Day 4
Today for the Magic Pennies team was a morning to sleep in and try and catch up on the long days in Romania, combined with effects of international travel.

Lily picked up the team at 11:00 am, and then off the team went to a very large farmers market in the area. One of the beauties of "food" in general in this area of the world is that "everything" is in the "organic" section, and it would be difficult to find a food section that has a high percentage of processed foods. Slowly though, there is the introduction of organizations such as "Costco type" superstores. There is even that occasional trip for a Romanian to a McDonalds in their area...very much considered an expensive "treat" in Romania.

 At a certain point there was a little girl around the age of 7, that was working in the market selling spices. She followed the team around the market, suggesting over and over that the team buy some of her spices.....after visiting with and buying some spices from the little girl, Mary bought her a banana...something considered a very expensive exotic fruit since it has to be imported into the country.

The MP team also bought some hand carved wooden utensils that are very popular to see being sold in the markets.

This particular trip to the market for the team was to buy supplies to take to an area of Craiova where a number of children known as the "Tunnel Children" live on, or under the streets....many of the children living on the streets coming from a "Gypsy" heretage.

Craiova is located in the Southwest area of Romania. This area has one of the highest population % of the very old "Gypsy" peoples, or "Roma" peoples. The country over all has about a 2% Gypsy population, but in the Craiova area, and Southwest even farther, it is about 11 to 12 percent. Below is an article from a web site describing a brief history of the Gypsy people. This web site also has other information regarding the culture and history of Romania. http://www.eliznik.org.uk/RomaniaHistory/gypsies.htm

After leaving the market, the team went for a quick lunch at Tom and Lilies, and then back out for the afternoon. They went to an additional market to continue purchacing supplies for the Tunnel Children, and other children living on the streets. This time they added more fruits (fresh and dried), breads, juice, cheeses.

Prior to going to see these kids, the Team made up separate "gift bags" placed in the large ziplock bags to hand out to the children . The kids ranged from about 13 to 22 in age...the oldest kids acting largely in  parental, or protector roles. There is a wearyness from the children toward strangers until either recognizing one from the Romanian organiztion, such as Tom or Lily, or just being given an "ok" from one of the older kids that have made the decision that it is safe. Mary and Anca tried to communicate with a young girl that was both deaf and mute...without success since she was also unable to read or write. They did there best to at least make sure that she could eat first while they were there to supervise so the older children would not take the things in her gift bag. 

There was a young mother named Daniella, with her son Elvis living in the tunnel...they also talked to an 11 year old little boy named Ionut. The little boy was very much under the influence of a continuous habit of sniffing glue. There was traces of glue dried all over his face from trying to glue a bag of glue to his face, covering the nose and making in not necessary to hold the bag with his hands. Lily recognized the little boy from a placement center and after getting back to their home showed the team a picture of the same litte boy sitting on Santa's lap only 6 month before. Ionut was at the time sitting on Santa's lap with very intelligent and happy eyes. It is not clear how it happened that this little boy ended up out of the placement center and on the streets.

The MP team distributed the gift bags to everyone. They also gave out supplies such as vitamins and various other nutritional suppliments for the children with more special needs such as the mother Daniella and her baby Elvis.

After going back to Tom and Lily's, the team had one of Lily's great dinners, and started preparations for the next day. At the end of the night there is always a festive atmosphere at the Tom and Lily home. It is an "open" home, and many of the children living in various placement centers know that it is always a safe place to come.

Days 5 and 6.
This news letter is referring to both the 5th and 6th day for the Magic Pennies team. This main body of this letter, like the account of the 2nd day, was again written by the Romanian team member, Ancuta Tamas.

The computer lab referred to in this letter is something that MP has been working on for some time with Tom's organization in Romania. This will be used for regular classes for the kids from the placement centers. These classes will vary from, basic computer skills, to complete computer service and programming. I would like to extend a "huge thanks" (this has been expressed to MP many times) from Tom Hill to the ones that have helped put all of the materiel's together for this computer center.

 

First day at the Rescue Center

It was Wednesday July 2nd and we had just arrived by train from Craiova. We arrived at our new home the "Villa Helga" in Bucharest at 2:00 PM and crashed for a couple hours before we left to pick up Sarah at the airport. After an hour of trying to finagle public transportation to the airport, Anca finally called a friend (Lawrence) and he took pity on us in our moment of desperation. Little did we know, we were about to take a treacherous journey through the meandering streets of Bucharest. We somehow made it to the airport in one piece and only 1/2 half our late. We found Sarah just in time as she was just about to pull out her emergency phone list. We headed back to the hostel, enjoyed dinner together at a local restaurant and crashed for the night.

 

In an effort to recreate the luxurious accommidations in Craiova, Steve prepared a sampling of cheeses and fruit for breakfast in the morning served, of course,  under a canopy of grape vines in the hostel veranda.   9:30 AM soon came and we were whisked off to the Rescue Center by Marius, one of the outreach workers at the center.  After carefully fielding a 15 minute barrage of questions regarding the search for Saddam Hussein and Bin Laden, we finally arrived at the center.  We were immediately introduced to all of the staff, discussed the days activities and headed out for our first outreach in Bucharest at ~10:30 AM.  Florin & Emma led us on a wall around the city where we both ran some errands and encountered several kids. As luck would have it, the first kid we met has been Vasile, who had just hopped a train to Bucharest.  He was staying with two other boys under the bridge at the train station.  Through a series of questions, we found out that one of the boys was Ionut, who we had met in the parking lot in Craiova a few days earlier.  We were all incredibly surprised and Mary had goose bumps despite the fact that it was oppressively hot outside.   We continued on and found an old sewer entrance.  Steve and Florin walked through the ~200 feet of tunnel, but found only one elderly man who told us that all the kids had left because of a recent police raid.  Our next stop was the train station where we met Eugene (16 years old) whose head and both hands were wrapped with thick white bandages.  He told us that he was huffing glue and some other kids wiped the glue all over him and lit him on fire.   We heard later at the rescue center that he had set himself on fire for some reason.  

   
When we returned to the outreach center, the "Mom and Baby" program was in progress.   We immediately began playing with the kids and spent the next two hours with them trying to meet an embrace everyone in the room.  Once the program was finished we went out for outreach again, this time with Daniela and Florin.  We saw several kids on the streets in the University Square and met with one family that lived in a nearby park. At about 5:00 PM we headed back to the hostel for a much needed nap then had a quick dinner and ran to meet up with Marius again for night outreach which began at 10 PM.   We stopped at the Rescue Center, picked up 3 cases of croissants then headed for the streets.  We spent about a half hour at a nearby sewer entrance where we met with 4 kids.   Only one of them was actually living there at the time and he showed us around.  We were surprised to find that they had made quite a home of the place.  They had posted hundreds of posters all over the place, including Eminen, David Hasselhoff, etc...   They laid down a rug and even had a couch and a bed.  A group of kids had been living there for about 2 years and told us stories of a local gang/junkies who periodically came down in the sewers and beat up the kids.  We left and headed back to the streets and found almost 50 kids in various parts of the city.

Along with the guys from the placement center, we gave chocolate croissants to all of the kids. The larger group we met was the one from the train station," Gara de Nord". 25 kids, amongst which one of 10 years old, Ionut, as you can see this is a pretty common name. There was also Alin, who was about the same age, but looked like he was five. Almost every kid we encountered was openly huffing glue from bags, even as we talked with them.   You could see the immediate effect on the eyes and body with each sniff, the sight was so disturbing to us that we wanted to rip the bags right out of their hands.   Unfortunately, we don't know when or if we'll ever see these kids again and we certainly don't have the ability ensure they are fed well and kept safe on a daily basis so regardless of what we do or say tonight, they'll almost certainly return to the one thing that helps them cover up the pain tomorrow.    Knowing this, we tried anyway.  Mary and Anca spoke with Alin for ~15 minutes.  They talked about what the glue will do to his little body.  They also asked him about what he wanted to be when he was a man and tried to convince him the the drugs he was taking was the one thing that would make that dream impossible.   He listened at times intensely and at others his eyes wondered as if he just wanted to be left alone. We weren't sure whether or not our words had any impact... until it came time to leave.  One by one we darted into the car through the sea of kids, giving hugs and blowing kisses on the way in.   Just as we were about to go, Alin ran up and gave Steve a hug and didn't want to let go.   He then hugged Mary and kissed her face and arms.  There was silence in the car as we slowly pulled away, careful not to hit any of the kids running around the car and putting their hands on the car windows screaming smiling good byes.  It is one thing to hug a 10 year old boy and tell him he can do anything, but it is quite a different feeling driving away and leaving him alone on the streets.