Expat In Romania

The first version of this post was published not long after I moved to Romania, when the political battles in the country resembled mafia clan wars - minus the restaurant drive-bys. (You can find it here ). The same types of unscrupulous bosses laying claim to and fighting for fiefdoms while their lieutenants (ministers or deputies in parliament) run the day to day management, right down to the associates (bureaucrats) who may not be 'in' the system, per se , but who facilitate and gladly take favours when they're given. This is not such an original analogy, if you're looking at the situation objectively, but people here don't quite see it because, even if the government is run by a criminal organization, the ordinary citizen is ignorant as to how organized crime works. Many Romanians are are also ignorant about the way democracy works. Or, if you think about it, how business and economics work. Let's just say we're on a learning curve. But, if we're...

"Jos Comunistii!" "PSD, Ciuma Rosie!" Why are there now, as I'm writing, protesters out in the streets chanting, "down with the communists" and "PSD is the Red Plague"? Hasn't it been nearly thirty years since a bloody revolution rid us of the Red Plague? It had poisoned our minds and imprisoned our souls for nearly fifty years. Globally, Communism has killed more people and lasted longer than any historical plague. Yet here we are, still fighting this insidious disease, as if it never went away. Judging by much of the Romania around me, it hasn't. Without a doubt, the Romania of '89 and the Romania of today are two different countries - at least on the surface. Cars are not all Dacias, people aren't toting worn-out raffia bags wherever they go (even if Luis Vuiton has made them fashionable in the West ), there is more colour, more glass alongside the concrete, more neon, more music. Roads are flatter, (some) sidewalks w...

In Chinua Achebe's, A Man of the People, the narrator, Odilli,  describes an incident between villagers and a greedy local shopkeeper, Josiah. Although he was disliked by many, the villagers could tolerate his greed so long as the shop remained well-stocked and convenient. But one day Josiah is caught stealing a blind beggar's walking stick. He was planning to use it for a medicine that would "turn [the villagers] into blind buyers of his wares." This act epitomizes Josiah's greed and turns the entire village against him. "Josiah has taken away enough for the owner to notice," a villager says. "I thought much afterwards about that proverb, about the man taking things away until the owner at last notices. In the mouth of our people there was no greater condemnation. It was not just a simple question of a man's cup being full. A man's cup might be full and none be the wiser. But here the owner knew, and the owner, I discovered, is the will ...