Street Life
(Picture found at http://www.chron.com/content/interactive/special/romania/)
The children of the orphanages have found a way out of the daily
abuse and neglect from their care-workers. They have found a way
out of being hosed down, ignored, and tied to their cribs. The children
of the orphanages have found their way to the streets.
Romanian
winters are cold for anyone in less than layers of clothes. The street
children survive in nothing more then t-shirts, rags, and pieces of shoes.
An example of one of these street children can be found in an 8 year old
girl named Gabby. The first time Gabby was found, she was eating ice cream
out of trashcans in a train station. “She wore only a white sweater.
Because she had a twisted leg, her parents abandoned her.” (SoRelle).
She will most likely spend the rest of her life under the streets of Bucharest.
Her story is not uncommon. The situation is so dire in Romania that many
children are abandoned as the last resort of starving families. “Many have
been abandoned because their family could not feed them or were told if
you leave we’ll have more food for the rest.” (North Star)
The children
make homes in whatever shelters they find. They are in a constant state
of movement as the government pushes them from one makeshift home to another
(Picture found at http://www.northstargallery.com/pages/Report01.htm#Underground)
At first, they survived in the warmth of railway and subway stations.
But officials evicted them. Now they inhabit
the sewers and the subway service tunnels. The unlucky or unwary
freeze in the streets or are hit by passing
subway trains. (SoRelle)
In the streets
the street children form new family groups and huddle together under whatever
scraps of blankets they can find. Each year in February the Bucharest
police seek out the street children and send them off to orphanages, jails
and homes, but by March they’re already back. (SoRelle). They return
to the streets because they depend on them. Begging in Bucharest
is their only form of employment.
The street
children go from car to car begging for a few coins to buy food or a paint
thinner called Aurolac. Like the street kids in Africa the Romanian
street children huff the Aurolac to escape from their pain and worry.
What they don’t realize is the dangers of huffing “Aurolac is a paint thinner
that is extremely addictive and destroys the brain, liver, kidneys and
lungs.” (North Star). If they can’t get money through begging then
they steal or sell their bodies. Mariana a 19-year-old has been a
prostitute for 3 years, her and her 2-month-old son both have AIDS.
In some ways Mariana can be considered lucky. She and her son can
seek help in one of the AIDS pavilions. They will be safe from the
horrors of the “icy hell” of the streets. Life on the streets can be summed
up by one volunteer “I've seen babies dead in the sewer. I've seen little
children stoned out of their heads.” (SoRelle).
Works Cited
SoRelle, Ruth. “Children of the Streets.” Houston Chronicle – 1996.
February 21, 2002.
http://www.chron.com/content/interactive/special/romania/story2.html
SoRelle, Ruth. “Born to be Forgotten.” Houston Chronicle 1996.
February 21, 2002.
http://www.chron.com/content/interactive/special/romania/
North Star. “The Underground.” October 19, 1999. February 21, 2002.
http://www.northstargallery.com/pages/Report01.htm#Underground
