Two Volunteers Take Expertise, Compassion, and Hope to Suffering Children in Romania
Episcopal News Service. October 4, 1991 [91195]
Jay Cormier, Director of Communication for the Diocese of Massachusetts
Jack Feeney will always remember the two Romanian orphans holding their mouths while singing a silly song about elephants.
"The interpreter had taught me a children's song about elephants, and I began to play it on my accordion for some of the kids. We were having a good time singing this funny little song. But I noticed these two little kids holding their mouths the whole time. I thought that was strange and wondered why they were holding their mouths. I found out after that it was because they were smiling and it was hurting their faces," Feeney said.
Pain and emptiness have been Romania's lot for a half century. Almost two years after the downfall of the Ceausescu regime, new tales of the horrible devastation of Romania's economy and spirit continue to be uncovered by relief agencies and volunteers who are often overwhelmed by the poverty and pain of the Romanian people.
Susan DeCristofaro, a nurse and administrator of the Massachusetts State Hospital School, and Jack Feeney, a building inspector for the Massachusetts Department of Safety with a background in heating and energy, spent the first three weeks of July in Romania as part of a team put together by the Free Romania Foundation (FRF), a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based nonprofit relief organization begun by Romanian expatriates to mobilize medical and educational assistance for their homeland.
DeCristofaro and Feeney, both members of St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in Hanover, Massachusetts, decided to make the trip after seeing a report on the ABC-TV newsmagazine 20/20 on Romanian orphans and hearing an appeal from FRF for professional volunteers to work in Romania. With the support and encouragement of their parish, DeCristofaro and Feeney joined the 10-member team assembled by the foundation.
The team was sent to an orphanage in Nicoresti in the central part of Romania, four hours by train north of Bucharest.
More than 114 orphans, ranging in age from 7 to 17, are housed at the Nicoresti orphanage. The Ceausescu government, in an effort to increase their country's labor force by seven million people by the end of the century, imposed a "celibacy" tax on couples with fewer than five children. Abortions were outlawed, sex education and contraceptives were withheld, and women were subjected to on-the-job gynecological inspections every three months. "With such poverty, families couldn't keep these kids and just dropped them off at the orphanage," Feeney said. The state-run orphanage system, totally incapable of caring for the 125,000 children in its charge, is one of the most tragic legacies of the Communist era in Romania.
"They were probably born normal children," DeCristofaro said. "But many suffered from malnutrition and rickets. Many were confined to a bed, severely handicapped. A few had AIDS and hepatitis," she continued.
The Nicoresti orphanage's filthy facilities, nonexistent medical supplies, and untrained staff are typical of the state-run system that can do little more than warehouse children. Even basic food supplies and the most ragged clothing are at a premium. "The stench of the orphanage would stay with you the whole time you were there," Feeney remembered. "Your eyes would burn."
DeCristofaro spent most of her time assessing the needs of each child, cleaning them up, doing what she and the other health professionals could do, with no clean water and just a few minimal medical supplies they brought with them.
For both DeCristofaro and Feeney, the stay in Romania was the longest three weeks of their lives.
"We had very little to eat," DeCristofaro recalled. "We lived on cheese, eggs, and tomatoes. You had to build an open fire in the heat of the day to boil the water, it was so parasitic. Just trying to get yourself clean was a daily challenge."
"It might as well have been a Third World country," Feeney said. "It's going to take a long time to turn this country around."
Many European countries, like Norway, France, and the Netherlands, are providing some help to the shattered country. But neither the struggling Bucharest government nor the Romanian church are capable of offering any support to the efforts of groups like the FRF. "There was no orientation or support for us at all," DeCristofaro pointed out. "We just sort of 'plopped in' and went to work."
"It's the strangest feeling you could possibly have," Feeney reported. "We had to register with the secret police when we got there. They were very suspicious that we were doing this work and not getting paid for it. They can't understand volunteerism at all."
DeCristofaro added, "There were rumors that we were going to steal the kids, that we were going to take the children and sell their organs back in America."
"I asked someone in our group whose uncle lived there why the people are the way they are, why their spirit is so broken," Feeney remembered. "The uncle said that once they had taken God away from these people, it was easy to break them."
"The people going off to the work camps were like zombies. There were no smiles in their eyes or on their faces. The church has to get involved here and bring hope back to this country," Feeney continued.
Despite their difficult and often frustrating experience, the two Massachusetts volunteers are convinced their work has meaning in the long term.
"Volunteers make a big difference," DeCristofaro reflected. "You are showing a very demoralized and suspicious people that others do care about their plight. Even though we can't see light in this situation -- they do. You show that there are some possibilities."
"The thing that I have kept with me the whole time we were there and still have is an anger about the whole thing -- anger that people have to live like that, anger at what we went through and saw," DeCristofaro continued. "But I felt that we were planting a seed for more work to be done. I just think that the anger that I feel will move me and others to do good things from this."
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