Day 256 - Arrival of the Craftsmen

Image of Coke bottle
by slightly-less-random , via Flickr.com

The renovation of the embassy involved bringing together expert craftsmen from Moldova with expert craftsmen from the U.S. One of the differences between the two was their tools. The Moldovan craftsmen had hand tools. The American craftsmen had power tools.

The Moldovans could do amazing things with their hand tools. They didn't just create drain spouts, for example, they created works of art as decorative touches at the corners of the building where the drain pipes met the down spouts. They created eleborate picture frames using a variety of different planes. But once they saw those power tools, they seemed unable to do anything without them. It was the Moldovan version of the Coke bottle in The Gods Must Be Crazy.

The Moldovan craftsmen worked in the areas of the embassy that did not need cleared Americans to do the work. But when work had to begin in those areas requiring a clearance, the carpenters, plumbers, and electricians recruited by Fluor Daniel began to arrive. Many of them were from North Carolina and had never been out of the U.S. before. Moldova was a very good first foreign experience.

The American craftsmen had their specialties, but they all pitched in where the work needed to be done. Plumbers pitched in as carpenters and electricians as plumbers. Work progressed.

But it was off the compound where the American craftsmen made their biggest impression.

One of the local motorcycles with sidecar being enjoyed
by the son of a Moldovan employee

In spite of the advice we understood they were given to keep a low profile, many of them arrived wearing Western hats, Western boots, and belt buckles the size of salad plates. They spoke with accents Moldovans were unlikely to have heard in movies or TV shows. Several of them bought local motorcycles with sidecars. One picked up a puppy who traveled with him around the city in the sidecar. The traffic police in Chişinău saluted him as he made his way around the city.

Once the construction was mobilized, and Tom and Dave were available to join us for dinner, we stopped eating in the private dining room at the Hotel Codru and began eating in the hotel restaurant where there were more tables with four chairs at each, lined up in rows across the much larger space. Each row of tables was assigned to a different waitress and we learned to find out which waitress was there before we sat down since they didn't all come on duty at the same time. If we sat at a table assigned to a waitress who wasn't at work yet, no one would come to take our orders.

Chuck and Harold, two of the craftsmen

We could squeeze one or two more chairs around each table, but once the American craftsmen began to arrive, when we needed a table for at least seven, we couldn't get by with one table. To solve that problem, we pulled two tables together and grabbed a few more chairs so we could sit together. The reaction of the waitresses in the restaurant bordered on horror. No one else had ever moved the tables together. But after the end of the first meal, when the guys all pulled out their small bills to leave on the table as a tip, the waitresses stopped trying to prevent us from pulling the tables together, so long as we didn't try to combine tables from different rows.

Ben and Jimmy, two of the craftsmen

But getting a big tip wasn't all the craftsmen gave the waitresses. As the men with the unusual accents sat down and pulled out their Bowie knives in order to cut the meat, and their Tabasco Sauce bottles to spice up all the food on their plates, they provided the waitresses with entertainment.

The restaurant had a series of semi-circular alcoves that seated more than four around the edges of the room, but I never saw anyone in them. They were dark and had curtains that could be pulled shut for even more privacy. One evening as we were seated at a series of three tables pulled together, a group of six Moldovans came into the restaurant. It was like watching a silent movie because all the participants used gestures while they talked. When the waitress greeted them, one of the men in the group pointed at the alcoves, clearly requesting that they be seated in one of them. The waitress pointed instead at the row of tables in front of them. The man then gestured with a sweep of his hand at the number of people in the group. The waitress responded by pointing to two of the tables and then gestured to show they could be pulled together.

That's when we knew we had made an impact!