Dear All,
Well we survived another spell in Moldova with the usual packed
itinery and mixed results. I hope to write a report this week so will not spell
out too much here. The weather was very hot again over 30°C most days with one
spectacular thunderstorm. Our routine projects with the Agriculture, Meal Deal
and Water all seem to be going well. The projects that we invested some legacy
money in last year all have problems. Politically the country is in chaos with
the fragile anti communist coalition wobbling as the PM resigned and the
Speaker was dismissed. There is a constant tug o’ war between those looking to
the west and those preferring Russia.
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Familiar transport
Financially most are struggling epitomised by one Burlacu family
with 7 children. The eldest 2 are bright enough to go to University but this
takes money so the father accepted a 2 year contract lorry driving in Russia.
Meanwhile the mother, Sveta got a visa to visit relatives in the USA and while
there found a 6 month job leaving the eldest daughter back home to look after
the rest of the family.
The Meal Deal is currently feeding 20 children with a waiting list
of 40. Some kids are so poor that they take dried bread home in their pockets
for their evening meal.
Meal Deal kids
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Star Grower
The Training Day went well with 41 attending. The violent storm took
place late on Sunday evening when we were taking the Youth Service. The
aftermath were completely flooded streets which we had to negotiate in pitch
darkness (no street lights) with hidden potholes knee deep in water.
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We visited several places that we had not been before including the
Duckers new village (they sent regards to Mary & Graham). They are close to
a couple of our pastors who need a bit of encouragement so hopefully they will
be able to work together somehow. We visited the school, the medical centre and
the mayor as well as the new water project and watched the village football
match where we witnessed the slightly unusual event of the referee pacing out
10 yards for a free kick then waving the wall closer as they were standing more
than 10 yards away!
Leova continues to look like a ghost town as the population has
shrunk dramatically from about 20,000 to 7,000.
In Chisinau we attended a 2.5 hour pre Easter (orthodox calendar)
service of 2.5 hours in Moldovan so did not understand a word! And with time to
kill before out flight visited the Botanic Gardens and the gigantic underground
wine store at Milestii Mici. It has 200 km of tunnels cut out of soft limestone
to rebuild Chisinau after the war. 50 km are lined with barrels and bottles of
wine but we had a plane to catch!
Serious consultations
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Burlacu at its Best
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Milestii Mici
I will put some photos in “Dropbox”
Love
Mike & Kate
1 comment:
The Guardian had an article this week on Moldova. I think yours more than measures up to that.
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