Spying On Your Neighbour

We hear that some of you are idle. They are not busy; they are busybodies. – 2 Thessalonians 3:11

Quite interesting how the devotional yesterday reminded me of a conversation with Simona, our apartment-mate here in Bucharest. We had been living in the ministry apartment and just 2 weeks’ back, there was a mission team of 12 pax from Idaho (USA) staying over for a week. A bunch of people in a confined space naturally entailed a higher noise level, and Simona shared with us regarding the “spying neighbour”.

This was a retiree who had lived through the communist regime where a full third of citizens were spying on the other two-thirds. Apparently you can’t even trust your own siblings and relatives. One wrong comment could get you placed on the dissident list, and God knows what would happen to you thereafter.

So our neighbour got real curious about the Idaho team and kept making a few excuses trying to enter the apartment to poke around. She then started chatting up the apartment block’s committee chairman (her good friend) and he started to take some action against these “noisy foreigners who might be a threat/nuisance to the residents” by pasting some notice on our door, and publishing a list of number of occupants per apartment at the lift landing. (Our apartment was listed as having 25 pax, as compared to the usual 2-4 pax per apartment)

Final straw came when they called the police in to gain official access into our apartment, wanting to see what’s going on. Our apartment’s owner (the missionaries whom we were volunteering for) finally got to know about the nonsense and stepped in to clarify. Pretty surreal tale of the communist hangover that still pervades parts of the society in the ex-communist bloc countries. Makes you wonder sometimes what information your neighbour (or country’s authorities) keep on you.