KLAVA
I meet pensioned nurse Klava in the village Cotiujenii Mare where she lives with her husband. She’s building a shower, soon she will have running water in her winter house. She shows me how like most people here she has 2 houses next to each other: a small one with little windows and an oven in the middle that heats up the thick walls for winter, and for summer one that is spacious, has a high ceiling and an outside kitchen.
Klava takes me to the backyard where she tirelessly starts to chop up wood. She wants me to take a picture to show the world how strong Moldovan women are. I ask her about her work as a nurse and what was different for her during Sovjet times, expecting big stories about hardships and heroism. She shrugs her shoulders and says: sick people were still sick people.
MARIA
I meet Maria in the bright yellow church of Komrat. Together with other women, she is carrying dozens of paintings inside, on them are saints of whom I must admit I don’t have a clue who they are. Against the wall is a table, on the table a small ladder, on the ladder a priest. He just hammered a nail into the wall and is now leveling out the paintings. A little to the right, slightly back to the left. The ladder is wobbling. The table as well. The priest keeps his balance.
This might be symbolic.
RAIA
I meet 82 year old Raia while she is working in her garden. Her grandson is helping out bottling watermelon. Watermelon. Preserved in glass jars. I never knew this was even an option.
When I take her portrait I ask her to stand in front of the bright blue door of the abandoned house all the way in the back. Her walking stick and her feet both take a few more steps back, her bare legs coming dangerously close to some stinging nettles. Watch out! I rush to warn her, but she looks at me completely undisturbed.
I’m not afraid of evil plants, she says. Only evil people scare me.
