Alex Tofan, from village Zmeu, Lungani local authority, is a quiet child. Life next to his three brothers, in a house made of adobe, with a leaky roof above his bed, has not broken him. It does not affect him that at school his colleagues laugh of him because he is short, has big ears and does not have slippers. He has got a new friend that encourages him permanently to go to school.
Since he was five, Alex has slept with his older brother, on a bed next to the wall. Every time there was a heavy rain, the water was seeping through the roof and wet the old bed linen.
In one cold autumn day, when I entered the house that was sitting to fall apart, the 9 year old boy was happy that his parents managed to cover the roof, so it was not raining on him anymore. The boy has two their brothers and one sister, Denisa, who is five year old. He feels very close to his sister. Every day, during breaks, he runs happily to the kindergarten close by to be with her. Until this year, this was happening only on the days Alex did not manage to go to school. He has an illness, fuelled by the poverty in which he lives and the hardships his parents are going through in order to feed the four children, which kept him from school sometime.
“I feel like crying when I don’t go to school, I like being with my colleagues, but I cannot do this when I feel ill. I just stay in bed”, says Alex sad, in a squeaky voice that, if you are not careful, you can mistake for his sister’s.
Nobody knows what he has. The parents say that since he was little, he was a sickly child. They have not seen a specialist because of their financial situation. Alex’s illness manifests in a strange way. “Without me realising, I could not move and was falling; after a while I would wake up surrounded by people. I had to stay home for a few days until I was feeling well again. I don’t really know why is this happening to me”, explains Alex confused.
“Initially, we thought he has cardiac problems, but the doctor from the local practice told us that sometimes he has anaemia. We should take him to a specialist to identify what he has”, explains Ciprian Cozma, a counsellor to the local mayor, that Alex describes as “my best friend”.
His parents are working by the day
Lungani village is one of the poorest in Iasi county. The situation in the centre of Lungani and village Zmeu, where Alexandru Tofan lives together with his family does not bear any comparison. The majority of the population is Romani – they earn their living from labouring one day here and one day there and from the social benefits they pick up from the town hall every month – and struggles for survival in houses who would not withstand rain, let alone flooding.
Alex was born into this poverty that his parents do not want to accept. His mother, Carmen, works in the village as a day labourer “with a spade and weeding. If I make 30 to 40 lei is better than staying at home. I earn the money with my back”, tells me the father, touching the kidney area, clenching his teeth. “I go in the forest and help people carrying wood. This way I take wood for winter too. I take my wife, eldest boy and bring back wood”, continues Dumitru Tofan, known as Mitica to the village.
The only way Alex can help his family is through his child benefit of 45 lei that he receives from school monthly. But he had many problems there last year.
Teased by his colleagues because he is an introvert, quite short and with round ears that move when he talks, the boy has never managed to make many friends. Although he feels lonely at school, he says he likes studying and that mathematics is his favourite subject.
His father and a friend of his elder brother tell that children at school call him “little dog”, “little donkey” and tell him that he is “downcast”.
“The ones who are older and more well off are laughing; those who know his family situation don’t laugh of him and try to help him” tells Ciprian, his best friend who helped him that sometime he will graduate.
“Every so often it happens that a boy beats me up because I am small, laughs of me because I do not have shoes. There is nothing I can talk to them about; they would beat me up immediately since they are older than me. This happens during the breaks; if we talk in class, the primary school teacher takes us by the ears. But I usually get along with my classmates”, says Alex, shrugging.
AHe had to repeat the last academic year because of his non-attendance
Ioan Tudose, the director of the school in Zmeu, tells that Alex missed school so much last year that he had to repeat the year. He knows that he has a precarious situation at home, but he could not pass him. This year, though, the boy has started studying again and the primary school teacher is confident that he will finish the year with good grades. “He is not repeating the year because he did not manage, but because of his non-attendance. Now, the primary school teacher told me that he comes to school and makes friends, things that make us happy, says Tudose, the school director.
Alex told the director that last year a boy hit him on his head with a stone, but that took place outside school. He went to hospital and recovered pretty quickly and says that this is how older boys are, there is nothing he can do to them and he tries to make friends among the others.
“I do not have problems with the children all the time. I get along the best with the colleague I share the desk with. I talk mainly to the girls at school”, says Alex.
In the small room where the six members of the Tofan family live, Alex takes a reading manual out of the bag with faded colours he is using at school. He does not have any homework for tomorrow, he tells me proudly, but he has to read a poem – “The Chickens”. Guided by his parents, he reads slowly pronouncing the syllables individually. “The-Chi-ckens. The Chickens. Sit without du-vets. Duvets. The chickens are without duvets”, says happy that he managed to understand the writing in the manual.
When he sees that I am looking at his frayed reading book, he apologises quickly. “It’s not my fault, if this is how I got it from the primary school teacher? She gives the better ones to the Romanians from up the hill, because they are better”, says the boy under his father critical looks, who would have liked for him to stop talking. Alex sees his look and shuts up quickly, buries his head in the book, following the chickens with the finger on the paper.
The story has changed this year
Alex’s story has turned into a tale of redemption. Even if he is not aware of which disease he suffers from, Alex took courage and went to school constantly, improved his grades and he started liking a girl. I ask him what is her name and he tells me blushing like an iron taken out of fire, “Maria, from up the hill”.
He enjoys being at school because he plays football daily. Sometimes, when he finds a ball, he plays football in the street; he prefers to play forward and to score goals. He idolises Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, but le likes Messi the most, because he is short just like him and runs fast.
But, he would like to be a doctor when he grows older. He is not in for the money or for leaving the poverty in which he was born into, but to help people out and sort out his only problem who prevented him to have a life just like his colleagues, some who “always laugh of me”.
“I want to be a doctor just like the other doctors, to help people out I want to know what is my problem and to get well.”
This article can be read here http://www.ziaruldeiasi.ro/stiri/a-priveste-dincolo-de-aparentea-pustanul-care-se-incapataneaza-sa-mearga-la-scoala–83309.html
