In Romania, the economic pressures ‘produce’ children that are without a lot of perspectives, especially in rural areas. Not only is there very little support to ensure that the children can finish secondary school, so that for some, 8 classes effectively mean the end of the possibility of schooling. Reasons: the secondary schools are further away, and the options of commuting or staying at a family are too expensive.
Children are also the big losers of the race for jobs abroad (4 million Romanians abroad is an estimation, total population 21 million). They are left to the care of family, grandparents, or older siblings, while their parents do slave labour in Italy or Spain. There are families who are getting on better, and who do white work abroad, who have been gone longer, but those who have gone more recently, who do black work are more precarious. Of course, the parents being stressed to make a living also affects the children, and I would like to suggest that the degree to which this is happens here is higher than in the UK, for instance, even though child poverty as far as I remember is highest in Scotland as far as Western Europe is concerned.
Juxtaposition: one of these mornings, I read in the newspaper (Gindul 22.10.07) that some NGOs with programmes aimed at children in need (protection of the child I think is the technical term) had ‘lost’ billions. The National Authority for the Protection of the Child works with two main NGOs (SERA, Pentru Copii Nostri), and they were supposed to finish building, until 2006, 16 day care centres for abandoned children. In August 2007, a report showed that 4 of these were functioning. The rest do not exist, are being constructed, or have the buildings finished but without utilities. One case in Ilfov: here sheltered housing was supposed to be created for children with special needs. The building is illegal (the land not being properly put into possession), 75% of the money has been spent, and the houses are no more than a few walls, and a foundation. The responsibilities are pushed from one authority to the other…
At the moment, on private TV channel has a campaign is on entitled ‘do you know how your child is getting on?’. It is I guess aimed at sensitising people that children suffer a lot: from abandonment generally, growing up in rural areas where there are two or three children left in a village, being under considerable psychological stress, and having their options effectively limited even more. When I see these children, I get really sad and angry. You can see that they are uncared for, neglected, possibly subjected to violence, their hands are like hands of adults, rough and overworked, they don’t go to school often because they are sent to work, helping with the sunflower harvest, for instance.
I met one girl (6) who was upset all the time. You could see her anger in her face and every move she made. She had stopped speaking to everyone, including her grandmother who she lived with her during her mother’s absence. Her mother had been in Italy for a long time, and then ended up coming home having spent most of the money earned there on living.
Another girl (5) told me that children are easy to make, but difficult to raise. She said, I go to bed very late, and I cannot fall asleep without the TV. Her parents have a combined income of 60 euros. This pays just about the electricity and the firewood.
Showing posts with label balkan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label balkan. Show all posts
Thursday, 25 October 2007
Monday, 8 October 2007
Saturday, 15 September 2007
Branza de Burduf
Monday, 16 July 2007
Tuesday, 29 May 2007
…and it will be my last…
I am listening to Bach’s Wohltemperiertes Klavier. Today it has the same effect on the pace of my heartbeat and my soul as the first time I really listened to it, as a ten-year-old in one of my piano lessons. I still see my piano teacher’s allure at the piano. She did mark me a lot, but I was a bit young to emotionally grasp some of her lessons back then. I went to this music and folkdance event today, on occasion of the sheep having gone to the mountains in the village across in the next valley. It made me happy to listen to the music and see the dancing, and sad because I have been neglecting this need within me, and I know that part of my stress could be greatly reduced by making more music. I remember living at home and playing for no reason. The piano just drew me in and I just played for a while, and during that time, I did not worry. It is a different kind of concentration than the one mostly used in writing work. In this village, I did not get the opportunity to practice an instrument. I have found myself taking notes, though, and starting to sing, in the silence of my room. Bursting into song. I misunderstood fieldwork. I got it wrong. I am so stressed I forget to breathe and I am surprised that I suffocate. It is true that fieldwork is not exactly a normal life situation, and this is what makes it harder. Yet, I cannot merely bet on its transitory nature, just like I cannot be content with the transitory nature of life itself. I cannot keep it all locked up, and think that typing it up will provide enough emotional release. I want to live more fully again, and spend time with people my age, and be somewhat relieved by their youth and their jokes and their mischief and their willingness to embrace life. I’d like to think that I am an optimistic person with a dark sense of humour, but with a lot of need for joking around, but I have been so caught up with all kinds of other things. This being-bottled-up makes my body receptive to all kinds of ailments. Being happy is often easier than I think. Worry less. Enjoy more. Do not take it so personally. Remember Kahlil. Be content with the ways in which it is not up to me. Wear down my clarinet like this accordeon I saw at the festival today.
Fill the air with more music. For no reason at all. And try to remember that tune that I heard played by the Vienna Art Orchestra. It’s called ‘Everything Has Its Own Time’. Truth of the year, quite possibly. Yours musically, beat-shell
Thursday, 29 March 2007
The Ending of Regimes
I finally dared asking the question about the ending of regimes. When did it first occur to you that communism might not be forever? To me, it is a hard question. It was answered to me in the following way by someone I appreciate a lot:
‘Summer of 1989. My father was saying that Ceausescu’s regime was not going to last past the year. I didn’t know. I realised that things were happening in Berlin. Then we had a meeting of the UTC (Union of Young Communists) at work. It was a regular thing, an ideology meeting, a kind of advanced course. One guy was speaking and I was sleeping with my eyes open. I must have been one of the older people there, I was around thirty. Something he said woke me up, and I reacted to it. He said that only with Communism, History had come, before Communism there had been no History. I said f*%& that, what on earth do you mean? I was astonished that no one else reacted, but they were either not listening, like me, or they were a lot younger. What happened then was even stranger. He made his excuses and left in the middle of the course. I was expecting to get into trouble by the security, but I did not. I started to believe my father was right.’
1989 was a long time ago. I was nine years old. I remember the Berlin pictures on TV, the classrooms I was in that year, and I remember my communion. It was so stressful the day ended with a headache (possibly brought on by the impossibly tight weave the hairdresser had created on the top of my head), the ice-cream lamb was crying, and it was cold and beautifully bright outside. Last weekend someone (male, around 35, married, one child, wealthy) was visiting who wore a communist emblem T-Shirt under his white jumper. You know the kind, red background, white hammer and sickle. Strange choice despite the period that has passed…
‘Summer of 1989. My father was saying that Ceausescu’s regime was not going to last past the year. I didn’t know. I realised that things were happening in Berlin. Then we had a meeting of the UTC (Union of Young Communists) at work. It was a regular thing, an ideology meeting, a kind of advanced course. One guy was speaking and I was sleeping with my eyes open. I must have been one of the older people there, I was around thirty. Something he said woke me up, and I reacted to it. He said that only with Communism, History had come, before Communism there had been no History. I said f*%& that, what on earth do you mean? I was astonished that no one else reacted, but they were either not listening, like me, or they were a lot younger. What happened then was even stranger. He made his excuses and left in the middle of the course. I was expecting to get into trouble by the security, but I did not. I started to believe my father was right.’
1989 was a long time ago. I was nine years old. I remember the Berlin pictures on TV, the classrooms I was in that year, and I remember my communion. It was so stressful the day ended with a headache (possibly brought on by the impossibly tight weave the hairdresser had created on the top of my head), the ice-cream lamb was crying, and it was cold and beautifully bright outside. Last weekend someone (male, around 35, married, one child, wealthy) was visiting who wore a communist emblem T-Shirt under his white jumper. You know the kind, red background, white hammer and sickle. Strange choice despite the period that has passed…
Poverty and Precariousness
Someone pointed out to me that poor people on the countryside fare better than people in the city. The comment precipitated a lot of thought on the matter, because part of me at first rejected it entirely (always fascinating to see how we react to certain engrained assumptions qualified). Then I conceded that I had been wrong about certain things in this regard.
Not only two or three people here get twenty-five (25) euro pension per month. Some households are constituted of three generations, sharing one salary, and one of the said pensions. I have been wondering about the difference between the poverty here, and the poverty in Western Europe. It may be not just a question of difference in degree, but also a question of difference in kind. I take into account that a difference exists between the kind of poverty found in cities and the one found (here) on the countryside. People here get credit at the local food shop to buy bread (one bread costs 0.7 RON = 0.2 EURO – the shopkeeper explained to me that they had to have a sign saying ‘no credit here’, but that it was not possible to stick to this in practice). The people that have a pension, no matter how minuscule, do not get social benefits, apart from one-off money for fire wood (only heating source around here with very few exceptions). From what I hear from the Lux context, people do get enough money to cover their basic needs. And, speaking about basic needs, I do not think there is anyone in Britain or Lux who does not have access to running water, a bathroom, and electricity. There are a lot of people here who do not have number one and two, and a few who do not have number three. The reason elderly people hold as many animals as they can work is because they cut food bills and enrich staple diets. You can also (at the moment of writing: still) somehow sell the cheese you make, the eggs your chickens lay, and the meat of the spring lamb that your ewe has had. This helps, to some degree. Of course, the facts that communism collapsed and left a whole generation on terribly small pensions (who is to blame that they did not pay contributions to a fund then?), and that incomes are up to ten times lower than in some Western European countries needs to be taken into account in any characterisation of the kind of poverty here.
On the other hand, the kind of misery in Western Europe I mean may resemble the urban kind. It can mean a combination of the following: high debts, forms of social exclusion that include lack of access to education, to secure and fairly-paid jobs, to a secure, healthy living environment, and so forth.
I think one of the most important differences is that in the countryside here, people live without major debts, but in the cities, people have debts because they have commodities, too. In the cities, people may make more plans for the future to face uncertainty, but here, uncertainty is levelled out by minimising the risk in the present, because they do not have the resources to act otherwise. I am not sure how it is with risk deferment: people commit to take out mortgages and pay in health and pension cover, but what kind of percentage can still commit to this kind of responsibility in societies rapidly increasing in inequality, say, in ten or fifteen years’ time? Furthermore, there may be more of temporary poverty because the job situation can change quickly. The welfare state being under siege from various internal and external forces, I am not sure anymore in how far we can and should still speak about it. So these are my embryonic thoughts on the matter, and I am sure a lot has been written about it. I just need to find time to read all that.
Not only two or three people here get twenty-five (25) euro pension per month. Some households are constituted of three generations, sharing one salary, and one of the said pensions. I have been wondering about the difference between the poverty here, and the poverty in Western Europe. It may be not just a question of difference in degree, but also a question of difference in kind. I take into account that a difference exists between the kind of poverty found in cities and the one found (here) on the countryside. People here get credit at the local food shop to buy bread (one bread costs 0.7 RON = 0.2 EURO – the shopkeeper explained to me that they had to have a sign saying ‘no credit here’, but that it was not possible to stick to this in practice). The people that have a pension, no matter how minuscule, do not get social benefits, apart from one-off money for fire wood (only heating source around here with very few exceptions). From what I hear from the Lux context, people do get enough money to cover their basic needs. And, speaking about basic needs, I do not think there is anyone in Britain or Lux who does not have access to running water, a bathroom, and electricity. There are a lot of people here who do not have number one and two, and a few who do not have number three. The reason elderly people hold as many animals as they can work is because they cut food bills and enrich staple diets. You can also (at the moment of writing: still) somehow sell the cheese you make, the eggs your chickens lay, and the meat of the spring lamb that your ewe has had. This helps, to some degree. Of course, the facts that communism collapsed and left a whole generation on terribly small pensions (who is to blame that they did not pay contributions to a fund then?), and that incomes are up to ten times lower than in some Western European countries needs to be taken into account in any characterisation of the kind of poverty here.
On the other hand, the kind of misery in Western Europe I mean may resemble the urban kind. It can mean a combination of the following: high debts, forms of social exclusion that include lack of access to education, to secure and fairly-paid jobs, to a secure, healthy living environment, and so forth.
I think one of the most important differences is that in the countryside here, people live without major debts, but in the cities, people have debts because they have commodities, too. In the cities, people may make more plans for the future to face uncertainty, but here, uncertainty is levelled out by minimising the risk in the present, because they do not have the resources to act otherwise. I am not sure how it is with risk deferment: people commit to take out mortgages and pay in health and pension cover, but what kind of percentage can still commit to this kind of responsibility in societies rapidly increasing in inequality, say, in ten or fifteen years’ time? Furthermore, there may be more of temporary poverty because the job situation can change quickly. The welfare state being under siege from various internal and external forces, I am not sure anymore in how far we can and should still speak about it. So these are my embryonic thoughts on the matter, and I am sure a lot has been written about it. I just need to find time to read all that.
Sunday, 4 February 2007
in the museum: troglodytes, civilisation and the balkan
As I waited for my friend to finish his meeting yesterday, I hid from the wind and snow in the Palace of Culture in Târgu Mures, and had a look at the History Museum there. History here is reduced to an archaeological collection of ceramics and iron-made ‘tools’ that more often than not are very silent about possible uses in daily life. I got very frustrated by the glass boxes as I attempted to reconstruct some kind of social life around these objects in my imagination. The collection is concentrated mainly on the glorious distant past, and the places of discovery are indicated on light-faded maps. This is definitely something Umberto Eco should have included among his brilliant excursions on ‘How to organise a public library’ and the like. I did a bit of collecting myself and present to you here the most interesting ‘explanatory comments’, presented on laminated beige posters in a very poetic English voice, as you will discover. How to make a museum as dusty as possible:
The Starcevo-Cris culture is representative for the beginning of the Neolithic. This culture is characteristic through the painted ceramics tools made by cut and polish rocks. The smalls settlements is formed by cottage.
(…)
The funerary habit was represented by incineration in plane or tumular graves.
(…)
The economy was mixted.
(…)
The tibula was used as a dress decoration. For the first time appeared in the Bronze Age and it was used until the Great Migrations (7th Century)
(…)
The 2nd Iron Age.
The ferrous metallurgy would reach its climax in La Tène due to the Celts and progressively generalise, to a large extent beginning with the 2nd Century B.C. The Dacian iron civilisation is undoubtedly one of the most remarkably civilisations of the ‘barbarian’ Europe.
(…)
The Roman epoch (106-271 A.D.) signified the moment of outmost interaction with the universal history, as the history of the Roman province of Dacia is part of the history of the Roman Empire. Accomplishing the role of a strategic bastion positioned in the barbaric world, Dacia had the statute of imperial province.
(…)
I especially like the Polish rocks, and I want a plane grave too, please! Also amazed at the (very ambivalent) emphasis on how proto-Romania was already more European / civilised than its barbaric neighbours, something reproduced in the nationalist discourse of the nineteenth century, and in the Romanisation efforts of the language at that time. This is most likely largely an issue of historiography, and of the timing at which these posters were put up. I suspect just after the revolution… but maybe someone has a more definite idea on this? Very revealing also considering the large Hungarian population of this town, and the bloody confrontations in 1990 on the Piata Trandafirilor between Hungarian students and peasants sent in from the countryside by Romanian group Vatra. Finally, what on earth are laypersons like me supposed to think about the generalised climax of ferrous metallurgy? Sound and fury… signifying and teaching nothing.
Saturday, 13 January 2007
the announcement kindly asks us...
to leave the metro carriages and wait for the next one. everyone gets out quietly. piata victoriei. on the platform across the rails, a voice. the person it belongs to is hidden behind the yellow pillars, and he does not look anything like his voice. with a pronounced vibrato, he performs a mellow, plaintive type of folk song. let us see beyond the balkan soul stereotypes.
it moved me, and it may have moved others too. one young police officer was not moved and mocked the singer to his friends, who listened nevertheless.
also encountered some roma kids on calea victoriei carrying around their sheep and wishing every bypasser health and luck and also wishing for a return of some kind.
the following article is a particularly apt portrayal of the romania beyond the stereotypes of contrast, of alterity and proximity:
http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2006/09/IONESCU/13967 - septembre 2006
and also this, for the contrastive effect...
http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2006600595,00.html
it moved me, and it may have moved others too. one young police officer was not moved and mocked the singer to his friends, who listened nevertheless.
also encountered some roma kids on calea victoriei carrying around their sheep and wishing every bypasser health and luck and also wishing for a return of some kind.
the following article is a particularly apt portrayal of the romania beyond the stereotypes of contrast, of alterity and proximity:
http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2006/09/IONESCU/13967 - septembre 2006
and also this, for the contrastive effect...
http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2006600595,00.html
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