Lost in a land few would remember (03/26/08)

The classic souvenir from Russia or any of the countries of the former Soviet Union is a Matruska doll, one of those wooden dolls where smaller and smaller versions nest inside one another.

Sunday was a Matruska kind of day.

How else can I describe a day when I was observing observers observing observers as they observed an election?

By the time this is published, I should either be back home or on my way back home. But for the past two weeks, I've been back in Moldova, the former Soviet republic sandwiched between Ukraine and Romania.

That's where I dragged my wife and youngest daughter ten years ago on a Fulbright scholarship, and that's where this constantly surprising second career doing international free press development work began.

The trip was delayed by the late March snowstorm that hit the Saturday of the Jay County Chamber of Commerce Expo, so I'm a little discombobulated about the calendar. In fact, discombobulated is a pretty typical state of mind on a project like this.

Take that Sunday and my Matrushka kind of day.

It was a day off, and days off on a project like this tend to be boring and endless. So when the chance popped up to join a group from The Eurasia Foundation observing the Gagauzian elections, I quickly agreed.

Okay, that last sentence requires some explanation.

The Eurasia Foundation is an outfit doing work in numerous countries with funds provided by the National Endowment for Democracy, which come from U.S. taxpayers.

Gagauzia is another story. It's a section of southern Moldova that's home to an ethnic minority: The Gagauz people. The Gagauz are an unusual footnote in any history book. They are Turcic, meaning they're descended from Turkish people.

But they are Christian, unlike Turkey, which is Muslim.

Though they are a long way from Russia, they tend to speak Russian or Gagauz. Fewer of them speak Romanian, which is the dominant ethnic language in the country.

That's enough of a geography lesson.

The election observation session turned out to be an exercise in making sure our tax dollars are being spent wisely. Eurasia Foundation had provided funding to a Moldovan group that trained Gagauzian election observers. So on Sunday, the observers were being observed on behalf of Uncle Sam.

And I was along for the ride to observe the observers observing observers observing the elections.

See what I mean? It's like a Matrushka doll.

We set out in three teams. I rode with Sorin, the Eurasia Foundation country director. Lucia and Mircea were in the back seat.

No drive in Moldova is effortless, but this one was pretty brutal. Chuckholes, dirt road, cobbled road, no road.

But the conversation was great.

Mircea is working on his doctoral dissertation on corruption in Moldova. It has become endemic. And, unfortunately, it seems to be tolerated more than ever.

He had his opinions, but Lucia had twice as many.

Sorin tried to get in a word, and I kicked in my two bits.

It made the trip to the polling places go more quickly, and it was all good fun.

Until we saw the border.

Somehow, we'd missed a turn and were staring over a barrier at Ukraine.

And I found myself wondering that if being lost is one thing, isn't being lost in a remote region of a country that most people have never heard of another thing entirely?

It's a Matrushka.[[In-content Ad]]