Expectations

Just like many volunteers who ended up in Eastern Europe, I originally wanted to go to South America. And just like many volunteers I ended up being extremely happy to have gone to Eastern Europe instead. When I was offered a place at a school in Romania I was immediately excited. What a coincidence that I would be spending six months so close to the town that my mother grew up in!

I could not imagine how Romania was going to be at all. Floating around in my head were my mothers childhood-stories and scraps of forgotten history lessons about Nicolae Ceausescu, the communist dictator who ran the country down until the revolution 1989. When I stepped out of the airport in Timisoara (which I would soon find to be my favourite city in Romania), I felt confident that I would manage the next six months in this country. My landlord picked me up from the Airport and gave me a ride to Resita – my new home town. On our way we passed more or less humble villages that were built on both sides of the road. I saw horse-drawn carriages and stray dogs and old women with headscarfs, sitting on a bench in front of their house.

The country with many faces

I quickly learnt that Romania is a country with many faces. The landscape is diverse: There are beautiful forests in the Carpathian Mountains, there is the Black Sea on the East Coast, there are the massive boulevards in Bucharest. There is a lot of poverty. And there is a lot of enthusiasm for the Western World. Second-hand clothes and furniture from Germany are most desirable. Everywhere you go, you see throwout buses, trains and cars from abroad. In my city we had public transportation from the Netherlands, trains from France and an old German ambulance parked on my way to school.

In the bigger cities there is a social class of nouveau riches that encapsulate themselves in pool clubs and haute couture-shopping malls. On the side streets you run into the poorest and least accepted minority: Romani people. In these few months I have heard more horrible things about them than you can ever imagine. I was told not to sit next to them on the train, that they were dirty and evil. Even for the most broad-minded, cosmopolitan Romanians, Romani people are a sensible spot. For me this is very hard to comprehend. I did not let myself be influenced by the hatred around me and tried to face everyone I met without preconception.

My everyday life

I was warmly welcomed at the school and given all the freedom I needed in order to contribute to the school life. At first I spent a lot of time in the classrooms, watching the lessons and getting to know the kids. I started to establish an after school theatre club. This turned out to be my most important occupation at the school. At the begining a lot of kids were excited about the programm. But staying in school after the lessons are over is not at all common in this school. So I ended up working with a small, but motivated group of kids. We wrote our own piece of theatre and performed it in the last week of school. It was a lot of work, but seeing the kids faces after the performance –  owerflowing with pride and ease – made it worth the effort!

Being a volunteer

Since I was the first volunteer at this school, it was not easy to find my place. No one knew, why excactly I was there or what I was supposed to do. On the one hand that gave me space to do whatever I wanted, on the other hand it was difficult to do anything at all. As I mentioned, getting the children to do anything voluntarily was extremely hard and frustrating. In the lessons there was not much for me to do because the teachers had to stick to their curriculum. But I still got the chance to stand in front of the class from time to time. That was a valuable lesson for me. I now have a whole lot of respect for teachers around the world!

I am glad that I was a „kulturweit“-volunteer other than organizing my own voluntary work somewhere. Through the organization I had excellent guidance and consulting. I got to be connected with volunteers all over the world and with the ones in my area. That allowed me to travel through Eastern Europe and have a guide (and a friend) in every city. I went on a holiday with two other Romanian volunteers and in the School Summer Holidays I participated in the bicycle-carawan along the Danube along with lots of other „kulturweit“-volunteers.