Oh Transnistria … you sure are a mystery-a? Let it be known … Month 11 still has some tricks up its sleeves yet. Let’s begin with where this all began … the time we left Chisinau, loaded up some vans and headed into the great unknown. Literally, the unknown country of Transnistria … “the breakaway republic.” As we left the big city and ventured out we finally arrived to the border of the pretend country about an hour or so later. At the border we had to unload, cram into this tiny “border crossing” building, where we began to wait in line for the passport checking window, the line snaked around the inside of the building so we figured we had awhile. Until our taxi driver grew impatient with our inability to make things happen, so he jerked my passport out of my hand and took it up to the counter, cutting who knows how many people, then he stood there making sure noone would cut in front of the Americans.
We load back up in the van, look at our passports and realize this whole border crossing really had no purpose … we neither got stamped out of Moldova nor into Transnistria … I don’t really know what we did. It’s like a toll road where you have to fill out paperwork and show your passports, basically. Well then we continue on into the great unknown. We don’t really know where we are going, our taxi driver has an address and our team leaders can’t seem to get in touch with our contact, so we kind of drive in circles around Transnistria for another hour and a half or more. We finally arrive at what we believe to be the church, but after a little research we discover we are in the wrong city, we will be living in a much smaller city. Perfect. Smaller than a city with basically nothing already? Perfect.
Well we finally arrive for real at our living quarters for the month, we are greeted by some volunteers and one of them speaks minimal English, so we’re off and running. We come into our humble abode and abandoned orphanage and get settled into our rooms. We’re starving by this point in time because it is now about 4pm or later and we still hadn’t eaten lunch, and most of us had barely eaten breakfast. We arrive hoping to be greeted by food, rather we are greeted by a kitchen and an empty pantry. So needless to say the whole beginning of this month already started off a bit chaotic, and even after arriving we still couldn’t really reach our contact. We were told though that there would be a celebration at the church the next day, so be ready to leave at 5pm …
Well yesterday rolls around and we are all ready for what we expect to either be a celebration for us World Racers or some child’s birthday party … both rumors were somehow floating around, oh and that there would be an American team joining us and something about a concert. Let’s be real though, when I think concert, I think some Americans who can maybe just stand in the pulpit singing some Christian songs and what not for the celebration, that’s normal. Usually those Americans are us. Well, 5pm hits and we follow another volunteer/worker who doesn’t speak any english really for a 20 minute walk to the bus stop where we proceed to wait for 10 minutes for the Marshuka (van/public transportation) to take us to the church or wherever we’re going. Note: we still haven’t heard from our contact yet at this point. So we all load up and cram into a vehicle big enough for the 14 of us but just double the occupancy and welcome back to the African matatu, peeerfect. Anyways, we venture for 30 minutes into this change of cultures from middle-of-nowhere abandoned orphanage to the heart of Tiraspol with restaurants, bowling alley, etc … and then we arrive. One of the girls from the church comes to greet us and help us get our tickets, there were legit tickets for last nights event. We had assigned seats and everything. Hundreds of people were gathered in the expo center for what we now realized was a concert. A concert with an American band – where the lead singer and all the band were from Eastern Europe but are now living in America, and the three backup singers were American, well at least for sure the one male backup singer was, the other two are debatable, haha. But this was all part of a vision by the lead singer for a Russian/English blend of Worship music.
Well we finally got our seats worked out and then … the smoke machines were triggered, the strobe lights were cued, and the sound was amped up for the big event … I think I may have got a little watery eyed because on the tail end of a really bad few days, it felt if just for a minute like I was somewhere in America. The band began to perform and we could get up and clap and dance and actually worship, it felt so … different than what I expected of Moldova. So I guess this is what our contact sheet meant by “large charismatic church.” Anyways, it was amazing and then when they began performing, “We Are Family!” I legitimately felt like I was a little closer to home. It was the first time we have been somewhere (pretty much) and not been noticed as the “Americans in the foreign country,” for once we blended in and we weren’t the sole reason for the celebration. YAY!
After the concert we went outside to wait to hopefully meet our contact, finally … well, we did, but not after first meeting a different pastor. All in all it was just an odd first meeting. It seems we will be quite busy this month, though we still have no idea exactly what we will be doing and when … I know I will come home exhuasted after this month if we keep up this pace though. Oh and then we were also told before we met our contact that we would be riding back on the bus with the band, because they would be staying with us. Yeah, life on The World Race … riding on the tour bus and chilling with the band. But to add to our increasing number of awkward moments already this month, we went to get on the bus when they told us to, but as we got on there was noone on yet and the driver didn’t know why we were getting on, so we walked back off and we were told by our contact that there would only be space in the storage space underneath, he’s got jokes. But then after clarifying the confusion and after him being like “why did you get on the bus to start with?” we finally determined that half of what he says isn’t actually being serious.
The past few days have been a giant game of follow the leader, just be ready when they say, get on a vehicle to who knows where, arrive to do who knows what, and leave who knows when. Rinse and repeat. I just don’t know what’s going on here … I just don’t know …
… and of course, we all leave our cameras at home on this epic first night, so you’ll just have to close your eyes and pretend you can imagine this grand concert scene.
