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Two societies coexist in Romania and three cultures share the same dramatic landscape, Hungarians, Romanians and the gypsies. In the Brasov region, it is just two, principally the Romanians and the gypsies.
Twenty-two teenagers and leaders from the Nail the Truth Ministries (now The Uncut Project) at All Saints had arrived at Bucharest airport in warmth reminiscent of a pleasant English summer's day. We were met by John Rushworth, Andy's father, (and his team of three from across the Pennines) together with Daniel, the young director of Fast, a charity that had, among other things, co-ordinated the building of the church that we were to visit the next day. They also drove the minibuses.
The trunk road up from Bucharest, though not busy by English standards, often narrowed and then twisted slowly following overloaded trucks lumbering up through the foothills of the mountains to bring us to Timisul de Jos. Here our marble modern hotel was sited on the bend of a small river in the narrow valley set between steep mountainsides. This was to be our link with our 21st.century life in Sheffield similar in building materials, central heating, ensuite facilities and food.
We ate chicken or pork schnitzel there for the first two evenings but on subsequent evenings, dined in the neighbouring historic town of Brasov or on one evening as guests of the church in Sacele. Breakfast, after prayer, praise and bible study was our daily routine. Gradually only about half of us persisted daily with ham and eggs or cheese omelette. The remainder of us settled for toast and sometimes cold puff pastries or croissants.
A half hour journey led us from the present into the past, as we swept by a rhythm of traditional houses, ornate metal gates and river trees, then off the metalled roads into sharp bends and uneven surfaces until we reached the new church building in Zizin that we had helped to complete through our pledges and fund-raising efforts.
Progressing by way of nods and smiles, we passed through the melee of visitors' cars and gypsy children into the new, modest but impressive white walled and dark grey carpeted building. We were invited to seats at the front and sat down in the order in which we arrived. The remainder of the congregation who gradually filtered in over the course of the next half-hour or so divided for the most part on gender lines. We were culturally exempt. The opening ceremony seemed to flow seamlessly into the Sunday service.
Various people addressed us to a phrase by phrase translation for mutual benefit. We sang our home-grown songs to them. Some of their song tunes were familiar to us which meant that we could join in with what English words we could remember. These Romanians were strong natural singers.
Our VIP treatment continued when, following the service, the church was transformed into a dining hall and we and the other guests from the mother church at Sacele were sat down on benches and impromptu cloth-covered trestle tables to a regional speciality. When we had had our fill, our places were taken by the locals for a second sitting. Quite where it had all been prepared and kept warm was baffling but that passing thought vanished as we were whisked away to a kindergarten down the street. We were shown two rooms; one bright and well decorated, the other dowdy and gloomy by comparison. The latter was for the gypsy children.
As we stayed longer in Zizin this contrast of a two-speed community and country emerging from a communist past became more and more apparent. The young, talented and dedicated management team from FAST are addressing this issue in a micro fashion by setting up in a specially renovated room an after school club for children from both communities called ‘The Reconciliation Centre' where they learn to know each other and break down prejudice.
Apart from a break on Wednesday to visit Bran Castle, summer residence of the Romanian royal family and fictitious home of Count Dracula, the working week was spent in two groups preparing and varnishing chairs for both the Reconciliation Centre and the church as well as advancing the roofing on the toilet block lean-to. Fortunately, although it had drizzled on Sunday morning, the rest of the week provided beautiful sunshine which illuminated the glorious autumn leaf colour. So we were able to work comfortably outside under a warm sun even though the mornings and evenings were quite brisk. The children, when not at school, would watch us work and gradually join in. They were friendly and affectionate with seemingly few qualms about strangers. The adults had more reserve but stood around to spectate and comment. We finished our allotted work on Thursday so that Friday was free before the football match. In measurement of man- hours on site, our input had been quite slender but in terms of showing commitment to the project and to the village people it was a very worthwhile exercise to complement our Sheffield efforts and financial contribution.
This support was further reinforced by the presence of nine of us at the funeral of a four-month old girl who had been born with a rare heart condition. The ceremony began in the yard of the modest but lovingly constructed home of the child. Although we had hoped to merge into the background, we were given front seat benches covered in cloth on which to sit. The little girl Georgetta was brought in her simple open casket -similar to a nativity crib- into the centre of the space and placed on two stools looking precarious on the uneven ground. She was dressed in a pink fleece jacket and a red bonnet and the gauze that covered the crib was decorated with large yellow flowers which were also laid on the ground close by. After the minister and Andy had spoken words of comfort and hope and we had sung together, we processed with family and friends to the small makeshift cemetery picking up others along the way. Many villagers awaited our arrival, some children running excitedly up on the steep hill immediately behind the freshly dug grave. At this second phase, grief took over from numbness for the parents as the casket top was nailed down and reality struck that this cherubic-cheeked dark-eyelashed sleeping beauty was not going to draw breath. The distraught mother flung herself through the crowd, inconsolable, and passed her surviving twin on to her husband. As the family supported her, her mother, through Daniel, invited us back to their house for a meal. It was phrased in such a way that we could not diplomatically refuse even though the football match was scheduled in ten minutes time. It felt biblical and timeless: Jesus, the haemophiliac woman and Jairus. Raw emotion in a third world state, full of narrow passages, rough open timber houses and fences, stray dogs and bright coloured second hand clothes with slogans in English.
Again we were served first, seated on benches round a table. We were the centre of attention as we sipped our vegetable soup with meatballs. After further food was served, we took our leave feeling uncomfortable as if rejecting their hospitality but were assured that the family would not take it amiss and would pick up where we had left off. A traditional way of receiving guests, however alien they might be.
The football match might have been a damp squib but by the time we had walked back to the church, changed and assembled, the mood had lifted. The two teams observed a minute's silence in the centre of the pitch. Then we sang a raucous National Anthem. In spite of Ben Walker - the Pied Piper of Zizin - trailing a swarm of children across the corner of the pitch and a flock of sheep being herded across the far corner, two goals being disallowed for offside, a large hole, a banked mound and a deep rut, a rickety assemblage of pine spars nailed into goal frames, England in their white shirts and far from finest hour lost two nil to Romania.
We said our goodbyes with mixed emotions which in many cases still persist as I write this. Brasov, where we went for three evenings to eat, has a well conserved architectural centre in the lee of the huge Black Church and a large paved square where the world strolls at night. To all intents and purposes it is a globalised good-looking European city with many expensive-looking shops but amid this prosperous sophistication, I was deeply challenged while caught off-guard. As we strolled across to kill some time before the Chinese restaurant (where no Sino-featured people appeared) I was set upon by three gypsy children begging in well-rehearsed histrionic fashion miming their hunger and Catholic credentials. I immediately hardened my attitude in a gut reaction and was subsequently told by Romanians and experienced visitors to the country alike that I was right to have done so. However a sense of unease persisted that I was being two-faced and that the gypsy phenomenon is deeply ingrained and very hard to address and overcome in a two-speed nation.
- Keith Noble
