EASTER IN THE VILLAGE

Never Again

‘Hristos a inviat’ means ‘Christ is Risen’ in Romanian and it takes over the usual greeting of ‘Buna Ziua’ as of today for 40 days. Yesterday, the Eastern Orthodox Church all over the world celebrated the resurrection of Jesus and Moldova was no exception. The Eastern Orthodox Church uses the Julian calendar rather than the Gregorian calendar and as a result, Easter here more often than not comes a week after Easter in other parts of the world and is a much bigger holiday than Christmas (arguably, this is as it should be). People come home to visit their families and with 25% of Moldovans living overseas, the border crossings were crazy this past weekend with apparently 150,000 cars crossing into Moldova on Friday alone.

Last year, I was invited to the village of Izbiste which is around an hour’s drive from Chisinau to celebrate. My friend Jessica, who serves in the Peace Corps here, invited her boyfriend Jeremy and I to see how the villagers celebrate as Chisinau becomes a ghost-town over Easter weekend. A night in Jessica’s host-parents’ house was interrupted around 3am by a wake-up call for church. Most Moldovan villages are not gifted with street lights so the 15 minute walk to the ‘biserica’ was in pitch black. On the winding road up to the church, the first thing that strikes you is the singing from inside the church being played from speakers at the top of the bell tower. On arrival in the churchyard, there was a ring of babushkas (wee old ladies) surrounding the building with baskets of bread and food waiting for the blessing of the Priest. Candles are lit in anticipation of the coming of the Priest and then he emerges from the church – with a sprig of twigs and a vessel containing the holy water – to literally soak the people and the food of those around the church*. Most people have not only brought bread but also their entire meal and for it to be blessed is the most honourable of gifts on this Holy Day. People shriek with excitement when the Priest soaks them and before long, the families are all on the way back to their houses to start preparing the food for a massive meal to be served around 7am. After this visit, which was absolutely fascinating but ultimately freezing, Jeremy and I vowed that once was enough to see this very unique ritual.

However, almost a year later, Jeremy and I were questioning our prior decision as we slipped down the muddy hill on the way to the same church at 2am on Easter Sunday morning. Jessica had once again invited us, along with friends Amy and Becky, to experience Easter in Izbiste once again. Since last year, Jessica has moved to a ‘casa mica’, a small holding in the garden of a new host family. Rather than living in the main house, she now has a two room building without a drain, bathroom or proper heating. Instead, Jessica uses a bucket which is emptied in the street, an outhouse which is a shed with a hole in the floor situated in the garden and a soba which is an indoor ceramic chimney which heats up over some time.  

Easter Saturday brought some of the worst rain in Moldova so far this year and so the rural roads of Izbiste were soggy and mucky but we soldiered through the mud to get to the church to see the ceremony part of the Easter service. Women are required to dress in a dignified manner, so the girls wore dresses or skirts complete with headscarf inside the church and fitted right in with the babushkas. The service lasts for 6 hours and begins before midnight however we decided to skip to the exciting part where the priest appears and walks around blessing people and taking their candles wrapped in 1 lei notes (about 5p). It turns out that these candles can only be lit from the central candle in the church as the flame from this has come all the way from the tomb in Israel (how it gets through customs I have no idea). The priest then goes back to the pulpit and prays for those who have given him a candle. Throughout the service, the little babushkas continue to sing Easter themed worship songs while the priest proclaims ‘Hristos a inviat’ to which the congregation replies ‘Adevarat a inviat’ which means ‘He is risen indeed’. We decided that a decent night in bed would be a better option than to hang around until 6am for the blessing of the food so headed back and hit the hay.

The next afternoon we were invited to Jessica’s director’s house for the traditional Easter dinner which was shared with her husband and 5 year old daughter, Daniela. We ate like kings, the non-driving contingent (everyone bar me) drank like fish and we shared a great afternoon of fellowship and laughs with our new friends before heading back to the city for a well earned good night's sleep.

Jeremy and Jessica will sadly not be in Moldova in 2013 as their Peace Corps service draws to a close this Summer, however I hope that if I am still here then I find another rural village to celebrate this very unique celebration. While in the UK, I’m a fan of whacking back the crème eggs and getting up to watch the sunrise at the top of Kinnoull Hill, however I like the way that Moldovans (and the rest of the Eastern Orthodox Church) utterly immerse themselves in this amazing celebration of Christ’s coming back for us. It’s a time of reflection and thankfulness, but it’s also a time of family and I was blessed and honoured to have shared this magnificent day with the people who I am lucky to have had become my family here in Moldova. 

The girls preparing to fit in at the kirk (L-R Jessica, Becky and Amy)

We passed some rather hirsute looking babushkas on the way to church

Becky had a boyfriend once...perhaps this is why

A normally urban Amy goes rural in Jessica's 'casa mica'

Our massive Easter lunch

The painted boiled eggs (all ready for war)

Becky's game face ensured that this battle was hers

Chicken in jelly - as nice as it sounds

I ponder my first win while Jeremy is overcome with dismay that his egg has been annihilated

Only one of these war faces won the challenge...

...mine!

Jessica reads 5 year old Daniela a story about a witch who lives in a moving castle built on chicken legs who comes and steals children away in a sack and eats them. Scarier than the Woman In Black. And Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. 

Our new friends, Natalia and Mircea, who so generously opened their home to us on this very special family day

 * The blessing of food at Easter is traditional but so is the blessing of other objects at the beginning of the school year including Jessica's laptop which was soaked just after she arrived in Moldova. Thankfully it still works. 

AE FOND KISS

Ae Fond Kiss

Our first fundraising event of 2012 was a truly Scottish affair with Hospice Angelus staging the first ever Burns Supper in Moldova. Sixty of our friends and supporters gathered at Vintage Art and Lounge Cafe in Chisinau to celebrate the 253rd anniversary of Scotland's most famous son, Rabbie Burns. Homemade haggis, stovies, tatties and special 'Moldovan neeps' were served along with the sweetest of Scottish desserts, Cranachan.

The night was a real success and we raised over 1000 euros which will go directly towards the work of Hospice Angelus in Moldova. Here follows some of our favourite video clips from the night.

Video 1: Kenny Wright addresses the haggis in true Burns style

Video 2: Alexei Ghertescu toasts the lassies

Video 3: Faith Tempest replies to the Toast To The Lassies

And last but not least, you can click here to watch a news report from the event along with seeing me back on Sare si Piper cooking Scotch Broth and home-made oatcakes and talking about Edward...sorry, Robert Burns. 

You can see some of the best photos from the first Hospice Angelus Burns Supper on our website

POSITIVE EXPERIENCES

Smile Like You Mean It

Since the start of January, we’ve had a lot of positive things happening at the hospice. The first is a partnership with an organisation called OM which has generously been supplying us with food packages to deliver to some of our poorest patients. I had the pleasure of visiting one of our younger patients, a 14 year old girl who is suffering with metastatic cancer and is tragically likely to lose her leg. It never ceases to amaze me the positivity that radiates from some of our patients. With a beautiful smile and a positive outlook on life, this young girl talked about what she missed about school as she is unable to attend now that she is sick. Sadly, because she has to stay at home, her mother no longer works and thus their income is limited. Indeed, they owe about £200 for their heating bill. The average salary in Moldova is around £150 per month so this amount is an astronomical amount for a family on benefits. Furthermore, and sickeningly, their landlord has said that they also owe around 20,000 euros in rent and if they do not pay this, they will be evicted. Another example of the exploitation of Moldova’s poverty-stricken by the terminally corrupt who seem to still have such a huge presence and influence in this country. We are grateful to OM for their assistance in providing these packages to our families.

One of our food packages donated by OM

As part of the fundraising team at Hospice Angelus, it can sometimes be very easy to forget why we are doing the things we do so these visits are necessary to remind us of the importance of raising awareness and funds to support palliative care in Moldova. Meeting the beneficiaries of our work and seeing the fruits of our labour is the most humbling part of working for Angelus. This past week, I had the privilege of visiting another of our patients for her birthday. A small team of hospice workers arrived to see another smiling and positive young woman beaming to see our director arrive with cake and flowers to celebrate this special day. Surrounded by friends and loved ones, it was an honour to share even a small part of this day with her. An English speaker, it was a rare opportunity for me to speak to one of our patients in my native tongue and to hear first-hand about the trials and tribulations of being a cancer sufferer in Moldova. It’s always great to hear about the differences that our medical team can make to the life of someone with cancer and to hear about what life might be like without the care that we provide makes us realise how important it is to continue the work that we do. And it's always mind-blowing to see the smiles behind the stories. 

Holes in the windows in a Moldovan apartment block make it very difficult to keep buildings warm

RUNNING BEAR

Running Up That Hill

On October 9 2010, I arrived in Bucharest, Romania to start my new job as part of the Hospices of Hope organisation. The night before, I was out in London with some friends and while in a restaurant, some very inconsiderate individual walked up behind me and stole my bag from the back of my chair. Inside was my passport, wallet (complete with bank cards, driving licence and cash), iPod, work documents including my contract, a book and my filofax (yep, very Gordon Gekko) with lots of interesting things I’d picked up on my travels over the years. The following morning, I spent the morning running across London to report the theft, apply for and receive a new passport and get to Heathrow all before 5pm to catch the flight to Bucharest. Having taken weeks to pack up my life in the UK to start this new chapter in Moldova, I had to try and get as many documents replicated as possible in the space of a few hours. I’m glad to tell you that I made it but it was one of the most challenging things I have ever had to do.  

Fast forward a year to October 9 2011 and I was about to undertake one of the other biggest challenges I have ever had to face – the Bucharest International Half Marathon. When I arrived at the Hospice offices in Bucharest a year prior, the fundraising team were knee deep in the organisation of the Bucharest International Marathon races at the end of the month. At that moment I decided that I was going to take part in the 2011 race and raise some money for the work of Hospice Angelus in Moldova. Of course, that was the easy part. Despite being overweight and unfit, I thought that if I gave myself a year, this would be more than ample time to train for running 13.1 miles (or 21.1 km). Actually, six months would probably be enough. Right?

In January of 2011 I found a running club called the Chişinău Hash House Harriers here in Moldova which consists of expats and locals who run every second Sunday around the city. For the first few months, I walked the courses and then started properly training for the run around April. A fellow Hasher, Teapot (who I also cajoled into running the full marathon in Bucharest), was consulted and put together a training program for me over a period of six months. It was designed to build up my strength and endurance and kudos to Teapot, because it worked! Admittedly, I didn’t strictly adhere to the program over the six months so by the time that the race came around earlier last month, I wasn’t sure whether I was going to make it.

Joined by Teapot and two other runners raising money for Hospice, Lindsay and Conrad, we arrived at the start line around 8am on 9 October 2011. Sadly, unlike the time we spent in training, it was lashing down with rain and pretty cold. For the parents, who had come over to enjoy the October warmth in Bucharest, they were disappointed that winter had come early but still came out with their Scottish flags in support.

The start line ran up Bulevardul Unirii towards The People's Palace, the second largest building on earth

At 9.30am, the start gun signalled the beginning of the race. Armed with an iPod full of tunes chosen by my sponsors, I was off and the initial view of running up Bulevardul Unirii towards the Palace of the Parliament was great as this still is such an impressive sight to me. Constitution Square, where the Palace stands, is normally the start and finish point of the marathon, however because of a NATO Summit, we had to start further down at Alba Iulia Square. Halfway up Bulevardul Unirii, there was a turn to the left across the man-made River Nistru and it was a long slog for about 2.5km down the edge of the river and 2.5km all the way back up the other side. The weather had kept any supporters at bay for this leg and so it was a bit endless running this part which was straight, dull and not in the slightest bit stimulating. This was when the tunes chosen by my sponsors kept me going – some favourites were Running Bear, Heigh Ho, Kinky Boots and my favourite, Keep On Runnin'.

Following the river part of the run appeared the first hill, which was gradual but thankfully very short. Back onto Bulevardul Unirii and down to Alba Iulia Square where the finish line was in sight. However Alba Iulia Squire isn’t really a square at all, rather a bit of a roundabout, so there are three roads which meet there and therefore the run also consisted of running down and back up the other two thoroughfares. The first was only about 100 metres down and back but the second road was probably about 1.5k and running away from the finish was really tough. It was great to run back up that road and not only see my folks waving the aforementioned flags, but to see the finish and my colleague Marc (the race starter) waiting to cheer...and send me on for the second lap. Yep, the race was two laps of the course for the half marathon and four for the full so off I went again. As I ditched my rain jacket I noticed that I had done the first half in 1 hour 27 – slow, but so far, so good. At this point I was starting to fade a bit so used the first ‘Gu’ gel which had been kindly donated by Teapot. Water and Isostar also kept me hydrated and everything was going great until I returned to the river part of the run. At this point, while I still hadn’t had to slow to a walk, I was really struggling to keep going but didn’t want to let myself down by stopping running. The four Team Hospice runners for Angelus Moldova had raised almost £6000 for the work done here and I was determined to not let my sponsors down so kept focused and pushed on. Coming back to Bulevardul Unirii and seeing Alba Iulia Square in the distance gave me the necessary boost to keep going and going. Supporters were starting to line the streets towards the end and this was another great push for me. Just as I was running down the last street of the square, I noticed the finish line and was gutted that I had to do that last 1.5km away from the chequered flag.

Running back up the street and seeing the finishing line in the distance, I had my finishing song on – Highland Cathedral by the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards (as recommended by a seasoned marathon runner). What a great song to finish on – the pipes and drums kicking in – really gave me that necessary push to run towards the end. Have a listen here and you'll hear what I mean. The sight of mum, dad, Lindsay and Conrad at the end made me go for a final sprint for the last 100 yards (ooft, this was a REAL mistake as I thought my legs were about to go) and I made it to the end to be met by the lovely volunteers with my medal. WOW! I couldn’t quite believe I had managed it. 3 hours and 5 minutes of running and I was now a half marathon runner.

The feeling afterwards was something else and I was really amazed at how quickly after I had stopped running that my legs started to turn to jelly. A congratulatory Snickers was soon followed by a beer with Lindsay and Conrad and then we went off to see Teapot as she crossed the line and became the first Team Hospice female to complete the marathon. Great effort and she joined Lindsay as the first Team Hospice female to complete the half marathon, so well done Team Moldova!

Lindsay, Conrad and I celebrate our half marathon with a cold can of Ursus, King of Beers in Romania (and the world)

Teapot hoofs it to the finish and completes her third marathon

Celebrating with Teapot and another Ursus

It really was a magic day followed by quite an epic after party (although I was so knackered that I only managed a few hours). With final calculations done, Team Hospice Moldova raised £6500, including Gift Aid, which is a staggering amount. But this was only part of the achievement – we all hit another goal that day. Teapot completed her third marathon while Conrad and Lindsay beat their time of the Miami Half Marathon they ran in March. For me, I had run over 13 miles. Six months prior, I couldn’t even run one. It really is a case of ‘if I can do it, so can anyone’ and I stick by that. I want to say thanks to all my friends, family and colleagues for supporting me throughout this time and especially for giving so much of their hard earned cash. Hospice Angelus really is a great cause to donate to and the money pledged really DOES make a difference. I am so privileged to work for such a worthy organisation and to see all of you get behind the work that we do is a great honour. Which leads me to one final question:  who’s up for joining me in Bucharest for the 2012 International Marathon?

And for anyone who would still like to sponsor me, please click right here to make a donation to an excellent cause. 

IT'S ALL OVER THE FRONT PAGE

Road Rage

Well, I guess in a city with hundreds of drivers who have no concept of road courtesy or in some cases, legitimately earned driving licences, my time to have a run-in with another driver was inevitable. On a daily basis I scream at drivers who bypass the entire queue waiting at the red light to sit at the front of the line (past said light) and screech off before the light has turned amber. Sometimes I even get annoyed at people who simply bypass traffic lights, mount the kerb and then hoof it down to the corner and alight the pavement on the other road. Furthermore, I frequently get annoyed with marshrutka drivers who just stop to let their passengers get off at random spots without signalling and then pull out again as you go to overtake them thus ensuring you have to either speed up to get past or slow down to get back in traffic. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Moldova is not a country of courteous drivers – their trip is much more important than yours and thus they take every opportunity to romp past you at breakneck speed or pure and simply, cut you up and leave you reeling while also using expletives that not even the most Russian of babooshkas cannot fail to understand. 

So on Monday on my way to work, when I passed two separate road traffic accidents within 2 minutes of the office, I did think to myself that I was lucky that in almost a year in Moldova, I had come away scrape-free.  However, as one usually does when one has such a thought, I forgot to touch wood. So an hour and a half later when I was out in the car delivering invites to our VIP reception (in this instance, to our financial partners SOROS Moldova) with our new fundraising co-ordinator, Vadim, I missed a stop sign and drove straight into the path of a Daewoo Damas (see below) coming from my right. For those of you who have been hit by another car, whether it be a minor or major incident, it can give you a nasty shock and so rather than mouth of a bunch of expletives, I apologised to my passenger and pulled over onto the side of the road to get out of the way of the other traffic. This was my first big mistake. You see, rather than pull out of the way of traffic coming behind you or towards you, the trick is to keep your vehicle in the path of said traffic so that when the police arrive you can show them what happened. So despite me telling the driver that it was completely my fault and that I was sorry and would pay for any damage, he still kept the wee eggbox of a vehicle in the middle of Str Sciusev, a street which I can only describe as one of Chişinau's busiest. Logic? Nah.

A DAEWOO Damas - thankfully not a monster truck

Now, what you must also understand is that when something of such a magnitude as a car scrape happens in Moldova, everyone within 100 metres suddenly makes it their business to congregate and ooh and aah at the wonder that beholds them. Indeed, all of a sudden two of the driver’s pals appeared out of nowhere and became involved. Thankfully I had a witness and translator on hand in Vadim as the driver refused to speak Romanian and only conversed in Russian. I also called our executive director to come along and sort it out as he is definitely the right person to have around in a crisis. 20 minutes later, after I had signed a wee scrap of paper saying that the accident was my fault, we went on our way to the traffic police station to report the incident.

Despite this being my first encounter with the fuzz in Moldova, my experience with the police in eastern Europe has been vast. In Romania, I once had my mobile phone nicked in a pub and spent 4 hours the next day at the police station filing a crime report for Orange so that I could claim the phone on my insurance. The crime reference number they eventually gave me was ‘1’ and so I have never had a huge lot of faith in the eastern European police authorities. But perhaps things were about to change in Moldova...

As we arrived at the station, Vadim informed me that this should only take half an hour and that we would be back at work soon. A year living in Moldova has made me slightly more cynical and thus I felt confident in making him a bet that we’d be at least an hour. After being directed to the front of the queue at the police station to file our report in order to claim with the insurance company, we were sat in front of a wee stocky cop who did not look unlike the bloke from Plan B. He was very thorough in explaining the process and sent us off to the ‘Expert Filer’ to get him to write the report and pay £1.25 for the privilege and then return to him. Upon return, he was extra friendly and really went out of his way to be nice and sympathise with the situation. Of course, I decided that this was a very nice policeman and that he was doing everything he could to assist the stupid foreigner. Alarm bells should have been ringing, however I just thought he was being helpful. It wasn’t long before I had my wake-up call as his phone rang and I heard him talking about an accident on Str Petricani which I knew was a large thoroughfare on the other side of town. He finished with the words ‘see you shortly’ and this is when those alarm bells started banging. He got up and told us that he would be back in ten minutes as there had been a serious accident on Petricani and when he did, we would be the first people he would see .

Over an hour had passed and so as Vadim bought me the coffee he’d lost in the bet (albeit with sugar which we had specifically asked not to be added resulting in Vadim almost getting in a fight – a story for another time) we discussed  as to how the rest of the day would pan out. I wasn't sure why the kind policeman had just upped and left but I was assured that as I was a foreigner there may have been a way in which to make him stay and finish our paperwork. Or not (who knows who might be reading this...)

90 minutes after leaving, PC Plan B walked back in and completely ignored us and went to his office. A lot can happen in 90 minutes and so while he was away, a rather large queue had formed outside his office and we were not part of it. As someone entered the office, we protested saying that we had been told we would be next. Plan B just raised his eyebrow, sneered and told us to wait. Eventually we got to sit down and draw a diagram of what had happened on the scrap bit of paper he gave us. He then decided that this bit of paper was ‘not nice enough’ so gave us a bit of A4 printer paper to draw on. Then we were given certain bits of paper to fill in. I had never seen these bits of paper before and since this had been Vadim’s first instance of being in a car accident (so sorry Vadim – only his 3^rd week in the job), we were both a bit clueless as to what to do. To cut (an already) long story short, we were told to stop asking questions and if we wanted to ask questions then we could join the end of the queue (which had grown even more) and he would be happy to answer them then. He also chastised us for using a black pen when he had completed the rest of the form in blue. By this point I was almost at breaking point and after almost 4 hours and a huge pile of work to get back to at the office, we just signed what we needed to do and were on our way.

Office 116 - where I spent most of my Monday

My first experience with the law in Moldova was over. Unlike Romania where you were frequently pulled over for no reason at all, I have been pretty lucky (yep, knocking on wood) and hopefully this won’t happen again. I’ve learned to look carefully and stop at every intersection (even if I have right of way) and to perhaps not get too enraged at my fellow drivers as it was my stupidity and lack of attention that caused an accident which could have been a whole lot worse. In fact, with the amount of behemoth trucks driving around Chişinau, we were extremely lucky. And finally, I really hope that guy from SOROS Moldova turns up to the reception next week otherwise I might just get a little bit vexed. 

KILLER DRAFT

The Wind That Shakes The Barley

There's a phenomenon known over here in Eastern Europe known as 'curent'. More lethal than smoking, more dangerous than a polar bear with toothache and more deadly than a bite on the arse from a black widow, it strikes the fear of God into people all over this part of the world. So petrified are they, some people are even too scared to open a window.

I've been wanting to write about this for a while but someone in Bucharest beat me to it (and wrote a much better article than I ever would have anyway).

Have a read of Ken Huegel's hilarious blog post here

CHANGE

A Change Is Gonna Come

Every time I have thought about my blog recently, I’ve tried to think of something different to do. Procrastinating is my favourite activity and since school I’ve been a world champion at it. As I’ve said before, I don’t believe in writing a blog for the sake of it and I certainly don’t want to ramble a lot of pretentious twaddle which I see a lot of in others’ online diaries. So I have to keep thinking of fresh ways in which to keep my blog relevant and contemporary. The best way I can think of doing this is to write the truth about what’s happening here and how things are changing within the Hospice.

When I accepted the job with Hospices of Hope, the whole concept of my becoming Country Manager was ‘to change’. According to Sheryl Crow, “a change would do you good”, and I’m an avid believer in this. If it’s not broke, don’t fix it but when things aren’t working then you need to rethink your strategy and come to a different solution.

There have been lots of changes in the Hospice over the last few months. We’ve recently seen quite a change in the personnel here and while this has caused a bit of unrest, I truly believe that while we’ve had some extremely difficult decisions to make, and through guidance and consultation, we have made the absolute best decisions for the future of Hospice Angelus. Having recently won a grant from the Bosch Foundation in Germany, we have hired a doctor, nurse and social worker to work in the non-cancer area of paediatric care here in Moldova. Sadly, this resulted in us losing one of our long-serving members of staff, however we are extremely happy with the new candidates we have and we are looking forward to watching these members of the medical team undergo their training and become valued members of the Hospice Angelus collective. Additionally, the decision was made to remove the post of PR & Events Manager from our organisation and replace this with Fundraising Co-ordinator. Our fundraising department is in huge need of expansion just now and while this decision was by no means taken lightly, we feel that we have made the right decision in creating this new post. In addition to this, we have said a fond farewell to our summer intern, Olea Brega, whose activities at the Hospice you can read about here. 

Not only have we seen a change to our personnel, but there has also been a noticeable change to our fundraising events. This year we have seen our charity ball raise four times the amount we expected and we have also reaped the benefits from a pool tournament plus the Hospice Angelus Big Charity Quiz which is now going to be a monthly fixture on our events calendar. For the remaining part of the year, we hope to be extremely busy organising the following:

• A football tournament for local businesses, organisations and embassies in September
• A concert and photo exhibition to mark International Hospice Day in October
• Participants for the Bucharest International Marathon on October 9^th
• A fashion show in November
• A special event to recognise our 10^th Anniversary in December
• A winter run in one of the main Moldovan wineries' tunnel

For further information about these events, you can see our events on our website or why not become a fan of  our Facebook page