TIRASPOL, MOLDOVA — A Moldovan journalist I met joked that three days in his country was only long enough to understand the wine. I’d argue it’s only long enough to find a reason to stay longer.
Moldova earned a spot in the American news stream for a brief period in April. Disputed election results and accusations of fraud culminated in a political uprising.
Protesters stormed parliament, three people died, and the world’s first “Twitter Revolution” was underway — though Twitter’s actual role in the demonstration remains questionable.
By the end of the week, news outlets had lost interest, and Moldova quickly disappeared from their collective news feeds. As a result, many Americans — myself included — forgot about this small Eastern European country.
That is until two months ago, when I added Chisinau, Moldova’s capital, to the itinerary of cities I’d visit during my six-week European excursion.
Before my June 14 departure, I spent several nights researching Moldova, Europe’s poorest country.
What I found in news archives, YouTube videos and Wikipedia entries was equally fascinating and disturbing. I read stories about economic struggle, a national identity crisis, corrupt government officials and nearly every form of illegal trafficking, including human, organ, weapons and even Tyson chicken.
Yet no amount of research could have prepared me for my trip to Kirileni, a small village in Western Moldova. Dasha, a young Russian I met on the train from Kiev, Ukraine, to Chisinau invited me there to visit her and her grandparents.
I took her up on the offer and arrived in Kirileni six days later. Of course there were the obvious signs of poverty and rural life: rutted dirt roads, farm animals wandering freely and houses made from steel roofs and mud bricks. But it was a peaceful village with few signs of corruption, political unrest or trafficking — a place of little interest to most people.
Dasha and her family were warm and gracious hosts, as equally interested in me as I was in them. Though their living standards fell far short of most Americans’, they appeared content. Dasha even boasted that while many villagers still rode horse and wagons, her grandfather had not one but two cars.
This quaint and peaceful side of Moldova is rarely presented in American mass media. To experience it, you must go there yourself.
That’s not to say I expect everyone who reads this to catch the earliest flight to Chisinau. But in a time when an infinite amount of information is available at the click of a mouse, it’s easy to substitute the virtual world for the real world.
No number of YouTube videos, Wikipedia entries or Flikr photo galleries could adequately represent Kirileni. The same holds true for any village, town or city in any country anywhere in the world.
When it comes to understanding the world, it took me a village to realize there is no substitute for firsthand experience. We must discover it for ourselves.