Today I had a troubling?, moving?, conversation with 2 of our students.  Together they are doing a practicum with another ministry organization where they go with a team to do a Sunday School type program twice a week and go with a Romanian social worker the other afternoons to do home visits and a community needs assessment.

    Albesti Valley has a long history with the ministry programs in Sighisoara and everyone who has worked there has a story to tell, as these students will.  Dorothy would tell you about the preschool they started 10+ years ago with the help of an early childhood development specialist who was here as a volunteer for 6 months.  They returned after Christmas break to find the rehabbed building and play equipment destroyed and the materials sold.  David, originally from England,  lives here building homes for poor Roma people  and he would tell a similar story from the same time period.  Having built a number of homes in this community of 31 houses, he came back to find the very people he built them for had dismantled them and sold the materials.  Jamie, who came here first as a student, then back again to volunteer for a year,  would tell of getting her call to become a nurse while working in impossible conditions in Albesti.  Now she is a U.S. trained nurse practitioner who returned this fall with her Romanian husband and their son, to work and serve here in Sighisoara.  Others would tell of donated school supplies being thrown away on the street, or parents taking Christmas gifts given to their children and selling them.  Mention Albesti Valley and everyone has a story.

     Margy and Calcy describe driving up to the river and crossing over on foot into this community where there are no roads, only mud filled paths that smell of sewage when it rains.  As they walk they see the bushes along the river shaking as the kids run through and hear them screaming the social worker's name and 'Progamul', announcing their arrival.  Once the kids reach them they literally maul them.  We have had discussions about their right to personal space, ways to teach respect, we've tried to figure out what is cultural, lack of information or just being taken advantage of  as young women.  They tell me the kids are much better than at the beginning of the semester, they aren't trying to pull out their earrings and nose ring, their shirts (and what they cover) aren't being grabbed, but they still get their hair 'petted' and one of them went on a home visit not knowing there was a big hand print on the back of her pants.  Head lice in Albesti was the topic of our meal time discussion on Monday night (during our weekly cross cultural check-in with all the students), head checks were done, shampoo provided as a preventative measure, and we debated the ethics of how and what needed to be shared with host families - pun intended.

      The social work supervisor and the mother in me feels like enough is enough, it's time to pull them out of there, we can let them have a different experience for the last month of placement. But they are committed to staying involved.  They speak of how important it is to these families that they all get a home visit from the American students, of teaching a child that holding their hand is appropriate affection, of helping a child to be confident enough to go and sit with the other children during the program, of giving these children the feeling of being loved and accepted each time they go into the village. Their goal?  Once they have met with all the families they would like to talk with the mayor about this community's wish for stones.  If they had stones on their paths they wouldn't get muddy in the rain, the children that go to school wouldn't arrive mud covered and  reinforce the belief that they are 'dirty gypsies'.  Two families approached the mayor on this matter, but he thinks it is useless to put anything into this community, an understandable conclusion!  Calcy and Margy are hopeful, if they ask for stones and get stones,  might this empower the people to see other ways they can make their life better?  Maybe this time it will work. Maybe this is the story these students will have to tell.