News from Pip

Convoy aid Romania Newsletter march 2002 News from Pip McCarthy News from an aid volunteer In This Issue: Pip's experiences during his 2 months stay in Romania
Two month report from planet Bivolari
I arrived in Bucharest by plane on 12th of November 2001 at midnight. my stay was to be for two moths .Danni and Dan (the man with the Dacia) collected me from the airport and he drove through the night reaching Bivolari eight hours later. I caught my first glimpses of Romania during this car journey .It got light at approximately 6 am. An hour before this , we were dodging many unlit horse and carts already out on the road and of course, the many unfilled pot holes. As light did come ,I was captivated by the numerous tiny rustic cottage-type houses, beautifully painted in mottled pastels , mainly blues and green, sometimes pink. Roofs were sometimes tiled, sometimes thatched, but mostly commonly metal sheeted often with cut metal shapes of birds, flowers and various intricate patterns around the edges tops and over the porches. Wells, sometimes covered and again ornately so ,stood at the side of the road at frequent intervals in the many small villages that we passed through. Each house appeared to have a small piece of land with geese, chickens, a pig and a cow on it, and typically several large circular stacks of sweet corn stems for winter feed.
Day one was spent sleeping mostly, then Brian, my English comrade showed me around the village for the next day and a half stopping in the small basic shops and the unheated grubby bars where the liquor and spirit measures only come in large, and cost the equivalent of about 20 pence. Bottled beer costs between twenty and fifty pence a pack so these were two vices that I have not been encouraged to give up as I originally planned.
Brian left Romania four days after my arrival (returning three weeks later), so I was left on my own in a cold house-cum-warehouse piled high with boxes of clothes , food and gifts.
I did have the luxury of both toilet and running water in the house unlike most of the rest of the villagers, but of course only cold water. These ,I later discovered were expandable luxuries as the temperature soon dropped way below zero and the whole water system was often frozen up for days at the time. Bathroom flooding also became a regular occurrence as did power cuts.
It all looked rather grin in the first few days of being here (before the big snow came) but I soon got used to it and actually came to enjoy a more basic way of living. After all ,it's only two months. The many local people I have had the pleasure of getting to know here ,the work I have helped with and the many weird and sometimes mad experiences I have had , were for me an exceptional holiday.
Once Brian left Danni, the charity administrator at this end of the operation became indispensable as my guide, friend, interpreter and teacher of Romanian and sincere gratitude goes to her and also her husband Nelu, and sister Cami who also extended both friendship, interpretation and their time helping me learn Romanian. Virtually nobody else in the village speaks a word of English. Why should they?
Football needs no common language. On the first Sunday of my stay here I had a game of football with some of the local lads, first half played on a water-logged pitch having cleared off the geese and sheep; second half on the dry, but undulting common. We lost , but I managed not to break any limbs and did make new friends.
The work I have done here has been split into two different areas. I began working with the men in the back of the yard constructing two new offices for extra storage and new admin. space plus walls and gates encompassing the yard.. Construction techniques appear to be somewhat different out here. Inventiveness often compensates for lack of tools or materials .As the temperature dropped hot wine was shared out and heartily appreciated. Working on the top of the roof at minus 10 or 15 didn't look easy. I had at this point transferred to working with the women.
Working with the women comprised the work of what Convoy Aid is all about. Boxes , boxes and more boxes, we sorted "packets " for individual families some of which were collected , and some we delivered by horse and cart , and horse and sleigh on occasions to the outlying villages surrounding Bivolari. The desperate poverty and cramped, cold often basic conditions were clear to see, as was the appreciation received for delivering the very needed clothes and toys and food.
The journeys to and from the villages we delivered to were particularly memorable. Some of these communities are remote, and the tracks to them are littered with deep ruts and holes filled with much snow and ice.
Two weeks into my stay here the snow came by blizzard. About a foot of it, but this drifted up in areas blocking the roads and tracks. Having done a fifteen km track up into the hills and around the lakes less than one week before, I, with mad dog resolve and dressed to the hilt in my winter mountain gear set forth to retrace the path I had taken before. On my first walk I had seen shepherds with their dogs and sheep .Not a sole was out on this second occasion.
After a few days after the snow fell the temperature plummeted some fifteen degrees to minus twenty one. That was what it read at eleven p.m. before I went to bed.
My evenings were often spent reading, sometimes by candlelight , and learning Romanian from a self teaching book I had bought back home. I visited the bars some nights both in Bivolari and in the next adjacent village, sampling the liquors and beers., playing pool and table tennis on very knackered tables and conversing as best as I could with the local men, all of which were more often than not keen to talk to me.
I spent two excellent evenings in the company of Petrica and his family sampling the five different wines that he had harvested from his vines.
The pace of work quickened as Christmas approached and all the designated Christmas parcels had to be distributed .Brian and I were assigned Santa duty.
Rod and Gabbi arrived two days before Christmas meaning an additional panic of clearing out space in their bedroom and cleaning the place up generally. The house almost looked homely.
Decorations went up then Gabbi and Rod generally took off daily to deliver parcels to the more distant villages that were too far by a long chalk to reach by cart and horse.
Back in the village, Brian and I were treated to the equivalent of carol singers - large groups of school children of all ages accompanied by their teachers , some of the kinds dressed up into elaborate costumes made from brightly coloured ribbons, wearing head-dresses made from deer heads,. Others played drums, whistles, other strange instruments and cracked whips. All pretty impressive stuff.
A break was taken from the village on Christmas Eve through to Christmas day. Brian and myself, Rod and Gabi, Dani and the family and the rest of Gabi"s family and a couple of friends spent the night in a cheap hotel in Iasi. Having booked in and paid, we discovered that the kitchens were locked up so we had to find food for sixteen people and utensils to eat with. We more than managed. An excellent cold feast was scoffed by all. This was complimented by much beer and hotel disco.
Three trips were made by me to the local disco which was heaving with young people. They did n't know what to make of me dancing, and I certainly couldn't get to grips with their style but I tried my best.
The real drama for me especially started just a week ago on the second of January. I took leave of all sense and attempted to stroke the nose of a horse. Not a wise move. The horse bit the end of my thumb off and ruined a good glove. Thus started a three day drama beginning with a visit to the village hospital. I was given a tetanus injection then whisked off with Rod and Gabi to the Emergency Hospital in Iasi ( 40 km. away). An x-ray revealed no damage to my bone other than a slight scratch, but I was informed that I would need a skin graft operation the following day. Following a good soaking with alcohol and iodine I was bandaged up, returned to Bivolari, then back to Iasi the following morning for 8 am. At 4 pm I was laid out crucifix style in just ripped pyjama bottoms several sizes too big for me ( having hobbled to the theatre in slippers several sizes to small for me ). Drips went in my left arm, a tourniquet (?) went around my upper right arm and my thumb was worked on whilst listening to pop music coming from a radio in the corner of the theatre .Despite the grim archaic nature of the theatre , the job reassuring me ... and by 'eck I needed reassuring. This ,I had been informed, was the good hospital.
Meanwhile Rod and Gabi had rushed back to Bivolari to get my passport as we had been informed that no operation would be carried out until they had had sight of it. This evidently was not the case as Rod and Gabi were still digging their way through snowdrifts with the assistance of Brian and Nelu as I was lying on the operating table.
Rod and Gabi and co made it back to Iasi but we could not make it back to Bivolari that evening , so we spent the night in the same hotel that we'd been for Christmas.
The following day things got really serious. Having had my thumb re-dressed and bought necessary medication, we drove two thirds of the distance back to Bivolari then got stuck .We could go no further because for one hundred and fifty metres in front of us there were snow drifts continuously between one and two metres deep and we had to shovel; and it was just two hours until dusk.
What we should have done is return to Iasi. We didn't ,but instead followed Nelu's suggestion of driving off the road ( after all that's what four by four are made for) , down a short but steep incline on to a vast wind swept, very exposed flood plane attempting to follow a faint rarely used cart track with the intention of detouring around the stretch of blocked road. After two hundred yards we were grounded in deep snow. With digging and pushing we edged further and further , maybe ten yards at the time but into deeper and deeper snow. To make things worse , dusk was upon us ,the temperature was dropping from minus fifteen , the wind was blowing and there now lay a drainage channel dangerously close to us on either side. This looked a bit dire. My thumb was aching. Rod felt it was time to put some shoes on.
We needed to be dragged out so Nelu and the hitcher we had picked up continued on foot to the nearest village two or three km away to try and get some help. Meanwhile Brian continued to dig in front of the car and from underneath it, whilst Gabi talked with her sister on the mobile ( incoming only) who was trying to persuade someone somewhere to venture out with a tractor.
Three hours late Dani rang to say that a tractor was on it's way. An hour later we saw a faint torch light approaching. Help had arrived - not a tractor, but in the form of six young men ,with shovels, two horses and a sleigh. The next half hour was rescue drama and a half. Seven pushed the car , Rod tried to drive the vehicle on the track the horses nearly killed themselves pulling the sleigh which was attached to the car, and Vasile precariously balanced on the old door which was the body of the sleigh, furiously driving the horses.
The tractor could not have managed what the horses succeeded in doing. It was waiting for us half a km away on a slightly more navigable track.
The remaining 8 km to Bivolari was comparatively easy being towed behind a chained-up tractor, but we couldn't have done it without.
It had been a lucky escape. The next morning we heard that several had died in stranded cars.
It is now 16th of January. Rod is very poorly with a bronchial infection. I am nursing my thumb and considering in light of the weather what options to take as I am supposed to be flying home from Bucharest in four days time.
If it weren't for the state of my thumb, I would not want to be returning home. I have become attached to Bivolari and to this area of Moldavia in the far north east of Romania. I have been charmed by my many many encounters with the people from this region from tots to frail elderly woman. The beautiful tiny little houses , the churches and the array of farm animals wandering the village streets and tracks that have all endeared me (though I've gone off the horses).
I have been extremely impressed with the effective and thoughtful distribution of clothes, food, gifts, toys, walking sticks, mattresses, bedding, utensils, desks, chairs and sometimes raw building materials that I have seen first hand delivered to families, isolated elderly people , hospitals, orphanages and schools. It most certainly is needed.
I take my hat off with the utmost admiration to Rod and Gabi for what definitely appears to me to be tireless devotion to the task at hand and a determination to overcome all the obstacles whether bureaucratic, logistical, or those created by the extremes of climate and geography... and this would all appear to be on a shoestring budget with no surplus as a safety net and overheads judiciously kept to the bare minimum.
Viva Convoy Aid and all those who donate to , sponsor and work for it. Thank you sincerely from me to Rod and Gabi, and to Dani and to all those I have worked and laughed with here. It's been an exceptional and an unforgettable experience.