ walk from here is
a nice little grocery store / market called Linella, and while small, it has a
good assortment of high quality groceries and fresh fruits and vegetables. It has a proper deli, meat section and has
nice quality breads, as well as a little wine and beer selection. (I bought a nice bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon
the other day and it cost about $4.)
It’s small, but once I have access to my car there are a number of
other, larger grocery stores around town, including a French-owned market in
the creatively-named shopping center called “Malldova.”
Last year I read a little book called
Playing the Moldovans at Tennis in anticipation of my move to
Chisinau. It was a light hearted,
humorous travel book that didn’t always paint a very flattering picture of the
national capital: city streets without
lighting at night and missing manhole covers on the same were a high, or rather
low, light. (I can imagine that would be
a rather, um, interesting combination to experience.) Moldova is a poor country, but clearly
progress has been made on several fronts, at least in the infrastructure within
Chisinau.
I have yet to get out and explore the
country itself, but have been around the capital a bit and I have to say I’m rather
impressed. It’s not Vienna or
Washington, and it’s certainly not Minneapolis, but it’s a nice, compact little
city. Roads are paved, some are even
reasonably lit at night, there are quite a few decent restaurants, and I have
yet to encounter a missing manhole cover.
Sidewalks exist along some streets, although sometimes they just
disappear or are in rough shape, and occasionally they are obstructed by any
number of unexpected things as I discovered my first week here when I smacked
into a billboard right a forehead level.
Streets in the city are often leafy and green, and while there is some
trash littered about, it’s not at levels like I experienced in Port-au-Prince.
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| The View Restaurant at the Hotel Nobil |
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| Mmmmmmm.... |
Of course this is not to say that
Moldova doesn’t have its issues. Like
any country or individual, we’re all works in progress, advancing or retreating
as the occasion warrants. Moldova is a
parliamentary democracy, and there have been struggles with governing
effectively since independence. There
was a recent two- or three-year period where the country was without a
government (no, no, not like that; no candidate in Parliament could gain a
majority of support from among its members in order to form a ruling
coalition), and this past summer a 28-year-old businessman and banker was
accused and then arrested on suspicion of illegally transferring – wait for it
– almost
a billion dollars from three Moldovan banks over the course of two days. This is roughly 12% of the nation’s annual
GDP, which, if you didn’t already guess, is a lot. The Moldovan Central Bank was then forced to
bail out the three banks to the tune of $870 million dollars in emergency loans
in order to keep the economy from collapsing.
Estimated total losses could reach the $1 billion mark.
A report detailing the alleged theft
was released and later published after the public got wind of what happened, and
the accused businessman – Ilan Shor, one of the richest people in the country
who is married to a Russian pop star (of course he is!) – was charged with
corruption and placed under house arrest during the subsequent investigation. Then, a van transporting critical
investigative documents was “mysteriously” stolen and was later found to have
been destroyed by a fire. He was given
immunity during his house arrest as he was also, coincidentally, a candidate
for mayor of a small town about 25 miles north of Chisinau, which – of course –
he won with 62% of the vote this past June.
He’s now the mayor of Orhei, and is evidently more popular now than ever
before as he arranges to have this city of 25,000 completely electrified with
street lights and high efficiency LED bulbs.
You can check it out right here: http://orhei.md/index.php?pag=news&id=813&l=ro
One result of these massive losses to
the Moldovan economy and the corruption at the root of many ills in society is
that popular protests have been organized just about every weekend over the
past few months, with tens of thousands of people gathering and marching in the
city center to demand the resignation of the government and an end of rule by
the oligarchs. Fortunately, they have
all been peaceful. So far. This, too, is a work in progress.
Moldova is one of the poorest
countries in Europe (GDP per capita is about $5,000 per year, or 171st
in the world) and 1/8th of their GDP just vanished, virtually
overnight. They are energy dependent, mostly
on Russian oil and gas, and a large percentage (totaling about $1.6 billion) of
their national income is from remittances that come from family living and
working abroad. Several local colleagues
have shared with me that, despite the relative poverty of the country, there
are more Porsche Cayennes in this country than anywhere else in the world. And while I don’t know about the veracity of
that startling observation, there certainly are quite a lot of luxury cars
driving about in town. On a trip home recently
I saw, in short order, a Bentley and a variety of high-end BMWs, Mercedes and
Audis, often with darkened windows and zooming along past the babushkas and
pedestrians struggling to make their way on the sidewalks and zipping in and
out of traffic on streets filled with packed city buses and taxis.
Like I said, a work in progress.
Doing the People’s Work
All that being said, it’s not all
play and no work. I am here to do a job,
after all.
The Embassy itself is very different
from Haiti. In Port-au-Prince all
agencies were housed in one NEC (New Embassy Compound), opened in 2008 and like
a modern office building with loads of extra security. Hundreds of people worked there, and we had
several annexes and other buildings on the grounds, along with a small swimming
pool, the Marine House (a dormitory for the Marine Corps Security Guards), and
a regulation basketball court. The
Embassy in Chisinau is 115-year-old former ballet school. Of course we have lots of security and all
that, and several out-buildings made from converted containers and mobile
structures which have essentially become permanent buildings, but several
agencies are housed in other buildings in town, and while we, too, have a
couple hundred people, it’s not nearly the size of Haiti. There we had something like 200 direct hire
Americans, here we have about 40.
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| US Embassy - Moldova (moldova.org) |
As in Haiti, I am working as a
Consular Officer performing visa interviews, helping American citizens, and
conducting the business of the United States here in this little corner of
Europe.
I’ve detailed my job as a Consular
Officer before, based on my tour in Haiti.
(In the event you’ve forgotten, and care, you can go here to refresh
your memory.) In the Consulate in Haiti
we had 15 Entry Level Officers, five managers, a Deputy Consul General and a
Consul General, along with about 50 or more locally hired colleagues. In
Moldova we have a Consul (my boss), me (and Entry Level Officer), an American
citizen colleague who is trained to adjudicate visas, and five local staff. The work is very similar, but the volume is
much, much lower and of course the issues are different, as they are in every
country. Whereas in Haiti Officers
worked months at a time in a particular unit (Non-Immigrant Visas, Immigrant
Visas, American Citizen Services, Adoptions and Fraud Prevention) doing just
the work of that unit, here we rotate essentially every day between NIV, IV and
ACS, and do adoption work and fraud work as needed. For example, in Haiti each Officer in the NIV
unit (typically five on a given day) conducted between 70 and 100 interviews,
every day, for several months at a time.
Here we have between 50 and 75 interviews each day, divided between two
officers. So the pace isn’t as frenetic
as it was in Haiti, and for that I am grateful.
Something similar to my transition to
Haiti with my French training in a country where few people spoke French on a
day to day basis is the language barrier I’m experiencing again. I received six months of intensive Russian
training in preparation for this post, however upon arrival I discover – no,
it’s not really a surprise – that the ability to speak about global warming or
international relations between Moldova and the United States isn’t what I really
need to be able to discuss when interviewing a young IT professional or
Moldovan farmer from the village for a tourist visa. In addition, I would say more than half the
people speak Romanian more so than Russian.
To be sure both are present in shops, on signs and in the community in
general, but it seems more common for people to speak Romanian in the home than
Russian. Up until now, and into the near
future, I’m relying heavily on the translation assistance of my Moldovan
colleagues. I start Russian classes
again soon, this week I hope, so as to eventually be able to do the principal
part of my job without assistance.
I will have a chance to do more things outside the scope of my work in the Consulate than I did in Haiti, which will be nice. Given that I am what amounts to a deputy to my boss the Consul, I have more responsibility within the job itself than I did in Haiti. Also, recently I helped out at the welcome reception at the Ambassador’s residence for the newly arrived DCM (Deputy Chief of Mission), and met some interesting diplomats from the Ukrainian and other embassies as well as other organizations. The Consulate hosted a lunch the next week for our American citizen “wardens” who live around Moldova, also at the Ambassador’s residence, and again I met some fellow Americans who have some really interesting stories to tell.
So it’s been a pretty good start, I
must say.
The Impending Arrivals
I am so looking forward to the arrival
of my partner in crime and our International Dog of Mystery in mid-October.
Perhaps comparable to the day I
departed Minnesota for training in Washington back in August 2011, the day I
left Minnesota for Moldova was one of the most difficult days I have ever
experienced. It’s hard enough to go
through much less describe, but the closest description I can think of is that
this is what it must feel like to experience a broken heart. Of course it’s just temporary, and in large
part is my way of dealing with the process of mourning the major transitions occurring
in the lives of the kids at the same time as I’m leaving the country, but it
was heart wrenching to walk through the security gates and wave goodbye to my
Team. My flights from Minnesota to
Amsterdam to Barcelona to Chisinau were the longest 24 hours in my life.
But Kate and Riley the Wonder Dog are
coming in just a couple short weeks, and she hopes to get a part-time job at
the Embassy working in the Community Liaison office. The kids of course are and will be doing what
they should be doing, which is to continue on the path to independence and adulthood. And so that is as it should be.
Sophie is in the midst of her third
year at Gustavus, and after switching her major last year to history she spent
the summer in Washington, D.C. with me while interning at the National Archives,
which was pretty darn cool. She’ll spend
the spring on a semester abroad in Italy, which is pretty close to Moldova,
kind of. So I’m looking forward to
regular visits to Perujia to annoy, I mean visit, her.
Tommy graduated from Gustavus last
spring, and cajoled me into participating in a sprint triathlon with him in
Maryland last July. He graciously kept
my pace for all three legs, and in the end we had a good old time. He has been preparing all summer and fall for
his impending departure in October for boot camp outside of Chicago as he
begins the next stage of his journey with the US Navy.
As you might be able to tell, we are
immensely proud of them both.
Coincidence? Perhaps…
Strangely, I realized recently there
are some rather odd connections between Moldova and Haiti, and it’s not that
they are both relatively poor nations (although that is true). In Haiti our house number was #30; in Moldova
it’s #30A. Hmmm, curious. Then I remembered that Haiti managed an
unlikely defeat of the powerful but weakened French army led by Napoleon
Bonaparte in the early 1800s, and that the territory that is Moldova today was
ceded by the Ottoman Turks to the Russian Empire in July 1812, just a month
after Napoleon invaded Russia. Six
months later Russia defeated the mighty French.
History is replete with French military defeats – wonder if one of them will indicate the location of Tour #3? Hopefully it won't be Elba or St. Helena…
Until next time
Well, if you made it this far, you’ve
wasted another 30 minutes or so of your time with me, and for that I thank you. It's not exactly the easiest place to get to on the planet, but we have the space available, and of course we have a wine cellar! We will be happy to welcome visitors at any time to our little corner of Europe...
While still in a state of transition,
life is good. Hoping the same for
you.
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| I want you to visit us in Moldova!! |
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