23 Sep 2009, Posted by jessie in the category, 1 Comments

The Morning Walk

I’ve mentioned before about the homeless lady who was searching in a bin just outside our apartment. But I’ve been thinking since then that for those of you not living in Moldova it may seem like this is an unusual occurrence for us. Sadly, that is far from the truth.

Every morning when we leave our apartment for work we are confronted with the reality that we’re living in the poorest country in Europe. When you glance out the door from the bottom of our stairwell you can see the bins where people search each day (no exaggeration) for something to live off. Then there are the two shipping containers that people have turned into something they call home, kept level by a few concrete blocks under each corner. These containers get moved with no questions asked if a truck needs to get through for the new apartments being built; there is no sense of an invasion of privacy here. We can see all of this before we even step foot out of our building.

As you make your way up the hill towards the bus, you always pass innumerable stray dogs (probably the ones that keep us awake nearly every night with their barking), and then pass an older lady or two who are slugging along an old dirty bag filled with ‘valuables’ found in the bins. It must pay off to get to the bins in the morning, as the early risers are the ones you see with bags filled of empty alcohol bottles.

The footpaths we walk on are completely uneven and cracked, and you have to make sure you don’t fall down one of the uncovered manholes. Word has it that the iron caps are valuable, so they are often stolen. Either that or they are so poorly made they just break.

And then there are the things we have grown used to now and have to think about before we mention them to people. Like the roads not having lines, bottoms of trees painted white, goats at some street corners, drunk men in the streets, continual presence of the defense force (one year’s service is compulsory for all young men), and young kids making their own way to school without anyone to watch over them.

There are times when we do things here that make us think we could be anywhere in Europe, but then there is the daily morning walk to remind us of the reality.