Dr. Strangecar: How I Learned to Love a 5am Bus

Yesterday, my mayor asked me to go to Chisinau with a couple
community members for a meeting with an aid organization, IREX. They
want IREX to give them money to fix a road (i.e. river of mud) -
which I spent an hour or two photographing and which you see pictured
below. I thought the participants of the meeting would be myself,
one community member, Oleg, and someone from IREX. This morning that
group changed to me, 3 members of the community, our vice-mayor, no
Oleg, some Turkish guy who needed a lift back to Chisinau, the school
director who had the day off and wanted to go to town, and two drivers

This many people could not fit in one car, and two cars were hard to
come by.
About 2 hours after we were originally supposed to leave,
we departed in two cars. Fifteen minutes later, at the local gas
station, we stopped for about 30 minutes to haggle with the owner
about giving us gas since we were at least mostly on "official"
business of the mayor's office.

When we reach the halfway point, a city called Comrat, our car stops
so the random Turkish guy can meet with someone in that mayor's
office for an undisclosed period of time. So I call my friend, Bryan
to see if he's free to meet me. He is, we go to a cafe and order
food, and just before my food arrives, the Turk's meeting ends and we
have to get back on the road - good thing I packed a Clif bar...

About 30 minutes outside of Chisinau, our car develops some sort of
mechanical or electrical problem requiring the car to shake a lot and
have frequent shut off.

So we get to Chisinau and IREX's office and the other car isn't there
- which begs the question, considering all our delays, what the hell
happened to the other car?! About 30 minutes later they arrive and
we have our meeting which basically goes like this:

VILLAGERS: So, we'd like you to give us money to fix our road.
IREX: Well, we don't just give money for projects. There needs to be
some kind of community development - like a community group that will
meet regularly to address this and other local concerns during the
project and into the future.
VILLAGERS: But, we want you to give us money to fix our road. Didn't
you see the pictures?
BRAD: [sigh...]

After the meeting, I ate a pretty good lunch at a cafe while waiting
for our driver to return from some mechanic who is hopefully
repairing the car. God only knows when that will be, so I take a
taxi to the PC office and while away the time there.

Several hours later I'm picked up in a working car, minus the Turk,
allowing me to stretch out in the back seat... for 5 minutes until we
pick up to random people headed to Ceadir-Lunga, so now as I type
this I am quite scrunched. Then we hit a pothole and got a flat
tire, which our driver changed (quite quickly) and I got home around
11pm, ate dinner, and went to bed.

Thought I'd give you a sneak into the "never a dull moment in
transportation" lifestyle that many people lead in this country.

Lessons learned:
1. Don't go to Chisinau and back in one day, especially in the
mayor's car.
2. I actually prefer the daily 5am bus to Chisinau. I leaves on time
- or at least never more than 15 minutes late - and doesn't make any
unscheduled stops.
3. Only go to necessary meetings in Chisinau.
4. I get more work done in my village than I do in the capital
(though I think I knew this already, but today really drove - no pun
intended - the point home).