THE ORPHANAGE

The revolution which overthrew Ceauşescu in 1989, and eventually Communism, left behind it some major problems which had been hidden for many years. One of these was the scandal of Romania's orphanages which held thousands of children some of whom were actually orphans but many of whom were children whose parents had been persuaded that it was a national duty to have children but who found that they had no means to support them. The attempts to quell the revolution itself created more orphans. In 1992 I raised some money and went to work for a couple of weeks glazing windows, painting, decorating and generally helping to make more habitable an orphanage in Bucharest. It was an awful place but this is not the time to describe what it was like. Sixteen years later Ruth and I were able to go and see what conditions were like now. The first photograph shows one of the roads leading to the orphanage. You will see that the road itself is still not made up (although one or two streets in the locality are being upgraded). Very few foreigners go to that part of Bucharest. We had a coffee and beer at a micro-shop and the owner asked us why we would wish to visit that part of town, which is down at heel even for the less modernised areas of the city.



This second photo shows that stand-pipes are still used for obtaining drinking water just a few yards from the one where one of the orphans demonstrated to me "how backward Romania is" 16 years ago.



This is the orphanage (and my stomach) today. We didn't want to take photos close up as we thought it might be an infringement of the residents' privacy. The orphanage looks a lot better than it did when I was last there - which is more than can be said of me.



This is the school which the orphans (and others) attended.



This is (or was) the hotel I stayed at in 1992. My room was behind one of the balconies on the right. The Ground Floor is now a bank. When I was there previously currencies were also exchanged, but not quite so officially.



This is another shot of the approach road to the orphanage. Speaking of shots, the hotel had evidence of one or two and was about a block from the Securitate headquarters which still shows evidence of the fire which burnt it out shortly after Ceauşescu had tried to make his last speech. The hotel is also near the Athenee Palace Hotel - star of a number of novels set in prewar Romania - which Ruth was rather disappointed with. I spent an interesting evening at the Athenee Palace in 1992 which space does not permit to describe here.