Moldova Life

1994







This blog is not filled with the historical events that have made Moldova what it is today.


Because the past is not important, the struggle of daily life is all that matters to its people now.


How the country got into the situation it now finds itself in, is not important because it cannot be changed.



The fight for a better future is all that matters to its people. To have a normal life is their


Only dream.



www.moldovalife.co.uk




Introduction.

I arrived in Moldova in the summer of 1994 and have never really left, I did my very best to help its people. This is my story.

The country of Moldavia, was one of the fifteen old C.C.C.P republic's, that now can only be described as a place consisting of the most extreme differences one could imagine from a country that seems on the outside to be civilised. When I arrived the people were still trying to come to terms with the changes that its new freedom offered them. On the outside they seemed to live the same as we did in the West and the first impression you got when you saw them in their smart copycat Western clothes is one of normality. They have tarmacked roads and modern looking shops, transport, banks and schools, all the indications of Western society. But these things are only there to mislead you, and it will not take long for the reality of the place to hit you right between the eyes.
Everything that we take for granted, including what we expect a normal society to have is missing. The legal system does not exist, health and hygiene are just words to be found in books, that is if you can find one that's not over twenty years old.

People’s attitude to life and their fellow man would take a psychologist to analyse. They push and fight for everything, from the space on a bus or train to a piece of bread. And when the day is over and the daily fight for survival has come to an end, an alarming amount of people will lose every remaining sense they have, in the bottom of several bottles of vodka.




To speak to these people of a society that is stuck between Socialism, Capitalism and Communism only leaves you with the impression that they are a lost race. My heart goes out to them all, the young school children who at thirteen know that their family haven't any money, food or a future.

Or the teachers, who after collecting their ten pounds a month wages can only dream of a better life that they now know exists in the West. To make things worse what we have is thrust in their faces every day, in magazines, television, and by Western visitors. Sixteen-year-old girls are forced to marry in the hope of a future with a husband who can provide for them, and then find themselves no better off than they were before.
Of course there is a way out, if these people could raise the two hundred pounds needed to buy a ticket to the West, they could live the same as us, except that the governments on both sides of the boarder would do all in their power to make it as difficult as possible for anyone to get the visa required keeping everyone trapped and under control
They are an angry but loving people, who need a fair deal in life, and not to be treated like second-class citizens by their own government who only get richer as they get poorer.












Moldova

This small country located between Romania and the Ukraine, has a long history consisting of many battles and conflicts for independence, most of which it lost.

But on August 27th 1991 the most recent battle was won. Its four million people were freed from the reins that most of the surrounding countries had held over them for many years. The Communist system in Russia had collapsed and a free society was declared. Moldova walked into freedom without a single shot being fired.

When people, that have spent most of their lives being supported by their richer neighbours are released, it has a wide reaching implications, it is unfortunate that no-one sat down and thought about it first.
I can only liken this new society to that of the freeing of the slaves after the American Civil War. Yes, they were free but there was nothing for them to do, and nowhere for them to go, most of them either sat around doing nothing, or were forced back into working for their old slave masters in worse conditions than before.

Without the support of the U.S.S.R, Moldova has found that it is very much the poorer relation.
An agricultural country that is under financed and under developed it now finds that it has to survive on its own. With out money for imports or investment in manufacturing, each new day is looking bleaker than the one before.



For the average person, the future simply does not exist, you can only guess at the unemployment level as there isn’t a system to count the people who sit around aimlessly and
without a program in place to provide even the basic financial help there is very little hope for change.

The question now being asked by the people is, “Was Communism such a bad thing” compared to what they have now it must have seemed like heaven. When it was alive there were systems and a certain amount of normality, and more importantly they had food. Now they are just hungry and confused without any direction in their lives and no one to turn to for the answers or help.

Ask the average men or women in the street what they like about their new country and you would get the same answer every time, “We want to escape to the West”. Maybe this is because they now know so much more about our country, whereas before almost all the information was withheld.
Sometimes ignorance is a good thing, for now they have something to compare their lives to and it has come as one hell of a shock. They now realise that what they have is nothing compared to the us in the West.
Tomorrow, for them will bring more of the same thing…..nothing. If they were a stupid race then they would have no comprehension of how much better the Western way of life is, but with most fourteen-year-old school children being able to speak four languages, and most ten year old's two they are more educated than the best student of the same age in the West.




This knowledge can only work against them for they are able to comprehend the problems when still young. It gives them more time to get angry and dissatisfied.
The average fifteen year old has already experienced many of life’s horrors and so ends up falling in line with the ever-increasing number of alcoholics and drug addicts.

Without a thought for the future or maybe a cunning plan to suppress the people even more, the government made the decision to reduce the price of vodka to around fifteen pence per bottle, affordable even to the poorest. The reason they gave for this generous gesture being that it would help reduce the risk of cholera, which was rife in the summer of 1994, mainly due to the total collapse of the water system. At forty per cent proof it does not take long for even the harden of drinkers to fall into submission.
This method of brainwashing has been used here before, whenever the government ran out of a certain food, or simply could not afford them, they would inform the people that they had removed the offending food from the shops because it had been discovered that it was bad for their health.
A drastic step to take just to keep the vote, and one that has left the people believing that certain foods that we eat on a daily basis are not good for you.

Of coarse this has had its own effect so that when the offending food returned to the shops, no one will buy it and it stays on the shelves until it goes rotten. This not only deprives the country of revenue, but also the people of food.





At least when Communism was in place people were in a state of happy ignorance. The ignorance has now been removed and the people are anything but happy. A community of angry dissatisfied people now live in this country and it can be seen in their everyday lives. Like a swarm of hungry ants they climb over and step on each other in their fight to survive, without time to think or care for the person next to them.

Things will change, but it will take a long long time. The sad thing is for the people of today is that it will not happen for many years, maybe not even in their lifetime.

The school children of today know that they will have to live their lives with no future or hope. Is this life, or a living living nightmare?
So what has gone wrong? In my opium just about everything. Reading through this book will give you your own ideas and it will be possible for you to come to your own conclusions. I have only written about the events that happened to me, and have told what I was told.

As you read on, I would like to leave you with the thought that these people are as normal as you and I, with the same dreams and hopes for the future that we have, but stand no chance of ever realising them, unless that is you help.










Trying to understand

As the weeks dragged into months, I started to find that not only was my personality changing, but so was my outlook on life.
It was now in the middle of winter and the six months I had already been in Moldova seemed like years, life itself had just become one big struggle.
The cold was forever with you, and so was the hunger, there seemed no escape from either of them. Even the routine of Russian life became apart of me, getting up early in the dark due to power shortage, shaving by candlelight in cold water were things that had become normal.

The trolley bus that had been taking me to school each day was as packed as ever, but now did not seem such a fearful thing, gone were the days when I would wait for one that had spaces on it. I now found it possible to get on regardless of the amount of people that fought for the smallest space, hanging onto the next person so as not to fall out the opened door and once on I would not give up my place for anyone.

Seeing people in queues, I would automatically join them just in case there was some food to be had. Most of the time there wouldn’t be, so I was forced back to my diet of bread and potatoes. It would be wrong to say that there was no other food to be had. There was every thing from tinned pineapple, yoghurt and even pizza had turned up on odd occasions, but at a weeks wage for each it was beyond my reach.




Anyway, you could buy bread for a month for the same price as one of these items so that's what we ate.

As winter started to take a firm hold with temperatures down to minus thirty-five, the first snows fell. It seemed to have an affect on everyone, people became withdrawn and more desperate than before. Food prices started to go up, sometimes doubling overnight, and the cold was unbearable.

Rumours had started to circulate that maybe soon the government would pay everyone’s wages, which by now were four months overdue.

Some people who worked in the umbrella factory had been paid in umbrellas, which they would try and sell in the streets or swap for food, an item of little use when you are starving and there is no rain. Other workers in the Vodka factory got a fairer deal and were a lot better off than others. People were saying that the prices would soon fall and this then would stabilise the currency. I tried to explain that it wouldn’t, that it might even devalue instead, but I gave up on this idea as they needed some hope.
The only thing that seemed to be on everyone’s mind was survival in the bitter cold, they would wrap up in as many layers of clothes as they could to fight the conditions. Then they would spend hour upon hour trudging around the markets to try and find food, and I was one of them.

The trolley bus was just the same, but fewer could now get on because of the thick clothing, which meant even more pushing and shoving, and I found myself in the middle of it all.



People seemed to have changed overnight, but there again so had the weather, at least in the summer it was possible to look upon all the beautiful things which that time of the year brings and makes one feel happier with life, but now all that had gone.
Everywhere now looked bleak and sullen. Even the white snow did nothing to brighten things up.

Power supply's were a continuous problem, the electricity had stabilised into a regular pattern off being switched off every four hours for six hours at a time so at least you knew when it was going to happen and could already be wrapped up in bed, but hot water continued to be a mystery, sometimes it was so hot it would burn you and on others it was turned off for weeks. On more than one occasion, I returned home to find a cold blast of wind was waiting to greet me when I opened the front door to go into my flat as all the power had been turned off at the same time, this not only meant that I would be freezing cold until they decided to turn it back on, but I would also not be able to cook the simple food I had been able to find. With nothing hot inside me my mood would become even more depressing.

The resolve I had first felt when I arrived all those months before had almost gone, being a Westerner you have the impression that you can beat the system and to a certain extent in a free society you can, but here there was no way to even start. Everything was falling down and was corrupt, with no where to turn to for help or support.
Everyone was out to get what he or she could for them self, which meant that the average person was left with nothing.





All the fresh food had long gone as the country could not afford to import, so we were forced to eat the most basic of foods that had been in store from the summer months.
The meat that was available would consist of either old livestock that only produce fatty, tough meat or young animals that they could not afford to feed so were killed that had no meat on it.

Christmas of 1994 came and went without being noticed, December 25th is not recognised as the birthday of Jesus in Moldova, and even if it was it would not have made any difference for there was nothing to celebrate with.
People’s health started to suffer due to the continuous deprivation their bodies had endured, but nothing could be done. If you were forced to go into hospital you would have to take your own medicine, blankets and food because they hadn't any. Sitting in a freezing cold ward would not help any recovery, so most stay at home preferring to rely on the old women for their knowledge of herbs and old wives cures.
The dental service was the same, a filling was always done without anaesthetic and also in some cases were extractions that is unless you could afford to pay.
The continuous struggle of day-to-day life became life itself. There seemed to be nothing to look forward to, not even a little
spark of happiness on the horizon. Just more of the same, and deep inside you knew it was going to get worse.







For me even the knowledge that I could escape seemed no consolation. I felt trapped, not just by the conditions of life but the system that supported it. Home, seemed so far away and out of reach. It would only take six days of travelling before I could get back, with many hardships to suffer on the way but to go home would be running away from the people here that had become my friends, so I was forced by my own stubbornness to stay. I was forced to suffer with them.
It seemed strange to look back only a few months before when I had set out from England thinking of all the great adventures that were before me. Now I was faced with the reality of life, like a solder marching off to war my bravado had now been replaced by suffering.

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