Consider Angyalka, now 14, born into a family finally of six children with the mother gone, the father jailed, the children alone in a house that was once a house of two small rooms but by the time she knew what a house could be this was only wood hanging at random angles and the winter wind was whistling in through the holes where windows once were unbroken, windows now gone, walls of holes, no food and she felt the need and the instinct to protect her brothers but she was too young, too young.
This young girl says she has clothes at this Kidstown supported children’s home in Romania, she has food, she goes to school. Four of her brothers, one older, three younger, also live at the home. They have all been rescued.
“Here is better,” she says. Her goal for the future? “I would like to be a hairdresser. I would like one child, a girl. I would like to be a mother who — I don’t want to leave my child as my mother left us. I don’t know what goals for my child. I would like her to feel good. I am a person who helps people. I would like to help my kid. When we are here, I take my little brother to school.”
Here’s what this Kidstown supported children’s home leader in Romania writes in a note: “Their house was in a terrible situation. They lived in an old house with 2 rooms with 7 persons. The father received money from the government to build a house. He gets building materials from the local council, but he sells it. The father was aggressive and he was in prison for 2 years. The children visit him, with their mother. Once their mother decided to go with another man and she let the children alone. The youngest was 4 years old, the oldest 13 years. The only girl was 10 and she tried to take care of her brothers. They went regularly to school. The social worker from the village tried to place the children in a good place.”
I’ve seen the house, two rooms, roof shingles chipped or missing, foundation crumbled, half or more of the stucco walls fallen away, nothing behind it, mold all around, uninhabitable. Uninhabitable, but not so long ago inhabited by a family of children. – C.R. Roberts
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