Diary October 2005

Diary
MARIA GHEORGHIU

October 2005

I would have liked to live in Bucharest in 1930 and to have danced in the Athenee Palace under the stained glass dome. But then I would have missed the pleasure of driving a 4x4. Sometimes I feel that all I have are my driving skills and my diction. I have always loved driving: day or night, Dacia or non Dacia, sunny or cloudy, dry roads or icy, open highway or bumper to bumper on Magheru, and most of all – off road in a 4x4. Here the rules are different. That false sense of control you have on the highway is replaced by instinct and engine power and pure concentration. When I’ve had enough – that’s the way I go on strike – by leaving the main road and dancing with the mountains. I travel a lot between two worlds – between ex-pats and natives and between Bacau and Bucharest. I may start a day in Buhusi among people that have no toilets, running water, or prospects for the future, and end up at dinner on Lake Herastrau. Going back and forth stretches me to observe not only the obvious differences, but also the nuances.

This time four years ago I was wondering if a move to Bacau was the right road for me. A friend opened a book and found Bacau on the map. ‘Looks like if you choose Bacau, the mountains will dance with you,’ he said. Slowly it started to make sense to me and Gata, Dispus si Capabil (eng: Ready, Willing and Able) Bacau became my new home and my life. The day I couldn’t drive last spring, I took the train.

Inter City Diary, April 22, 2005

6:00 am The lady in the ticket booth informs me that the train for Bacau will stop for two hours at Peris. She offers me full eye contact and a smile. Are you sure you want to buy the ticket? Why wouldn’t I? Maybe they’ll change their mind and won’t go on strike. Her smile grows wider.

6:20 I search for the restaurant car from the platform. The conductor says there isn’t one. Could it be that the Bistro crew started the strike early? He keeps walking but laughs out loud.

7:00 Like clockwork, we stop at Peris. As the train puts on the brakes I say to the conductor, ‘Gata?’ His smile is full of complicity. I never noticed before what sweet faces the train workers have.

7:20 I dub this the Smile Movement. Makes sense, no? The Chinese have Fortune Cookies, the Czechs the Velvet Revolution, Americans have Coca Cola and self-confidence, Israelis have Palestinians, and we have smiling strikers. The engine is on, the heat is on, the rain is on, the lights and music are on. People pass through the car in both directions, flowing from wagon to wagon. Searching for the Bistro perhaps? I wish the Minister of Transport and his minions were here among us, listening with their eyes. The Minister represents the government and the government represents the people. So just for today, lets skip the government and go straight to the people. Negotiate on the train. With the engines humming and the compartments full of smiling people!

8:58 The train starts to move. Shortly thereafter the ticket puncher comes in. I ask him, ‘So?’ He smiles back, ‘So!’ Romanians would call this in coada de peste (eng: a fish tail).

There was a recent teachers’ strike but it didn’t affect me. I think our teachers have been on a kind of strike for years. It’s called ‘transition’ or sometimes even ‘reform’. Things are started with great fanfare and wind down to empty rhetoric and apathy. Last month, the first day of classes at a middle school in Bucharest found children playing tag in the courtyard amid grandmothers holding the obligatory bouquets of chrysanthemums and fathers on mobile phones. The principal droned on for 40 minutes through a fuzzy communist era microphone, with nobody paying attention yet no one having the guts to strike out of the courtyard before the ceremony reached its conclusion.

Strikes have a completely different impact depending on whether you are poor or rich. For the poor, strikes create major delays, increased costs and genuine hardship. For the affluent strikes are to be observed from afar, or at worst, something to be batted away like a lone fly by the pool. There are children here who are on permanent strike from school. Yes, the number that abandon school before they reach fifth grade is growing in my country. As a teacher I think about this a lot – the lives that are being ruined, the minds that are being wasted, the potential that is being stunted.

The reality in Bacau, Bucharest and most other cities is that the streets are the work place of certain unlucky children. Instead of being a time of innocence and burgeoning intellect, their childhoods are full of worries, physical dangers and dead ends. Romanians, always a soft touch when they see a stray dog, or a stray child, will give these children money day after day. Don’t these people realise their generosity is depriving a human being of both a childhood and a future?

So what can a person do? I think a lot about that too. There is no magic wand. But I have experienced first hand that transformation can occur when there is resolve, action and persistence on the part of many. I discovered in Bacau that when given the opportunity, people will work very hard to improve their lives and the futures of their children. Yes, even the most marginalised people, even Gypsies. I discovered that all kids want to learn and that their mothers want more than anything to see them succeed. My favourite, at the same time, the most challenging discussions – with disadvantaged children, their mothers, and their teachers – are about the future. Just dealing with the present takes all their energy, imagination, and stamina. I also discovered in Bacau that cooperation between and among NGOs, government agencies and the business sector is not all that hard to accomplish where there is a common vision, adequate funding, and good management. Alas, I also learned that one bad old apple can spoil the whole bunch.

My mantra of late is ‘a new generation makes a new commitment.’ More and more, young Romanian professionals try to make a difference by giving both their time and money to helping deprived children, the so-called “orphans”, street kids, and children at high risk of becoming street kids. There is no question that many of these young Romanian professionals have been positively influenced by the values of ex-pat professionals in our midst.
In general, I like ex-pats; I like working with them. But in all honesty, there is also an attitude of superiority that I increasingly find un-endearing. It comes out in lines that start: ‘Why do Romanians always …?’ The complaint usually has to do with bad service or poor work habits. I ask: ‘How many Romanian friends do you have – people you socialise with?’ Invariably the answer is, ‘Well, you – but you’re different!’

I say, why do ex-pats always hang together? Why do they always expect us to speak (and flawlessly comprehend) English? Why do they blame everything that goes wrong on the fact that they’re in Romania? Do things never go wrong in France, for example?

Another stock ex-pat line is that we don’t have a sense of humour. This is actually true – we have several senses of humour, most of which we keep private. Sometimes it’s haz de necaz (eng: laughing at our troubles); often we laugh when we hear you trying to speak our language, and often we are just laughing inside ourselves at all the ironies around us. We are natural caricaturists in a world that is ripe for teasing.

So far the strides we have made in Bacau in getting society’s forgotten children into school and helping them succeed there seems to follow us in Sector Five. The layers of bureaucracy are thicker, but here too, a new generation is making a new commitment.

My only major complaint is that there are no mountains to dance with in Bucharest. However, some days as I drive by the People’s Palace on the way to our centre in Piata Rahova, the Palace looks like it’s smiling, and almost ready to dance with me.

Maria Gheorghiu, a native of Bucharest, is the executive director of Asociatia Ovidiu Rom, an NGO that helps the urban poor to work their way out of poverty – through the ‘Gata, Dispus si Capabil’(Ready, Willing & Able) programs offering education, training, social services, and advocacy. She invites you to dance with her at the Halloween Charity Ball on October 29.