No running water hurts - International Water Day, Romania
Elena Scurtu is a devoted mother of two children, stuck in poverty’s vicious cycle and is desperately trying to break it. She is living with an uninvolved husband and her daughters Ionela, 8 years old and Andreea, 5 years old, in Cumpana – a large European village located 15 km far from Constanta city, in an unfinished small house built on the city hall’s grounds. The family received a piece of ground in concession, seven years ago, and started to build a house from clay and adobe. Elena plastered, whitewashed, painted and built the storehouse by herself, in order to have a clean and decent place for her children. Unfortunately, grave financial and relationship problems prevented her from finishing the house and connecting it to electricity and the water system.
The electricity problem was temporarily solved thanks to a neighbour’s benevolence, who is allowing Elena to have paid electricity in two bulbs. But running water is still missing from the household.
Running water is lacking for 45% of Romania’s population, according to the National Regulation Authority for the Public Utilities Community Services, subordinate to the Ministry of Administration and Interior. Practically, this means one in two Romanians does not have access to running water in his household.
There is a huge difference between the big cities, which have more than 90% of houses connected to the water network, and the rural areas which have only 30% of houses connected to the water network.
“We don’t have current water. We take water for washing clothes from a neighbour’s well and drinking water from another neighbour who is living on a different street. I usually fetch 60 L to wash clothes for the entire family and 50-60 L for drinking and cooking,” Elena explains.
They drank well water for couple of years, before Andreea was born. When the Romanian government launched a national program with free analysis for the population, Elena, Ionela and her husband’s analyses showed a high level of nitrites in the blood. The family doctor recommended them to stop drinking water from the well because their health was in danger.
“It’s hard to depend on somebody else. The both neighbours, who are giving me water, have a job. And I cannot disturb them anytime. I ask them to let me to fetch water only when I see them outside the house,” Elena continues.
At least two days, she is forced to carry water with a 20 L plastic can. Ionela goes to school and Andreea goes to kindergarten. Also, the girls go to karate class twice a week, where they exert themselves and sweat. They need clean clothes because they learn in a collective and because it is important for their health.
“Even we have a small income which is insecure in the future, I insisted that Ionela and Andreea continue the karate courses. We pay a 100 lei tax but is important for me that my daughters learn to protect themselves in this crazy world where children are fighting each other in school, to have a disciplined life, with rules and principles and to become more and more self-trusting in their capacities,” Elena explains, proudly showing Ionela’s violet karate belt.
Ionela is a very good grade three pupil. She has only “very good” qualifications at school and dreams to become a medic. Andreea is only 5 and her aspiration is to become a pilot. Even though she is just a little child with her head in the sky, she is still capable of knowing the difference between the kindergarten and home comfort. She realizes that at home she is forced to bathe in a metallic small basin while at kindergarten she has a modern hand-wash basin.
“I wash my hands every time before eating at the kindergarten and after I am going to the toilet. I like very much the wash-hand basin and I wish to have one at home too,” Andreea says.
Elena washes strictly the necessary things: their clothes and the bed clothes and very rarely, the carpets. She boils the water on the stove and uses a through (plastic basin) for washing. Even though she is washing with home soap or a cheap detergent, it’s very important for her to buy Lenor, a balsam that makes children’s clothes to smell good.
“Andreea is going to an eight hours program kindergarten and she is sleeping there at noon. It’s incredible, but kindergarten children don’t play with their colleagues whom clothes do not smell of Lenor because they “smell bad from their home”. I don’t want my children to be marginalized so I buy Lenor, doesn’t matter how poor I am. It’s important that Andreea and Ionela not be aware that we are poor and I want [them] to be treated like all the children,” Elena shares.
Elena dreams to have running water inside the house or even in the yard, but it is almost impossible to raise the necessary money to be connected to the system. Two summers ago, her mother, who is living in the same community, connected the house to the water network. She paid only 1000 lei (US $300) for plans and papers because Elena and her husband dug up the ditches and did all the work. But Elena can’t afford to pay the rest of the money. She recently lost her job and lives off the children’s allowance and some occasional money which comes from her husband.
“My husband Daniel is working like mechanic to a firm, but he goes to the poker or to the country inn as soon as he takes the salary. Sometimes he didn’t give any penny in house, for children. So, I worked into a factory, in night shifts to feed the girls. I came home from work and I cooked and washed clothes, go after little one at the kindergarten, stay with children and supervised their homework, take the girls from karate, in the evening. Nobody is helping me, not my husband or my mother and I don’t want to neglect the children’s education because I am always extremely tired. I am searching now a job with a program that will allow me to be at home when children go to school and came from school in order to take care of them. But who knows if I’ll find one in these harsh times,” Elena is thinking.
Without money and a sure income, she doesn’t see a solution to her multiple problems. In fact she is terrified that the city hall could take away from her the ground and the house because she hasn’t paid the concession annual fees for the last five years. As for running water, this seems like a drop in the ocean of her despair.
Elena is a clever woman who’s not afraid of work. She finished vocational school and since she was 19 years-old, she has worked as a saleswoman, maid, in confection and in a car wash. She has completed communications training organized by city hall, a job club and computer navigation courses.
“All I want in life is to feed my girls, to give them an education, to help them to continue the karate class and seeing them smiling. I don’t want anything for me. Only to surpass this impossible situation: to have a job and current water,” Elena sobs.
She is almost crying. Ioana is embracing her. Suddenly Elena’s face is shining and she found the power to conclude our conversation, in the purest Romanian style:
“Except the luck, God gave me all: brains, health and two beautiful and smart children. Only the family head is broken…”
The Romanian Government intends to provide the entire Romanian population with running water by 2018. Also, authorities are searching for constructive solutions to decrease water prices in order to help the final consumer, who is currently paying 500 euros for one cubic metre of potable water and sometimes, even 1000 euro/mc, as was declared at the Water Regional Forum organized in Bucharest, on June 2012.