5 October 2010

                  Lions, and Tigers, and Borderguards, Oh My!

                                             "Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore!" 

There is no “yellowbrick road” leading into Transnistria. But there are plenty of “lions, and tigers, and bears” to impede your journey.

I had been living for two days not in a tiny little tselo (villiage with a church) on the Moldovan side or the border between Moldova and Transnistria. The town is so close to the border that Transnistrian army trucks are regularly seen in the village even though it’s located on the Moldovan side. On my first full day in Moldova I rose from my bed early to meet Fedya, the brother of Oxana our NGO director, so that he could take me over the border to the NGO office in Transnistria. Crossing the border requires going through three check points and walking into a ramshakety little building to fill out a migration card. It’s usually a 30-minute ordeal, and at best it’s an annoying hiccup to the commute. At worst you could be held at the border, interrogated, and made to pay a bribe to be freed. Once inside the country you have only 10 hours to be there. Any more than that and you’ll have to drive down to the government office, pay $4, and register. It’s a real pain.

 In no time we arrived at the border. the Transnistrian guards checked my passport, I filled out a migration card, and one last guard stopped us. He asked us what was in my back pack and I responded, “medicine”. He didn’t like that and wanted to know exactly what kinds of medicine I had in the bag. “Contacts” I said “You have that whole bag for contacts?” he brazenly replied. I shrugged my shoulders, and he, visible perturbed, waved us on. Giving a sigh of releave I told myself “Man, that’s the last time I’m risking taking any medication like that through the border”.

            The rest of the morning I spent at the Interaction office. I hoped that someone from the office would drive me back to my village at the end of the day because
I was at a loss for how I would find my way home. Oxana gave me directions for taking the series of mini-busses that would end me back up to my apartment. I asked her about getting back across the border stating that I had heard that foreigners aren’t let over certain borders and that in order for me to return by bus I would have to cross over one of those borders. (Two years earlier my friend Jaron was forced to sneak into Transnistria when the bus he was on diverted from its original route and tried to take him through a border that didn’t let foreigners though.) I didn’t want to have a repeat of Jaron’s experience.

At my question Oxana sat quietly and lightly nodded her head,

“Yeah, good thinking, you’re right they won’t let you across that border by yourself” I wasn’t expecting what she would say next.

“We’ll just have to take you to the place where you can walk across the border on our way to Chisinau”.

“Walk across the border?” I replied, “How will that solve the problem if they won’t let me go through the border”

“Oh you won’t walk through the border, you’ll walk around the border guards the way that the locals go; no one should stop you.

“You mean, I’m going to sneak over the border illegally?”

            “Oh, you Americans are always so concerned about what’s legal and illegal, she laughed. “you’ll be fine; they won’t stop you”.

            “Hmm” I thought, “that’s still not very comforting”.

            As we had planned Oxana, her husband, Fedya, and I drove to the border. On our way our plan to get me across the border slipped out to Oxana’s husband.

            “That’s crazy!” he said “He doesn’t look like a local! They’ll stop him and demand his passport! They do that to people walking over that path!”

            “I think he’ll be okay” Oxana confidently responded

            Now I really wasn’t feeling sure about this. But what else was I to do? The only way I would be able to go back and forth from my apartment into Transnistria on public transport would be through this border.            

            The car stopped and Oxana hopped out the back seat and opened up my door. “Come on, let’s go” she said.

            I followed her on the left side of the road on a worn down dirt path which carved itself through the long grass surrounding it. Trash, broken fragments of stone and tile, and animal feces littered the landscape. The trail headed on the backside of the border guards’ shacks. It kept its distance from the guards but was still easily visible to them in certain points. I warily peered at the guards in the distance as we made our way over the border and then back to the main road. They hadn’t seen us! I expected that Oxana and I would then return the way we had came, they would drop me off in Bender, and I would only have to repeat the border crossing that evening. To my surprise Fedya and Oxana’s husband were there to meet us on the other side. We drove on an in two minutes we arrived in Varnița, the village where I was staying. Oxana instructed then instructed me:

-            “tomorrow morning you will cross the border by yourself just as we did and then catch the bus on the other side of the border”.

-            “By myself! But I can’t remember how to get back there!” I protested. I was worried that since I would be coming from a different direction that I would get lost and be caught by the border guards. I had figured we were just sneaking across the border so that she could show me how to do it and that we would return so I didn’t pay much attention to exactly how to find the trial.

-            “Don’t worry” she reaffirmed as she told me the directions to the path again. “I think you’ll be fine”.

(I decided not to even ask about what would happen if I was stopped while trying to sneak across the border.)

-            “Just put on a serious look, and walk like you’re going somewhere and are in a hurry” she continued, smiling.

            They dropped me off and went on their way to Chisinau while I was still feeling unsteady about what to do. Later that day I walked back over towards the border so that I could see the guards and where they stopped people. I saw the path as it winded around the border patrol station. In the near distance on the Transnistrian side was a stonehenge of abandoned, uncompleted cement buildings towering above the treeless, naked earth below. The building’s wide, rectangular holes where windows would have gone made them look like skeletons of concrete and brick. I would discover later that this massive cement ghost-town was going to be a huge tram center but construction halted because of the civil war. Surrounding these abandoned fortresses of stone, unusual grass-covered lumpy mounds decorated the area making it look like Hobbiton in Hell. I mentally planned my next day’s dash and then returned to the village.

            That night I told my khozaika* what I would do the next day and for 20 minutes she pleaded with me not to cross illegally. “Is this really a good idea” I thought to myself that night more than once.

            Night faded into morning and I left the apartment a little after 10am, making sure to leave all my valuables at home and to only have a small amount of cash on hand. I disguised my Americanness behind a black coat and grey trousers. I quickly walked towards the border as the words of Oxana’s husband echoed in my mind “Are you crazy! He doesn’t look like a local! They’ll stop him and demand his passport! The do that even to people walking over that path!”

            The road split, one end heading through the border and the other turning sharply to the right. I stayed to the right. I could clearly see the Transnistrian border guards less than 50 meters ahead stopping traffic and checking documents. “I hope I look Russian enough and that my laptop backpack doesn’t give me away” I nervously thought. I continued to follow the right fork of the road waling along a dirt path etched into the grass along the road. Cows and goats grazed along retired railroad tracks overgrown with grass. I could see the path. I walked towards it, now I was only 20 feet away from the path.

            Suddenly my heart stopped. To my dismay I spotted a border guard walking towards the path I planned to take. He stopped short of it and entered a wooden outhouse only a few yards away from the path.            

            “Shoot” I thought, “I can’t risk taking that path, I’ll be too close to the guard if he comes out and he could easily stop me.” The expired railroad intersected the scene in front of me and created the border between Moldova and Transnistria. Quickly rethinking my plan I spied out a different path running on the Moldovan side of the train tracks. I quickly walked along the tracks for 50 feet and stepped over the first track putting myself inside the tracks. Still safe inside Moldova I approached the second track. I set my left foot on the far track, then my right. “Thump”. I jumped down. I was in Transnistria.

            I quickly hurried towards the Hobbit hillocks infront of me. The only trees in the area were near the border guard station and behind me. The first of the giant skeleton-buildings was only a few meters in front of me to my left and its larger companions loomed a 100 meters in front of me. The buildings stared down at me as I made my way to a path of sort that led between them. 50 yards away to my right was a babushka talking with man wearing a somewhat triangular hat. They were surrounded by goats grazing on the grassy mounds. “Could that man be a border guard?” I thought. A quick glimpse made me think not but still wasn’t all too sure. I turned away from their direction and headed on the path between the spread out buildings. So far I didn’t think anyone had seen me besides the babushka and the mysterious man accompanying her.

            Suddenly I heard a whistle behind me. My heart skipped a beat. I kept walking. Another whistle. “Oh, no” I exclaimed “I’ve been caught!” Terrified, I looked back over my shoulder to the man in the hat. His face was focused away from me to something else and he lashed at something with a whip. “Whew” I sighed in relief. He was just whistling at the goats and not me!

            By this time I was only a few dozen more meters from the road and thus safety. I quickly reached the road and then backtracked up to the bus stop a few feet closer to the border. I sat at the bus stop and waited for the bus. The border was easily visible to me but the guards would have no clue that I was an American that had just sneaked over their border. I was safe.

            A few minutes passed and I saw the red bus arrive at the border. It stopped and as soon as it stopped a guard waved it on. They hadn’t stopped the bus! “I can’t believe it” I thought in amazement. “You mean I went through that all for nothing and I could have just ridden on the bus and then never would have known I was there?” Sure enough it was true. They rarely stopped busses, after all it would take too much trouble to load everyone off an on the bus to check documents. In  fact since that time I have ridden on the bus twice through the border and no one stopped us to check documents. I had gone through all that trouble for nothing except having a great story. But that’s a reward enough in itself!