The Story is in the Soil

It is not difficult to feel like you have stepped back in time when you set foot in a Moldovan village. Apart from the occasional anachronism of satellite dishes on rooftops or techno music resonating from a neighbor’s yard, little has changed in the past three hundred years. There is no industry beyond basic agriculture. There are no billboards or other indications of commercialization. It is a simple life, tempered only by the challenges imposed by modernity.

Moldova’s history is as rich is the fertile black soil that carpets the landscape, and the soil itself tells a harrowing story of abuse by those in power. In the village of Lunga, for example, the groundwater has been contaminated by jet fuel, which for years had been dumped in the fields at a now defunct military base just a few kilometers away. With the spark of a match, the water catches fire. I have seen it with my own eyes, and the smell of petroleum permeates nearly every element of this otherwise unspoiled existence.

It is in the water that they draw from their wells, which is the same water that they drink, which is the same water with which they feed their animals and irrigate their fields. I sampled a locally produced wine only to discover that it, too, smelled like gasoline. The condition of the water has been this way, the residents told me, for over thirty years, so I suspect that many of them no longer even notice, except on the rare occasions when they receive much needed medical attention for the pollution that they ingest.

Among the most basic of human needs, clean water is vital in itself and to all other aspects of survival. Indeed, it is a fundamental human right. The people of Lunga, as well as those of several other villages in Moldova, have a right to drink water that is not loaded with carcinogens, that nourishes instead of contaminates, that is as pure as their traditions.

If not for the negative influences of the outside world, I doubt that many of these villagers would be keen to give up the lives that they have known, which until recently have been essentially without covet or need. Industrialization has changed and threatens to destroy their way of life, and now the modernization of their water retrieval and distribution systems may be the only way to salvage what remains.

These villages have been essentially self-sufficient for hundreds of years, but now they are faced with a problem that they lack the means or resources to address. They are good people, many of them too proud to ask for help, so I feel compelled to do so for them. Without new, deeper wells, their otherwise simple lives will only continue to get harder.

If you are able to do so, please help them.

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