Returning to their roots; growing a future for themselves and their children
Vasile, 46, and Marie, 44, live with their five children in the remote and mountainous Vasliu region of Romania. The commune they call home is called Todiresti. It is where Maria grew up and where she knew she wanted to raise a family someday. Although the landscape and environment are inviting to the visitors, life has not been easy for Maria and the other residents of the area, nor has the outlook on life been particularly positive.
Scars of the past
In 1968, when Maria was born, Romania was under communist rule. During this period, villagers had to cope with harsh supervision of national authorities who wanted to urbanize, reorganize, and homogenize the country often pressuring rural peasants to move to urban settings to take away their independence and crush their individualist ideas.
Under the communist regime, Maria studied as long she could afford it. In 1989, when she finished high school, she was forced to leave her parent’s home and move to the city where she worked in a factory. She never really adapted to the noise and hurried nature of life in the city. She couldn’t imagine raising her family there. After the regime fell, she returned home and married Vasile. Together, they have five children between the ages of 8 and 15.
Struggling to survive
Like the majority of other families in the area, Maria and Vasile have struggled to support their children. For some time, they followed the same model as other families trying to find finances to feed their children and support their education—international employment—with Vasile traveling to Germany months at a time and Maria trying to care for the children on her own. According to the Romanian National Statistics Unit more people are going abroad since 2008 than were in 1990, when the country was in transition.
Immigration not only impacts children and families, it is transforming the foundation of entire communities and shapes the culture. Official statistics show that more than 350,000 minors in Romania have at least one parent who has left the country to find work (a number that doesn’t even reflect those who have left children in rural areas for work in urban centers) and as many as 20 per cent of these children are functionally orphans, with both their parents out of the country for work, leaving these children vulnerable to school abandonment and other forms of abuse.
Families who remain in Romania are rarely choosing to do so in rural areas. Although forced migration is no longer an issue, the population of the area where Maria and her family lives has lost almost half its population since when she was a child and has only about 30 per cent of the children it used to (in 1968 the population was 6066, including 1,162 children; by 2008 the population had dropped to 3,594 with just 440 children).
Going against the current
Maria knew she didn’t want to raise her children in the city and after several years of Vasile traveling to Germany for work, Maria encouraged him to stay home and look after the family. “I told him, ‘as long as we have two hands and strength to work, we will be able to make it through. If you go to Germany so often, the family would be incomplete, children will suffer and the money would be gone before we know it,’” she recalls.
In the face of common practice, Maria and Vasile have placed their bets on being able to support their children through agriculture. Vasile works when he can as a day laborer in the summer, earning $15 a day (when he can find work).
They live in a small house with only a few old furnishings. Despite their financial situation, Maria is an excellent and generous host, receiving her guests into an immaculately clean house and offering them boiled corn and Romanian doughnuts.
Getting by and keeping their kids in school
Their eldest daughter, Maria Isbaela, 15, goes to Nicolae Iorga High School in Negreşti city. She has just finished the 9th grade, and is eager to start the 10th. Unfortunately, the village is situated far from the city. During the 9th grade, she lived at her uncle’s house but he recently passed away, leaving Maria and her sister Beatrice Elena, 14, who will also be entering high school this year, not knowing where they will be able to stay in order to study the coming year.
As a general rule, in Negreşti, people require $60 for a rented room that can accommodate up to four children, if they agree to cohabitate. That means the family will have to pay up $30 a month for the accommodation of their two eldest girls this year and $45 the following year, when Luiza Ioana, 13, joins them.
Stuck between a rock and a hard place
Parents, including Maria and Vasile, don’t necessarily want to send their children to stay in the city in order to study. But, it is the best and most economical option. While there is a bus that runs between their village, the $3 a day fare to-and-from school would add up to $60 a month, per child; more than four times the cost of staying at someone’s house and the long hours of travel would limit the time the children could dedicate to their studies.
The problem is the room is just the beginning. There are also the other expenses of attending high school. In addition to paying for a place to sleep, children also need food ($65 a month), school supplies ($45 a year) and clothes ($65 a semester). All of this adds up to an impossible amount of money for the average rural family depending on subsistence agriculture.
To put things in perspective, the state poverty allowance for children is $12 per child, per month. With this situation, it is easy to understand why a large percentage of children from impoverished rural communities are unable to finish their education.
Maria and Vasile, however, are determined to see their children finish high school share their children’s dreams of continuing their studies in the university. “We want to make something of our lives,” says Maria Isabela. “We want to be able to look after ourselves when we grow up,” she adds.
Growing a future
The family owns 2.46 hectares of land and have also leased an additional three hectares of land that was left unused next to their house. In return, the family has to return 600 kilos of wheat per hectacre on the leased land; the rest is theirs. Maria dreams of purchasing the leased land one day, but for now the $3,020 price is far beyond their reach.
They work the land to obtain wheat, alfalfa, barley that they use for feeding their animals. Currently, they have six milk cows and several pigs. Haveing animals not only helps provide food, but for money as well. The $350 from the sale of a pig or $680 from the sale of a cow goes a long way towards helping cover their children’s educational costs, anything that is left is earmarked for the construction of a new two-story family home. “Each year, we try to invest some of the money we obtain [in the construction]. We wish to build a big house for our children,” says Maria. “A place for them to live with their families or a place in which their children could spend their vacations,” she adds, confident that this dream will too come true someday.
Maria and Vasile’s faith in God is for any visitor to see, with Icons of Jesus in every room. A very grateful Maria says, “All I ever wished for, God has given me,” she says, looking at her children. “[Now], I wish for my children to be healthy, educated and succed in life, bearing in their hearts their love for God,” she adds.
Setting an the bar
For World Vision, Maria and Vasile sets a good example for what all parent should do for the welfare of their children: to make sure that they enjoy good health from good and nutritious food, to encourage them to go to school and pursue a career, to stay committed to the values of Christianity and, most important of all, to make their best so that their children are cared for and protected.
Because of their exemplary status they were among the recipients of five bee hives through World Vision’s Livelihood for Transformation non-sponsorship project, financed by World Vision USA. The bees, designed to help care for the whole family’s needs are also cared for by the whole family. All of the children have special equipment they use when caring for the bees.
Luiza Ioana, 13, is the most dedicated beekeeper. She knows her away around the hives and is adept at using the cleaning instruments. Most importantly, she is not afraid of the bees. She is a great help for her parents and she wishes to become a professional beekeeper in the future.
Maria is happy to have been involved in the LIFT project and learned about bee keeping. As a result a relative recently used some leftover wood to build her 30 more wood hives that she intends to populate herself. In one year time, she has managed to extract 10 jars of honey which she will be using for her children, saving the family about $60 that would have otherwise been spent on honey.
Until now, World Vision has been working with the members of the community to identify their needs and possible solutions and is in the process of designing a long-term community development program which will commence in FY2014 with an initial focus on education and economic development.