Many Americans are oblivious to the existence of this beautiful eastern European country, measuring about 10,000 square miles and sandwiched between Romania and Ukraine. Though it is one of the poorest countries in Europe, it is a place rich in culture and with an intriguing history. Consider a country where another independent country, that does not officially exist, exists within it. Imagine a place where the heart of the Soviet Union still survives nearly two decades after its official demise. The government controls the local TV stations and in-patient care is virtually an assembly line operation. However, regardless of the abject poverty and overbearing government control, it is here that I encountered some of the most hospitable people I have ever met and gorgeously lush scenery that many people believe is a thing of fairytales. It was in this tiny country of 4 million people where I had the opportunity to witness a stunning spectacle featured in the 2007 Guinness Book of World Records. Moldova truly is one of the undiscovered treasures of Eastern Europe. Below is a collection of short stories that I considered the highlights of my experience in Moldova, though I feel that in themselves, they cannot do the entirety of the experience justice.
April 20, 2008
We get in the van, and Nick our driver, begins our speedy journey to the hotel. He quickly accelerates far more quickly than I thought this vehicle was capable of doing and I instinctively reach over to fasten my seat belt. My eyes scan the seat for the buckle but I soon notice that they are located under the seat cover and there is no way to access them. “I guess they don’t want us to wear our seat belts,” I conclude. Natalia, our tour guide, who is seating in the front passenger seat immediately responds, “It has only been in the last few months that seat belts have been compulsory in Moldova. Now there is a $2 fine for those who are caught not wearing them.”
As we speed along one of the main avenues of Chisanau, we pass many buildings and multi-story apartment complexes that are not quite dilapidated but far from luxurious. I feel fortunate to live where I do. As I observe one of the apartment complexes, with laundry hanging out of the window, I listen to Natalia mention that there have already been 80 automobile related deaths this year, “Probably, partly from people not wearing seatbelts,” she says. As we fly down the main avenue, we notice a pedestrian begin crossing the street, not 30 feet in front of us, and she walks directly in front of our van. Everyone in the car is completely silent, our eyes are fixed on the very brave (or foolish) woman in front of us, and the only thing we can hear is the screeching of the tires on the asphalt as we come to a sudden halt about eight feet from her. As she walks by the front of the van, she locks eyes with our driver and gives him an icy glare, as if it is his fault for getting so close. She then continues on her way as if nothing had happened. All of us sit in the car in silence for a moment, pondering the events that have just occurred, briefly comment on her astounding audacity, and then continue on our way.
April 21, 2008
Upon entering the operating room, I am instantly struck by the contrast of this one and those I have seen in the United States. Beside the fact that the room is extremely crowded with medical students, doctors, and assistants, there are two operating tables side by side. There are no respirators, blood pressure monitors, or anything else that one would consider a banality in a modern O.R. Lying on one of the tables is a young woman who has lacerated the tendons in her wrist by putting her hand through a window. My father sits down across from Dr. Buzo (one of the head hand surgeons at the hospital) on the other side of the patient’s extended arm. “This is what we call spaghetti wrist” my father comments. It does not take long to understand why, with the tendons jumbled in no particular order.
Carefully, my father and Dr. Buzo, work to attach sutures to each segment of tendon above the laceration and below it. They then unite each segment with its appropriate counterpart and close the wound. On the opposite table, a knee surgery quickly took place and the patient was wheeled out of the room. When another patient is brought in shortly after and nothing is done to the bed except a sheet change, I promptly learn that aseptic technique is thought to be relatively superfluous here. Then I see that the surgeons keep their same gowns and simply change their gloves.
Now I am certain that aseptic technique is superfluous here. The new patient lies down on the operating table, that is probably still warm, and she is sedated with an I.V of valium to prepare her for the metal rods that will soon be driven through her knee. An incision is made over her knee, and the skin and soft tissue are pulled back and even I can tell this one is in terrible condition. It is overgrown with granulation tissue and the joint is essentially immobile.
The surgeon chips away the overgrowth of tissue surrounding the knee, and he removes the deteriorated patella. After dragging the cord on the floor, then picking it up, the scrub nurse hands the surgeon a drill one might find at Home Depot and he drives four long screws through the tibia and into the femur. “Aren’t you going to take X-rays?” asks my father. “No need” says the surgeon, just before he jams one of the screws into another, forcing him to reorient everything and start over. I am no expert but I have a feeling this patient is not going to be very happy when her nerve block and valium levels subside.
April 23, 2008
I follow my father and several of the other doctors down the hallway of the republican hospital, one of the other hospitals located near our hotel. We have already visited several patient rooms and we are about to enter another one. We enter the room and it does not take me long to realize that I have seen this patient before. My father had examined her hand two days ago and agreed to operate.
She is young and very attractive, and for a moment, I forget why she is here. She greets us and then allows my father to reexamine her hand.
She has already had four very unsuccessful surgeries, and each one seems to have exacerbated her hand’s previous condition.
Four years ago, she had lacerated the tendon in her middle finger. The surgeons had attempted to repair the tendon and extend her finger but each time it would fold back into her palm. Because of the inability to use her finger, her proximal interphalangeal joint has dissolved and her phalanges have fused together leaving her middle finger tightly folded into her palm and completely immobile, consequently rendering the rest of her hand virtually useless.
After his evaluation of the girl’s hand, my father informs the other doctors of his plan of action and explains to the girl what he intends to do, while Sergio (one of the residents) translates. Her face lights up at prospect of gaining partial use of her hand that has been out of commission for four years. We leave the patient’s room to prepare for the operation and the girl is taken to the O.R so she can be prepped of the procedure as well.
We enter the O.R, finding the girl sedated and my father and the two other doctors position themselves around her extended arm. My father orients the hand and makes the first incision on the dorsal side of her middle finger. “Do we have a saw?” asks my father. “No, just these” answers one of the doctors as he hands him a mallet and osteotome. The other doctors help support the hand while he forcefully drives the osteotome with mallet several times until the bone has finally been cut and he removes the small piece of the phalange. He repeats the process a couple more times until he is satisfied with the amount of bone removed and the finger is partially extended. He properly positions the finger and one of the doctors uses a drill to drive three pins into the bone of her finger to act as an internal splint.
I look over at the girl, wondering if she feels any of this painful-looking procedure, but fortunately, she is sleeping peacefully. My father then stitches the finger closed to complete the procedure, which at this point, resembles a filleted shrimp. “At least she can use her hand now,” comments my father, “I hope she’s happy with it.”
April 24, 2008
His hand is grossly disfigured and completely crippled by gout. All of the joints in his hand are gargantuan, like swollen balloons. His finger mobility is so severely compromised that he cannot even touch his fingers to his thumb.
The patient has been given a local anesthetic block to inhibit the perception of pain in his arm and hand as well as an I.V of valium to make the experience more enjoyable. He has been drifting in and out of consciousness for the entirety of the operation. His eyes sluggishly scan the room before dozing off again and continuing his symphony of snoring. My father and the other hand surgeon, Dr. Buzo, have been scraping out the Uric Acid deposits, from the areas adjacent to the joints, with what looks like a miniature ice cream scoop removing tiny spoonfuls of cottage cheese. They scrape, irrigate, remove, and repeat, moving from finger to finger.
As the process continues, another doctor walks over from the adjacent operating table, where he is performing a non-union clavicle repair. His gloves are completely saturated in blood and he hovers over the patient’s head, within eight inches, to observe my father and Dr. Buzo at work.
Just at that moment, the patient slowly opens his eyes to see a very bloody pair of gloves within inches of his face. Initially, there is virtually no reaction except for a blank stare at the bloody latex. However, as each second passes, the man’s eyes begin to open wider and wider until they begin to appear to bulge from his eye sockets like a bug. His facial expression, apart from his eyes, is identical to what it has been, a blank stare.
His eyes are open as wide as they will possibly open and the fear he must be experiencing is blatantly evident. The observing doctor returns to his adjacent table and resumes his work and instantly, the man’s eyes close, allowing him to return to his barbiturate-induced bliss and the symphony of snores to continue.
April 28, 2008
There are men, carrying AK-47s and wearing camouflage, standing guard at the border. I see barbed wire barricades and more men dressed in the traditional uniforms of the Soviet military.
If we tried to run, we would have no chance of escaping but fortunately, for our sake, we are not running. We are waiting at the interface of a country that does not officially exist and the country that does officially exist containing it.
Transnestria, a small strip of land along the eastern edge of Moldova, has its own unofficial independent government, currency, and economy. Though it is officially contained in Moldova, Russian is the official language and it is highly recommended to speak such.
The guards approach our car and our driver exits and opens the trunk. The officer inspects the trunk and then comes to my side of the car, and opens the door. He says something to me in Russian and Natalia translates, “What is in your backpack?” she says. “Just a jacket and a camera,” I answer, as I open my bag. “No marijuana or drugs?” asks the guard. My father and I just laugh in response and a smile comes across the guards face. He laughs and tells us that we have a good sense of humor before walking away.
After finishing the formalities at the border, we embark on our journey into the city of Tiraspole, the capital. When we crossed the border, I genuinely believed that the year was 2008 but somewhere along the short stretch of countryside between the border and the city, I have become distinctly less certain.
I feel like we have traveled, not just a short stretch of road but also thirty years into the past when the Soviet Union was very much alive. The fine work of a communist regime is ubiquitous. Dilapidated apartments and half-finished buildings are not in short supply. A roadside guard signals us to pull over our car at his station and our driver stops the car and opens the trunk again.
After a quick search, we pass further into the city. Along the way, Natalia points out a 12-foot solid metal gate, the entrance to a military base, where photographs are strictly prohibited. Guards stand watch, giving us a glance of alert indifference as we pass by. My father and I joke with Natalia that we are going to take pictures. “
No, please don’t!” Natalia interjects, aware that we are joking but still wanting to demonstrate the gravity of the situation, “They take that very seriously here.” She goes on to tell us a story about a group of Japanese tourists who were arrested for photographing a beautiful soccer stadium that we had passed a few minutes earlier.
We move further into the city and stop at a giant monument dedicated to Vladimir Lenin. He looks so majestic, with his cape hanging back as if it were blowing in the wind. Across the street is a monument dedicated to the soldiers who died in conflict in the Afghanistan during the final years of the Soviet Era. It is a statue of a soldier standing tall, despite the anguish in his face and nearly destroyed uniform, a powerful tribute to Soviet tenacity during trying times. There is a T-34 Soviet tank as part of the monument with an eternal flame nearby.
As we walk down the sidewalk, I hear the familiar sound of an accordion. I see a woman playing and I photograph her as we pass.
Instantly she stops playing and gives me the unmistakable stare of someone expecting a tip, but having no tip to give, I avoid eye contact and continue walking. I feel the tension ease as the distance between us increases and I finally break free of her deathly gaze.
We briefly visit a church and then continue walking up the street where we see another monument to Vladimir Lenin and a row of giant photographs of important people of Tiraspole, one of whom is the president with the unforgettable name, Smirnoff.
A group of younger men walks by us, and when I notice that two out of three of them have mullets, my suspicions about our time travel have been confirmed. We walk a little bit further and see a statue of Yuri Gagarin (the first man in space) before our one-hour time limit is almost expired and we need to be leaving or we are not going to be allowed to leave. We drive to the border, have our car searched twice more, and cross back into a country that does exist. Driving back to the hotel, I open up my passport to check if they stamped it at the border. I flip through the pages and find nothing of Transnestria. I guess I am not surprised.
The funny thing is that this unofficial country would annihilate Moldova if they went to war. An even more humorous aspect about this country is that Russia indirectly aids one of its own enemies through it. The Russians provide a great deal of funding for Transnestria, who sells weapons to Chechnya, who is at war with Russia.
April 30, 2008
Imagine a network of tunnels 250 feet under ground, wide enough for two-way traffic, nearly twenty feet tall, and approximately 120 miles long. Now imagine that 34 miles of that is used to store 2 million bottles of wine, almost enough for every person in the entire city. This is exactly what the Melicii Mic Winery is. It is not only the largest winery in Europe, but also the largest winery in the world.
We drive into the tunnel and notice the daylight begin fading behind us. I immediately realize how easy it would be to get lost down here if we did not know where we were going. Natural light disappeared shortly after entering the tunnel network, now there is only dim lighting from the lamps on the wall.
As we drive deeper into the tunnel, we pass enormous barrels standing 10 feet tall where wine is stored before it is put into bottles. Every three years, someone must climb into the barrels through a tiny door and clean them. I notice the size of the door and know that I could never even fit my head through the hole. I become claustrophobic at the thought of the work that the barrel-cleaners must do. We stop the car, and walk down a passageway with shelves of wine bottles and our guide shows us a secret wine chamber with an automatic door used by Gorbachev in the 1980s.
We see nothing but shelves and shelves of wine bottles, stacked on one another down each stretch of tunnel. Some bottles have been sitting around since 1968. We arrive to a small set of steps leading to a 3-ton stone door, which is the entrance to the first chamber of the wine tasting hall. We see pictures of the presidents of Ukraine, Moldova, Poland, Romania, and former president Jimmy Carter, among others.
My father and I both notice that the president of Ukraine appears rather disgruntled and we simultaneously conclude that he has not had enough wine. We see a sequence of masks and the guide tells us a story about how the god of wine made grape juice and forgot about it. It fermented into wine but did not know and he drank it, becoming intoxicated in the process.
The first mask is the god sober and wearing a hat. His features are sharp and his horns are uniform. The next mask is the god after he has had too much wine. His horns become wavy and uneven, and his eyes droop. We enter the dining room with a sign-in-book, the Guinness book of world records, a map of the winery, and a table with seating for 80 people with a picture of King Stephan the Great at the end of it. We taste three different kinds of wine, a red, a white, and a sweet wine. Each one is delicious! All of them are very sweet and light, with just a hint of dryness. The sweet wine almost tasted like juice. We emerge from the tunnel, content with our mild state of inebriation and daylight strikes our faces, stinging my eyes in the process. We go to the gift shop, look out the window into the tunnel, eye some of the wine bottles, and I notice that one is for sale for $14,500. “That better be the most delicious wine on the planet at that price.” I think to myself.
In a country where the average citizen earns barely $200 a month and gas is priced at over $4 per gallon, it is no surprise that its people face economic hardships.
Though their operating room and health care facilities are deplorable by modern standards, the doctors and nurses truly do a good job with the limited resources and funding that they have available to them. Even something as mundane as Botulinum toxin, which is used frequently in the United States, remains unattainable through a combination of financial limitations and lack of knowledge. When my father first explained to the Moldovan doctors about the use of Botox to treat chronic pain, they were slightly interested, but less interested than if it was a surgical treatment option. When he told them that it costs about $600 per vial, every single one of them laughed hysterically, and they concluded that Botox will never be used for treatment in Moldova.
Toward the end of our time there, the doctors, especially the younger ones, became more receptive to the knowledge and techniques my father had to offer them. Unfortunately, the Soviet mentality is still very much alive in many of them and change is not on the agenda.
Within the first few minutes of arriving in Moldova and meeting Natalia, our tour guide, we had gotten on the subject of doctors and medicine. She had mentioned that people do not trust doctors in Moldova because they tend to misdiagnose people’s conditions and she tells us a story about a friend whose father died because of a misdiagnosis.
She tells us about how she prefers to concoct home remedies of herbs and spices to ease her illnesses, such as the flu. She calls it “Isvar” which consists of boiled wine combined with sugar, cinnamon, and pepper. “Only drink it at home”, she says, “because you get really drunk and fall asleep but when you wake up you feel better.”
Maybe one day, things will change. Maybe one day, the average citizen will trust doctors. I hope that for their sake, they took what my father had to teach them.
