Life in Romania never ceases to amaze and amuse me. Yesterday presented itself with 3 or 4 simple tasks to take care of. I was only able to complete two after a full day of trying to get all of them done. It boils down to lack of parts, unbelievable traffic with detours everywhere because roads are constantly being repaired, and which triples the time of getting from one part of the city to the other.
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No cashier. About that time, the woman who just wrote up the receipt walked across the aisle to the cashier's desk, took the receipt, took Radu's money and gave him another receipt showing he paid for the wire. He then went back to the original counter where he was to pick up the wire. The same woman scurried back across the aisle and Radu showed her the receipt and she handed him the wire. Makes sense to me!!! NOT! These are just a few of the reasons everyday life in Romania is such a challenge! Only those with a sense of humor can appreciate life here.
If you're living here as our friends the Goodwins are and you need to open a bank account, wouldn't you think that would be a simple procedure? Go to the bank and see the nice, smiling person at the "New Accounts" desk, right? No such "desk" in a Romanian bank. Too simple! The procedure is to get in line for a teller. When you reach the window and let the teller know you want to open a new account, you then fill out all these papers, answer all the questions you're asked, show proof of this and that, all the while a long line is forming behind you. Want to withdraw money? You go to one window and tell them how much you need and also to get your balance. Then you get a little receipt and go to another window to receive your money. It's gotten a bit simpler because you used to have to go to another window if you wanted to know the balance in your account. Oh, and you can only get money out of the bank until 1 in the afternoon, even though the bank is open past 1:00.
Humor is also the order of the day. Recently I was visiting friends we met in the summer of '92 when we lived in the Hotel Casa Tineretului (House of the Youth). Nicu was a waiter there and still is, his wife Julia is an excellent cook at the hotel. Over that summer, Dennis and I came to love them. Even tho they don't speak English, love knows no boundaries. I go back to see them every time I'm in Romania. They have two boys, Ioan (Johnny) and Mihai (Michael) who are 15 and "almost 14". Both boys speak English very well. We were having a wonderful visit in their home last week, and began talking about the really tough pronunciations of some of the Romanian sounds. There are some you have to say that go clear to the back of the throat, and for Americans, that's hard to do. Well, "turn about IS fair play, so, remembering that one of the sounds in English that is terribly difficult for the Romanians to pronounce is the "th" as in "this" or "that." I was making up tongue twisters for these kids to say, and we were laughing over phrases like, "Thursday I will go to the thick thicket with Theodore." They were doing pretty good with the "th" pronunciations when I remembered that the word "toothpaste" is very difficult for Romanians to pronounce and usually comes out something like, "toospaste." I turned to the "almost 14 year old" Mihai and said, "Ok, pronounce toothpaste." He did pretty good, lisping the "th" only a little bit. I asked Ioan to pronounce "toothpaste" and without blinking an eye, he said, "Colgate." I howled! He outsmarted me and he won! We quit our game then and there!
In my other "Virtual Romania" tomes I told y'all about the conditions we find some of the families living in that we were taking food and clothing boxes to. I told you about the beggars on the streets. In Romania there's also trouble with the street children. I have seen stories about the children of the sewers and subways in Bucharest, and my friends in Cluj had also told me there were children like that here, but there weren't nearly as many as there are in Bucharest.
Well, recently I learned of the "cave children" in Cluj. I have a friend who's just a kid, 18 yrs old, but he fancies himself to be a "real man". Anyway he likes to hang around, he translates for me periodically when I need help and he likes to go places with us. I was going to see some friends I've known for a while and and since I needed a translator, I invited Mihai to come along.
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L to R: Radu Hertog, Radu Cristea (translator), Mihai Moldovan (translator). Life would be SO difficult without good translators! |
I got to see the "caves" with Radu a couple of evenings after I first heard about them. (Radu is a great friend to us, and our main translator. He is a student at the Theological Institute here in Cluj, studying to be a priest.) Radu confirmed to Victoria Goodwin and to me that there were indeed kids living in caves just a few meters from the Transylvania Hotel. He seemed surprised that we even wanted to know about them. Radu told us that they do chemical kind of drugs like sniffing glue and paint. He took me there Monday evening around 7. As we walked to the caves, he explained that the police will periodically come up to the caves and clean them out, taking the kids to jail then to orphanages. But they usually end up coming back to the caves. In the larger cave, there are palettes all around on the cold, hard ground. There's trash, but not as much as I would have expected, inside and out. The ceiling of the cave is pitch black from fires the children build in the winter to keep them warm. The only clothing I saw was a large, black & white, tweedy-looking coat. There were a few tin cups around, but not much else other than trash. The other cave is more of an overhang, and beside that is a hole the kids can crawl into, totally out of sight from prying eyes. As we walked by, I noticed movement in this black hole. I didn't want to get too close and scare the person inside but I was able to detect one of the children who looked like he had a pastic bag. Radu said that they sniff the paint and glue from these plastic bags. My immediate thought was, "we need to find out what can be done for these children." Radu says they "like it this way." I say that no child likes it that way. He says they're wild children, doing drugs and sniffing chemicals. I say what they need is love, instead of being shoved from police station to orphanage. They escape from the orphanage and head back to the streets. It's a vicious circle for these unloved, wild little children.
Victoria and I are going to wait for Craig to get back from the States next Thursday then see about bringing the kids food 2 or 3 days a week at first. Gain their confidence and trust. Then as time goes by, see who WANTS to be helped. We figure the younger ones, the preteens, would probably be the first to respond and that the teens are most likely going to be the tough ones. Remember us in your prayers in the coming weeks as we try to befriend these children and win their trust.
Cu mult drag. . . (With much love)
Zan