Moldova to Japan

Dateline: Kamikawa, Japan; September 11, 2011—Last time I posted I was in Bulgaria and that was a long time ago. I have a few comments in this post covering Eastern Europe and a few comments at the beginning on Japan. For a few of you, knowing I am in Japan, you might be thinking, “Did he do Fuji-san?” Well, that was my sincere intention. The official climbing season ends the end of August so I booked a ticket to leave the USA on 29 August. Arrive the 30^th, climb the 31^st, be back in Kawikawa the 1^st. Yes, that was the plan. The plan didn’t work out.

Running is something my body has to do. Back in California everything was going great, not an ache or a pain anywhere. One afternoon my run took me to some railroad tracks. They are defunct and running along each side are paths horses use, as well as bikers and other runners. It was over 100^o but the low humidity makes heat hardly noticeable. At one point the trail meandered off into the dry California weeds and thorns, and they can be meaner than a union boss at a Labor Day speech. So, I went onto the tracks, running the ties. It isn’t all that hard, just have to adjust the stride a bit. But somehow the track troll grabbed my right ankle and I went down hard against the rails. The left knee brace saved it from a decent shredding but couldn’t help my running pants. The left elbow received four little holes and the left shoulder made hard contact with the rail as did my ribs resulting in a minor costochondral separation. Oh yes, and the right ankle was badly sprained. Bummer.

It was a long, slow walk back to the home where I was staying and I immediately iced the ankle and the ribs. For a couple of days I was in exquisite pain but still I kept the possibility in the back of my mind that Fuji-san might still feel my tread. With the simple remedies the ankle was feeling better in a couple of days. The ribs were/are a different story. Seems they were just beginning to hurt the first few days. This all happened about August 23 and I still can’t sleep on my back for the pain in the ribs. But still Fuji-san loomed above the Kanto Plain, tantalizing, beckoning, teasing. Surely I could tough it out. But apparently God doesn’t want me climbing it at this time for at the very time I was arriving in Japan, so was Typhoon Talas. It was a bad typhoon, as if there might be a good one. Over 33 known dead and many more missing. So, the most climbing I have done here is climbing into and out of bed. This is good because jetlag takes its toll.

Tomorrow we leave for Nippon Sani-ku Gau-ken, the college where we will be conducting one of our schools and where I will be lecturing the nursing students. The college is located in the same prefecture as Tokyo but it is up in the hills and very beautiful. Hopefully it will be high enough to escape some of the humidity and heat that is cooking us down here in the flatlands. More on this as it happens. Now to catch up just a bit.

Dateline: Bacau, Romania; June 3, 2011—As is my wont, I am far behind in my travelogues and now, as I sit here on this gently swaying train threading its way from Bacau to Bucharest through promising fields and forested hills, I reflect on a wonderful journey. I have always loved well-laid fields, the quilt of the earth. The bright yellows of the canola blossoms, the verdant green of spritely corn, the various hues of brown. There is the new turned earth, bearing its ebony soul for reception of life-bearing seed. There is the sienna hay, much of which has been laid low by the sinewed, tan arms of the farmer and his scythe. And there are the dusty khaki lanes traversing field and forest. It evokes the happy memory of driving across the Allegany and Blue Ridge Mountains and through the Shenandoah Valley in the mid-fifties. Yes, very happy memories. And today I relive them a half-century later and thousands of miles distant. Oh yes, and punctuating the motley tapestry of spring’s offering are the blood red poppies, nodding gravely as we tremble past.

Bacau was the city but Podis was the place of my sojourn. Podis is a new lifestyle center 300 km north of Bucharest set back in the hills of the sub-Carpathian Mountains. Many of the workers there were former students of mine at Herghelia, the center near Tergu Mares. Now, I have been privileged to serve in many schools and centers around the world, but this one had a special luster. All the workers love Podis, feeling called and privileged for the opportunity to work there. It is not a school so there are no students “marching unwillingly to school.” No strong, domineering personalities, no malingerers, no complaining. It was family and I was made a beloved member. Even the patients, coming from every walk of life, embraced me. It reminded me of Psalm 68:6 “God sets the solitary in families.…” Indeed it was a family.

Each day I would teach the staff principles of health and practical applications. Then I would have meetings with the patients. A number of the patients decided to give up the evening meal and as a diversion, I was asked to deliver a lecture to them during that time. It seemed as if I had at least half of the patients, some still chewing their food they had wolfed down prior to coming to the class. Even with the anchor dragging need to use a translator, everyone seemed to enjoy the meetings.

The director of Podis pointed to the forest rising up behind the center and told me to pick a place; they would build me a house if I could come and live and work there. I have often thought that if I were to be stranded in a country, Moldova or Romania would be good places to be. In these countries, the people have learned of necessity to grow their own food, to gather their own fuel, to draw their own water; in other words, to live close to the bone and still thrive. When the US infrastructure goes south and Walmart SuperCenters close, you have a prescription for anarchy. And I believe this time is coming and not always with stealthy step.

Herghelia, Romania; April 29-May 25—It had been two years since I taught at Herghelia. The day I arrived, after and all-night bus trip from Chisinau, Moldova, I was being shown around the campus which was being readied for the Outpost Centers International Leadership Retreat May 16-22. Herghelia had bought a large circus tent which they were retrofitting as a conference center. It was quite impressive. Inside there was a ring of steel poles supporting the roof and some of those were posing an obstacle as they stood ramrod straight across the front of the speakers’ platform. They had devised a plan to angle certain of the poles inward to a large wooden beam about eight feet above the floor in the middle of the tent. For some reason they decided this wouldn’t work so were taking the metal poles down. I was helping and all was going happily along until they came to the last pole. A man was pounding on the pole to knock it loose and when that was accomplished, the beam was also loosed from its perch. I ducked and started to run out of the way but I was too late. And the ducking only gave the beam extra time to build up momentum. It caught me just behind the right ear and across the back of my head knocking me to the ground, skinning an elbow and knee, and sending me into two weeks of dizziness.

After teaching for two weeks, we enjoyed seeing friends from around the world as the OCI retreat unfolded. From meetings in a tent to meals in another, we enjoyed a week without rain and showers of blessings.

Sarata Noua, Moldova; April 14-28, 2011—It was good to be back in Moldova again. Biser drove me back to Bucharest and I caught a train to Chisinau, Moldova. I decided to splurge and take a first class berth. It cost just over $60 which wasn’t much over the next lower option, and for an all-night journey, it is well worth it. The compartment I was assigned had two beds although I as the only one occupying, and it was bordering on opulent. It was a most comfortable ride. As we rattled through the gray dawn, evidence was everywhere that it had been raining a very long time. The sodden fields gave no evidence of verdant spring. The ubiquitous geese complained from a sea of choices and farmers gazed from kitchen windows at the quagmire before them. I found out upon my arrival it had been raining for eight days straight, and that after a long and very cold winter.

Serghei Costas met me at the Chisinau train terminal and soon we were jolting along the pock-marked road to Sarata Noua. Moldova has some of the worse roads I have traveled, and that says a lot. And previously, almost the whole length of the drive there had been walnut trees lining the highway. They formed a natural corridor, especially in the summer. It was really quite impressing and took one’s mind off the constant pounding his body was taking on the winter-scarred road. But now, by some fiat from Chisinau, the trees are being cut down, leaving the landscape even more denuded, if that is possible. Moldova has lost most of its forests and now even the farmland is being overtaken by vineyards. Wine will come next, and then the baleful results of its intoxicating and poisoning influence.

My time in Sarata Noua was rich, as usual. We traveled up north to give a series of meetings at various churches. In one church I was answering a question about someone having an allergy and explaining about the number one food allergen in the world, which is milk from a cow. Turns out most of the members of the church were dairy farmers. Their employment made my explanation no less valid, but did require a bit of tact and humor. When it was all over we were all friends and I was invited back to live amongst them any time I wanted. They are really beautiful people.

There is a family at Sarata Noua with a special story. The father and husband was a very successful businessman, having a number of lucrative ventures allowing them to live very comfortably. He is just one of those types who can make things happen. So, he decides to immigrate to the USA and really strike it big. Things were going fine but before a year was up, he returned with his family to Moldova. The reason? He felt he was losing his children to the influences of America. I am afraid the exhibition of our freedoms is overshadowed by the fecundity of our excesses. So now he and his family live an extremely simple life and the children and thriving in a simple, natural environment.

And there is one more family at Sarata Noua that makes it imperative for me to return. Stas, Adriana and Yana, and soon another addition to this beautiful family. Both were my students a couple years ago and now work with the school there in Moldova. The whole campus was built from a failed youth camp being constructed by the Soviets. When the iron curtain fell, everything stopped. All of the buildings were decrepit by the time the school moved in. These people are miracle workers. There was one building, a rude, dark row of rooms filled with coal, dirt, rubble or assorted junk. A wrecking ball seemed the only solution for this eyesore. Well, now Stas and family live in the end two units which have been turned into the nicest little apartment I have seen. It is noting short of miraculous. Tiled walls, wooden floors, lovely walls. It is amazing what a bit of work, ingenuity and building materials can do. I look forward to returning this winter.