Traveling back to their home country to help at a summer camp where they’d sponsored 85 children would have been enough of a noteworthy event for Greenfield’s Ivantchev family, especially since Greenfield Middle School Assistant Principal Angela Ruggeri had come along to help.
But the Ivantchevs, who first immigrated from Moldova to Greenfield in 1997 and were also planning on offering a medical clinic during their three-week trip, just missed becoming part of two major events during stopovers in Istanbul.
Sergei Ivantchev, a physician who with his wife, Lucia, decided to sponsor between 80 and 100 campers in southern Moldova, about 6 miles from his home village, Tarancuta. Traveling with their two daughters, Victoria, 25, and Nicole, 19, the family also invited Ruggeri, with whom Nicole Ivantchev has worked for as a Russian-Romanian translator and tutor in the Greenfield schools.
The five flew from Logan Airport to Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport, where they had to wait nearly three hours for a connecting flight.
“We were supposed to depart at 7:40 that (June 28) evening, I think, but we were held on the tarmac, delayed for some reason, for about half an hour” waiting for their flight to the Moldovan capital, Chisinau, Sergei Ivantchev said.
It wasn’t until they arrived in Moldova did they learn that there had been a terrorist attack at the airport, with two attackers blowing themselves up and more than 40 people killed.
“I believe it was divine protection for our family,” he said. “It could have happened we still would be there an hour before. Nothing was suspicious when we arrived, we changed at the gate, we went to a cafe there. There were no increased police security …”
Returning from Moldova through the same airport last Friday, the Ivantchevs had a brush with a major event again, when after their three-hour layover, they learned on the flight that the airport had been closed immediately after they left that afternoon.
They asked the flight attendant what had happened, but nobody knew, Ivantchev said. “It was a very fluid situation.”
It wasn’t until they had returned to the United States that they learned they had just left Turkey before the failed coup attempt.
“Everybody was talking about it, especially the Turkish nationals and the flight attendants,” he told a Boston Globe reporter who met the Turkish Airline flight as it arrived at Logan.
“We could have been delayed longer, and the airport would have been closed,” he told The Recorder.
The two near-misses did nothing to mar the trip for Ivantchev, who with his daughter Victoria, a student at Caribbean Medical College in Aruba, offered a “medical mission,” with cortisone injections to arthritic patients. Ivantchev, who has also offered clinics in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, said he wanted to help patients with knee, shoulder and hip problems and had brought along 150 doses of the steroid along, since many poor people are left to fend for themselves in getting the medical attention they need.
The Ivantchevs also had brought 100 green Moldovan Baptist Church of Greenfield backpacks that were filled with school supplies to give to Moldovan children. And they also filled bags with groceries for 100 elderly residents.
“They don’t have any help at all,” said Ivantchev, pointing out that conditions have seemingly gotten worse in Europe’s poorest country, where the gross national per capita income is $2,560 a year, according to World Bank figures. With a growing disparity between rich and poor and rampant government corruption. (During their visit, former Moldovan Prime Minister Vlad Filat was sentenced to a nine years in jail on corruption charges, but Ivantchev says the problem is far more widespread.)
To help the children, Lucia and Nicole, who is a student at Stonehill College, worked at the camp in rural Baimaclia, helping volunteer staff with chores and pitching in with the campers, along with Ruggeri.
Most of the children have parents who have to leave the country to work in Italy or other countries, because jobs are scarce, said Ivantchev, who works as an emergency room physician in Pittsfield and Great Barrington, alternating with work giving anesthesia in New Brunswick, Canada.
Ruggeri, who had never been to Moldiva before but had worked with the Greenfield Middle School’s large population of Moldovan students, said, “It was a very eye-opening experience.”
It also her gave her added empathy for the students she works with in Greenfield, a community with approximately 300 Moldovan families.
“For a European country, there’s very little English spoken,” she said. “Putting myself in a situation where I didn’t know the knowledge, it was a challenge to connect. I know that’s what our students go through every day. Not only is it a challenge for them to learn the language … they’re in a classroom also trying to learn the material. I realized how it can be really exhausting to be in that kind of situation.”
She added that for students moving to Greenfield from small Moldovan villages, the change is dramatic.
“The kids work really hard in their homes, but there’s also high expectations for education in Moldova, for students are working very hard with that as well. “I think it really helps understanding the challenges they’re facing,” said Ruggeri, who plans to share her experience with other principals and teachers in the Greenfield schools.
You can reach Richie Davis at: 413-772-0261, ext. 269