Chapter 4

          The children in this orphanage were divided into five developmental groups, based mainly on whether or not they could feed themselves.  Group Five was the furthest behind, and Group One was the most advanced.

          Group Five was bottle-fed, and most of the children in that group couldn’t walk, even though some of them were four years old.  None of them were physically handicapped; they were just completely behind in all development.

          Mark spent most of his time in Group Five, so we called it “Marks Group”, and Mary spent the majority of her time in Group Two so that was “Mary’s Group.”  Groups One and Three received attention from other various volunteers that came.  Group Five was the group I first met and fell in love with, but I adored the children in Group Four too, and spent most of my time with them, calling it “My Group.”  I tried to divide my time between Mark’s Group and My Group because I wanted to be with them all.  Some days I was torn between wanting to stay in Mark’s, but not yet having spent time in mine.  Other days I wondered if I was doing any good at all.  I felt that the overall time each child got was not enough, but I couldn’t tear myself from either group to be exclusive in the other.  The children in Mark’s group needed so much help and extra attention, but if I didn’t go into my group and give them love and attention they wouldn’t have anyone except the workers. The workers were there to provide for their basic needs like feeding and changing, but they rarely gave the children attention or played with them.

          Children move through three orphanages during their lives in the orphanage system.  The first one is called Leaganul de Copii, which means “the seesaw of children.”  In the first orphanage, children range in age from very young to around five years old.

          The children then move on to the second orphanage called Case de Copii which means “house of children”.  It is in this orphanage they begin schooling.  Nine months of the year the orphanage is a school.  Some of the older children go to a regular school near the orphanage for a few hours during the day.  Children stay in this orphanage until the age of nine or ten.

          In the third orphanage, I was told they continue their schooling and learn a trade.  Around the age of eighteen the children supposedly leave orphanage life.  However, by that age most of these children are far from normal, terribly unequipped to function in the world because they are so socially inept.  Orphanage life fails to prepare them for the challenges they will face, and deprives them of natural self sufficiency.  Few ever receive proper schooling, and many end up in mental institutions.  Too many will never become healthy citizens.  In some of the big cities, children run away from these orphanages to live and beg on the streets.  Train stations inevitably house many of them.

          As I mentioned earlier, these children in Romanian orphanages aren’t actually orphans whose parents have died, but children whose parents have abandoned them, or couldn’t afford them.  There are very few that have no record of parents.  Some children receive visits from their families, and one or two even return home when their family can afford to care for them again.  Sometimes when a child is old enough to work, and the family can benefit from bringing them home, they are reclaimed.

          Even after different forms of birth-control became legal in Romania they were not often used.  They were expensive, not widely available, and people were not educated in how to use them.  Consequently, many continued having unwanted children.  At the same time, abortions became legal, and were a very common alternative.  One of the doctors we had a lot of dealings with told me that the hospital where she worked averaged fifty abortions a day, and this was not in one of the larger cities.  (I don’t know if this statistic would be different today in the same hospital.)

          Mothers who choose to bear their children, but don’t want to keep them, take them to the orphanage, or leave them in the hospital.  Most of the children I knew were a few months to a year old before they were brought to the orphanage.  I think most mothers probably want to try and keep their children, but find it too hard to support them.  Because the economy is constantly changing; it would be impossible to say what the average income is, but it is obviously not sufficient.  People make do, but many find it harder to get by as inflation soars so rapidly.  I saw the price of bread rise from 9 lei when I first arrived, to 100 lei when I left.

          In the south of Romania most children in the orphanages are Gypsies.  Romanians are very prejudiced against Gypsies.  I feel that this is one of the main reasons why the conditions in Romanian orphanages do not change.

          Gypsies are not working in the orphanages, and are not taking care of the children in them; the workers are Romanian.  Romanians see Gypsies as thieves, liars, beggars, filthy people, and a nuisance.  I didn’t meet many that didn’t feel this way.

          Gypsies are typically darker-skinned, poor and unclean.  In Călăraşi there are apartment buildings that have been allocated for the Gypsies to live in.  I’ve been in them.  They have no running water, no heating, and very little room.  I do not know for a fact that they pay no rent, but I was always under the impression that these buildings were turned over to the gypsies and forgotten about, left to remain unclean without running water.

          A Romanian friend once told me, “Nobody knows where Gypsies come from.  They are Romanian, but a different breed.”  I looked into the Gypsies’ origin, and found out that Gypsies originally came from North West India nearly one thousand years ago, and are now all over the world.  The ancestors of Romanian Gypsies may have come from India hundreds of years ago, but to this day a Gypsy family name is not considered a Romanian name, even though it is not Indian.

          In order to clearly explain my thoughts to you, I will continue to use the distinction Gypsy from Romanian. I am not trying to attack the Romanians for being prejudiced, nor the Gypsies for any reason.  I am trying to present the situation clearly enough that you can see both points of view. (I understand I do not know every man’s heart, and I do not assume I know every side to this issue.)

          For many Americans the idea of a Gypsy is romanticized into an image of “carnival” people who travel in groups, never settling in one place, wearing lots of big jewelry, and living a happy carefree life.  This might be the case for Gypsies somewhere, but hardly for the Romanian ones which are estimated to number more than 1.5 million which is around 7% (according to the internet source Wiki.Answers).  Gypsies all over the world have been encouraged for years to settle and abandon their nomadic existence for social and economic reasons, and many have in Romania.  Not all Gypsies around the world are the same; there are different tribes.  The Rom tribe; which most Romanian gypsies are part of, hardly have a life that could be considered carefree.

          I saw Gypsies on the street constantly treated badly, put down, and openly pushed aside.  Many Gypsy children make their way into restaurants to beg for food or money.  Most often they are waved aside told to “Get out of here!” and called names whether they beg quietly or brusquely.

          Most Gypsies loiter on the streets and many make pests of themselves.  I came across Gypsies in Bucharest who were ungrateful for what was given to them and made sure we knew it was unsatisfactory.  Many Gypsies in Romania will admit freely they would sell their children if given the chance.  I even had Gypsies come to my apartment door asking me if I wanted to buy their babies.  The Gypsies provide reasons for Romanians to feel the way they do.  I met Gypsies who were thieves, but this is a direct result of being so poor.  It’s a never-ending cycle; because the Gypsies can be poor, dirty, and dishonest they are never given a chance to be different.  It may not matter whether they would or not because children are taught from a very young age to hate Gypsies and call them names.

          Gypsy children don’t go to school.  They grow up to be illiterate, and then can’t provide for a family.  They become everything that a Gypsy is considered to be.  The children from filthy homes with no running water are not going to school where everyone else is clean, clothed, and fed.  Illiterate parents don’t enroll their children in school.  Children with little education from in or out of the home are growing up not having a good clear sense of right and wrong.  Abortion and abandonment are both simple solutions to a young mother who doesn’t know differently, and hasn’t been raised to value the importance of creating life.

          Where we were in Romania, there are also a lot of Turkish Gypsies.  It was not uncommon to hear that a Gypsy child in the orphanage had a mother who was a prostitute in Turkey.  Those with Turkish last names were automatically seen as bastards.  Just another reason for the children in general to be seen as having no worth.

          Who pays for the running and upkeep of orphanages?  Where must the money ultimately come from?  Who is filling the orphanages with empty bellies?  What becomes of an economy in such circumstances?  The Romanians don’t think twice about having a prejudice against Gypsies, and the situation continues.  As it so often happens in circumstances like this, the children are at the end of the line, and are the ones truly suffering in the situation.

          There are children in orphanages who are not Gypsy, but they’re all part of something that is not a sympathetic institution.  There seemed to be a general feeling among Romanians that the children with deformities and children whose families don’t want them are then obviously worth nothing to anyone.  “Better off dead” was what I heard many times.

          Adoptions of Romanian children were stopped in 1991.  People were going to Romania having seen the masses of children on television; some people were rescuing abandoned children, but many were unknowingly buying babies.  Before adoptions would open again, a committee for adoptions was organized and agencies designated in each country to be the sources through which children could be legally adopted.

          Late in the spring of 1992 the system was organized and adoptions were legally open, but children weren’t being rescued quick enough.  The criteria for adoption were very specific and the process proved to be a very slow one.  The children now had to be on a special list as “adoptable.”  This meant that they would have to be considered abandoned by their family before their name could be listed.  If any child had not been visited by a relative for six months they could then be considered abandoned.  If the parents signed papers saying that they didn’t want the child, then he/she could go on the list also.  It was the responsibility of the orphanage Director to make and keep this list up to date.  Very few children were visited in our orphanage, and many were considered abandoned by the six month rule.  Even if it had been a one year rule, we would have still had many eligible for the list.

          When Mary asked the Director which children were on the list from our orphanage, there were only thirteen, out of roughly one hundred children.  Two of them had AIDS, eight had severe developmental problems due to neglect, and only three could have been considered normal for an orphan.  Children with AIDS are unable to be adopted by foreigners, because of other governments’ laws.  The chances of a child with AIDS being adopted by a Romanian family are even more remote than those without serious disease, who are almost never adopted by Romanians.

          It occurred to us there may be a misconception that if all the eligible children were on the list, a major reduction in jobs would follow once the children began to disappear; being placed in families.  This could hardly be the case because the supply of children is not diminishing.  There are always poor parents turning to the orphanage for their child’s welfare.  There will always be single or young mothers who do not want their children, and leave them for convenience.  It may take years for the economic system in Romania to get better and for conditions to change.  Orphanage jobs will not disappear.  It seemed obvious, and we were very frustrated by the lack of action.  Nothing seemed to be moving forward even though new laws were made and adoptions were supposed to be happening.  We wanted to see children leaving the orphanage and going to families.  Nothing would have made us happier.  (Amendments to Romania’s original adoption law have been made, which hopefully will be more effective at getting these orphans united with families.)

          The women working in this orphanage worked in rotating twelve-hour shifts with low pay.  Even though many women dressed in uniforms like nurses; they were not.  Most were not even trained or qualified in any first-aid.  Spending more time with orphans than they did with their own children may be one of the many reasons they seemed callous and insensitive.

          Everyone who worked in direct relation with the children, had to wear white lab-coats.  We were asked to wear them as well.  There was a belief that the white coat somehow made everything more hygienic.  Even when visiting other orphanages, we were asked to put on a white coat, and therefore acquired white coats of our own.

          Unfortunately, there were not many women whom I could consider friends, and so I did not get to know them all by name.  It was hard for me to be non-judgmental of them, and not to get angry with them for all that I saw.

          Mark was loved by most the women, I’m sure because of his never-ending ability to be nice to everyone.  If Mark saw something he didn’t like, he said something.  I often noticed the women were different when he was around; giving him respect and some authority.  I’m sure the fact that he was male had a lot to do with it.  If I could have loved the women more, as Mark did, it wouldn’t have been so difficult to go to the orphanage by myself, and I might not have felt so alone at times.

          I now realize, too late to help me be more sympathetic, the women might have turned themselves off to the children a long time ago.  They might have cared and loved in the beginning, but eventually found it too hard.  Toward the end of my year I couldn’t take much more of the sadness, and wanted to close my eyes to the suffering of the children around me.  I didn’t want to treat them badly because of it; I just wanted to get away from it all.

          We knew a woman who worked at the hospital in the children’s ward and was very friendly.  We were pleased and had high hopes when she got a job at the orphanage.  It wasn’t long before we noticed she smiled less and seemed to have little tolerance for the children.  In trying to interpret what I was seeing I came up with a couple possibilities.  I wondered if it’s not the women shutting the children out intentionally, but the children in their rough, difficult and sad state turning the women against them.  The children cannot control their situation, but is indifference and abuse toward them the result of their sad condition?  Or, could it have been that she felt animosity from the other women because she did show the children love and compassion, and that was what caused her to change.  There are really so many possible reasons for her altered attitude, I was just sorry to see it happen.

Chapter 3

On my first day in the orphanage, I walked into the room I would end up spending most of my time in, and met Danuţ Mustafa.  My first thought when I saw him was ‘that’s him!’  I knew when I saw him he was a huge reason I was there.  I went directly to him, stunned by what I was feeling.  He had a terrible smell from a green infection that continually drained from his ears.  I was told he was deaf and had Otitis Media.  (A condition when the eardrum is infected and inflamed.)  He soon proved he wasn’t deaf.  When I puckered my lips and made sounds he was very interested.  I also noticed when someone entered the room, he could hear the door squeak and turned to see who was entering.

          Danuţ was also called Danny, so I too called him Danny because it was easier to say.  From the beginning I found him hard to play with; all he ever wanted to do was hang over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes while I sat on the floor.  The more time I spent with him, the stronger I felt he was one of the main reasons I came to Romania.  I felt a tangible connection to him.

          When I left for Romania my mother had said, “Don’t expect to bring any of those babies home with you.”  I told her “I won’t, that’s not why I’m going.”  The day after I met Danny I spoke to my mother on the phone and asked her if she wanted to adopt a little boy.  I told her what he was like, about his ears, and how strongly I felt about him.  I asked her to find out about Otitis Media and adoption, and asked if she would consider it.  She said she would look into his ear condition and that she wouldn’t say no or yes to adopting him.

          After a short time of seriously thinking about adoption, my mother called me and said that she was considering it, but was getting a lot of discouragement.  She received an anonymous letter in the mail; describing the “anguish and financial pits” she would be sure to endure.  When I later read the letter, I naturally had quite an opinion.  This person, occasionally mentioning “We”, listed five large reasons why my mother should not adopt.  I feel compelled to share some of it with you.

“The anguish and financial pits this will bring upon you is not worth any feelings of being a guardian angel that you might receive.” 

“The harm you will do to your own flesh and blood children you cannot estimate now.  There will be resentments among all the children in your household.  There will be problems created that are beyond your ability to comprehend.”

“As a single mother you are not equipped to take this burden upon yourself.  Emotionally it will drive you to the wall.  Financially it will rob you of basic things that you need for simple sustenance.”

“Concentrate on what God has given you and accept his goodness for having normal, good children.”

“I promise you that this child will bring you untold agony and your natural feelings of wanting to be a good mother will bring such a struggle within your heart that you will collapse emotionally and physically.”

“Please ponder this in prayer”

“I am not signing my name, because I don’t want you to turn your resentments upon me.”

          My mother did not take offence to the letter.  She said “If the writer had included their name, I would have taken what they said into consideration, and discussed it with them.

          These ridiculous claims slightly amused me, but more so, annoyed me.  “As a single mother you are not equipped…” My mother has been single for a number of years, and obviously has been equipped.  The “promise” of “untold agony” actually made me laugh out loud.  After all the struggles my mother has had in her life, adopting a child with problems will finally cause her to “collapse emotionally and physically”.  With their final comment/request that my mother pray about it, I lost all patience.  Who were they to assume that prayer had not been constant?  Why would she blindly and flippantly make a decision on something as important as adopting a child?  And actually, how was any of this their business?  Do they think in sending the letter that they are the ones who would (being obviously anonymous to my mother) receive the answers to her prayers?  The writer of the letter could not have known my mother, and therefore had no right to send it.

          My mother was hearing from people: “Are you sure you can afford to adopt and support this child?”  When she told me this, and that money was one of her main concerns, I told her, “Even if we had nothing, we could provide him with LOVE, and what does he need more than that?  Money isn’t absent.  It may be scarce at times, but he will be provided for even if we are not rich.”  My mother was in a part of the world where people looked at this through eyes of money.  From where I was, it was impossible to look at it any other way than these children need anything and everything.  They currently survive on almost nothing.  They could not be poorer anywhere else!

          Around a month later, my mother began to prepare herself and the necessary paperwork for adoption.  She had prayed a lot and knew that it was the right thing to do.  Many have said I convinced or talked my mother into adopting.  My mother knew we were talking about her adopting and gaining another child, not me.  She knows what being a mother involves, and told me: “The two things I love most in life are being a wife, and being a mother.  At the moment I’m not a wife, and I want to continue being a mother.”

           One of my first days with Danny, I was asked to feed him at lunch time.  They laid him down on the floor and told me to drop the food from the spoon into his mouth.  I thought, “You don’t feed a child like this!”  He didn’t close his lips on the spoon, and he didn’t even chew.  He just closed his mouth and swallowed.  When I gave him noodles or bread in the soup, he would moan, but eventually swallow.  I found out that he was bottle fed, like many children, until around the age of four, and eating from a spoon was new in recent months.  I also learned through my mother that you should never feed a child who has Otitis Media while lying down.  So I tried to make sure he was fed in a chair like the rest of the children.  I didn’t offer to help feed the children while Danny was still waiting to eat; that way they wouldn’t ask me to feed him on the floor.

          About the only thing Danny could do for himself was walk, like most of the children in his group.  There was only one child in the orphanage older than Danny, and he was in Group One; the most advanced group.  Danny was twenty-three months old when his mother brought him to the orphanage.  How advanced he was when he arrived I will never know, but because so much of his life was spent within the confines of his group walls, he became terrified if anyone tried to take him outside the room.  He’d panic, scream, and cry.  This alone made him impossible to toilet train.

          I asked the “social worker” at the orphanage about adopting Danny, if his mother wanted him, and where she was.  I was told that she was a gypsy and didn’t want him.  She suggested we go and see her, as she lived nearby.  The social worker understood that I didn’t want to ask about my mother adopting Danny, but simply wanted to find out whether his mother wanted him.

          When we went to find her we were told by the new tenants of the apartment that she no longer lived there.  Because I didn’t yet know much Romanian, I couldn’t understand the rest of the conversation, but the next day Danny’s mother showed up at the orphanage.  Well, she said she was his mother, but she looked nothing like him.  Danny has very striking features, big blue eyes, and a face you can only call beautiful.  His mother had dark skin and eyes, and a very plain face.  I asked her if Danny looked like his father, she said no and that he was a very ugly man.  She told me she would sell Danny to me for 30,000 lei (roughly $100 at the time), so she could get herself a television.  I asked it to be translated to her that selling children was illegal and that I was only nineteen and didn’t want a child.  Her reply was that she was only nineteen too.  I didn’t want her to know I wanted my mother to adopt Danny because I didn’t want to create problems for myself.  I told her that I wanted to find Danny a family to adopt him.  She didn’t seem to care either way.  Danny was brought downstairs to her, and I took a photo of her holding him while he screamed trying to get away.  (This one important picture was on a roll of film that I sent to my mother for developing, and it never arrived.)  At least I found out in this short visit that she didn’t want Danny, but I couldn’t help feeling she wasn’t his mother.  I never did find out if the girl I met was.

          Near the time our three months would be up, Mark and I knew that we couldn’t leave.  We had only just begun to gain the children’s friendship, and wanted to be with the children almost as much as they needed us to be there.  I had no desire to return to America at that time, but I had only come with enough funds to stay in Romania a few months.  Mary came to me knowing I didn’t want to leave, and asked if I would be willing to stay for a significant amount of time, if the Romanian Orphanage Project would support me financially.  I was very grateful for her offer, and felt wonderful knowing I didn’t have to leave the place I wanted to be most.  I wrote home about R.O.P. supporting me, and that I would be staying longer, but unsure how much longer that would be.

          The organization that we came to Romania with had little to do with us once we were there.  When Mary returned with all of the supplies and funds she had raised, the organization’s president phoned from America to forbid Mary from taking anything into the orphanage that was “not hers to give to!”  She wanted to speak to each of us in turn on the phone, trying to convince us Mary was bad and wrong in trying to help these children.  We all saw how ridiculous she was being, and gave no regard to her mean words.  The only things she accomplished with her angry phone call were making Mary feel terrible, and showing us what type of person she was.  Future volunteers that came to Calarasi through this same organization had heads full of stories about the horrible woman named Mary that should be totally avoided.  All learned once they met Mary, that she was lovely.

Chapter 2

          We landed at the Otopeni airport near Bucharest in the afternoon of December 16^th.  The sky was white, snow covered the ground, and fog filled the air, preventing us from seeing any distance.  I felt like we were in the middle of Siberia.  I had a very clear mental picture of this warehouse serving as an airport, sitting out in the middle of a gigantic field with nothing but snow covered miles all around.

          Mark and I had made a friend on the plane.  He was a nice Polish man who didn’t know what to expect of Romania either, so we three walked together as an unsure but sturdy trio. 

          As we entered the door our bodies were searched.  A big rough woman ran her hands over me questioning the travel pack around my waist, and the chap-stick in my pocket.  After showing her everything, and wondering what she would take away, she pushed me aside to examine the lady behind me.

          We went up stairs and stood in lines to have our passports studied.  The men we waited in line to see made me nervous with their serious faces, fur hats, and stiff uniforms.  I couldn’t relate them to any uniformed men I had seen before, and I decided they looked like communists.  Examining our passports so intently, I was almost surprised when they let us pass.

          At the end of the line, we took five steps and stood in front of the belt on which our luggage would arrive.  We were amazed when the decrepit old belt started moving, and luggage began appearing.  Men in big dark fur hats were everywhere, making me even more certain we were in another Siberia.  Being one of the few females in the building, I couldn’t help but feel like food in a forest of bears.  It was all so foreign.  Nothing was even close to what I was used to, and couldn’t compare to the States or Canada.  One thing I hadn’t anticipated was countless new smells. The culture shock was immediate.   To have called me “green” wouldn’t have come close.

          Our Polish friend received his luggage and left us before ours appeared.  We wished him luck, and I was reminded how lucky I was to have someone traveling with me.  Finally we got everything together and went to the customs lines.  Mark pulled out orphanage volunteer papers and we were waved through.  Good thing, because I wouldn’t have been able to fit everything back in my bags if they had wanted them all opened.

          We made our way to the doorway where dozens of people waited for the arriving passengers.  As we tried to exit we learned half of them were taxi drivers looking for fares.  We didn’t have to search for the people we were meeting, they found us.  Our luggage was loaded into a van, while we climbed into a small Romanian car.  It was just getting dark when we left.

          There had been record snowfall that week, and it was freezing.  I kept wishing my feet would warm up.  I tried sitting on them and rubbing them with my hands, but it didn’t make much difference.

          The night’s thick fog turned our two hour journey into four; a drive that I thought would never end.  I tried not to watch the road as the driver went too fast for conditions.  Since I couldn’t sleep sitting up on the plane, I wanted desperately to sleep now as we drove, but I was too afraid I would wake up upside down or dead.  I’m sure it made the journey even longer as I constantly fought to keep my head up.  When we finally arrived at our hotel in Calarasi and unloaded our things, my feet were so cold it felt as though I wasn’t wearing shoes.

           The next day we went to the orphanage.  With the sun greeting us on our first morning, I enjoyed our walk there.  I thought the old town was quite interesting with its old houses and grungy looking apartment buildings.  I saw the car we had ridden in everywhere around me; almost all cars were identical and Romanian made.  I thought the route to the orphanage was so long I would never be able to find it by myself.

          I was twice as excited once I met the children.  They were all so beautiful!  I don’t know what I expected them to look like, but it was hard to believe they were all abandoned.  I was incredibly anxious for the time when I would know them individually, and they would know me.  I was very happy to be in Romania and excited about the weeks ahead.

          At Leaganul de Copii (Seesaw of Children), volunteers had been helping for nearly a year, so the conditions weren’t as bad as the orphanages I had originally seen on television.  We were told it was worse when the first group of volunteers arrived in early 1991; children were left unchanged, sitting in their own excrement, and the workers did little.  Now the women were doing their jobs, but seemed to hate it.  I was slightly surprised when Mark and I were ignored by many women in the orphanage.  We were happy to be there helping, and I expected they would be happy to have our help.  I’m not saying we were ignored by everyone, but most seemed indifferent; never acknowledging us.  There were only a few women who were friendly to us on our first day.

          In December 1991, the number of volunteers was five, including Mark and me.  I was of course the youngest, and my ‘peers’ were thirty-year-olds.

          Earlier in the year for three months, Mary Thompson volunteered in this orphanage.  She went home after her three month commitment to raise funds and supplies in America for these children she fell in love with.  She returned in January of 1992, committing to stay for one year as president of the Romanian Orphanage Project.  Mary increased our group of volunteers to six, but less than one month later two volunteers returned to America.

          We lived in the hotel for two months.  The hotel was expensive, and almost weekly we were told the price would be going up again.

          This is the back of the hotel.  My balcony was on the top floor, one in from this end.  The view from my balcony was of the apartments across the street, the roof tops next to us, and behind was a park against the Danube and a small reservoir.

           In the Hotel we rarely had hot water, and when we did, it ranged in color from yellowish-green to red.  My very first bath in Romania was in a tub full of rusty liquid.  I bathed in it only because another volunteer said I should take advantage of all available warm water, whatever color.  I filled it to the top of the bath, thinking there would be more water than crud to clean myself with.  This is a picture of a ‘clean’ bath before I got in it.  When living in such a cold room and bathroom, I was really quite pleased to climb into some warm water.  I eventually got used to bath water being dirty before I bathed in it.  We had plenty of cold water, but it was so cold I almost couldn't brush my teeth or wash my hands in it. 
 

  

          In February, we all moved into apartments that had been built to house foreigners working in the local coke and coal factory.  These were near the orphanage and cut our walking distance by more than half.  It was very nice to have a kitchen, bedroom, bathroom and living room.  We also had water heaters and clean water!  Occasionally we didn’t have any water and found it necessary to keep bottled water handy for brushing our teeth and washing.  The electricity failed us as much as the water, but luckily, seldom at the same time.  However small these apartments were by our American standards, they were much bigger than the hotel rooms.  They were comparable in size to that of the Romanians’ apartments, although much more expensive because we were foreign.  We found that being foreign meant that most things cost more.  Romanian’s didn’t have to pay anything close to the $60 we did for a months rent, but we were happy to not have to pay the $100 the hotel wanted.

           My balcony was the one at the top with the semi-circle.  The window in the middle was my kitchen.  To the left, my living room, and to the right, my bedroom.  The windows either side of those are the balcony doors for the apartments next to me.  My balcony was the biggest, so we used it in the summer to have an outdoor dinner.  Just enough room to put tables against the balcony wall and sit with our backs to the building.  A great view for a meal.  This is my kitchen sink, stove, and fridge.

Chapter 1

          Communism began crumbling in 1989 when the people in Eastern Europe found strength and hope.  Everyday average people were ready for freedom and risking their lives for it.  Poland, Hungary, East Germany, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and Romania were the countries in which communism toppled that year.

            On December 21, 1989 an uprising began against the president of Romania, Nicolae Ceauşescu (chou shes’ ku).  While  Ceauşescu  spoke to thousands from the balcony of the Central Committee building, angry crowds booed him incessantly, ending his speech.  He and his wife Elena (second in command) couldn’t leave the building due to the riotous mass.  Defense Minister Vasile Milea committed suicide rather than obey the order Ceauşescu gave to open fire on the crowd and its demonstrators.  Regardless, shots were fired, and many were killed. This marked the beginning of a revolution in which the people, the military, and top government officials brought about the end of Nicolae  Ceauşescus rule.  The  Ceauşescus were executed after a short trial on December 25th, just four days after the uprising began.  This revolution led to the fall of communism in Romania.  After this the country opened and people all over the world saw what the prison known as Romania, held within.

        My life’s pain could not compare to what I saw on television October 5th 1990. I thought I knew what fear and sadness were, until I saw them in monstrous form.  I had no idea as I watched that my life would be forever changed.

Journal entry:

         “Thousands of orphans are living in the saddest situation I think I have ever seen.  While sitting comfortably in the living room, watching one of my favorite news programs; I saw pictures of a world full of pain and unhappiness.  Tragic stories always make me sad, but never before have I been this affected; to feel such despair.

        How could something so appalling and torturous be happening in 1990?  It reminds me of the Holocaust films we saw in school.  These orphanages in Romania have children of all ages living in them that seem to be on the verge of death.  Many little bodies looked like skeletons covered with skin; their coloring pale, looking already dead and drained of blood.  They don’t even seem to be aware.

        I saw older children scooting along a cement floor, naked and sitting in what was said to be urine.  All of them had short dark hair, making them look like boys.  It was apparent all weren’t, but I saw nothing in their faces showing personality, only pain.

            Some children were deformed; one child’s leg was so out of place it was bent up and around her shoulder.  Still she made her way across the cement floor and down some stairs.  I questioned how a child could be left to remain so crippled for what appeared to be a life of around seven years.

        Little children that looked two and three years old, sat in cribs rocking from side to side, seeming oblivious to the presence of a news camera or the people behind it.  Other little faces stared into the camera’s eye penetrating my eyes thousands of miles away.  So many innocent children are suffering terribly.  Many are starving to death and dying of AIDS.”

        I was overwhelmed by the thought ‘This is really happening!’  Children are living like this at this very moment.  The pain and emptiness in their little faces is real, and impossible to look away from.  The report said that these orphanages are overflowing with unwanted and unloved children numbering 150,000.

        It’s hard to believe the reasons for this mass abandonment are due to the laws of Romania’s now executed ruler. Is it possible for one man to have so much power that this disgusting state could be the result of his rule?

        He outlawed birth control and abortion, requiring married women to have at least five children that would increase Romania’s work force and create loyal soldiers for his armies.  Having children was almost unpreventable, creating an abundance of unwanted children.  With this lack of control, many parents abandoned their children.  For some poverty was the issue.  Others simply didn’t want them.  Some children were abandoned because of illnesses or deformities.

        This sounded strange, but confused me more.  How could children be SO unwanted?  Mothers give their children up for adoption to be part of a family that can love and care for them, but this wasn’t ‘up for adoption,’ it was abandonment by the thousands.

        The number of births was far greater than the supply of milk and food for them.  In desperate attempts to save small babies, hospitals performed the age-old practice of transfusing babies with blood to boost their immune systems.  HIV-contaminated blood and the reuse of needles caused a hideous outbreak of AIDS.  During Ceauşescus leadership, he refused to acknowledge the AIDS problem spreading throughout the country’s orphanages, and did nothing to prevent it.

        Oddly, the number of children in orphanages only increased with  Ceauşescus death and liberation of the country.  This liberation meant changes including government subsidies on basic things like sugar, flour, rice and gasoline.  Prices began to rise at alarming rates, while wages only increased slightly.  People chose to give up that which would bring new, unwanted, and inevitable expenses, while seeming to forget the importance of that precious child.

        Orphanages and hospital rooms were full of children in cribs, but empty of color, toys, affection, or stimulation.  With their senses so deprived, many of them seemed almost comatose with no desire to thrive.  Children in this sensory silence were turning themselves off, hitting and rocking themselves for stimulation, and understandably dying in a world totally devoid of love.

        It was impossible to see these little faces and then tell myself to move on as though it were just another part of the world.  I saw the babies bundled and lying in rows with no one holding them, and thought to myself, if nothing else, I can hold babies that need to be touched and feel love.  I was a senior in high school, and decided that after I graduated I would go to Romania and do whatever I could to help.

        Once I had made this decision, everything inside me said it was right, and I knew I had to go.  I couldn’t see myself doing anything else.  I told my mother I had prayed about it, knew I had to go, and asked her to pray too.

        I tried to find a way to Romania for months.  I looked for anything helpful at the library, but there was almost nothing.  The couple books I found were old enough to have the old spelling RUMANIA on the cover.  With no such thing as the internet, I had to keep looking on my own.

        Almost accidentally, I found an organization working in Romania.  I happened to turn on the television just as Romanian orphans were being discussed.  They showed an orphanage, introduced the organization working in it, and volunteers were briefly mentioned.  I excitedly wrote to the address they gave, telling them I was serious about becoming a volunteer.  I said that I had love to give, the desire to help, and decided I had better mention that I was eighteen.  I worried that although I sounded serious, they may laugh at my letter.

        After a few months of anxiously waiting for a response, I received a phone call asking if I would like to go to Romania with a team of volunteers leaving in two months, on December 15, 1991 for a three month commitment.     The orphanage I would be going to was in Calaraşi, a city in the most southern part of the country.

        I was told that I needed to cover all costs myself, $2,500 plus any food I would like to bring, as many previous volunteers found Romanian food unpleasant.  The $2,500 would take care of the flight expenses, visa, and three months in a hotel.  They gave me fund-raising ideas, and supplied me with a video to show possible contributors.

            I immediately received $500 from a friend’s mother who was very supportive.  After that, I had a hard time getting any further.  My family gave me as much support as they could, and so did a few good friends, but generally I wasn’t taken seriously.  I placed a short article in the local university’s paper stating my desire, and asking that if everyone reading it could send me one dollar, I would make it to Romania.  I didn’t receive one response.

        My mother supported me and never once told me I should stay home to work or go to school because it was more practical.   Others did, but not my mom.   She could see I was serious and believed my conviction.

        It was very difficult to come up with everything I needed so quickly.  I got on my knees many times, asking for help to find the next hundred dollars. I had never wanted anything so badly.  I was so sure this was what I had to do, but extremely frustrated, I worked daily on reaching my goal.

        Fortunately my mother worked with some incredible people, and when they heard what I was doing, many donated.  Even small donations added up and became a very significant help.  Somehow money always came just as I needed it to pay for the next expense.

        I turned nineteen the month before I left, and was often reminded I was still younger than I felt.  When people heard what I was trying to do, most had the same response.  A half smile would cross their faces, and I could see their doubt in me.  Some asked why I needed to travel half-way around the world to help children, when there were needy people in my own back yard.        My response was rarely good enough; what could I say to make them feel my conviction?  It was only when I was days from leaving, that people started to listen and believe what I was saying as real.

        I boarded my plane, surprised at how unafraid I was to be going alone. I’d only flown on a plane once before, and I’ve always been uneasy doing things by myself and going to unknown places.  This made my whole trip a contradiction of the Natalie everyone knew, including me.  All my shyness and fear had to be put aside so I could reach my destination.

        Leaving my family wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be.  I knew, as surely as I knew everything else, they would be there for me when I returned in just three months.  I also knew I was about to be with the children I was so anxious to meet.

        As a naive and apprehensive little girl, I landed in New York.  New York was supposed to be a terrible and dangerous place; I’d seen it in the movies and was sure of it.  Almost positive I would get mugged, I began to search for the meeting place of my “team”.  As it turned out, my team was one person -Mark Riley.

        I didn’t know how airports worked, and this one refused to work with me. Nobody could help me find the “Delta Dash” desk where I was supposed to be, and I was near tears trying to maneuver my giant luggage.  In all my frustration and obvious lack of control over my bags, a man approached me asking if he could help.  I was so upset, embarrassed, and nervous that I said no.  He told me to stay where I was, and I didn’t know TWA from TAROM anyway, so I did.  After I spent a few painful minutes of feeling stupid and trying to look casual, the man returned with a luggage cart for me.  I then realized he worked there.  I stumbled with my words trying to say thank you, but wanted to hurry away.

        After asking numerous people how to reach my meeting point, I finally learned it was “down those stairs”.  There seemed to be no other way down, so pushing my heavy load, I approached the stairs and decided to risk having something stolen while I carried my luggage down one piece at a time.  It was difficult to hold in my burning tears of frustration, but I did.  Luckily there was a landing half way down the stairs.  As I got three pieces down to it, a very friendly looking man offered to help me, and I couldn’t refuse help that would get me out of looking ridiculous sooner.  I thanked him too, but had a hard time coming across as sincere, despite my honest sincerity, while feeing so dumb.

        At the bottom of the stairs, all organized again, I pushed my way to one of the only places it could be.  I clumsily got my cart through the door, and wanted desperately to hear a yes to the question I had been waiting to ask.  "Is this Delta Dash?"  I wonder what face I made, and what they thought as I pulled my cart next to a chair and collapsed in it to wait.  Now that I had found it, I wanted more than anything to cry.  Just a slight release of what had been building up in me would have helped immensely.  I was forced to be calm knowing how strange I would look covered in tears, and that I would be meeting Mark any moment.

        Everyone who walked through the doors, I eyed with a silent question of “Are you Mark?”.  Finally Mark came in, and I had to ask it aloud.  It was him, but without luggage and looking very organized.  How annoying!  I don’t remember saying much, only following him with full confidence that he would finally take me where I needed to be.  Just an hour later, we were patiently waiting for our flight and I had calmed down enough to be looking forward with excitement again.

        December 15, 1991; flight from New York to Romania, part of my journal entry:

“. . . He’s thirty one, a sign-language interpreter, and an Alcoholics Anonymous counselor.  He’s very friendly, and easy to talk to because he’s so nice.  He has made me feel less nervous about the journey ahead.  It’s quite a relief to find he appears to be a regular guy!”  

 I had no idea at the time how much I would grow to appreciate Mark and his unending strength.