Rural Moldova is a part of Europe where life rarely moves faster than a horse can trot, as David Atkinson discovers
Maria Chebotari breaks off from sweeping the family grave and looks me in the eye. ‘I was born here and I’ve lived here all my life. My husband died nine years ago. My daughter is in Moscow and my son in Romania,’ says the 68-year-old grandmother, placing a garland of knotted bread, decorated with candles, on the family tomb. ‘All the young people are leaving,’ she adds. ‘Now only the old people remain to keep the traditions alive.’
It is a crisp day in the village of Ivancha, rural, central Moldova, and old women such as Chebotari are stooping over the graves of deceased relatives in worn head-scarves and grubby aprons to make their offerings for the annual day of remembrance. Many, like Chebotari, who clutches the hand of her seven-year-old grandson, Andrei, are increasingly alone.
With a GNI per capita of $1,080 (World Bank, 2006) and an average salary of $80 per month for people working in the primarily agrarian villages, the lure of seeking better-paid work in Europe has resulted in rural depopulation on a massive scale. The rich, black soil remains ideal for growing organic produce but the workforce has been devastated.
In Ivancha alone well over a quarter of the working population has deserted the village to seek work in popular destinations, such as Russia, Turkey, Italy and Israel. Of the 800-odd people left in the village, many are grandparents looking after young children while parents send money back home.
‘Many young people leave and I don’t blame them. They have to find ways to make money,’ says Chebotari, who receives a monthly pension of around $50 and is paid a monthly rent of 350kg of wheat and 50kg of sunflowers for the 1.5ha of land she leases to the local farming association. ‘In Soviet times life was definitely better. People had jobs and food was very cheap compared to wages. Today there is more freedom – but freedom has brought divisions,’ she says.
Moldova, landlocked between Romania and the Ukraine, remains a little-known and far-flung enclave of eastern Europe. Having declared independence in 1991 following the collapse of the Soviet Union, it was beset by internal conflicts in the early 1990s, resulting in a bloody civil war in the Transdniester region – a place where Russian troops still perform a peacekeeping role. Now with the erstwhile communist interior minister, Vladimir Voronin, installed as the democratically elected president, it is slowly opening up to tourism.
Since 2007, visitors have been able to get a visa on arrival, while direct flights now connect the capital, Chisinau, to London’s Stansted airport. A couple of UK tour operators even have a Moldova programme, albeit one often incorporated into a wider tour of the region with the Ukraine or Romania.
In recent years the internet has done more to influence changes in the country than the policies of perestroika ever did, but change has also magnified the divisions between the urban, Russian-backed élite and the rural, subsistence-level poor, and precipitated the growth of people trafficking.
I had come to see first-hand the effects of change on life in the villages. After two days in Chisinau, with its numerous mobile phone stores, internet cafés and designer-brand boutiques, I hired a car and driver one drizzly morning to head some 40km north along the main highway to Criuleni.
Having passed a stark, Soviet-throwback Chisinau sign and snaked along the wine route past the well-regarded wineries of Cricova and Cojusna, now besieged by wealthy Russians with an eye for a bargain, we turn off the main road and head into the mountains. With its dirt-track lanes and weather-beaten crucifix, featuring Christ atop a skull-and-cross-bones emblem, Ivancha is typical of life in rural Moldova: sleepy, rustic and eerily quiet. But a surprise awaits me in the village shop. While many young women are leaving the village, 30-year-old Inna Ryabaia and her daughters Lena, six, and Xenia, seven, are very much at home.
‘I was 10 at the time of perestroika. In this village we still can’t afford the cost of gas installation and there is no water supply, just the well. We have to boil the water before we can use it,’ says Ryabaia, busying herself with arranging new stock among the sweets, bottles of liquor and household toiletries.
‘We earn a little, but I decided it was better to keep the family together than be apart. My disabled grandparents live in a nearby village and they needed looking after. Besides,’ she casts her eyes down to the counter, ‘my husband left to work in Moscow. The marriage failed.’
Ryabaia says that some of her friends have gone abroad, but if trafficking is rife, it is not openly discussed. ‘Plenty of girls go to Turkey or Cyprus and come back to the village with money. They say they worked in a bar. Of course there are rumours, but people don’t talk openly about trafficking,’ she says.
Back in the car we head about 15km northwest to the village of Butuceni, part of the settlement of Orheiul Vechi, one of the primary tourism sights in central Moldova thanks to its haunting cave monastery.
In the 500-person-strong village the only disturbance is the sound of cockerels and smell of smoked meat in the air. As the sun emerges from behind brooding clouds, I climb up the hill behind the village to the Orheiul Vechi monastery complex, where the head Orthodox monk, Efimia, cares for his spiritual domain with a long white beard, piercing blue eyes and flowing black robes.
‘When people come to pray I see the problems in their eyes. Children alone, husbands, whose wives are working abroad, turning to drink. Once you lose your connection with God, everything in life goes wrong,’ he says, as we light candles in the half-light of the tiny chapel carved into the limestone cliffs.
But, while we are heading back down the stone steps onto the main drag of the village, our eyes are drawn to some elaborately carved wooden gates, which look rather incongruous amid the ramshackle entrances and dilapidated façades of the neighbours. My guide strikes up a conversation with the owner and we are invited inside, picking our way through the building site of a garden, to sip fresh coffee with honey on the patio, where a wood-fired oven glows and corn hangs out to dry around the hearth. Anatol Botnaru, it transpires, has big plans for Butuceni: tourism.
Botnaru, who has made his fortune in Moldova’s burgeoning wine trade, has moved out from Chisinau and plans to buy 15 houses around the village, transforming them into upscale guesthouses. At €100 ($140) for two people per night on a full-board basis, his plan seems ambitious, but Botnaru, clearly a man with connections in Moscow, is sanguine.
‘I think tourism will become this country’s focus given Moldova’s location between Russia and western Europe. A period of transition from one system to another brings a lot of changes to people’s lives and the post-Soviet times were hard for village people,’ he says, reclining on his chair, a huge, hand-woven carpet, a symbol of wealth and prestige, sprawling across the wall behind him.
‘I was born in a village like this. I wanted to come back to the countryside to bring the traditions back to life,’ he smiles, draining his coffee cup. ‘I will set an example for other people to follow. My dream is to change the economic situation of the village without destroying the natural environment.’
Could a fledgling eco-tourism industry be the saviour of rural Moldova? Maybe. My entrepreneurial guide has set up a package whereby tourists can stay on her family’s village farmstead. It is a low-tech experience with a hole-in-the-ground toilet and no shower, but the €30 price includes her mother’s home-cooked dinner, using local, organic produce. A return transfer to Chisinau in her father’s prized Audi costs €60.
Back in Ivancha, grandmother Chebotari, having attended to the graves, invites us back to her simple house for a glass of apple juice and a chance to look at photos of the diaspora of her family. Talk of homestays comes too late to stop them dispersing across Europe, but her grandson’s generation may yet see the benefits.
‘My place is waiting for me here,’ she nods towards the blue dome of the village church opposite. ‘The only place I’m going,’ she flashes a toothless grin, ‘is the cemetery.’
HOW TO GET THERE
Explore offers a 15-day Moldova, Crimea & Kiev tour from $2,500 per person, including flights, 12 nights’ B&B in small hotels, two nights on a sleeper train and the services of an Explore tour leader. www.explore.co.uk
WHERE TO STAY
To go local, independent travellers should consult local guides Natasha (www.domasha.net) and Marisha (www.marisha.net) for help with ground arrangements prior to travel.
They will arrange a homestay in a family apartment with a private room and shared bathroom/kitchen facilities for around $15 per night. Add a home-cooked meal – typically polenta, salad and pork fried in breadcrumbs, preceded by a steaming bowl of Moldovan borsch, plus wine – for an extra $20 per night.
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