THE REAL POWER OF ROMANIA

We went to Sibiu this weekend.

The trip was primarily to meet members of Sibiu Ballet Company, who would like to do something to help support the Special Needs Centre that we work at, or even to do a performance to raise some money for them. They are really lovely people and we had a great time with them.

While we were there though we also had a little time to relax.

When we have had city breaks in the past, relaxation during the day happened by finding cafes frequented by the locals, not the tourist ones, and sitting in them and just to watch the world go by.

That's exactly what we did in Sibiu. We found a cafe overlooking the beautiful main town square, went in and sat down at a table in the window. We drank great coffee, chatted, and watched the world go by as people went about their business in the square in front of us.

As usual we talked about the people we could see and speculated occasionally about what they might be doing or where they might be going.

After a few minutes a pair of street sweepers came into view, a middle-aged woman and an older man. They were both dressed in dark coloured waterproof jackets and trousers with high visibility bands around the arms and legs. The woman was brushing hard at the cobbles, really having to make an effort to get the dirt and cigarette butts out form the cracks between them. All she had to work with was a Besom Broom, you know like the famous 'witches broomstick', which seemed to make the work twice as hard as it needed to be, but she just kept on going without resting, really working the broom into the cracks between the cobbles.

Road sweepers throughout Romania use these brooms, but most are sweeping tarmac or smooth paving, not ancient cobbles.

As I watched I thought about the road sweeping machines that they use in other 'better developed' cities in the world and wished that this poor lady could have one. Then I realised though, that if the city of Sibiu did have one, she would probably be out of a job and it would be the man she was 'working' with  who would probably be driving the machine around the square and making a nuisance of himself among the many pedestrians.

Piata Mare, Sibiu

His task this day seemed at first to be one of just leaning on a floor brush next to a wheelie bin, and watching as the woman swept and swept at the rough paving, occasionally making a comment or pointing at something she had missed. He stood watching her for about ten minutes, then suddenly he leaped into action. He took a shovel from his wheelie bin, swept the pile of dog-ends and litter that the lady had made up into the shovel and then almost ceremonially emptied the shovel into the wheelie bin before tapping it on the side and then throwing it and the brush inside. He then strode off, at pace, pushing the wheelie bin towards the other side of the square.

I craned my neck around to look out of the corner of the window and I could see that another lady was on the other side of the square brushing just as vigorously at the cobbles over there. Once the man arrived next to her, he took his brush from the bin, leaned on it and stood watching her, just as he had been doing when I first saw him.

Another lady, completely different place, same hard
work, similar broom.

I looked back at the first woman and she was still working her broom furiously, making neat piles of rubbish, and I suspected that she might be trying to get far enough ahead of her task so that the man didn't have any time just to stand and watch whenever he returned.

As she brushed I saw a young man walk past her and then casually discard a cigarette end onto the paving where she had already brushed, not even glancing at the woman, or caring that she was working so hard.

It was then that it struck me that this really is a never-ending task for these ladies, and a task that would never be finished.

As a story I think this is also indicative of Romanian life generally. there are so many fit and healthy old ladies in our village, in their 80's and 90's they always greet us with a cheeky grin, a happy hello, and often a risque comment too! They are so full of life. The women are on their own, they are all widows, there are no men of similar ages.

It was Ali who pointed it out, and stressed that it is no surprise. After all it is usually the women who do all of the hard physical work, spending all day bent over, planting or picking or weeding in the fields, and then return home at the end of a long hard day to cook, wash, clean and raise their children.

They live a life that has kept them a lot fitter.

The men tend to supervise, just as the male road sweeper was doing.

Either that or they spend their time in local bars smoking, drinking coffee, beer or Tuica 'doing business,' or just talking about what needs to be done at any particular time of year. They might even discuss the big issues of the day, and of course, all will have an answer to them that no-one else has thought of.

Even the younger women who work long hours in bars, cafes or offices in the City have to return home to do the cooking, cleaning, etc., so modern day life hasn't changed things greatly.

So it's no wonder that it is the ladies who have the longevity, they have been kept fit all their lives by the amount of work they have to do, whilst the men live  a far less healthy existence.

It is the women of Romania who are the power houses, who break their backs to try and ensure that their children, and their men, are fed, clean and presentable, and women have lived this lifestyle here for hundreds if not thousands of years.

The same is true in other less-developed parts of the world too, and I know that I am generalising and that this isn't true of all men and women, but from my observations of everyday Romanian life, it is the way the great majority of women live.

It's the woman who are the real power.

Steve

www.volunteerromania.co.uk

CHANGING ROMANIA, A REAL DILEMMA

When we drive along the main roads now there are obvious signs of how quickly Romania is changing and moving into the 21st Century.
Not just with the roads themselves, or the new motorways, or the number of cars, or the new building developments that are occurring everywhere, but also with what is happening on the land on either side of those roads.
Farming methods are changing, and they are changing perhaps more rapidly than anything else in this beautiful country.
For me, and many like me, who love this country for it's beauty and it's tradition, it is a real dilemma.

A large part of the beauty of the country comes from it's unspoilt nature. For hundreds of years farming has always been done on a small scale. Even the farming co-operatives of communist times were relatively small, and consisted mainly of individual family plots that were worked in unison, not enormous fields.
Individual families have used small plots of land to grow what they needed for themselves to eat, and then to sell any surplus at the daily markets in the towns. This is the way it has been literally forever, and it has greatly affected the way the countryside looks, because it hasn't been spoiled. Largely it is the land that is available that has been worked, not land cleared for the purpose. So, there are small triangles bounded by trees, streams and roads that are cultivated, and narrow strips of land that are planted, clear areas between hills and mountains and hillsides themselves. Land is used for what it is most suitable for as well, it isn't changed to make it suitable for another need. 

We are surrounded by such families. Our neighbour's in our village largely live this way

People who farm like this also want 'progress', I know. They want to make their very busy working days easier, just as anyone would do, so when new innovation becomes available, and they have the money for it, they use it.
That is why there are large numbers of ancient small tractors used by these 'family' farmers, and they trudge and trundle out  to the fields morning and night, towing their trailers, or with homemade implements for ploughing, raking, clearing, or seeding, hanging precariously from the back.


However, there are also still a large number of families who rely on their horses to do the same, and horses towing carts can still be seen in their hundreds on the roads around the villages, as well as in the main towns. They are one of 'the' sites of Romania, and at this time of year, Autumn, the horses are looking fat and well fed in readiness for the coming winter. Once they arrive at the fields those same horses will be hitched up to whatever is needed that day, to plough, or clear or carry, or pick produce from the fields. 


Horses are utilized here in just the same way as they have been for thousands of years, as man's partner. producing vital food.

Farming is almost entirely organic too, as everything that is used comes from what you can make yourself. Fertilizer's for example come from the animals that are also kept to feed families with eggs, milk, cheese and meat. There is very little money for shop bought insecticides or fertilizers so every family uses their own home-made recipes when they need pest control.

But, those enormous fields are arriving, with their enormous tractors and farm implements, and their 'more modern' way of doing things, but also employing less people because of greater, more 'efficient' mechanisation.
This only adds to the dilemma of people like me, who love to see the countryside for what it is now,and to see the small scale traditional farming methods that are used. 
Why is it a dilemma? Because we know that producing sufficient food for all of the people on this small planet is becoming a more and more difficult thing to do. Also the knowledge that Romania is a very fertile country, with enormous plains between the mountains and going down towards the Danube, and that with large scale 21st Century intensive farming methods, Romania may just be able to feed the whole of Europe. To achieve it though, Romania has to pay the heavy price of possibly destroying much of what gives it it's beauty, and changing a way of life that has succeeded in this country for hundreds, if not thousands of years.

It is also true to say that a number of the young people of Romania don't want to live life in the way their families have done for so many years before. They are being lured by the 'riches' and 'glamour' of the West. This is a subject worthy of a book on it's own, not just a simple Blog like mine. 
However, there are also a significant number of younger people who remain, who are staying at their family homes, moving into the villages, and who are maintaining this way of life. Hopefully, they are enough.
'Progress' has to come, but surely we have learned from other places all over the world that progress mustn't come at the expense of what is already here and working. Surely we have to realize that 'traditional' isn't a bad word, particularly when that tradition works on a family by family basis, and those traditions have to be protected, they have to be encouraged to remain.
The rewards for 'progress' are potentially enormous, but the cost of seeing these traditions whither and die because of this 'progress' may be too high, and may just destroy the Romania that we know and love, and destroy a way of life that has existed for thousands of years.

There is one thing that I can watch and count that will tell me exactly what is happening, and this was shown to me by a good Romanian friend. It is the traditional haystack. These are simple affairs created by a long pole standing vertically, supported by smaller poles, tripod fashion. Grass and weeds that are cut from the fields by hand are then stacked carefully up around the poles to dry and mature, ready to be used as winter feed. Once stacked they form a distinctive, elegant shape, a shape that is recognisably 'Romania'. 















These traditional hay stacks are my measure, as they disappear, I will know that a way of life that has succeeded for so long is dying with them. 

They are already being replaced by the enormous, ugly, plastic wrapped rolls of hay and straw that we see in the West, which can only be moved by even more large machinery.
At the moment there are only a few of the enormous barren fields here, like those that are seen in the 'more developed' parts of the West, and they have only arrived over the last few years, but they are arriving, and they are arriving rapidly.
This is a country that needs to be seen as it is now, and the traditional way of life needs to be maintained, encouraged to thrive, if Romania is not to be lost forever.

Steve

www.holiday-romania.co.uk
www.volunteerromania.co.uk