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'In a world of ergonomic furniture, triple glazing and click flooring, a world where  central heating is simply normal and where we never really have to go hungry. A world where the first signs of snow bring not despair but thoughts of recreation; how do you explain poverty in a country like Romania…

I am beginning to believe that you have to see it, to smell it, to experience it, to begin to touch the horror and the hopelessness of it. Poverty is bad enough anywhere but in a country where the temperature can fall to –35 degrees Celsius in the winter it is difficult for us to comprehend.

Groups of people (both adults and children) try to get enough money to feed their families digging in the ground to gather rusty scrap metal.  On cold days the ground is too hard to dig.

It is a late winter afternoon and the light is fading. A young boy picks his way through the deep soft mud that makes up the road, a huge bag of scrap textiles on his back. He leans forward to balance the weight of it.  This will be the fuel that will keep his brothers and sisters warm tonight. They cannot afford food so they cannot afford fire wood which costs nearly 25 Euros for 1 cubic meter and which would keep the house warm for just under a week.

In the distance a little girl struggles to carry 5 litres of water home from the water pump. She takes a few steps and stops and then another few and then stops again. Setting the container down in the mud each time she stops. The closest water supply is 500 meters from her home.

I move carefully along the mud road, past tiny houses made of mud brick and old planking. I have to lower my head to duck under the rusty tin sheets that make up the roof of the house I am visiting. A small dirty face smiles at me through the cracked glass as I approach the broken wooden door and the little girl struggles excitedly to twist the bent nail that holds it (nearly) closed, to let me in. 

Small. It is a small space for so many people to live.

The floor is mud and turns to sludge when it rains. A small tin stove in the corner gives out heat and fumes. Old shoes found in the rubbish burning to provide some heat.

Mum smiles at me. A tired weary smile, as she holds the hand of her husband paralysed and so unable to move, or speak, as a result of a stroke over one year ago.

5 children crowd around her, a 12 month old baby in her arms.

There is no running water here, the closest water pump is around 700 meters away. Every drop of water has to be carried; for drinking, cooking, washing, washing clothes. There are no toilets, and no drainage in this area. She cannot work because she needs to care for her family, but even if she wanted to work she couldn’t, since she has no id card and little chance of getting one. With no identity card, she can get no benefits from the state, and if she could, they would be insufficient to meet their needs.

Since being released from hospital over a year ago, her husband has needed constant attention. Medication and nappies every day, but there is no help for them. They cannot even obtain the vital prescriptions that they need for the medication since they cannot register with a local doctor with no identity card. So night after night as her husband struggles with the pain of his condition, she gets neighbours to call the overworked ambulance service who come and administer pain relief, but who are more and more reluctant to do so. From time to time they provide a prescription for medication, but they cannot even afford bread or baby milk. There is no money for medication.

It is impossible to keep anything clean here. Step outside and you are in the mud. Just keeping pace with the laundry for her children is an impossible task alongside everything else. To carry the water (approximately 1 km round trip) and to wash by hand clothing for a family of 8, in cold water, since there is no wood to heat it. To find the money for washing powder when there is not enough money for food to keep hunger from your children.

The neighbour is a woman around 70 years old. For 4 years she and her daughter and grandson lived in a structure measuring 2.5 meters * 2 meters. The walls of this ‘home’ were made of 2 ranch style fences covered with plastic sheeting erected between the back of another house and a neighbours garden fence (which was the 4^th wall). No birth certificate and no identity card mean that they receive no help from the state. Each day this old lady climbs into garbage skips behind apartment blocks to find food for her family.

How do you ever begin to help people to understand poverty?

The truth is, this is a challenge. People find that they have no reference points from their own lives for much of what people see and experience when they come to serve with us here.

I have lived in Romania since 1996, just 7 years after the revolution. It is hard for me as a westerner to even begin to understand how a revolution impacts a nation. As one regime ends and another system begins to emerge.

The transition period itself brings staggering challenges. So many things to sort out. It is impossible to change everything overnight and where do you begin?

Over the last 10 years I have witnessed huge changes here. With the help of many  public and private outside agencies, humanitarian aid projects have developed and flourished. A whole system of social services has emerged and continues to develop and grow. Foreign business investment has brought in new employment. Basic infrastructure has been and continues to be put in place as for example road systems are being repaired and built.

10 years ago I walked through the main market in Arad and saw only grey burdened people poorly dressed trying to make a living. Old women standing by concrete market tables bundled up against the cold each trying to sell just a handful of vegetables.

The 16 years since the revolution have seen change, real change for many. If you travel down the main street of many of Romania’s cities today you could be in any city in Europe. Street cafes hug the edge of tree-lined boulevards where people sit and drink latte in the late afternoon. The shops are filled with white goods, plasma tv’s and the latest mobile phones. There are now Mercedes Garages and Volkswagen have just opened a new large outlet here. Much has changed and continues to change for the better.

But this progress has been a double-edged sword.

We in the west heard a lot about Romania in the news, just after the Revolution in December 1989. The awful conditions in State Orphanages, the impossible struggle of thousands of street children living in terrible conditions through freezing winters. The day to day battle of families to feed and clothe their children.

Western Europe responded and responded in an awesome way. Trucks full of aid, funding, volunteers, all manner of help poured over the border.

Visitors and media began to see the beginning of change and so the cry went out that all was now well. The fickle media keen to maintain its audiences, soon turned its attention to other horrors and disasters that left us gasping at mans inhumanity to man around the world, and the real and present needs in Romania began to fade in the minds of many.

Recently though, as Romania approached accession to the EU the media attention has again swung around and our televisions and newspapers have been full of stories of the situation here.

There are still communities living in incredible poverty and whilst the Government does all it can to alleviate the problems there is still a need for urgent help and support from humanitarian aid agencies.

Children with no shoes. Families with no income. Whole areas without fresh water or drainage. People unable to resolve papers and identity cards which means they cannot work, and have no access to social benefits, or medical care and means that their children cannot attend school. No food, no heating, no hope.'

The above is an extract from a newsletter written in March 2007. If you would like to receive our regular newsletters then please subscribe to this site on the home page. If you would like to get involved then please see the getting involved page or contact us at networks@clicknet.ro

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