The Beautiful...yet abandoned Children of Romania...Part 2

Babies, mattresses, wet diapers and sorrow

See Children of Romania...Part 1

It was the early 90's and my husband and I had traveled to Romania. We showed up one morning at an orphanage in the city of Bucharest.
Sadly, Romania is infamous for its orphanages and its orphaned children
There is history there
    there was a dictator who brutalized the country
      which led to a persecuted people and a broken society
Ultimately leading to abandoned children and babies…. many babies and many orphanages

We walked in that day to a very sterile environment.
How do you prepare for this? You don't. You walk in.
No noise or beautiful chaos like you might assume any house full of children to be
     Instead, picture an orphanage straight out of a Dicken's novel
           that's more like it
And then, if it's even possible, oh so much more sad

Cribs lining the wall
Beautiful, over-worked, overwhelmed Romanian women caring for these little ones
Eerily quiet, not because there were not babies in the cribs.
No ma'am
Those cribs were full,
     but the air was empty
So little sound, void of baby chatter
Not even a healthy cry for attention
A few slight whimpers of surrender
The creaking of a crib that is moving … moving as they rock … themselves. That universal sign of mental and emotional depravity. Learned at an impossibly young age. When others have abandoned their job to care for another, the abandoned one learns to self-soothe.

Walking through this nursery, big eyes just looked out at us. Looking like little birds that were trapped, really. Not even hopeful. What child in my world doesn't assume they will be picked up, cuddled, kissed or cared for? These ones evidently couldn't even grasp it. Because then it happened. I watched my husband Norb reach out to touch one little baby boy, because isn't that what you do?
         you reach
         you touch
         you hug
Babies need that. WE need that. In order to survive.
The only problem is when humans are not touched enough.
That sweet baby boy. He cringed. He pulled away... shaking.
Slowly, after some patience and persistence, he allowed a soothing hand to rub his back. To touch his little body.
How many were in their beds, rocking back and forth? No one there to soothe so they must soothe themselves...

Along the corridor we walked, on in to the toddler area.
Cloth diapers only got changed at assigned times each day because there weren't enough diapers, or enough hands to do the changing.
Bottle time - same amount for every child no matter the size, and definitely no more.

There behind a wall of windows was a mattress-covered floor.
The pre-walking, toddling babies in just a cloth diaper, holding a bottle, gripping it in order to get the last drop. I don't remember how many were lying on those uncovered, soiled mattresses. Definitely more than a dozen... 20? I don't remember. I do remember the smell, and the sight, because when there are babies and diapers there is always soiling and mess.  When there aren't resources or money or people to do the work, the mess stays that way.

It didn't take long for Norb to open that door to the mattress room. Down on all fours he just lay there while this "litter" of little ones crawled over him -vying for his attention. Smiles on their faces. Touching his face. Being loved with a touch and a hug and smile...while he wept
Norb wept with these little ones, for these little ones.
It was beautiful,
It was terrible
It was horrendous
and it was truly a holy moment.

I'm writing this down and I'm just not sure why I'm telling you this.
It's not like we did anything about it.
There I said it.
We cried, we mourned, we wept for the abandoned and the neglected, but at that moment, we did nothing more.
I'm sitting here crying again, mourning once more. Willing that our time spent, prayers said, touch and smile impacted little hearts and little minds in some way... If I could only wish it to be so.

I'm writing this out to try and figure out what's next. To make sure I remember and then do...something.

...to be continued

The Beautiful yet abandoned Children of Romania...Part 1

Twenty years ago today (give or take a month ... or six)
    Norb, my adorably handsome man, and I went on our very first trip to Romania.
We landed, excited, but very unprepared, in the city of Bucharest, the capital.
It was spring, the weather was mild, yet the country was …. sad

It was a very sad place twenty years ago.
It was a very sad place sixteen years ago
             with some hope sprinkled in
      when we went for the second time.

But that first visit.
Our friend Angie had moved to Bucharest, Romania a few years earlier after hearing about the children of the sewers. She was to be our guide, a friend to these sweet, abandoned, soot-covered children.
What we saw in the next few days was unlike anything we could fathom
Writing about it in this blog seems trite … words won't express it, I'm afraid
        but as I write
        and then, when I post this
I pray that the reader (and I) will be moved
                        will be awakened, if need be
          and will act - in some way - for some child - somewhere

Walking the streets of Bucharest those cool spring evenings, so many years ago
       with a backpack full of sandwiches
      and our huge video camera on our shoulder
What we were about to see, and who we were about to meet, would forever change our hearts.
That huge video camera
    (way before digital, small and indiscrete)
       attracted quite a bit of attention.
The sandwiches were obviously a big hit.
We were thrilled to be there,
    not the, there's the Disneyland sign… we're here!! kind of thrilled
    not the whew!! there's one more piece of chocolate cake left!
or the
    someone else is cooking dinner tonight elation
It's more of the
      giving food to someone who was actually hungry
              (not just someone who wanted more food)
      kind of thrilled
It was the kind of elation where your hug, your smile, your attention or your sandwich actually could have made a life or death difference that day

There was a problem though.
These were kids.

The kids weren't the problem but the fact that they were (are) children…
    seriously people,
          they shouldn't be begging for a meal
    They shouldn't be without a bed
    They should never have to say no one would know if I was alive or dead

Stepping out of that van, they came...
     they came from around every corner
     running down the street, or across the railroad tracks
     climbing out of holes in the ground
filthy dirty
often shoeless
many addicted
obviously starving -- for food and for love.

What we saw - what I saw over the few days we were there,
    my words just aren't giving it due justice.
My heart - it didn't just break - it went in to shock

Our first night out, we watched as a beautiful little boy dug through the garbage can at the train station
     right beside a food vendor.
He reaches in and finds an empty ketchup bottle.
    But not so empty that he can't put it to his mouth and squeeze the last drops out.
That food vendor yells at him… swears at him in Romanian. Would have hit him if he were a couple of inches closer
Wow! That was and continues to be so confusing
         --- to my heart and my mind.
I couldn't grasp what I saw then and I can't compute it now, 20 years later

Another cool evening.
We had visited the train station, again - crossed over to the other side of an abandoned line of train tracks.
We walked around the city of Bucharest looking for Angie's "kids" - children that adored her because she came, night after night, hugging them, caring for them, feeding them
Once again our backpack full of food
      we walked down a dark, lightless street
      so dark
      so lonely
There she was - a little girl. That's all, just one little girl.
Angie bent down to say hello, asked her in Romanian what her name was,
           how old she was
                who she was with and where she had come from.

A little girl. Alone.

She couldn't have been older than seven years old. She was small enough to be five or six. It was May. It was a very cool spring evening on the streets of Bucharest. It was after midnight!
Her little dress and little shoes... they were not enough.
I don't remember her name
I don't remember her exact age
I don't remember

The whole scenario was like watching a clip from some movie set back in an era that I just couldn't relate to - some horrific story about children being left alone in some far away place. A story that was being told so that we would be shocked while being entertained.
This was not academy award stuff
This was happening in front of me.
That sweet, darling little girl was alone,
         and I regret saying that we left her - alone.

The crazy part is, in that moment, what were we to do?
We didn't live there, in Romania.
We didn't have the option of (legally) bundling her up, bringing her home with us to California.
There wasn't a girl's home in Bucharest (yet*) to bring her home to, and sad to say the orphanages weren't always the best option (overworked and overwhelmed)
It feels so lame to say this
    I'm risking here, hoping that you won't be moved to rebuke or scold.
    Or then again, go ahead
          because maybe I deserve scolding, for not being "brave enough" to take her with me.
Anyway, I took off my socks
       my long adult-sized socks.
I put them on her little feet
       under her little shoes.
I took off my flannel shirt, my very large shirt
      put it over her little dress.
I rolled up the sleeves, those long over-sized sleeves.
Angie was talking with her the whole time.
          where do you live? are you with anyone?
I have to tell you I don't even remember much about that or much that happened afterwards.
All I know is … we walked away.
   She was abandoned by her parents.
   She was abandoned by her siblings.
   She was abandoned by a broken society.
Put on a train in another part of this beautiful but very sad country
At the end of the track she got off.
She had nobody. Nobody!!!

to be continued ...


* Response to emergencies should go faster, but frustratingly, it often takes an agonizingly amount of time. It takes money, resources, property and people. Since we first visited over 20 years ago I'm thrilled to report that Angie's kids have a place to call home. Soon after we visited, Children's Relief Network opened both boys and girls homes in Romania, caring for the abandoned children of a country broken by dictatorship many decades earlier.

Angie's Kids