January 2006

Getting the Lay of the Land

To give you the lay of the land, I'll describe the town of Lupeni where we reside. Imagine tall smoke stacks (occasionally spewing black smoke from the coal mines) and communist block apartments, 10 or so stories high. Lupeni itself is only one or two square miles....but there are 30,000 citizens here, all stacked on top of one another. There are lots of wild dogs roaming the streets and when I was looking out our window today at the 'park' below, I saw a big, black hog chilling in the grass. Hilarity. The mountains that surround us help to redeem the ugliness of Lupeni. They are snow-capped and gigantic, and at night you can see the lights of the ski resort on one of the peaks. There are good things about Lupeni -- the 'bread box' outside our apartment door (a one-room shack of sorts that sells some AMAZING bread), the Pizza Planet, the open air market which sells vegetables, and the chairlift that goes up the mountain to the ski resort...and our sweet apartment.

An Introduction to Corruption

We had a good introduction to corruption last night when we attempted to attend an IMPACT meeting at one of New Horizon's buildings (recently remodeled....it was a big investment on their part). Bethany and I and the kids show up and notice smoke billowing from the roof, and we can see the yellow and orange tinge of fire. One of the kids turned to us and very matter of factly said, "It looks as if the roof is on fire." Bethany and I being American are thinking ...."What can we do? How can we help?"....but in a place where fatalism rules and power is in the hands of the few and corrupt, these things happen and the best way to cope is apathy. Fortunately, some of the leaders and staff members showed up and called the fire department, but the trucks didn't come for almost 30 minutes (they originally thought our call was a joke). When the first truck came, the firemen rolled out slowly, half-dressed in their uniforms, and looked at their hoses like they had never seen them before. One of the kids said to us, "It's just like on TV but in slow motion." and we all got a big laugh. Dana turns to the crowd after the fire had died down (it was localized, fortunately) and said, "This is why we are fighting corruption. This is what happens." Apparently, when the coal fire was lit to heat the building, someone had overcompensated for the previous night when the building was freezing, and the intensity of the heat had melted the tubing around the stove. We found out later that the tubing was actually made of plastic. No one in their right mind would put plastic in the heating system unless they were pulling a scam. And there's one for ya! This is Romania....this is the type of corruption New Horizons is attempting to address.

Ceausescu

These days, we have a hard time distinguishing between what is real and what isn't....real or fake tree, real or fake hair color, real or fake breasts, real or fake apple. In many ways, it's the faux that's become the ideal: the wax fruit free of any mark or the freckle-less, cellulite-less, hairless models in magazines. What is real has become secondary to what is not real. And we wonder why we are depressed, angry, shooting our classmates in high school (video games: line between real and imaginary?). Communism was all about facades. Everything had the appearance of wealth and modernism, but most things were actually decaying inside, like a gutted building with painted shutters. In fact, whenever Ceausescu came into town, people would paint the leaves on the trees green. It was a facade. And Ceausescu exported all Romanian fruits and vegetables to other countries to make it apear like Romania was doing great financially, when in actuality, 90% of its citizens were starving. It was a facade of development and still is in many ways. That's why the post-communist world fools you. Africa doesn't fool you....development there is a new thing (gas stations, sky scrapers, all new). But here, some semblence of infrastructure has remained, but things run inefficiently, shops close at random hours, people are freezing inside their apartments because gas is being rerouted to the mayor's home, roads are left riddled with potholes winter after icy winter and left in disrepair for years.