1st April 1998
Part One
This is liable to take a while to write, so I thought I would send it out in (hopefully) manageable chunks.
We left London Gatwick airport pretty much on time at approx. 8.30pm, arriving into Bucharest at about 11.45pm local time. The terminal building was very small, if you took the departure lounge of most airports, you could probably fit most of Bucharest terminal building inside it.
We knew beforehand that Carol would need a visa, which we were told we could purchase on arrival. Not seeing where we could purchase the visa, we joined the queue for passport control, assuming that we would pay there. The passport official scrutinised Carol's passport and then said "you need a visa" and pointed to the bureau de change, (but of course!). Bought the visa ($33) and rejoined the queue for passport control, now rather longer due to the arrival of a flight from Geneva. Ho hum. When we finally got out and collected our luggage we were met by Radu, who was to drive us to where we were staying the night.
Radu was evidently a repressed F1 racing driver, given that we hurtled through the centre of Bucharest at speeds over 140 kph (over 90 mph in old money). The principles of driving appeared to be similar to many Islamic cultures - horns are there because they sound nice, red lights look pretty (but that's all) and double white lines are painted in the centre of the road to give you a guide as to where to place the centre of your vehicle. Overtaking (regardless of blind curves, double white lines etc...), undertaking and almost anything up to and (probably) including forcing your "opponent" off the road is allowed.
We arrived at the private apartment where we would spend the night a little after midnight and were greeted by Wanda, who is Radu's wife and one of the doctors who works with Viitorul Copiilor, the foundation that International Families (IF) works through. Wanda told us that there was a change of plan and that she was no longer going to be driving us, but Gabi (from IF) would now be handling everything. This was excellent news, since Gabi spoke excellent English, having lived in the USA for 7+ years. Wanda told us that she would be coming tomorrow at 5 o'clock to pick us up to drive us to Birlad (where we would be based for the majority of the trip). "5pm?" says Carol; "5am" smiled Wanda. We rapidly said our goodnights and retired at 12.30am, setting our alarm for 4.30am.
Well, that was the plan. Carol woke up, checked her watch, checked my watch and woke me up to tell me it was 5.55am. So we hurriedly got dressed, I shaved and had just started on a cup of coffee when Gabi rang the bell, apologising for being late. Were we grateful?! After a quick goodbye to Wanda we went downstairs with Gabi, where she introduced us to Andrei, who would be driving us to Birlad.
Andrei was not up to the F1 speeds of Radu, but he didn't hang around, typically driving at 120 kph (75 mph) and appeared to have been to the school of motoring that said that the white line down the middle was a locator for your tyre, your nearside tyre that is! He occasionally had Gabi unsure as to whether the best course of action was to grip her seat or cover her eyes! [Carol has been a much more nervous passenger in the car since we returned home]
To say that Romanian roads are bad would be like saying that the sinking of the Titanic was a bit of a disaster. The main road out of Bucharest to Birlad was really not that bad, with the exception of whenever it crossed a railway line, the problems were in the towns and once you left the main road. In the towns there were sections of road that compelled Andrei to drive on the opposite side of the road, simply to save the VW Sharon Van from a risk of grounding. In smaller towns and villages the roads leading off the one main street were all dirt tracks, usually badly rutted.
The most noticeable thing driving out of Bucharest to Birlad is how flat the land is, practically featureless as far as the eye can see and at this time of year all dark brown, freshly ploughed earth. Robin sent an article where the author describes the massive field of corn and other cereals and I am sure that at the height of summer the whole place looks wonderful, but right now it just added to the depressing feeling we got from the buildings of Bucharest.
Modern Bucharest architecture is something out of the worst poured concrete era of the communists and the same goes for almost every major town we went through. The brutish buildings are completely devoid of all charm, those we had the chance to go inside typically had no heating in the corridors and were very cold. Stepping inside an apartment is another matter entirely. The Romanians who live in these bleak buildings, recognising that there was nothing they could do to affect the external appeal of where they lived put all their efforts inside their homes. All the ones we visited were warm and cheerful places, most had excellent furniture, the occasional antique and family heirlooms that reminded me of almost anywhere in the world.
The villages along the way used a slightly different building material that resulted in very different architecture. A mixture of dirt, straw and manure is used to build walls that are about 9" thick. These are left to dry in the sun and are then painted, usually a nice and cheerful dark grey. On top of this is placed a patchwork tin roof, which must sound great in heavy rain. Major structures, such as the orphanage in Falciu where Cristina and Andrew are living appeared to be bricks and mortar, but it was a little hard to tell.
Birlad was about three and a half hours drive from Bucharest and is big enough to be found on most world atlas maps, north and a little east. The further we went from Bucharest, the more horse and carts there were and fewer cars, to the point where out in Falciu a car was clearly a bit of a rarity. The weather on the Friday was very cold, with a heavy overcast that never broke up and the temperature struggled to get above freezing. Pockets of snow lay along the roadside once we got away from Bucharest, but the roads were clear and didn't appear to be icy.
Birlad is one of the poorest major towns in the county of Vaslui, which is possibly the poorest region of Romania. If there is a bright centre to the universe, Birlad is clearly a very long way from it. The place was pretty miserable. The same concrete monstrosities as in Bucharest, but in a significantly worse state of repair; roads that were so badly pitted that people wove an elaborate dance as they drove down the street, trying to preserve their suspension; shops in which the majority of people could not afford anything.
Andrei told us that prior to the revolution in 1990 he had plenty of money and nothing to spend it on, now the shops are pretty well stocked, but with inflation running at 75%, few can afford to buy anything. In 1990 a loaf of bread was 2-3 Lei (the local currency), today it is 2-3,000 Lei. Inflation last year was 100%, so things are getting better! The US$ and the German Mark are the save haven currencies, if people want to save they convert their Lei into US$ or DMarks on the Black Market. We were told that if you want to turn $ into Lei, the Black Market will give you a better rate than the banks.
Parking is a nightmare pretty much anywhere; the number of cars has tripled since 1990, the number of spaces hasn't changed.
End of Part One! i.e. the background.
3rd April 1998
Part Two.
Once we arrived in Birlad, Gabi took us to an orphanage where she collected Constantin, soon to be called Kevin, whose paperwork she was trying to finalise to enable him to leave for the USA on Tuesday. First we had to get his photo taken, a process that seemed to take forever, but given the number of available photo-me booths approximated zero, this was not a huge surprise. The photos were required for Kevin's Romanian Passport, but before that could be organised, Kevin had to have a birth certificate in his new name. Once we had all this lot it was already into the afternoon when we set out for Vaslui, the county seat, where we had to go to obtain the passport; a drive of about 40-50 minutes.
Vaslui is the biggest town in Vaslui county, with around 100,000 people, approximately a quarter of the population of the county. The usual ugly buildings and dreadful roads, but clearly more prosperous than Birlad. Gabi needed some piece of additional documentation in order to get the passport produced and we then ran into what is clearly a common problem, the Romanian official who was meant to meet her and give her what was required, failed to show up as agreed. By the time she finally got hold of the official and obtained the documentation, the computer operator at the police station had gone home for the weekend. No computer operator, no passport; no passport, no meeting at US embassy in Bucharest on Monday to get health checks and complete exit from Romania. Big Problem.
At this point Gabi decided that the best course of action was to take us over to the orphanage at Falciu to see Cristina and Danda, so we drove back to Birlad and then to Falciu. All the way she was making telephone calls on her mobile trying to resolve little Kevin's passport.
Falciu is a small village on the border with the old USSR, now Moldova. It is really hard to judge poverty in Romania, but Falciu is clearly very poor by anyone's standards. The orphanage is a brick building on the edge of the village, one of the more imposing buildings in the place. A small dog greeted us outside the large doors and as we stepped inside the first thing we noticed was the smell. If you have ever been around a piggery, you would recognise that smell in an instant. It didn't bode well and we were both pretty nervous as we waited to meet the children. In fact the smell was emanating from the infants section and the conditions where the older children were kept were clean, albeit that there was no escape from the smell.
The walls of the entry area were covered with pictures and drawings and were quite bright, but the floors were bare and cold. All the children wore little moccasins rather than shoes and were generally dressed in pretty grubby clothes that had seen better days. Gabi went to talk with the staff and came back with the news that Danda was not well, suspected Rubella and had we had it/been inoculated against it? We didn't really know, but didn't really care, we hadn't come all that way not to see him. Gabi then went to bring Cristina.
My first impression of Cristina was that she looked just like the first picture we had seen of her on the Internet, except that her hair was a little longer and her cheeks a little chubbier. Gabi passed her to Carol and their meeting was a picture. They stared into each other's eyes, Carol with a look of wonder and Cristina inquisitive, not quite sure what to make of this person holding her. Carol turned her towards me as I was videotaping the two of them and Cristina cracked a shy smile.
We were directed into a small room which had a few 'ride-on', 'push-on' car-style toys. We had the impression that the children were not often allowed into the room and Cristina's obvious unfamiliarity with the toys reinforced this view. Cristina enjoyed being pushed around on the toys, but most of all she loved the noise the squeaky hooters made, grinning broadly. We had brought a couple of colouring books and some felt pens and Cristina showed plenty of interest, trying lots of different colours, drawing circles with each hand, showing no real preference between the two. This, together with the way she held the pens, grasped in her whole hand, suggests that she has not had the opportunity to develop any drawing or writing skills and places her closer to two years old, rather than her nearly three, as far as manipulative skills are concerned; not untypical of institutionalised children.
I went back out to the van and brought in a couple of beanie dogs that we brought with us. Cristina was initially a little nervous and then entranced, giggling with pleasure as Carol showed them to her. Cristina generally seemed to prefer the feel of more solid objects, like the yellow plastic toy ladder she had in her grasp when she was first introduced to us, but that didn't stop her from carrying around one of the dogs for most of the rest of the time we were there.
Cristina adored having her picture taken, almost always smiling broadly whenever we pointed a camera at her. Whether she was consciously playing to her audience, I don't know, but the photos and video we took show how photogenic she obviously is.
Danda was brought in by one of the care workers, Constanza, wearing a very oversized tracksuit. He was not a happy boy, he clung to Constanza, crying and obviously in distress. Constanza called him by his middle name, Gheorghe, pronounced Gi-or-gi with hard g's and eventually coaxed him into letting go of her, albeit with considerable reluctance. He stood on the other side of the room, shying away from Carol's attempts to touch him, trying to work out how to run back to Constanza, whilst avoiding Carol. In the end he twitched a devious looking smile and ran across to Constanza and smiled broadly on arrival.
The only still picture I managed to take of him smiling was unfortunately double-exposed, but he looked a very different child when he did. I managed to catch the occasional unguarded moment on video and he really is very nice, when he isn't screaming his head off!
Constanza left the room to get the children their food and Gheorghe moved to the corner of the room and stood there unhappily, but quietly waiting for someone to rescue him. Constanza returned with food and a table and Gheorghe and Cristina sat down to their hearty meal of (rather blonde looking) porridge. Yummy! Cristina was very adept with a spoon and was shovelling the unappetising white sludge down with relish. Gheorghe was rather less busy with his spoon, making an occasional dive into his bowl, all the while keeping a very close eye on Carol and myself.
Cristina finished almost all of her meal, although she tried at some point to share it with the beanie dog. Gheorghe, whether he was off his food because of his illness or because we were there, had no more than 6 or 8 mouthfuls. Judging by the appearance of all the children at the orphanage, none of them are starving, but it is clearly a very high starch-low protein diet and we will have to be careful when it comes to weaning them onto a more typical British diet.
Constanza returned again and cleared away the food and we were left with the children for about another 15 minutes. Gheorghe started showing something close to affection towards Carol, allowing her to hold his hand and in the end actually holding on to her. Carol tells me that Cristina got quite upset when I went out of the room for a little while and this transmitted to Gheorghe and he clung to Carol a little more. Cristina started looking around a little and said something that might have been 'poo poo' and so I went off and found Constanza who took both children to get them ready for bed.
We were allowed to say goodnight to both children. Cristina was in a room with probably 15-20 other children, all in cot-style beds with very tall sides, made from bars that gave the impression of being in jail. [Having been inside two orphanages I can only assume that someone purchased a job lot of these beds, since they looked exactly the same in Kevin's orphanage]. Gheorghe was in a smaller room with half a dozen or so children, all looking unhappy and unwell to a lesser or greater degree. Constanza was dispensing medicine and love in equal doses, she really cared for the children.
Which is more than we felt we could say for the director of the orphanage. Gabi was not very happy with her, in that as I mentioned in a previous email, she has sat on the paperwork of over 25 children who should have started or completed abandonment procedures. Given the state that the infants section was in and the apparent lack of stimulation that the children were receiving, we were not very impressed either. Our feeling of distrust grew when we handed over the books, toys and sweets that we had brought for the children and she took them with her when we gave her a lift home, saying that she would be returning to the orphanage later. We were left with the impression that the children were unlikely to see them. Such is life in Romania.
On our way back to Birlad for supper, Carol and I discussed the children, and decided that Gheorghe was not a Daniel. We simultaneously came up with Andrew, much to Carol's annoyance, she really hates it when I read her mind! Both of us liked Gheorghe as a name, but felt that it would just get mispronounced and eventually shortened to George, which both of us dislike, but we decided to retain it as a middle name. So it will be Andrew Gheorghe and Cristina Lucy. [Dad was close to tears when we told him. We all felt mother would have approved of the choice].
We stayed at a place in Birlad that had two key attributes, it was clean and it was cheap! A lot of accommodation in Romania is horribly overpriced, especially for what you get, but $15 per night for bed and breakfast for the two of us was very good value. The food was nothing to write home about, although the Borsch I was served was quite good, but the main course of fried chicken and (supposedly) chips were terribly greasy.
Gabi spent most of the evening with the phone glued to her ear, either pursuing Romania contacts to organise Kevin's passport for the following day or to Bob in Philadelphia (for an hour). Gabi managed to work yet another miracle and persuaded the chief of police and the computer operator to agree to come in over the weekend to sort out the paperwork. The plan for the next day was that the somewhat unreliable Luigi (one of Gabi's people in Romania) would drive over to Birlad and collect Gabi and they would deal with the passport problems, whilst Andrei would drive us back to the orphanage to spend some more time with the children.
I was very grateful for the opportunity to have more time with Andrew, since he was obviously very shy with strangers and I wanted to see whether he would come out of himself some more and give us a better idea of his personality, health etc...
End of Part Two.
8th April 1998
Part Three.
Luigi phoned Gabi to say that his car had broken down, so Gabi outlined our choices for the rest of the day. Kevin's passport was top of the list of priorities and therefore Andrei would have to drive Gabi to Vaslui to deal with that. Either we could hang around the motel until they came back after lunch, or we could tag along with her for the trip. It was unlikely that we would have the time to get over to Falciu to see the children again, since the plan was then to pick up Kevin and drive to Bucharest in the afternoon. Since we had no desire to hang around and do nothing, we opted for another trip to Vaslui.
Gabi was fuming about Luigi, he was not terribly bright and had obviously made a few too many mistakes over the last couple of weeks for Gabi's liking. We got the impression that Gabi was going to make do with sacking him, rather than hanging him up by some tender portion of his anatomy prior to ritual disembowelment, which seemed to be what she would have preferred!
Saturday was a bright and sunny day, the thermometer on the street in Vaslui got up to 8 degrees C, rather more pleasant than Fridays 1 degree and it was even warmer in the sunshine. Regretfully, Vaslui only marginally improved in bright sunshine! Once again, there was a lot of running around, ferrying the police chief, who was possibly the rudest person we met the entire trip, closely followed by two of her colleagues, none of whom even acknowledged our existence in the van, let alone said hello. We all know that the police in all countries are a law to themselves, but Andrei had to point out (politely) that he was not going to drive the wrong way up a one way street, regardless of the fact that she was the chief of police. Brave lad our Andrei! The police chief was slightly surprised at his non-compliance with her directions, but accepted it in the end.
The day was getting increasingly frustrating for all of us, in that Gabi was cross that we hadn't had the opportunity to go back to the orphanage, Andrei was annoyed that it looked like he wasn't going to get back to his family in Brasov that night until very late, whilst we simply sat in the van throughout the day getting increasingly hungry! At some point in her life, I am sure that Gabi saw the film Wall Street, wherein the phrase "Lunch is for wimps" was coined. Lunch simply didn't happen on any of the three days we were in Romania. Whilst I wasn't too bothered, by the end of the trip Carol was occasionally looking at the headrests in the van with a most peculiar expression on her face!
Finally at around 3.45 in the afternoon, Gabi exited the police station with the passport. Our final stop in Vaslui was to pay a visit to Dalia, someone in Vaslui County social services who Gabi thought we should meet. Dalia and her husband and 11 year-old daughter lived in one of the concrete monstrosities in the centre of Vaslui. After driving around the same blocks about three times, Gabi eventually phoned her and her husband met us outside their block. Since they all looked identical and the street names are nonexistent, it was hardly surprising we had trouble finding their block.
Dalia served us some of the worst coffee I have ever tasted in my life, it was utterly foul, but she also served some lovely cakes with a delicate cinnamon flavour that made up for the coffee, at least to an extent. We were there for the better part of two hours, with discussion mostly in Romanian, but occasionally in English. If you listen really hard, it is remarkable how much you can understand and we were able to follow the gist, if not the detail of most conversations. Dalia quizzed us about facets of life back home and was very interested in Carol's account of our schools system and teaching. Dalia's daughter is incredibly bright, speaking English as though she had been speaking it all her life.
Gabi suggested to Dalia that one way to speed Cristina along would be to approach the mother and ask for her consent to adopt, which would shorten the process to only a couple of months. Dalia rejected the idea because there have been cases in the recent past where the mother comes to the courthouse, having previously given consent and either changes her mind or, worse still, says that she will not give her consent unless money is handed over. Under these circumstances the child has to then go through the abandonment process anyway and instead of gaining two months, you've lost two.
Dalia advised that proceeding with the abandonment was by far the best option and said that she would keep an eye on the case to keep it on track. Good meeting, coffee notwithstanding!
We eventually got back to Birlad after 6pm and Gabi reviewed what we would be doing for the rest of the evening: have supper, pick up Kevin, drive to Bucharest, arriving at about 2am, drop us at a hotel where we had reservations, Gabi and Andrei would then drive to Brasov (2-3 hours away).... This did not sound like fun. After discussing things through, Gabi decided that it was more sensible to get up early in the morning, pick up Kevin, drive to Bucharest and drop us off at the airport. The only person unhappy with this arrangement was Andrei, who wanted to go home to Brasov, even if it would have meant arriving at 5am!
Supper was another cholesterol-packed fry-up and we had a delightful evening with Gabi talking about how she ended up in the adoption business, which is another story and would occupy a book rather than a few emails.
We completed practically the entire spectrum of weather, when we woke up on Sunday it was raining hard. Andrei groaned and bet correctly that it was snowing heavily in Brasov, where they were headed to after dropping us off at the airport. Our first stop was to pick up Kevin. Gabi had bought about three sets of clothes for Kevin the previous evening for $20, great value for us, if not for the locals. This visit, we got to go inside Kevin's orphanage and it was very different to the one in Falciu; much cleaner, more toys, generally looked like a much better place. It also had access to proper medical people in the town and had a nurse on staff. All that said, Gabi said that every orphanage has its good and bad points and we got the impression that the orphanage in Birlad had staff who could have been rather more caring.
Having changed Kevin we headed for Bucharest. Kevin was very chesty and Gabi was keen to get him onto antibiotics as soon as possible, but he was also a real sweetie, not fussing once during the 3 hour drive. Gabi got in about 30 minutes of sleep on the journey and cursed Andrei when he woke her asking for instructions; it was her own fault, she had told Andrei that we would go to the airport on the way into Bucharest, when it was on the other side of the city, so he wanted clarification.
So we ended up accompanying Kevin to the apartment where he would be spending the next two and a bit days prior to leaving for the USA on the Tuesday. Another grim apartment block, complete with teenagers in the lobby with bottles of dubious quality; another warm and beautifully furnished apartment. I cannot recall the name of the woman who would be looking after Kevin, but she was very hospitable, serving yet more dodgy coffee. Interestingly, she served some of the coffee that we had brought with us and had given to Gabi and it tasted as bad as any other, so I suspect it is the water that made the biggest difference. She also had a few toys for Kevin, including one that made lots of different noises and had plenty of buttons to press.
The difference in Kevin was immediate and dramatic, he was transformed to the silent, inactive child into a happy, vocal, active little boy, fascinated by the toys in front of him. He showed considerable dexterity and good coordination, especially when hitting one toy with another! We suspected that he would make a good baseball player.
Andrei and Gabi dropped us back a Bucharest airport, about 2 hours before our flight and we said an emotional goodbye to Andrei and Gabi. Duty Free at Bucharest was probably more expensive than shopping outside of the airport, but we hadn't had time for any real trips to shops, so we purchased a few nick-nacks and boarded our flight home.
The flight took us over Switzerland and we had pretty good views of the Alps, peeking in and out of the clouds. We landed at Gatwick about 15 minutes early and were home by early evening.
So what did we learn from our trip to Romania?
Where to start? The high point was obviously meeting the children, but the most interesting aspects of the trip were gaining an insight into the workings of the adoption process, the problems of making things happen in a country whose infrastructure and government are in decay. Discovering just how hard our agency and the Foundation work and the stages involved in the adoption process have made us far more patient with them. Anyone thinking of an international adoption should make a visit like this before they jump up and down about lack of progress in their case, it was a real eye-opener.
We also learned the value of money. Carol had purchased a pot of moisturising cream in the Duty Free on the way out, price approx. $30, which is enough to feed two children in an orphanage in Romania for a month.
We also learned the value of foreign goods, like coffee and cigarettes. We had taken with us half a dozen packets of ground coffee and a carton of cigarettes, the latter specifically for Gabi, which Gabi gave away to officials of one sort or another during the trip. Foreign goods were clearly highly prized by Romanians, even those in well paid jobs, simply because they cannot be obtained in Romania. It would be wrong to say that bribery and corruption are commonplace in Romania (which they manifestly are), but the occasional gift of a packet of coffee seemed to make things run just that little bit more smoothly!
When we got back home we discovered some minor glitches in our travel ideas. Our plan was to fly to Romania, pick up Andrew and fly to Dublin, via the UK. No Can Do. There is a special agreement between the Irish and the British, whereby the two countries are deemed to be one immigration region, the upshot of which is that you have to immigrate into the UK when travelling to Ireland from outside the EU via this country. This effectively means that we have to get visit visas from the British if we are to travel through this country to go to Ireland.
This presented us with a potential problem and solution in one. The problem is that in order to avoid the UK would roughly double the air fares. The solution would be that we get visit visas and not have to travel to Ireland at all, simply applying for the Irish passports from the UK, which is allowed. The trick is persuading British Immigration to let the children in, period. They are currently saying that they will grant visit visas, provided we can prove that the children will be adopted in the US and Ireland, which is actually easier said than done. We'll get there in the end!
Current Happenings.....
Our nice man at the US Embassy in London sent through our I-171H form this morning and this has now been faxed to the US and Romania, which completes our paperwork, so the rest is waiting for Andrew to be processed through the courts. All we can do about Cristina is keep our fingers crossed and wait for her abandonment to be processed.
The Irish have sent through a passport application form which is sufficient to obtain a passport, by post, so that's ok. Because the children will have Irish passports it may be possible that we don't have to travel to the USA within the 4 month timeframe to complete the adoption in the US required by INS regulations, it's a little complicated but we are certainly looking into it, even if simply to give us more leeway.
I think that just about brings you all up to date. I am in South Africa from next Wednesday for 12 days, so I will send out an update next week, but there won't be one the following week.