Moldovan wells – between tradition and wild capitalism

 

 

From ancient times, digging the wells was not an occupation like any other.  A new well is a new source of water and the water is an indispensable condition for the life’s perpetuation. 

 

Today, in the Moldovan villages, the modern life style elements are more and more present, mostly because of the many migrants working in the Western Europe countries. Only in 2008, the remittances from the migrant workers represented the equivalent of the global revenues to the state budget (apr. 300 million Euros).  Thanks to this money – but also because of the life standards that became familiar to the Moldovans working in the so called “civilized world”, new houses, equipped with modern facilities, are built. Since the country side is lacking any water supply system, new and new wells are appearing in the Moldovan villages’ inhabitant. Now, the water is not just the miraculous liquid that made the life possible, but a practical necessity, issued from the requirements imposed by a new vision on hygiene and comfort.

 

The water is also a business for those who can recognize the economical opportunities triggered by the change. In a country where the fair play and the fair business are senseless words, several new companies have appeared, ready to make profits from the money earned in distant foreign countries: whoever wants to get a well has to do is to sign a contract with such a company. Through this contract the company is obliged to dig up to 15 meters in depth against a fix amount of money. If they find water, the beneficiary can consider him a lucky guy; if they don’t, the company takes away its traps and just leaves, without returning any penny from the money that were, of course, paid in advance. The water is a caprice of God and finding it is a matter of luck and other factors escaping to the human control – therefore, nobody can grant for something where the intervention of the divinity is decisive. On this background, where old superstitions are interfering with new mentalities, with occidental money and wild capitalism throbs, digging a weal is an adventure with a highly unpredictable result, whose costs can never be anticipated. The moral consequences of this adventure can put a brutal earmark on someone– those who want to have a well and don’t succeed to find water are liable of hard sins. Otherwise, why should god refuse to them the access to what represent the inner essence of the life?

Of course, the inhabitant of the Moldovan villages need water for having in the evening a warm shower, for installing washing machines and for cleaning the dishes in a sink instead of doing this in a old wash bowl. Everyone knows what the goal of this expensive adventure is, but despite this, a voice from the pasts still makes people think that the digging of a well is a sacred activity. Half a century of communism, teaching them that the religion is the opium of the nations and prohibiting the baptizing of their children could not annihilate this mentality. Pushed by a strange solidarity, all the neighbors put together their efforts to help those who want to make a well. Various gifts are made; someone brings a barrel of cheese and sour cream, another one – a canister of vegetable oil, a third one gives 10 euros. The well diggers have to be fed three times per day and the effort for doing this is and has to be a common one. Just like the life itself.

 

Sometimes this abundance has a strange effect on the well diggers, who seem to forget what their goal is, what they are paid for and who can’t stop from drinking huge quantities of alcohol. Therefore, they finish their working day exactly after three hours of eating and drinking, yes, mostly drinking. The shortening of the program is not too convenient for those who are paying them, but nobody dares to protest, except a young man who has been working in Portugal for years and who knows exactly how a working day looks like.

 

- Please, please don’t say anything. We don’t have to quarrel! the other family members are scolding t and imploring him.

 

When a well is made, one has to avoid any sorrow, to eliminate any negative energy; otherwise you are driving away the waters from the depths and luring the divine fury. The water means life; life means love, compassion and forgiveness.  If you don’t do so, you will not find water, I am told. This is an explanation that is convenient especially to the well diggers, who are big wine lovers and who are prolonging the whole process at least with one week – but there are few peasants in Moldova who have understood that time is money. It seems that, indeed, the eternity was born here, in these lost villages, where the lack of money is unpleasant, but it’s not a reason for anxiety. “We are not poor, we just did not start to work properly”, Vladimir Voronin, the communist president of the country has declared.

 

Even if the people start to work properly, one can not challenge God. The well diggers found a tick stratum of limestone, the dimensions of which can not be evaluated. They are digging for two days in it, but don’t advance too much:  because of the short working program, because of the out-dated technology and because of the God will, of course. Since the working program and the technology are not subject of change, the householder decides to fix the third aspect: she gets up yearly in the morning, and leaves for a monastery that is 50 km far away from her village, ready to engage in a direct negotiation with God. She makes a financial donation to the monastery,  is confessing to the monk her sins, who is blessing her and in the evening she returns at home. The church is the institution with the highest trust of the population in Moldova (77%).

 

One day later, the limestone stratum is over and the well diggers and householders are happy again. I get closer to the deep black whole, trying to evaluate its depth, and then I see their terrified faces, with the eyes wide shut, I can hear their desperate yells and I can see them coming near, like a  tartars horde. All I can distinguish from their yells is a clear No, roared on all possible intonations. I’m explained that the women are not allowed to watch into the well until this well is not sanctified by a priest. I hardly can retain myself from laughing, but I remember that I belong to a damned kind, that some of my predecessors were burn alive some hundred years ago; that we, the women, are bringing the bad luck and in the orthodox churches the women access in the altar is still forbidden. Fifty years of communism and almost 20 years of democracy could not remove the dark impurities from the women’s face…

 

There are prejudices and superstitions that are hardly removable, that are resisting in front of all the regimes and ideologies. Those who are less convenient are disappearing quicker. By example, nobody seems to remember that according to the tradition the well diggers should not receive money for their work. The water comes from god, he did not sell it to us and, consecutively, one can not make a business out of his gifts. All that the Moldavians remember today is that, if God does not want the water to run, you take politely your money and leave, because you can not challenge or contradict the good God! It’s a fair compromise between capitalism and divinity…

 

 

After two days, the water stream is blenching through the sticky argil. Everybody is happy, candles are kindled, big bred  are offered to the workers together with flashy jugs, made in China, and of course, with the last money. The owner of the house is turning around, with the happiness’ tears running on her cheeks, fearing to get closer to the pretext of her sadden joy, because, as I said before, the women are dirty. It looks like everybody has forgotten that all the money, from the first to the last penny, were paid from the remittances sent  back by her  daughter, who is taking care of an old man in Italy. The wicked tongues rumors that she is a prostitute, but who cares– the pennies have no smell.

Politics and survival near the Nistru river

For the people of Oliscani, a village situated near Dnester River, the political changes have always involved an urgent necessity for reorienting the survival strategies, for consolidating new networks and for identifying new opportunities,  although  most of the time these opportunities were illegal.  There is nothing surprising in this permanent disturbance of the law, as long as the economic opportunities are practically non existent and the only solutions near at hand are  migration and underground activities. The biggest part of the labor force left the village for working abroad, usually illegally, in Russia or in Western Europe. Those remaining at home work in agriculture, but since modern technology is missing and spirit of the market economy did not yet penetrate the mentality of the villagers, the gains from this activity are hardly enough for covering their basic needs. Sometimes, the attempt to assimilate the market economy rules generates several so called “negative economic externalities”, like it happened few years ago. Enlightened by a sudden “commercial” revelation, the villagers decided to plant water melons – the previous year, a local farmer did so and got a fortune by selling the water melons on the local market. The result was foreseeable for those familiar with the law of offer and demand – the big offer of water melons determined a very rapid decrease of their prices on the local market. Most of the farmers remained with tons of water melons and the best use they could imagine for this surplus was to prepare a local brandy, named “rachiu”. Once more, the result was predictable – paralyzed by the abundant and perfumed alcoholic beverage, the villagers succeeded to compromise the rest of the crop, like potatoes or  corn, that are vital for their feeding during the year.

When guaranteeing a decent life through decent means is an unrealistic task, the resistance against  illegality’s temptation seems almost impossible.

First of all, this temptation appeared under the name of “racket” activities – the brutal recuperations, the collecting of a “protection” tax and bloody vengeances were the typical way for getting rich and powerful. Becoming a racket was not too complicated –a dose of courage mixed with some taste for violence and some connections to highly hierarchically placed persons, like judges, prosecutors or policemen were enough. This way, a certain welfare was granted, even tough it had to be shared with those who were offering you protection.  Everything was allowed – eventually, one  could throw a bomb into  his grand mother ‘s house if  one was getting  too upset with her. This was done by a famous “racket”, dauntless former fighter  in Afghanistan before the collapse of the Soviet Union. He was acquitted without any penalty for his “uncontrolled reaction”.

Those having less courage and fewer  connections have found themselves other occupations. Before the exportation ban imposed to the separatist self proclaimed transnistrean region, the aluminum plant from Ribnitza (30 km from Oliscani) was exporting its products all over the world, from the USA to EU member states.  The collection of scrap-iron represented the favorite villagers’ occupation. As a rule, the policemen and the local authorities were collecting the iron and then selling it illegally in Transnistria with the support and under the protection  of the authorities from all over the country. The “gold mine” of the village was an ex missile base that the soviets began to build in the neighborhood of Oliscani and which was abandoned when the soviet empire broke down. At the departure, the huge bunkers, hidden deeply in the soil, have been inundated with water for blocking their access. These bunkers remained in the wood,  easy to find for all the fortune seekers which have ventured in their sinuous labyrinths, trying to dismember doors, stairs and all the iron installations, in order to sell the metal to the collectors. Their dead bodies are still putrefying under the deep cold waters. Captive of the devastation fever, the villagers have destroyed everything that could be destroyed. The generalized madness offered to some of the villagers an appropriate occasion for setting free their creative energies. Inspired by various pieces of metal rolling over in its neighbor‘s yard, a metal collector policeman, the “old uncle Ion” was carried by his fantasies. The few pieces of metal, which he has bought from his neighbor, have triggered several phantasmagorical  projects. First, uncle Ion intended to open a forge, but then, due to the project’s complexity, he has abandoned the idea, in favor of an odder one – a huge swing trailed by horses that he wanted to locate right in the colorless center of the village. Convinced by his son that the idea of a swing is a non- inspired and a non-modern one, he orientated his creative potential toward the essence of the modernity itself – electric power. At that time, the country was passing through a serious energy crisis, so the old man had bought from his neighbor a metallic turbine, aiming to build a hydro-electric power station in the calm waters of the neighboring ravine. After announcing his project to everybody, uncle Ion started to make the electricity distribution plans:  to  those neighbors: whom he liked, he offered unlimited cheap electricity, to those whom he didn’t like the energy was sold at higher prices and only for few hours per day. A special category was represented by the stout ladies, with white, plentiful flesh, exempted from all their sins and supposed to receive electrical energy for free and without interruption, because the old  man had an weakness for  fat women.

When the exports from Transnistria to the western world were interdicted, people had to face hard times again. Some of them have sold their lands to an ex kolkhoz director, for symbolical prices but which were vital for their survival. The “rackets” were in a difficult situation too: the victory of the Communist party in 2000 was the beginning of an intense purification process, eliminating the criminal elements at the local level. Most of the rackets were put into jails, others succeeded to leave the country, moving to Ukraine or Russia. This classical attempt of “violence monopolization” by the state could have represented a step ahead toward the country’s modernization, but the new informal networks  quickly replaced the old ones.

These new networks have been settled around the new « gold mine » – the cannabis.  Protected by the new mayor of the village, of course a member of the Communist party, the villagers succeeded to set going a whole mechanism of producing and selling this crop. The mayor’s sister, together with her son, a student at the police school, were the leaders of the network. The cannabis was bought for a price next to nothing from the producers and then embarked and sold for a much higher price in Transnistria or in the north of the country, taking the way toward the East. The participating villagers made modest profits, the chiefs of the network made fortunes.

These few not participating in the cannabis trade though, the most religious villagers and the ones missing the authorities protection, were gathering rancor.  

The envy was doubled by the morally and religiously nourished  hate toward the means used for the enrichment. Although the religion is not playing a major role in people’s lives, some of its precepts are deeply enrooted into their mentality, representing a natural barrier against “modern perversities”.

Few months before the 2007 local elections, the sister of the mayor was arrested by the police, after being caught red-handed during a drug transaction. The arrest just brought to light what people already knew or rumored; they started to grumble – since the communist mayor came to power, nothing had been done, nothing had been built, everything was in ruins, devastated or abandoned.  The mayor started the coming electoral campaign with a serious hindrance, generated by the frustration of those who were not involved in the cannabis business. His efforts for granting himself another seat for the next 4 years were desperate and impressive, directly proportional to the money he has accumulated from patronizing the cannabis dealers.  He has organised several big parties with vodka and delicious food; he has arranged regular trips with his own bus to the county capital, helping people, potential voters, to get their ID cards, in order to participate to the elections. 

With high chances to get elected, Maria Gh. , the “Our Moldova Alliances (AMN)” candidate (an opposition party) was the main opponent of the communist mayor. But even she was within an inch to renounce when facing the reckless and disruptive wastage of her political enemy. The atmosphere had become tensioned; the sweat was trickling on the fronts of the candidates and their supporters.

Plucking up courage, a lady working as a civil servant at the local mayoralty elaborated a targeted strategy in order to encourage the votes for the communists. Since immemorial times, her mother was keeping in her house’s garret a red flag, with the scythe and the hammer on it, and a pair of puffed pants, from those the men used to wear at the beginning of the soviet era. The lady washed the dusty pants and the flag, packing them elegantly and then putting on the parcel the mayoralty’s stamp. She put inside a small dedication:  “From Vladimir Voronin[1], with deep gratitude for your loyalty toward the Communist Party” and was ready to send the parcel to her uncle, a devoted voter of the communists. No matter that the parcel was coming from the Oliscani’s mayoralty, with its stamp – there is no big difference in a villager’s eyes between the stamp of the Presidency and the stamp of the mayoralty. The parcel has never been sent, because the plan was by chance discovered by the mother of the inventive lady working in the city hall – her mother was the sister of the men to whom the flattering and fraudulent dedication was addressed. She hysterically protested against the initiative, fearing that her brother would die from a heart attack when receiving the package – happiness can also kill!

No matter what ways the support of the campaigners took, the result of the elections showed a clear preference for Maria Gh, the candidate of AMN, stressing the economical, but also the moral frustration of those who were not involved in the cannabis business.  

Furious because of his defeat, the communist ex-mayor launched his attacks  against  those who have committed the imprudence of getting involved into an activity patronized by him (cannabis), but who have also voted or supported his opponent.  Who voted whom he discovered quite simply:  The ballots have been printed on an extremely low quality semi-transparent paper –shouldn’t it be so in a poor country like Moldova? The voting procedure says that after expressing their preferences in the voting cabin, the voters must give the ballots to the electoral commission for stamping them on the opposite side. On the semi-transparency of the paper created the precondition for a total transparency of the electoral preferences, in a country where all the rest of the democratic procedures are lacking any transparency.

At the end the representatives of the Communist Party, members of the electoral commission, have made a whole list of those that have not been voting with the ex-mayor. The next step consisted in denouncing to the legal authorities those “traitors” who were cultivating the cannabis.

The penalties started to run; an accused man “had gone mad” and had to be sent to a madhouse; hypothesis about possible punishments and possible bribes started to spread.

Rumors say in a neighbor village the communists have cut the barber of a priest who proved to be a “traitor” and voted “incorrectly”. The change in power opened the doors to new strategies and new networks– the old ones already have started to devour themselves. New alliances are planned, new intrigues are born. The economic is still trailed by the politics and both are rapidly sliding beyond the border of the legality.

In a country where bare survival is a crucial matter, the imagination runs feverish and the rule of the law – is outside of the law.

 

---

[1] The president of the country and the president of the Communist Party