06 Apr 2009, Posted by jessie in the category, 0 Comments

A Matter of Perception

As I sit here and write, the birds are chirping, the sun is shining, leaves are blooming and the air is filled with sounds of those living a quiet village life. There is something cosy about being in this place, in the middle of nowhere in rural Moldova.

The drive from Chisinau wound us from bitumen roads in a bustling city, to dirt roads over rolling hills in paddocks showing the first signs of next season’s growth. Agriculture is people’s livelihoods – if you don’t plant you don’t eat.

Yet even in farming there are disparities growing and it makes you wonder how the poorer Moldovans will ever keep us with the Jones’s. A local farmer pointed out the new tractor someone has just got from Italy, and then explained how someone has recently been to Holland twice to bring back amazing machinery for getting the water from the dam to the paddocks (an irrigation system that most farmers in Australia would now take as a given).

Arriving at the house (where we’ll be based for the week), we were greeted by a couple of cows, chickens and turkeys galore, plenty of pigs, old machinery pilled up in the back yard, an outhouse that most of us would usually turn their noses up at, and decomposing compost that hasn’t quite made it to the right place.

However, we were also greeted by an incredibly generous family and two of their five children, who welcomed us into their home and have volunteered to feed eight of us all week and have five of the boys stay each night. We couldn’t have eaten more at lunch if we tried and already know that later today there will be more food, hot drinks and home-made juice on the table ready for us. Here is a family that clearly does not have extra resources to go an buy something to make their lives that little bit easier (like an extra piece of farming machinery that would make such a difference) yet they have opened their home entirely and are displaying generosity and true love that many people never experience.

While we may have to put up with some of the harder aspects of being in rural Moldova this week, it really does feel like an honour to experience such hospitality and be around people who truly know what life’s all about.