Two days from now I'll be in Romania, so it's a special pleasure to have this opportunity to reflect on fourteen years of Partner Church activities.
For me the beginning was almost accidental. It was the unintended consequence of joining the UUCF choir in January 1992. Two weeks later, Dan Couch, a master at gently nudging people, asked if I was going with the choir on their tour to Romania that July. I was startled, but the suggestion was all I needed. I bit.
Many of you are familiar with the story of the first choir trip to Romania in 1992, so I will not launch into a full description now. It was an extraordinary historical time to be traveling to Romania, as it was only two and a half years after the overthrow of the former dictator, Ceausescu. By the time the trip was over, the faces and voices of our new friends in Szentgerice were etched in my mind and the hook was set. My husband Mike and I have been back every year since and we were among the participants who gradually began to create a more permanent Partner Church organization at UUCF.
The intervening years are full of images and memories of learning how to be a friend to the villagers. There was the death of the prior minister of our partner church in Szentgerice, Csongvay Attila, accompanied by the hushed, sad tones of his widow, Zsuzsa, and the deep cloud of grief that descended over the village, as everyone mourned the death of this strong leader. It seemed to me our presence as American visitors, helped in a small way to reassure people, as if we were saying, although we may not know the exact path to better times, there are people who care about you, and we will be with you along the path.
There have been many heavy suitcases full of medicines, photographs, sewing notions, school supplies, toys, Hungarian-English Dictionaries, canvas bags, flashlights, Dr. Seuss books, seeds, pruning shears and other things that we have hauled to Szentgerice and many suitcases full of handcrafts that we have hauled back to the US. Then there are the silly light-hearted gifts like the spring- loaded fly-gun. It lasted an amazingingly, long time, about ten years. They replaced the string.
On the subject of medicines there is the amusing experience of pushing a shopping cart of over-the-counter medicines to the checkout at Walmart, and having the next person in line ask in a strong accent "Are you going back to your homeland?"
There is the pleasure of giving a couple, married forty years, the first photograph ever of themselves as a married couple and seeing their joy.
The year of the second choir trip, it was persuading many choir members to add a few large bottles of calcium to their suitcases, because Zsuzsa, the village nurse, had asked for calcium to help prevent the old women from developing osteoporosis. Then, there was the good laugh we had with her later, when we pointed out that it would take a large truck to haul in an amount of calcium adequate to supply the village for a year.
There are memories of beginning plans to construct the medical clinic. Several of us from UUCF, accompanied Balazs Sandor to the architect's loft studio in Marosvaserhely, where we viewed plans for the clinic and listened to Sandor and the architect discuss costs of construction. The architect estimated the costs to be higher than Sandor did, and he questioned the idea that the village could provide the labor. On subsequent visits, there was the beauty of watching the dedication of the well-organized, village work force. Now, there is the beauty of seeing the construction completed, the clinic crowded with patients, and the village caretaker drive up to the clinic with an elderly patient who has broken her arm.
There is the experience of having Balazs Sari, the minister's wife, say to me about the handcraft project that we (UUCF) began in 1994, "You have no idea of how much the money from the handcrafts means to the villagers, especially to the older women."
About two years ago a Hungarian businessman visited Szentgerice, offering to pay villagers to sort turkey feathers (poulyka). Now, you and I, if asked to sort turkey feathers, would probably think this was a terrible, "mind-numbing" job. It's just a matter of pushing feathers into bags of matching sizes and eliminating the slightly soiled ones. However, from a villager's perspective, it is an "ok" way to supplement their earnings from farming. Since it is "piece" work, it does not interfere with farming. My hostess, Margit, and her 70 year old mother, Maria, elected to sign up. We calculated the equivalent rate of pay per hour to be 33 cents in USD.
The last two years we've visited the village of Bede, which by foot over the hill is only 3km from Szentgerice, but which by car is much more remote. It is very picturesque. The altitude is higher there and it provides an excellent climate for apples, which are everywhere in the fall and exceed the capacity of local needs. Some of the excess is turned into brandy. At the entrance to the town, appropriately hidden from view, is the small village still. Its wood-fueled furnace runs around the clock, shortening the lives of the three men who rest beside it daily and tend the fire in the dense, fetid interior. By local economic standards, it's a good job, providing cash income and enough brandy to drink and sell. The men who work there fear the possible loss of this job when new regulations required by the EU, may put this still out of existence.
Sometimes "being a friend" to someone in Romania seems to be simply a matter of letting Romanian institutions know that someone outside Romania is watching. Recently, through a Romanian friend, we were contacted in regard to a man who needed treatment for the reoccurrence of cancerous intestinal tumors; the availability of treatment was blocked by Romanian bureaucratic requirements. After a few phone calls and emails, it was made evident that American institutions were aware of the situation. The government provided the necessary approval to begin treatment. The approval is of limited duration however, so continued monitoring is necessary.
Our interactions with people in Romania are mostly with those living in small, rural villages, but this trip brings a new opportunity. My husband, Mike, and I expect to meet with some representatives of the Unitarian congregation in Bucharest to learn more about the experiences of urban Unitarians living outside Transylvania. We know that many of them are much more assimilated into the Romanian culture than Transylvanian Unitarians and that the children may not even speak Hungarian. The GWAPCC of which we are members is interested in exploring the possibility of setting up a Capital to Capital (C2C) partnership.
What do these partner church experiences mean? To me it means being called out of the solitude of self, to be a dependable friend, to do more for others than you thought was possible, because you are there and see the needs. For me, the personal rewards from the experience of being in partnership with friends at UUCF and friends in Szentgerice are beyond the limits of my imagination in 1992 as I, a somewhat shell-shocked divorcee, embarked on the journey that I am still enjoying.
See also: A Piece of My Heart Remains in Romania, by Rosalie A. Clavez, 3 Aug 2003.