Chance to re-connect members of 'family' (10/11/06)

It's Day One.

I'm jet-lagged. I'm tired. And I'm trying to figure out who the heck I am working with.

My interpreter is a young woman named Liliana. She's about the same age as our twins, so I'm comfortable pretty quickly.

The important thing, since we're going to be working together for two weeks, is to make sure she's comfortable as well.

Over lunch at a place near the art museum in Chisinau, I do my best at small talk.

Tell me about yourself, I say.

She tells me the reason her English is so polished is that she was a foreign student at an American high school. It was in Lake City, Texas, she says.

Freedom Support Act? I ask.

Yes, says Liliana, referring to the program which has exposed hundreds of former Soviet and Eastern European students to Western standards. Many visiting students at Jay County High School have attended under the program.

Great, I say. Some of my best interpreters over the past several years were Freedom Support Act students.

In fact, I mumble, I had a great interpreter in the Republic of Georgia back in 2000, who was a Freedom of Support Act kid.

Liliana is interested.

There were about 14 foreign exchange students that year at my school in Lake City, she says. In fact, there was a girl from Georgia.

Before I know it, I'm asking what should be a stupid question.

"Was her name Tamuna Kvartskhelia?" I ask.

Now, think about it: There are dozens of Freedom Support Act foreign students visiting America to study each year. They're spread all over the U.S. And the program has been going on for years.

Why on earth should I think that my interpreter in Moldova in 2006 has anything to do with my interpreter two time zones away in the Republic of Georgia in 2000?

It's simply inconceivable. (Some would say it's inconceivable that I'd remember the name of a translator from six years ago.)

And yet, Liliana answers: "Yes."

You're kidding, I respond. The Tamuna Kvartskhelia I know was from western Georgia, a city called Kutaisi. Are we talking about the same person?

"Yes," says Liliana.

It turns out they were good buddies that year in Texas. The collapse of the Soviet Union was recent, and the students from the old U.S.S.R. stuck together, particularly in alien Texas.

I don't know about you, but the "small world" aspect of all this made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

And it gets better.

Liliana Ursu of Moldova and Tamuna Kvartskhelia of Georgia had kept in touch by mail after their U.S. experience. But finally, the postal systems were such a mess that their letters didn't make it through.

Now, thanks to the Internet, and the strange crossings of path with a small town newspaper guy from Indiana far from home, they're in touch again.

Tamuna had been keeping me posted over the years about her job changes, her marriage, and the birth of her lovely little girl Lille. It was a snap to contact her when I returned, make sure she and Liliana were in fact old friends, and put the two of them in touch by sharing e-mail addresses.

When you do the sort of work I've been doing, your interpreters - the best of them - become adopted members of the family. Tamuna, Liliana, Denis, Anton, Iulian, Dmitry, and Elena rank among the best of them.

What could be better than to reunite a couple of them who had lost touch with one another?[[In-content Ad]]