Day 273 - FedEx Is Delivering a Package Tomorrow

I am so excited. FedEx called me today - I didn't answer the phone because caller ID told me there was an unknown caller on the other end, but I got the message in my e-mail inbox:

Hello this is FedEx home delivery calling with your delivery information. I delivery is scheduled for Friday, November first, that requires a signature. The tracking number is 555555555 888888. If someone will not be available to sign for the shipment. You can track your package is status on the FedEx.com and click the customized(?) delivery button to check it eligibility to be held at a FedEx location or if sign for a package is an option print out the form and follow the directions to have your package last. To repeat this information press any key.

Image of a FedEx truck by myjon, via Flickr.com

I know my visual e-mail translator isn't perfect, but I got the gist of the message. And I am so excited. Who could be sending me a package? (Notice how I transformed the word delivery from the message into package in my mind?) It must be a gift. Yes, that must be it: a gift from someone who is thinking about me. Maybe it is from someone I haven't seen for a very long time, like the friends from Berkeley I haven't been in touch with for nearly 40 years. We just got in touch again this month after I found them using whitepages.com. I looked up his name and then scanned through the many men with the same name until I came across one that listed his wife's name, too.  I sent them a card and they responded by e-mail so we are connected again.

Or maybe it is someone I know very well who is sending me a birthday present. It's a little early, but not everyone waits until the last minute to send a card. Maybe it's a birthday present.

Or maybe it is from my company. I just got a message from my boss that the team I work with at the State Department is the company's Civil Sector Award Winner for this quarter. We got an award once before, but they only gave us one plague which we were supposed to share. We gave it to our government contracting representative as a reminder of why it is such good business for him to keep us all on board. This time I don't work in the same office, so maybe my boss decided to send one just to me. Maybe it's an award.

I hope it isn't just another ploy by a health insurance company that knows I am so close to becoming eligible for Medicare. I've been getting letters from health insurance companies with the most outrageous devices to make me think each is important. One company stamps their letters with

VERIFIED. SPECIAL DELIVERY. PERSONAL, DO NOT DELAY.

Another boldly prints

Open Immediately. TO BE OPENED BY ADDRESSEE ONLY.

with the further notation,

SEE TLT 18 SEC 1702-US CODE. Obstruction of U.S. Mail is punishable by fines up to $2000 or 5 years in prison or both.

My favorite ploy is when companies use those envelopes where there is carbon paper inside so the letter can be printed even though the envelope is sealed and can only be opened by folding down each of the ends to make ripping off that tiny strip easier and then the letter can be pulled out. I am convinced they use that type of envelope because they think only the government would be so behind the times as to still be using them and the recipient might be fooled into thinking this is the big one.

It is entirely believable that some health insurance company would think sending me a letter via FedEx would trick me into thinking this is the big one.

Image from NaNoWriMo by hoosadork
(I didn't make that up), via Flickr.com

But I'm still excited. Even if the delivery FedEx has scheduled for tomorrow is just another health insurance company trying to convince me they have the solution to all my Medicare gap challenges, I have had the opportunity to fantasize and come up with exciting possibilities from my overactive imagination. And the timing for that is perfect because tomorrow starts National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and I'm going to put my 365 Project to good use for the next 30 days, writing something that might someday turn into a novel.

Day 272 - Death of an American

Sarah

GSO David wore two hats when he first arrived in Chisinau. He was the general services officer and the back-up consular officer. But the GSO work was more important initially. Starting up consular operations required that we have a secure location for visa applicants to come. We also were looking forward to the arrival of Sarah six months down the road. Sarah would also share two responsibilities, as consular officer and back-up general services officer. Because the American population in Moldova was very small, any of them who needed help from the embassy, a renewal of a passport, or assistance in some other way, could come to the embassy at any time. We didn't need official hours.

But it was clear that David was looking forward to the opening of consular operations. At one point, he set up appointments with Moldovan officials to learn what the processes would be in the event of the death of an American. I was hard on David - only in my thoughts, not in action or words - because I thought David was being unnecessarily pessimistic and ignoring the bigger issues - getting the embassy operating on a basis closer to normal. For example, David was very comfortable at improvising and making quick decisions. And those qualities were important in the early days. But as we got some semblance of order and process, I was determined that we would follow the regulations where we could and take steps to obtain waivers when we couldn't, instead of ignoring them.

I should have celebrated when David started looking toward getting the consular operation set up. But I didn't know that yet.

In addition to setting up appointments with Moldovan officials, David also ordered two adult coffins and two children's coffins. Again, I thought his enthusiasm for consular work was getting the better of him. But then Hank*, one of the American craftsmen, died. I learned of the death when Jim ran downstairs from his apartment to the floor where the Ambassador and Alex and I lived. It was early evening.  We had returned from dinner. Jim was breathless, still holding his phone, when he told us of Hank's death.

Hank was a electrician, in his 60's who had never been out of the U.S. before this trip. He hadn't been feeling well and the Fluor Daniel project manager had suggested he return to the U.S. But Hank had two reasons for remaining in Chisinau: he didn't want to give up the end of contract bonus if he stayed until the project ended, and he had a Moldovan girlfriend about 40 years younger than he was.

Hank had been at his girlfriend's apartment when he again felt ill, so he went outside for some fresh air. His girlfriend found him sitting on a bench next to the sidewalk. He had suffered a heart attack.

It was a Thursday evening. That meant we had until Saturday morning to get him ready to be shipped on the Air Moldova weekly flight west.

David

David's preliminary work getting to know the people who would prepare Hank's body for shipping was critical to our being able to meet that deadline. We learned lesson #1 very shortly: when ordering adult coffins to have on hand, just in case, order size large, not medium. Hank's boots had to be removed in order to fit him into the medium size we had on hand.

And there were still more problems. It was early summer. There were no refrigerated spaces to store the body and even after the body had been embalmed and sealed in the coffin, there were no air conditioned spaces to keep the coffin. The best the Moldovans could offer was an empty warehouse near the airport that could be kept dark to minimize the heat generated. David and Alex delivered the coffin to the warehouse and covered it with tarpaulins. That wasn't enough to eliminate the formaldehyde odor. Alex noticed that every Moldovan who entered the warehouse hugged the walls as they walked, keeping as far away from the coffin in the middle of the room as possible.

On Saturday morning, Alex and David and others delivered the coffin to the aircraft and discovered the opening used to load suitcases into the belly of the plane wasn't quite big enough for the coffin. There was an alternative, but that was luck, not planning. Lesson #2: investigate other transportation options.

No one was willing to take the used-just-once tarpaulins that covered the coffin for two days.

And lesson #3: I owed David an apology, even if I had never spoken my earlier thoughts aloud.

Day 271 - Visitors From Moscow

Image of money by artist in doing nothing,
via Flickr.com

We had challenges getting dollars into Moldova in the early days of the embassy. Normally cash transfers are done electronically, but first the U.S. Disbursing Officer in Paris needed to establish a bank account. And the USDO was not about to take any rash action such as opening an account with an unknown bank in a country that didn't have a long history.

Once when we were desperate for cash, GSO David and I had to travel to Frankfurt and spend a week there before we could return. More often, one of us made a trip to Moscow where we turned over our paid vouchers for processing in exchange for U.S. dollars to replenish our cashier's account. When I made the trip to Moscow, I stayed with a friend, Sherry. Sherry and I met during my first months in Washington. She and my friend Ursula's husband, Randy, had entered the Foreign Service in the same class. By the time I arrived in Washington, Sherry and Randy had completed their first overseas tours and were back in Washington in language training. Randy and Ursula were in the Turkish language program and Sherry was in the German program. Once I finished the orientation program, I joined Sherry's German class. At the end of our training, Sherry went to Berlin and I went to Stuttgart. When I traveled to Berlin over the Thanksgiving holiday my first fall in Germany, I spent an evening with Sherry.

Image of Cricova wine cellars by hanspoldoja,
via Flickr.com

I was pleased when Sherry and two of her friends from the embassy made plans to visit Moldova over a long weekend in February. Sherry wanted to see what Moldova had to offer, but the most impressive site in Moldova, the Cricova wine cellars with its miles of underground tunnels storing all varieties of Moldovan wine, was not open on weekends. Instead, I asked Natasha* if she could arrange some sights. She came up with an excellent series of stops.

Natasha had many contacts within the artist community. She arranged for us to visit a studio where several artists had their work on display. The studio was much more impressive than the shops we had first found with paintings for sale. Next she took is to the home of a woman who was hoping to open a bed and breakfast or small private hotel where we had lunch as her guest. She also had embroidered items from a collective of women artists. Our afternoon stop was at the studio of Nicolai Yorga, a local musician who provided us with a history lesson about music, beginning with leaves and fish scales that he demonstrated could be used to make music. He moved through history to demonstrate other wind instuments. The final instrument he demonstrated was one he made from a gourd with holes drilled along the neck that he covered to change notes as he blew through the reeded mouthpiece. Since it was his construction, he called it a Yorgaphone. Sherry and her friends each bought a Yorgaphone.

Image of Moldovan embroidery by denseatoms,
via Flickr.com

The next day, we headed out of Chisinau to a scenic area that has been used as the location for many films. For lunch, we stopped at the home of a woman who had often hosted film directors, actors, and others involved in filming. Our lunch was more typical of a peasant meal than our meal the day before - mamaliga with cheese and vegetables. I think I enjoyed the second lunch more than the first because of the hospitality of our hostess.

Natasha also arranged a visit for the ambassador with Mr. Yorga who presented her with a Yorgaphone for President Clinton. On her next trip back to Washington, she accompanied the Moldovan president who was invited to meet with President Clinton. But an invitation does not mean the meeting will be private. The Moldovan president, Ambassador Pendleton, and several other ambassadors gathered at the White House at the same time. They all waited together outside the Oval Office before being directed to join the President for a photo opportunity. Ambassador Pendleton told us when she returned that she kept imagining what was going through the minds of the other ambassadors, all men. Who did they think the President was going to remember? One of the men in the obligatory suit and tie, or the woman in the hot pink dress with the strange instrument in her lap?

*a name, not necessarily the right one

Day 270 - Our Moldovan Neighbors

Our Moldovan neighbor Igor
and his children

Our last five months in Moldova were the best five months. The house itself was one reason. It was large and comfortable. Its proximity turned out to be a blessing, not a problem. We could go home for lunch, made for us by Tatiana.

But what made our house truly special was our neighbors. The two story house across the alley was home to two families, one upstairs and one downstairs. We didn't spend much time with the family upstairs, but the family downstairs enriched our stay more than we had ever experienced before or since.

We first met our neighbors on a Sunday evening when Alex and I were sharing a meal of homemade pizza with visitors from Washington. Our guests were being polite as they commented favorably on the pizza. I had used a recipe for the crust from Gourmet magazine that said the dough could be frozen. So I froze it. When it came time to make the pizza, the dough hadn't really thawed enough for my taste with the result being slightly doughy crust. But everything goes well with the right amount of beer or wine.

A knock of the door led to Igor, our neighbor, introducing himself and inviting us to join him and his friends and family for fish that he and his friend had just caught. There was no way that Igor was going to accept no for an answer, so we all - Alex, the two Washington visitors, and I - made our way across the alley to Igor's back yard.

Igor spoke only Russian. His wife spoke Russian and some German. The couple who lived upstairs spoke Russian and some Romanian. I understand some Russian, understand more Romanian, speak German, and am a native speaker of English. Alex, on the other hand speaks only English, and then only the Queen's English. Our visitors may have understood more than they indicated, but English appeared to be the only language they had in common with any of us around the table.

I spent a lot of my effort trying to translate, poorly, among the group.

Before too long, Igor brought out a bottle of ice cold vodka and poured out shots for everyone. I began sipping the vodka when the Moldovans all objected with great movement of hands that vodka isn't supposed to be sipped - it is to be downed in one gulp, usually with both head and glass high in the air. We tried to follow suit. They laughed. It was all good fun.

Then Alex went across the alley to bring back a bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label. He poured out the shots, we started sipping, and the Moldovans raised their glasses, threw back their heads and gulped the scotch down in one gulp. At that point Alex and the Washington visitors objected with great movement of hands and demonstrated that scotch is supposed to be sipped, not gulped. They laughed. We laughed. it was all good fun.

Before we made our way across the alley home, Igor invited both Alex and me back the following Sunday to celebrate their daughter's birthday. She was probably about to turn 10. We thanked him and told him that we already had plans the following Sunday so we wouldn't be able to join them. Igor told us we should come over to their house when we got home that Sunday. We told them we would, if we got home early enough.

But we already knew that we wouldn't have a choice.

Moldovan road trip with Nicolai as driver

Birthdays are a big deal in Moldova, probably in all of the former Soviet Union. We knew this because of the experience of Ian, the regional public affairs officer from Vienna who had come to Moldova to take part in observing the elections in Moldova. We had arranged for Nicolai*, a private Moldovan citizen who owned a car, to drive Ian around during the election weekend. The previous weekend Nicolai had driven me, three Americans from the U.S. embassy in Moscow, and Natasha*, around Chişinău on Saturday and then outside of Chişinău to a village where we had a typical Moldovan meal in the home of a family on Sunday. He was such a pleasant man who joined in our activities as if he were part of our group that we thought he would be great as Ian's driver and escort. We mentioned to Ian how pleasant he was. But Ian's experience was quite different. Instead of being a pleasant companion, Nicolai kept grumbling under his breath during the weekend. He wasn't complaining directly to Ian, but Ian thought there was something wrong, so he finally asked Nicolai what was bothering him. Nicolai replied that it was his daughter's birthday that day and he had never missed celebrating her birthday up until then. So Ian asked Nicolai how old his daughter was, expecting the answer to be something under 10. "Forty," Nicolai replied.

Birthdays are a big deal. So we knew the following Sunday when we came home from whatever our previous commitment was, Igor would be there waiting for us. It was late enough that the celebrations had moved inside where we joined Igor, his wife, their son and daughter, and others still there celebrating their daughter's birthday.

We learned that Igor had previously lived in the Russian Far East, on the Kamchatka Penninsula, where he prospected for gold. After leaving Kamchatka, he set up a trucking business in Moldova.

A few weeks later, there was a knock on the door. It was Igor inviting Alex to come along with him and some of his friends to a sauna. This invitation was extended entirely in Russian with some accompanying hand gestures to convey what the words did not. Because of his experience with the theatre in both Doha and Bridgetown, Alex is very comfortable communicating with hand gestures and body movements. Alex went off with Igor and his friends and enjoyed the sauna followed by the dunk in the cold water and the birch branch thrashings to clean the skin, accompanied by copious amounts of Polish beer.

Kamchatka drinking horn

Our final Friday evening in Moldova, we invited everyone from the embassy, both Americans and local staff, to our house to help us eat and drink up whatever we still had in our refrigerator or cupboards. Our suitcases were packed. Our household effects had been shipped. We just needed to get rid of the perishable items. In addition to the embassy community joining us, Igor, his wife, and their children also came over. When they realized we didn't have a radio or anything else for music, Igor went across the alley and brought over their CD player and speakers. When our food began to run low - that was the point of the party - Igor's wife went across the alley and brought back Moldovan pastries. Igor went back across the alley one more time and brought back a farewell gift for Alex, a drinking cup in an animal horn on a stand, a remembrance of the times they had spent sharing a cup while we were in Moldova.

But most impressively, the next morning Igor was at the door again, this time with breakfast for us. In all the years I have lived overseas, that was the only time anyone, from the embassy or the neighborhood, thought to make sure we had something to eat before we left the country.

*a name, not necessarily the right one

Day 269 - The CAG Who Thought He Was A Spy

Image by vpickering, via Flickr.com

Duke* wasn't the only memorable Cleared American Guard. Kent* rivaled Duke for behavior beyond the normal. We honestly thought he might be on drugs, either prescribed ones or less legitimate varieties. Kent had been a Marine Security Guard in the past which impressed the site security manager, Fred. We foresaw a repeat of Duke in our future. And we weren't wrong,

Kent didn't write his embellished thoughts in the incident log, but he shared stories of his encounters with his colleagues. There was the one about the guy in a Moldovan bar who threatened him with a gun - or at least showed him his gun while they were having drinks at the bar.

Kent also intimated that he was really working for another agency, one dealing in intelligence gathering. We ignored those claims since it made no sense for him to tell us if they were true.

We suspected that Kent was stealing from the embassy and staff as things went missing from desk drawers on the evenings that he was on duty. The missing items were small, items we gave as tokens to vendors and others who did business with the embassy. The official name for them was gratuities. What constituted gratuities varied from country to country. In Moldova they were lighters and measuring tapes with the Department seal and the name of the embassy embossed on the front, as well as the usual bottles of scotch and cartons of cigarettes. They were kept in GSO David's desk drawer and anyone who needed to give one out could take one which made it a little difficult to be sure if they were really stolen. Once we noticed things were disappearing more quickly than normal, the items were locked up and a log started to keep track of what went to whom. But then we discovered that the cables with gold connectors between the TV and VCR recorder that we kept in the Management and Consular building had been swapped with a cheaper set. We had the TV and recorder in the building to show training tapes.

Kent denied all accusations. So we set out to gather evidence that he wasn't standing guard in the guard booth when he was on duty at night by setting up the TV and VCR in a position that prevented anyone from watching a video without having to move them. We used photos to prove where the TV and VCR were at the end of the business day and then the next day we took photos again of how they had been moved during the night. We were satisfied we knew he was spending his evenings watching movies in the Management building instead of in the guard booth, but there wasn't enough evidence to have him replaced.

Even his most outrageous activity didn't get him replaced.

That activity occured the weekend after Alex and the ambassador's driver had driven two of the embassy vehicles to Kyiv for servicing early in the week. They stayed there until the work was done, returning to Chişinău Friday evening. Saturday morning at 2 a.m., the phone rang. It was the CAG on duty for Alex. He asked Alex to drive to Romania with a flat bed truck to pick up Kent, his Moldovan girlfriend, and the rental car Kent had just crashed and to return them to Moldova.

Image of crash barrier through passenger side of
car by DrJohnBullas, via Flickr.com

Kent had rented a car and driven with his girlfriend to Bucharest, an 8-hour drive, Friday so that he could take her to the Marine House for a party that evening. They made it to Bucharest and to the Marine House, but Kent had duty in Chişinău starting at 8 a.m. the next morning. He thought he could leave the Marine House at midnight and make it back to Chişinău in time for his shift. Along the way, he drove too fast and the car swerved too far to the right as he made his way through a curve in the road. The crash barrier on the side of the road sliced through the passenger side of the car, pinning it in place. Had Kent's girlfriend been wearing a seat belt, she would have been slice through as well.

It took Alex four hours to line up a truck that the damaged vehicle could be loaded onto for the return trip. The line of vehicles at the border crossing point between Moldova and Romania normally stretched for several miles, but with all the times Alex had crossed that border, the guards on duty knew him and always allowed him to drive directly to the head of the line. By the time Alex reached the border, a full 24 hours hadn't elapsed since he had returned to Moldova.

They reached the accident site before noon. Alex described Kent's reactions to the situation as completely abnormal. Kent hadn't wanted to stay with the car. He had wanted to find a way for him and his girlfriend to get back to Bucharest. And he talked about the car as an inconvenience, not his responsibility.

One of the other CAGs had had to fill in for Kent's shift, another reason for his colleagues to resent him. Once back in Chişinău, we realized that Kent hadn't told anyone about this trip, not his supervisor, not the site security manager, and not anyone with the embassy. The one action we could and did take after this trip was to issue a policy that no one would leave the country without informing their supervisor and no one could rent a car and leave the country without first getting approval from the management officer, me.

Two weeks later, Kent came to ask my permission to rent a car to drive back to Bucharest.

*a name, not necessarily the right one

Day 268 - Crossing the Border 46 Times in 23 Months

Image of guard tower at the border
 by tutam, via Flickr.com

Alex is an avid traveler who was already used to traveling frequently when we arrived in Moldova. For the year before our departure from Barbados, he flew from Barbados to St. Lucia and back every week. Crossing the borders in most of the Caribbean could only be done by plane or boat. But Alex's travels once we arrived in Moldova were much more varied.

We arrived in September, 1992, and left in August, 1994, and Alex left Moldova for some other country 23 times in those 23 months.

The first three weeks were tough to get through. As we took morning walks to wake ourselves up, Alex's comments to me about the situation started out with "What have we done to land us in this place?" to "You sure made a mistake bringing me here" to "I made a big mistake coming here with you." The pronoun shifts were accompanied with louder volume for emphasis. Since there was really nothing he could do in Moldova except work for the embassy, we had to structure a contract position for him that would allow him to do the work he did best without working for me. Anti-nepotism rules made it impossible for a husband to work for a wife. Those same rules made it nearly impossible for any husband-wife team to work at a small embassy, but since GSO David and his wife Susan were already in place, there was a precedent of sorts. Alex's official title was "Assistant to the Ambassador for Special Projects." But even then, it took some time. One cause for the delays was that he didn't yet have a Social Security number. He had arrived in the U.S. just over six weeks before we landed in Moldova and one of our first stops was at the post office in Fargo, N.D., to apply for his Social Security card, but the application was lost and he had to submit a second one.

In the weeks between our arrival and getting approval for us to hire him, Alex volunteered to do anything that needed to be done around the embassy. He made hand rails for stairs. He fixed - or tried - the doorbell at the front of the embassy. He went shopping for toilet seats and bought bent nails in the market for the staff to pound into shape. And while he took on these tasks just to keep himself busy, he was disappointed that no one seemed to think it was necessary to thank him. Some even thought it was appropriate to tell him what to do instead of ask him for his help.

These niggling experiences led him to look for opportunities to leave Moldova.

When we finally received permission for Alex to begin working, traveling to Germany for training was his first trip out of Moldova. He flew to Frankfurt and took the train to Bonn. He expected to travel to Brussels at the end of the training to pick up the ambassador's official vehicle and drive it to Moldova.  He made the trip to Brussels, but when they turned the vehicle over to him to drive it, they provided no documentation to indicate the vehicle was owned by the U.S. government.  Alex decided not to drive the vehicle across the half-dozen borders between Brussels and Moldova without having license plates on the car and ownership papers in his pocket. He drove the car to Frankfurt where he left it and flew back to Chişinău.

Image of Corfu by "Hooch," via Flickr.com

Several of Alex's trips out of Moldova were to Bucharest to pick up whatever supplies the embassy there could spare, as well as our personal trips to Iaşi for shopping. One trip was to the Ukraine to bring two of the embassy vehicles to a dealer for servicing. One trip was back to the U.S. for us to attend our son's high school graduation. One trip, to Corfu, was a result of his having reached the end of his patience with the attitude of many of our colleagues at the embassy. The ambassador said something Alex felt was unfairly critical of him so he made plans to get away for a few days to cool down. I told Alex he should be pleased that the ambassador was comfortable enough around him to say something directly.  There were so many others no one was comfortable confronting. We all walked around them on tip toes.

One trip was notable for all the different means of travel it included. The regional medical officer from Moscow had been to Moldova for a regular visit and he made arrangements for Alex to have carpal tunnel surgery in London on a Monday in December. With only one flight per week out of Chişinău to Europe, Alex had to be on the plane the Saturday before that Monday or find another way to travel to England. We learned on the Thursday before that there were no seats available on the Air Moldova flight that Saturday because many of the Moldovan government officials were traveling.

The regional nurse practitioner was also in town that week from Bucharest so she suggested that the embassy provide a car and driver to take both Alex and her to Iaşi by car. The two of them then took the train from Iaşi to Chişinău and Alex flew on Swiss Air to London, all in time for his surgery. Once the surgery was completed, the surgeon told Alex he would be out of the country for the next three weeks, so Alex should come back in the new year.

The carpal tunnel surgery was the reason for the trip, but the regional medical officer suggested that Alex have some bone spurs on one of his feet removed at the same time. At that point, he faced one of two scenarios for the following three weeks: either he would remain in London in a hotel for three weeks over both the Christmas and New Year holidays until the surgeon returned, or he could travel with his brother, who was in London on business, to Newcastle where he could stay with his parents for the three weeks. He chose the latter.

At the end of the three weeks, Alex had to get back to London and chose to go by train where he wouldn't have to try to squeeze his still healing foot under the seat of the row ahead of him. The surgeon cleared him to return to Moldova which in Alex's case meant flying back first to Bucharest where his round trip ticket was purchased.

Image of the region around the embassy's villa
by cod_gabriel, via Flickr.com

The regional security officer, Pat, in Bucharest offered to drive Alex to Chişinău from Bucharest as he was planning to make a quarterly visit in January. Pat suggested that I fly to Bucharest to meet Alex when he arrived on the Friday and then the two of us could travel to Chişinău with Pat. But what I didn't know was that Pat planned to leave Bucharest on the Friday after work to meet his wife and their kids, along with another couple, at the villa in the mountains that the embassy had been renting from the Romanian government since before I was a Fulbrighter in Iaşi more than 15 years earlier. Pat's wife had driven up earlier with the kids, but she expected Pat to spend at least Saturday with the family.

I flew into Bucharest Friday morning and stayed around until Alex arrived, limping and on crutches. Pat had sent a car and driver from the embassy to take us to the embassy where I met the management officer and many of his staff. After work, Pat drove Alex and me to the villa where we stayed until Sunday afternoon. We arrived in Chişinău late Sunday evening.

To an outsider - and by that I mean the voucher examiner who processed Alex's travel voucher for this trip - it looked like we set up this European tour including a stop with his parents for the Christmas holiday for Alex's convenience rather than the round-about travel being all that was possible under the circumstances and very much at everyone's inconvenience. It took six months, and two amendments, to get the voucher processed.

Day 267 - The CAG Who Wanted To Be A Novelist

Ken, one of the CAGs during the
renovation project, at the guard station

One of the Cleared American Guards (CAGs) during the renovation project, Duke*, wasn't all that well liked by his colleagues. But he was the darling of Fred, our Site Security Manager. Duke knew others didn't like him, but he seemed to accept that as evidence that he was just a bit better than they were.

The CAGs were required to keep an incident log to record anything they felt was worth noting for the next guard. There was at least one CAG on duty at all times. During work hours, they were kept busy checking out the people and materials that moved onto the compound grounds. But during the evening and on the weekends, things could get a little dull. Most of the CAGs wrote nothing in the log because life in that guard booth was, frankly, uneventful. But Duke seemed to use the incident log as his opportunity to complete his first draft of a novel. For the first half-hour of every one of Duke's shifts, he would write notes in the incident log. They went something like this:

Date: March 4, 1993. The temperature was just above freezing and the sky was dreary and cloudy at 3:45 p.m. as I left the Hotel Sebaco and walked the three blocks to the embassy. I observed an unknown individual walking on the opposite side of the street keeping pace with me, perhaps surveilling my movements. He wore jeans and a bulky black jacket, leather boots, and a black fur hat like every other Moldovan man wears in the winter. I took a detour around a block to detect whether he was in fact surveilling me. He didn't follow, but he was standing on the corner across the street from the embassy when I arrived. Seems suspicious.

Fred approved of Duke's excessive incident logging. He encouraged the other CAGs to add their observations in the log as they arrived each day, just adding to the resentment of the majority and Duke's puffed-up ego.

View of the front of the embassy. Note the
two windows on the ground floor at the far left and the
person in front of the window next to it.

Early one morning while we were still living in the Hotel Codru suite, at about 4 a.m., Duke called me to report that on his rounds inside the building he had found something suspicious in one of the offices within the embassy. I asked if he had contacted Fred, the person responsible for the overall security of the compound during the construction. Duke said he had already talked with Fred. I asked Duke what Fred had told him. Duke relayed that Fred had told him to call me.

With that much as background, it sounded as though Fred expected that I would go to the embassy to investigate. I didn't want to call Fred again in the middle of the night to confirm that assumption so Alex and I got dressed and walked to the embassy. When we arrived, I asked Duke to show me what he had found that was so suspicious. He led us to the office where the local political and economic specialists worked. The room had three desks with PCs on them, one against each of the three walls opposite and to the side of the door. There were two windows in the room overlooking the Alexi Mateevici Street. The windows were double with one set of panes opening inward and the other set opening outward with bars between the two sets to prevent someone from crawling through them into the building. The handles to open both sets of windows were inside. The space between the bars was large enough for an adult hand to reach through to the outer set to open the latch.

I saw that the windows to the office were open, a keyboard for one of the PCs was lying key-side down on the floor, and in the middle of the room a box that we used to collect change for donations to buy coffee was also lying upside down on the floor. That box, an elaborate cardboard container for a Christmas fruitcake I had ordered the year before when we lived in Barbados, normally sat on a ledge behind the photocopy machine which was in the corridor outside the office. It was not a non-descript generic box. It was one of a kind in Moldova. Duke intimated that he thought someone might have opened the windows from the outside and tossed the box into the room, possibly intending to do harm to the building or the people in it. Because I knew that no one outside of the embassy staff could have gotten their hands on the box that now sat in the middle of the room, I concluded that there was no real danger. It appeared to me that whichever of the CAGs had been on duty before Duke's shift might have contrived the scene just to get Duke excited. I thought it was equally likely that Duke set up the scene himself.

I headed straight for the box, intending to put the room back into order before heading back to our suite to get some sleep. Duke nearly jumped out of his skin and grabbed my shirt to pull me back. At that point, Alex found a yardstick which he used to reach into the room and flip the box over, proving that the box was empty. We then went into the room, looked more closely at everything. The keyboard was upside down at an angle that seemed impossible for me to explain as anything other than having been placed that way. Nothing was missing from the office. Nothing was damaged. Alex and I went home to get whatever sleep we could before we had to be back at the embassy.

That next day I told the ambassador that I felt Duke should be replaced because it was clear his presence was a distraction to others. Whether Duke set up the room the way he did or someone else did it as a prank, the solution was to remove Duke, not to punish the prankster. Fred was not happy with this decision, but he complied.

Once the CAGs left, the local Moldovan guards
took over the guard desk.

But it wasn't until many months later when Fred himself was leaving that I found out the rest of the story. As Fred was leaving at the end of the renovation project, he turned his files over to me. In those files was his report to Washington about the situation, a second report, not the one he showed me at the time of the incident. When Ambassador Pendleton asked me if I had seen Fred's report in the days after the incident, I told her I had. When she asked me if I was satisfied with it, I told her I was. She saw the second report. I saw a much shorter first report.

Duke had discovered the suspicious set up just after midnight when he came on duty. He did call Fred right away, not in the middle of the night. Fred decided that it wasn't necessary for him to go to the embassy right away based on Duke's answers to his questions. Fred said it could wait until morning, but Fred did tell Duke to call me "in the morning." Duke waited four hours and then he called me. I learned this from the incident log for the evening which was among Fred's files. Fred failed to tell me how Duke's actions deviated from his instructions by about four hours. In addition, Fred's report to Washington claimed that my husband had endangered himself and the entire embassy through his reckless actions as he poked at the suspicious box. Yet Fred himself had previously decided there wasn't any urgency in checking out the box. I finally understood why the ambassador had asked me if I was satisfied with Fred's report. If Fred weren't already on his way out of Moldova, reading his report convinced me that I should have suggested that the ambassador request his replacement, too.

*a name, not necessarily the right one

Day 266 - The House Next Door

View from the embassy parking lot of the house next door.
 Our Nissan Stanza is at the far left.

Five months from the expected end of our stay in Moldova, the owner of the house next door to the embassy came to see GSO David to offer to rent his house to the embassy. At that point, everyone was situated in either a house or in the Hotel Codru suites so we didn't need to rent another house, but it was clear that we couldn't afford to let some other embassy rent a house that literally overlooked the embassy grounds. The challenge was that the house was much larger than most in our housing pool at that point. It wasn't large enough for the ambassador, but it was too large for the next employee we expected to arrive - Selina, the ambassador's secretary, a single woman.

The balcony of the house next door

Becky's house was an appropriate size for Selina, but Becky was also five months from the end of her tour. One of Becky's objections to her house was that it might be too small for her successor if her successor was married and had children. So one option would have been for Becky to move from her bungalow into the house next door. Her successor hadn't been named yet, so whether the house was too small was still theoretical. But no one wanted to take on the complaints that asking Becky to inconvenience herself with a move so close to the end of her tour was bound to raise. Besides, at this point we all had a pretty good idea that Becky wasn't spending her evenings in her bungalow anyway. She and Bob had gotten quite cozy. We preferred that Becky stay in her bugalow and Selina stay in a hotel room. Selina could move into the bungalow once Becky left.

Alex, Mary Ann, Selina, and the ambassador outside
 the house next door, with the exterior staircase
 in the background.

Bob also had five months left before he planned to leave. He was in the Moldovan singer's house which his successor would move into. There was no point in moving him from one house already big enough for his successor and his family. GSO David and his wife were in a house and they planned to stay for an additional year. Their house was not within walking distance, so it didn't make sense to ask them to move. Jim was about to move into an apartment which made his suite available for Selina to move into until Becky left. Sarah was already in a house. Johnny was in a house.

Eventually, all eyes were on Alex and me. We had resigned ourselves to staying in the Codru until we left Moldova. We didn't want to have to move again. And I so did not want to live next door to work. I imagined that we would get phone calls at all times of the day and night asking either Alex or me to come back to work. That had happened already many times while we lived several blocks away from the embassy. But the pressure was on for us to move. Reluctantly, we did.

Our living room with embassy furniture and our furnishings

The house next door had two stories with living room, dining room, kitchen, and bathroom downstairs and three bedrooms upstairs. There were two stairways between the floors, one outside and one inside. The inside stairway was one of the steepest set of stairs I have ever seen and it made a sharp 90 degree angle turn with the stairs arranged as a spiral staircase in the middle. As strange as it seemed, it was more convenient for us to take the outdoors steps, even in the middle of the night, when going between floors. But that was the only disadvantage of the house next door.

Our last five months in Moldova were our best.

Day 265 - Moldovan Weddings

The marriage palace

The blue building directly across the street from the embassy was a government building where it is likely lots and lots of official things happened, but we called it the marriage palace. Every day happy couples emerged and had photographs taken in front of the building. Some of the brides wore traditional white wedding dresses and carried large bouquets of flowers. Others were less formal. But all emerged with smiles.

Victoria, the embassy's economic specialist, was married there a few months after the embassy was opened, but only her family and the family of her husband were part of the group at the marriage palace. Victoria invited us to her parents' home that evening for a celebration of the marriage. Her parents' apartment was on one of the upper floors of a building at the edge of town where we experienced what we had heard about Soviet-era living. Victoria's mother met us at the entrance to the building and led us up the stairs, insisting that we hold hands like kindergarten children on a field trip, because the elevator didn't work and all the lightbulbs in the stairwells and hallways had either burned out or been removed by residents who couldn't find replacements in shops to buy. The single room that served as living and dining room, and probaby also a bedroom at night, had been transformed into a banquet hall with tables lining the walls in a large square with chairs so close to the walls that moving around in the room wasn't possible. Once situated, we were in place for the evening.

The Cleared American Guard and his wife and child with
Sandra, Helen (a local employee), GSO David, and Alex

After months of watching the marriage parades, we finally got a closer view. Blake*, one of the Cleared American Guards, was joined in Chişinău by his girlfriend, Melanie*, and their child. While there, they decided to marry. Several of us were able to enter the marriage palace along with Blake and Melanie to witness their marriage.

Another member of the local staff, Yurii, also was married during our assignment in Moldova, to Helen. In addition to Yurii working for the embassy, Yurii's mother was part of the kitchen staff set up by Fluor Daniel. Yurii, Helen, and their son Sasha ended up in the United States on immigrant visas less than three years later. Since then Yurii has turned into one of my two immigrant success stories. More on that later. Yurii's and Helen's wedding reception was held at the Hotel Codru's reception hall on the ground floor of our building.

Natalia and Ben at their
wedding reception

The next wedding took place shortly after Alex and I left Moldova.  My secretary, Natalia, took leave shortly before we left. She traveled to Tbilisi, Georgia, where some of the American craftsmen had been sent once they left Chişinău. One of those craftsmen was Ben. Very shortly after Natalia's visit, she and Ben were married. Ben and Natalia traveled together to several countries while Ben continued working on embassy projects.

Tatiana and Steve at their wedding

The last in the series of weddings I felt connected to followed our departure by a longer time. My successor in Chişinău, Steve, moved into our house where Tatiana had been our cook and maid. Before Steve left Moldova, he and Tatiana were married. When Steve returned to the United States less than a year after arriving in Moldova, Tatiana and her son traveled with him, eventually settling in northwestern United States when Steve retired.





*A name, not necessarily the right one.

Day 264 - Traveling Through Transnistria

Map of Transnistria from www.turkey-visit.com

Transnistria, a sliver of land at the eastern border of Moldova, right next to the Ukraine, wanted to be part of Russia, not Moldova, when the former Soviet Union broke apart. Refusing to assimilate into Moldova, Transnistria continued to use the Russian ruble even after Russia had issued new rubles and stopped accepting the old-style currency as legal tender. The Transnistrians added a postage stamp to the Russian rubles to indicate they were their currency. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian troops have been present in Transnistria. While we were in Moldova, General Alexander Lebed was in command of the Russian 14th Guards Army in Moldova which was involved in skirmishes in Transnistria and another semi-autonomous region, Gaugazia.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has had a presence in Moldova since the early 1990s, charged with facilitating a negotiated settlement between Moldova and Transnistria. At the time we were in Moldova, the ambassador from the OSCE to Moldova was a Canadian. One weekend, he, his wife, one of his local staff, Oksana, Ambassador Pendleton, Alex, and I set off for a relaxing few days in Odessa, on the Black Sea coast of the Ukraine. We left Friday afternoon in two cars, the OSCE ambassador, his wife and Oksana in one, Ambassador Pendleton, Alex, and I in the other. The OSCE ambassador's car was the lead car since Oksana was to be our translator for the trip. She was to explain to the guards at the Transnistrian border, which the U.S. government did not recognize, why we needed to be given speedy and unimpeded passage through Transnistria to the Ukraine.

Alex and Ambassador Pendleton in front of the
Odessa sanitarium

Oksana had been a university student in Odessa and she was very eager to show all of us what Odessa had to offer.  Her initial responsibility, getting us through the Transnistrian border, was not a problem as Ambassador Pendleton was waved through without having to stop. Once we reached Odessa, we checked in at a private sanitarium at the edge of the city. The name conjured up visions of patients with tuberculosis or schizophrenia, but Oksana explained it was a place that offered a relaxing and calming setting and was very desirable for weekend stays.

We didn't spend much time there. That evening we headed for a meal at a restaurant overlooking the coastline and beach. The restaurant was full of very well-dressed and apparently cosmopolitan young couples, some of whom looked as though they had just walked out of the Hotel Sebaco's casino. There was music and dancing, although we chose to remain spectators as the fashionably dressed couples filled the dance floor.

Image of the Potemkin stairs in Odessa by jakobmeils,
via Flickr.com

The next day we toured several museums, many of them with a strong military slant. We also went to see the Potemkin stairs, originally 200 steps leading from the city situated on a high steppe plateau to the harbor. That evening we went to a concert where one of the most noticeable acknowledgements of the change in the government was the hole in the flag where the hammer and sickle had been. After the concert, Oksana suggested we go to a hotel that was well known for its entertainment at the bar.  As she had done at nearly every other stop, she recommended that we not park directly in front of the location we intended to spend our time. Instead, she had the OSCE ambassador drive around the corner from the hotel where she located two parking spots so that the two cars would be parked one in front of the other. It may have been that desire that the two cars remain close to one another than led her to make the recommendation. We didn't ask; we just wondered.

The next morning, Oksana recommended we have breakfast at a famous downtown restaurant before we headed a short distance out of town to see another Ukrainian Black Sea site. At this location, there were plenty of parking spaces directly in front of the restaurant which also had a very wide sidewalk where others were parking their cars. But instead, Oksana again took us around the corner to park the two cars and we then walked back to the restaurant. At the end of the meal, we walked back to the corner where we expected to see the cars to our right, but it was immediately obvious that something was wrong. There was only one car on the street, Ambassador Pendleton's Honda. The OSCE ambassador's Lada was missing. Instead of spending a short time at the other site after which we planned to travel back through Transnistria, arriving at the border while it was still daylight, we ended up back at the restaurant where we had had breakfast and Oksana called the police.

Image of a Lada by SergeyRod, via Flickr.com

Gasoline was in very short supply in all of the former Soviet Union at that time, so when Oksana got through to the police, she was asked to arrange to pick up the policeman who would investigate the missing vehicle. Ambassador Pendleton, the OSCE ambassador, and Oksana headed out to pick up the policeman, leaving the OSCE ambassador's wife, Alex, and me behind.

Once the policeman was on site, he seem optimistic that they would be able to find the ambassador's car. He recommended that we just wait for awhile. In the meantime, Ambassador Pendleton, the OSCE ambassador, Oksana and the policeman made a few other stops to file reports and investigate options. The confidence of the policeman reminded me of the policemen in Barbados who asked what might have been called leading questions in a U.S. courtroom as they investigated the attempted theft of the Canadian High Commissioner's son's bicycle in Bridgetown.

By 3 p.m., Ambassador Pendleton was concerned that if we didn't leave soon, we would arrive at the Transnistrian border at dusk. She did not want to be confronting the informal Transnistrian militia under  any disadvantage, so she began to press for the six of us squeezing ourselves into her car so that we could return. Oksana assured her that she could get us past the border without a problem, so waiting a little longer would be fine.

So we waited. By 5 p.m., Ambassador Pendleton decided it was already getting too late for us to wait any longer. She insisted that the six of us get into the car and head back. But Oksana and the OSCE ambassador were unwilling to give up. Instead of getting into Ambassador Pendleton's car, they agreed that the four of us - Ambassador Pendleton, Mrs. OSCE Ambassador, Alex, and I - should head back to Moldova. Oksana gave Ambassador Pendleton directions for what she called a short-cut so that we would get to the border more quickly.

The four of us left, now minus the only Russian speaker among us, and headed for the border as the sun sank lower and lower. By the time we reached the border, we realized that the guards there, most of them very young men without any identifiable uniforms, had been standing in the sun while drinking all afternoon. When the car stopped, the guard who approached the ambassador stumbled as he walked towards the driver side window. A rifle was slung over his shoulder but the other guards were holding onto their rifles by the barrels.

The guard insisted the ambassador get out of the car. She tried to speak with him in Romanian, but that didn't work. He motioned for her to go to the back of the car and then he pointed to the trunk, indicating he wanted her to open it. She did. But when he started opening the suitcases in the trunk she pushed his hands out of the way and told him he didn't have any right to inspect anything in her car because we were all diplomats and her car had diplomatic plates on it. She got back into the car, put the car in gear and drove off. The rest of us slunk down into the seats so our heads were below the level of the back window.

It took a few minutes before we all exhaled.

Day 263 - Mr. Chişinău Airport, Part II

Image of Chişinău airport by Chris Radcliff,
via Flickr.com

Alex didn't get just that one phone call from the women at the airport. One Saturday evening, it was snowing heavily, so Alex didn't want to stick around any longer than he needed to. Very shortly after he returned home, the phone rang. It was one of the women at the airport to ask if he could help them get home. Normally they would walk to the main road and take the bus into town. Alex asked if there were any taxis at the airport. He knew that taxis were a very expensive option, so when they said there were a few taxis still around, he told the women to tell the taxi drivers that Mr. Alex would bring cash to the airport the next day to pay them for taking the women home. They did. He did. And the women were all the more appreciative of Alex after that.

In spite of the weekly shipment of pouches, there were times when we couldn't get in either the quantity of supplies and materials we needed by air or the items that we needed shipped in were too large to fit into the belly of the plane. About once every two months, those larger, bulky items were shipped in by plane from Frankfurt. These support flights provided equipment for all of what were referred to as the northern tier of newly independent states, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belorussia, Ukraine, and Moldova. The flights headed from Frankfurt to the northern-most of those posts, stopping along the way at the others with Moldova as the final stop. For that reason, we didn't always know when the flights would arrive. But we did know that by the time the crew arrived in Moldova, they would be tired and wouldn't want to be on the ground any longer than necessary.

Alex arranged to have all the embassy's trucks at the airport so that whatever needed to be offloaded could be moved into a truck as quickly as possible. He was able on most occasions to get the trucks to the support flight planes, get the plane unloaded, and then get off the tarmac so the plane could take off within 30-40 minutes. The crews were always impressed with how little time they had to spend on the ground in Moldova. Moldova began getting a reputation for being a place where things worked, in contrast to the other posts of the northern tier.

When Alex learned that the Senior Executive Corps was willing to send retired business professionals to the newly independent states for consultation, he suggested that getting retired professionals with experience at airports would be something that would benefit both Moldova and the embassy. The ambassador agreed and arranged for the visit. Alex identified the airport officials who should be invited.

The first time Alex and I left Moldova together, for a vacation back in the U.S. to attend our son's graduation, Mr. Cherednatski walked with us to the plane and handed Alex a bottle of brandy because he knew he wouldn't be in Moldova when we got back the following month. He was being transferred to Moscow.

The last time Alex and I left Moldova, all the women who worked at the airport came for the departure so that they could all say good-bye to Alex. When we got to the VIP area, the women were lined up, many of them with presents in their hands, all of them wanting to give Alex a hug and best wishes as we left. The ambassador of another embassy was leaving on the same flight and when one of that embassy's staff members came to the airport staff to complain that their ambassador was being kept waiting, the women responded that he would have to keep waiting until they had finished saying good-bye to Mr. Alex.

Months later, as Alex and I walked down one of the corridors at the Main State building at the end of the day, a man who had just turned right at the corridor intersection we were approaching from the left took just a few more steps before he stopped, turned around and said, "Hey, you're Mr. Chişinău Airport. What are you doing here?" He was one of the many diplomatic visitors who had come through Moldova during our assignment there.

Day 262 - Mr. Chişinău Airport, Part I

Image of Chisinau Airport by Breyten Ernsting,
 via Flickr.com

Each Saturday evening, the weekly Air Moldova flight from Frankfurt arrived. Sometimes the flight brought temporary visitors. Always it brought the unclassified pouch. That meant we always sent someone to the airport Saturday evenings with a truck to pick up the pouch. Because Alex was determined to make the arrival process less time consuming than we experienced when we arrived, he was always one of the Americans who went to the airport. He brought Slava, one of the local staff, as his translator.

While there, Alex used the time while he waited for the plane to get to know the people who worked at the arrival area. In addition to the large, dark, and cold arrivals hall that we experienced, there was a smaller room with chairs and lights available to use as a VIP lounge. But it was never used. So Alex's first goal was to get the airport to open the VIP lounge for the arriving diplomatic temporary visitors to wait. Over time, he convinced the women at the airport to let all our visitors, by then most were the cleared craftsmen, not just those with diplomatic passports, wait in the VIP lounge.

Along the way, he managed to ruffle a few feathers, but he brought flowers and chocolates with him to the airport the next day, along with Slava, to apologize. He also adopted the Moldovan greeting of kissing the hands of the women, something the young Moldovan men at the embassy weren't comfortable adopting themselves. They saw it as an old-fashioned tradition. I had observed the same pattern first in Iran where several of us had Romanian music teachers who insisted on kissing our hands when we met them. And I saw it again in Romania, so I wasn't surprised to see the hand-kissing tradition in Moldova. The women were delighted with Alex's apology as well as his method of apologizing. He now had allies at the airport.

Patron side of the VIP lounge

One Saturday evening when we had no arriving visitors, Alex returned from the airport with the pouches and returned to our suite just before the phone rang. It was one of the women at the airport. She spoke no English. I understood some Romanian and some Russian, enough to know the woman wanted to speak with Alex about a couple of Canadians who had arrived in Chişinău without visas. Using a combination of Alex's British English and my pigeon Russian, Alex assured the woman that he would be responsible for making sure the couple got visas if they were allowed to enter. He asked her to take down information from their passports and where they planned to stay so he could go to the British embassy, which had responsibility for Canadians in the absence of a Canadian embassy in Chişinău, on Monday to get their status in the country regularized or he would return the couple to the airport personally. This shouldn't have been possible, but Moldovans are the nicest people in the world and they trusted Alex.

Sarah at the bar and Alex behind the bar at the VIP
Lounge cafe

The weekly flight out of Chişinău was Saturday mornings. Once Alex had convinced the women at the airport to open the VIP lounge for arrivals, it was easier to get them to open it for departures. And at that time of the day, there was also a small cafe and bar that was opened. They served Moldovan pastries and sandwiches as well as Turkish coffee, beer, wine, brandy, and champagne. As the American craftsmen began leaving Chişinău, Alex encouraged them to leave all their leftover local currency as tips for the cafe staff. That was stage 1. Stage 2 was when Alex took over behind the counter serving drinks and food. The women who worked there just moved to one side with a smile and let Alex take over.

One day when Alex arrived with departing craftsmen, he was told by someone he hadn't met yet that he couldn't bring the Americans into the VIP lounge. He wasn't pleased with either the message or the attitude of the man, so he expressed his displeasure and insisted on seeing the head of the airport, Mr. Cherednatski. Alex had met Mr.Cherednatski early in his cultivation of relationships with the Moldovan airport staff, so when he came and explained to Alex that this time the VIP lounge was being used by another group so Alex and the departing Americans couldn't use it, Alex understood. Alex thanked Mr. Cherednatski for the explanation and asked Slava to go with him to the new man to apologize. Alex stressed that Slava was to translate everything exactly as he said it. And Alex warned him that he would be able to know if Slava didn't translate everything exactly because he would see it on the man's face. Slava objected saying that Alex would lose face if he apologized. But he agreed to follow Alex's instructions as Alex told the man he had been wrong and wanted to apologize. Instead of losing face, Alex's apology led to a huge grin and a hand extended for a shake. The apology worked.

Alex's propusk or airport tarmac access pass

Still Alex wasn't satisfied. When pouches were loaded into the belly of the plane, Alex wanted to be able to observe the pouches until the door to the belly closed. To do that, he needed a tarmac access pass. No one thought the Moldovan government would issue a tarmac access pass to a foreigner. But they underestimated the power of the relationships Alex had established. Alex received tarmac access pass which made it possible for him to meet the incoming visitors at the bottom of the ramp. That is when some of them began referring to him as Mr. Chişinău Airport.