Travel journal: World Vision staff member examines child trafficking prevention in Romania

Romania, day 1: u You don’t have to look far

Hello again. I’ve been up more than 36 hours so forgive me if this is a little … groggy. I left for the Tbilisi airport at 2:30a.m. to catch the 5 a.m. flight to Bucharest (pronounced “Bukeresh”), via a quick stop in Munich. These trips are rough. I’m not complaining because I’m always grateful when World Vision sees fit to send me out. But it just wears you down. I’m definitely feeling homesickness. In Munich, I saw a flight to D.C. I’m not going lie &mdash I was tempted. But anyway, back to Bucharest.

I’m not going to go into the whole modern history of Romania. What you need to know is that it came out of decades of communism in 1989, now has a nascent democracy, and as of 2007, has membership in that club known as the European Union.

But before it gained EU membership, Romania had a massive, and very public, trafficking problem. Specifically, Romania was a source and transit point for Eastern European women and girls being trafficked for sex and labor. After some efforts earlier this decade that produced a couple of high-profile arrests, Romania was allowed into the EU.

But guess what? Just like virtually every other country in the world, trafficking and exploitation still exists. For the next week, I’m going to be in the places most famous for it &mdash from the streets of Bucharest to the villages near the city of Iasi (pronounced “Yosh”) near the Moldova border. (More than 400,000 Moldovan women and girls were trafficked during the 1990s.)

The fact is, just as the run-down, gray, communist-era buildings still line every road in Bucharest as a stark reminder of the past, so does the specter of sexual exploitation that hangs in the air.

Case in point: I just opened the local Bucharest magazine (the English version) to find a place to eat tonight and discovered page after page of ads for escort services and “erotic massages.” Not all women providing these services are trafficked or slaves, but often they are forced in some way to sell their bodies. Like I always say, you never have to look far.

Before EU membership in 2007, there was no innuendo: just page after page of blatant advertisements for sex. In fact, most hotels had a “companion fee” they would charge if you did make a call to those services. It just goes to show that underneath the glossy surface lurks a dark and sinister tale.

Romania, day 2 part 1: It’s everywhere

I’m now in the Moldova region of Romania in the northeastern part of the country. I hopped a puddle-jumper here last night and touched down in an area that, up until recently, was the epicenter for trafficking in Romania and is still a hot bed for exploitation.

You heard me mention previously that Romania is in the European Union. As such you wouldn’t expect that in Iasi (the second-largest university town in Romania) you are much more likely to see horse-drawn wagons than cars — yet another reminder that poverty knows no boundaries. And also, sometimes a horse is just a better choice!

And before you shrug it off and say “There’s poverty everywhere. What are we going to do?” let’s remember Psalm 82: “Defend the cause of the weak and fatherless; maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed.” Whether it’s in Cambodia, Romania, or right next door, it is always our responsibility and our calling to take action.

Romania, day 2 part 2: Hope and hopelessness

Today I visited a village that’s about a two-hour drive from Iasi. World Vision has been here for about ten years. Things have gone so well that World Vision is looking at other areas of focus because the local community has formed a Community Building Organization to take over the programs started with World Vision. However, some programs will remain to work with families who are having trouble making that step up from poverty and vulnerability. I spent some time visiting with one of these families. What I learned simultaneously broke my heart and filled me with hope.

Tatia grew up in this community. Her parents were poor but were always able to provide for her. But with the fall of communism, the factory jobs in the area dried up and a mass exodus began from the area. Now there is only subsistence agriculture to put food on the table.

I sat and talked with Tatia and her six children. The children’s father has always been emotionally abusive, but recently a pattern of physical abuse developed. A wound just below Tatia’s neck is evidence of her husband throwing a hot metal disk at her a month ago. Their 2-year-old daughter, the youngest, was there to witness the attack. Tatia is afraid to leave the children’s father. He still provides a little money, but she is also afraid of what he will do to her if she leaves. The police can do nothing until Tatia takes action first. Even if she is beaten, she has to file a complaint.

When talking about advice she has for others in her situation, Tatia got very quiet before responding.“Don’t have children if you cannot afford to have them. My parents were poor but always provided for me and I never felt like they were letting me down.” Tatia then burst into tears. “I feel like I am failing my children every day. There is just no hope for me.”

However, upon seeing her mother crying and forlorn, Tatia’s oldest daughter Karina spoke up. While her mother sees a hopeless situation, Karina is not just hopeful, but determined. She is now in the ninth grade. She speaks Romanian, French, and a little English. She has participated in several World Vision initiatives that empower young girls, train them against the dangers of exploitation and trafficking, and encourage them to finish school.

Karina

In a region where most girls drop out of school in the eighth grade to begin a customary two-year training period to become a good wife, Karina’s goals are not the norm. “I will finish high school,” she declares. “I will go to university and I will find a good job to help my family. I WILL do it.” She says this in English and then repeats it in Romanian for her younger siblings. She wants the same thing for them as her mother does. The contrasts between generations are stark. I’m still reeling from Tatia’s tears. But Karina’s determination and fierce hope burn bright as an example to her siblings.

Romania Day 3: Home alone

You know that movie "Home Alone"? I saw that movie countless times as a kid. It never got old. I loved the idea of ruling the roost for a few days and then having my mom come back and take care of me again. Sadly, here in Romania, way too many children are living out this scenario: My former dream has become a long-term nightmare to these kids.

It started right after communism fell; jobs started disappearing. Families who had spent a lifetime together on the farm or near a factory suddenly found themselves in a new reality. For the rest of the 1990s and into the new century, Romania and its citizens worked to create a stronger economy so that they could gain entrance into the club known as the EU.

Once Romania gained entrance in 2007, it opened up the floodgates of Romanians leaving the country, taking advantage of the freedom to move between countries in Western Europe. However, as they left Romania to find jobs, they often left their children behind. At first children remained with the one parent, or with relatives. Now, both parents are often off in far-away countries trying to find work and leaving behind what is locally known as “Home Alone Kids.” They are incredibly vulnerable.

Walking into the one-room shack is tricky. After ducking to avoid cracking my head, I had to maneuver around a blazing wood stove with a scalding pot of boiling cornmeal on top. Two beds were set up perpendicular to one another taking up the rest of the space in the shack. On one of the beds sat a 7-year-old boy and a 5-year-old girl. Their mother is now in Italy, serving as a caretaker for an elderly woman. Their father is nowhere around. They don’t know where he is. Outside the kids’ 16-year-old brother talks with friends while he works in the front yard.

Standing at the doorway is the kids’ short, stout, 73-year-old grandmother. She heard that her grandchildren were left alone and came to take care of them. They are lucky. In this very town, four different children have committed suicide as a result of their parents’ abandonment. Many more have been exploited and trafficked south for farm labor. Others just disappeared.

As we talk, every now and then the grandmother pours another cup full of dry cornmeal into the pot and stirs it. The pot bubbles, and little explosions of piping hot polenta splatter on the bed. “The secret to strong children,” she says as she stirs, “is to massage their muscles every day. And when they are babies, make sure you pick them up by the neck to stretch it out.” I couldn’t tell if she was joking or not but then she looked at me and winked. This grandma’s got spunk! The children are in school but miss their mother badly. The 5-year-old grips her giraffe doll as she asks her grandmother when mommy will be back. The grandmother doesn’t know.

Romania, day 4: There is poverty in Europe

When most people hear me talk about poverty, vulnerability, and exploitation in Romania or the EU, the first reaction is almost always “Why? It’s Europe. The poverty can’t be that bad.”

As a missionary kid and then as a development worker, I’ve seen and lived in some pretty desperate situations including refugee camps and villages. Think there’s not truly desperate poverty in Europe? Well, I’m here to tell you, there is poverty in Europe. And today I saw poverty as bad as I’ve ever seen.

You may recall me talking about Roma communities from my Albania posts. Today we visited a Roma family on the outskirts of the village. Why this family? Well, a few months ago, a young mother here gave birth to twins. That alone isn’t note worthy. What is noteworthy is that she has had nine kids in eight years. Think about that for a minute.

As we left the car and approached the house, all the kids poured out of what I thought was a tool shed, given that the roof was stacked with old shovels and pieces of scrapwood. I thought the kids were just playing in there. As I walked toward them, the children screamed and giggled and tried to hide behind each other. A number of dogs ran in circles around the children barking up a storm. As I got nearer, my shoes started sticking to the ground and a fetid stench burned my nostrils. I looked down to discover that I was walking through a veritable minefield of dog and human urine and excrement. It was, as I look down at my notes from the visit, “a minefield of poo puddles”.

The kids took me by the hand to the shed they had just vacated. Inside I realized this was their home. The pig sty next door was larger than this structure. On a bed to the left of the door lay the two baby twins, naked from the waste down, screaming at the cold draft that was bursting through the open door. I couldn’t fit inside the shed as it was too full of the kids so I walked back outside. I really didn’t know how to process this. I have seen poverty but this was extreme.

To this moment I’m failing at describing the downtrodden faces of the mother and her family. Even our staff was taken aback as the conditions this family was living in were far worse than other families we had visited not 20 minutes before. It remains a stoic reminder that poverty is everywhere and we must work with communities to fight it wherever it goes.

Romania, day 5: Poverty of hope

It’s about time to wrap up this round of blogging from afar. I want to leave you all with a few parting thoughts that have helped me tie everything I’ve seen on this trip back to the advocacy work we do in the United States.

There’s a guy named Steve Haas who works for World Vision in the United States. I heard him give an amazing talk about how poverty is not just about money; it’s about broken relationships. I thought a lot about that concept this week when one of our Romanian staff members made a point about combating poverty. She said the biggest obstacle had nothing to do with economic poverty. Most poor people do not want to be poor. Rather, she said the hardest part is dealing with what she called the “poverty of hope.” I think that’s right on.

I think about the children forced to beg in Albania and the mothers who rent out their babies to forced begging gangs.If there’s one thing I’ve realized on this trip, it’s that when people seize the opportunity to improve their lives, access to money alone is not the solution. By talking with people who took advantage of World Vision programs, I learned that the most important thing for them was not monetary but relational.

I saw this relational enrichment in people like Flori in Albania, reaching out to kids in his old community to show there is a way out. I saw it with Nina in Georgia, who not only got off the streets and into a job, but was able to begin the healing process of dealing with her family’s past and reconnecting with her brother and father. And I saw it with Karina in Romania and her determination to heal her mother’s poverty of hope through succeeding in school, remaining vigilant against exploitation, and being a living example of optimism to her siblings. All of these individuals took action in the face of adversity and we must do the same.

And before you shrug it off and say, “Well, there’s poverty everywhere. What are we going to do?” More often than not, we ignore the more than 2,000 Bible passages calling us to seek justice and work on behalf of the poor, the oppressed, and the exploited. We hear the words. We see the images. But we fail to act. We look the other way.

Through looking at specific examples of poverty, exploitation, and empowerment, I want to challenge us to expand our personal faith into a public and transforming relationship with the poor. If you get nothing else out of these entries, at least understand that you have a role to play in ending injustice.

Whether it’s in Cambodia, Romania, or right next door, it is always our responsibility and our calling to take action on these issues of injustice. Sticking your head in the sand is not an option. Being overwhelmed into complacency like Saul in 1 Samuel 14 is not an option.

We have to be vocal. These are dark issues. We might not feel comfortable at first. But we must bring Jesus into darkness; otherwise, darkness will remain.