Moldova Part 3

The conclusion...

My return to Chisinau was bittersweet, for it was hard for me to juxtapose the poverty and despair I had seen in Hrincesti village with Chisinau, a teeming metropolis of well over a half million people. While socialism had left a mere hull of farming villages such as Hrincesti, history had been more kind to this urban setting. Determined to further my understanding of this developing economy, I explored the city, making good use of a map of Chisinau that led me to the city’s major points of interest. What a beautiful, graceful, old city! Several verdant parks were familiar haunts of University students. Benches and paths were filled with young people enjoying each other and hopes of spring in the chilly March air. How appropriate this seemed, since the word Chisinau is Russian for “new spring.”

Older government buildings, imposing with their heavy Russian facades, shared space with only a handful of apartment buildings. Signs of newer construction were totally absent. Very few cars competed with crowded buses and taxis that hustled from place to place. I couldn’t place why huge establishments such as hotels, commercial buildings, and factories looked odd to me until I realized that all lacked parking lots. Why invest space in parking lots when few citizens have cars?

I searched out the Presidential Building as well as the busy, block-long Flower Market, a beehive of merchants selling fresh flowers imported from Italy. Not to be outdone, the large Central Market teemed with people selling everything from clothing and vegetables to jars of honey and butchered chickens. (I couldn’t resist purchasing a beautiful yet inexpensive water color painting by an artist who wandered the aisles selling his craft.)

Near the city limits was a large cemetery. Fresh flowers graced many gravesites. Conspicuously absent, however, were crosses and other Christian symbols as well as any mentions of God or Heaven, a chilling reminder of the Soviet repression of every facet of human existence during the bloc years. Not unlike many American cemeteries, this graveyard had its share of people-worship, with the most prominent and wealthiest of the dearly departed memorialized by the largest and most ornate statues and headstones. 

In what would become a reassuring mixture of the new with the familiar, I invited Anna to join me for worship one Sunday morning at the Ciuflea Eastern Orthodox Church . Its golden domes towered above the church with its navy paint and white-trimmed windows and doors. What an awesome sight it was! Anna explained that churches such as Ciuflea had served as military depots during the Soviet era. (How repugnant was that thought!)

I added a few coins to hands of the women who begged at the courtyard gate before washing my hands at the chain hoist well as was the custom for anyone entering the church. In the vestibule I placed a candle in a sand box next to the other lighted candles as I offered a prayer for the safety, health, and well-being of family and friends—both those in America and those newly made in Moldova. How comforted I felt at the realization that, despite the difference in dogma and setting, the worship service was surprisingly similar to those I attended in my Lutheran church in Wisconsin: the young, pink-cheeked acolyte lighting candles; the heavyset, bearded priest in furry cleric’s hat with Bible in hand and ornate cross around his neck; the sermon delivered from a pulpit to a congregation who stood since the church lacked pews, the sacrament of Holy Communion, and the choir (who were allowed to sit) leading the congregation in hymns sung in Romanian, some of them to tunes which I’d known since childhood. Anna translated the sermon as it was delivered, which caused some in attendance to frown since they thought we were disrespectfully chatting and ignoring the cleric.

Yet, the obvious differences between Moldova and the United States, Eastern Orthodox worship and Lutheran, poor rural village and affluent suburban amenities, Romanian and English were inconsequential. I left with renewed faith that, while nations, governments, and cultures differ widely, people’s needs, dreams, and goals are often universal. Somehow I felt less of a foreigner and more of a brother.

 

by Everil Quist, International Agri-business Consultant

---

Go to the next Article from Moldova Part 3

Return to Articles from Moldova Part 3

Return to QuistSpeaks Home from Moldova Part 3

 

Everil Quist - President & CEO of QuistSpeaks, LLC

"Enjoy this story about the noble peoples of third world countries.  I've truly enjoyed working with them and have many heartwarming and entertaining stories to tell. 

I enjoy sharing my adventures with my audiences, where I feel I am truly 'Creating Positive Change'."

---

“Everil Quist delivers with knowledge, humor and compassion.  His trials and tribulations during his stints in Former Soviet Union countries impart the difficulties and perseverance these dynamic people have to overcome—difficulties we seldom experience here in America.”

-Virginia Dessart, N2 Area Governor, District 35, Toastmasters International