When eyes are shut, everything around is dark only the voice and the thought can be of guidance.
On an outlying street from the 1 May neighbourhood in the west of Targu Jiu, a town in Gorj County, a little boy who does not seem to be more than 12 years old is pulling a barrow filled with big water bottles. As the bottles are moving chaotic in the improvised two wheel barrow, the water splashes the boy’s trousers, leaving a wet patch on his leg. The sun has been scorching the ground ceaselessly for the last three days. When the heavy drops of water hit the sandy soil, the dust spreads in the air and leaves little craters like ant nests. The football field surrounded by bricks and carton boxes is empty. The peacefulness of the scene is broken by the screeching of the wheels and the splashing of the water in the bottles that sounds like waves crashing on the shore. The noises bring back the boy in the county’s landscape. It is the middle of the day and the boy helps Corina, the old lady who lives at the end of the street and does not have running water.
The grey rubber slippers, far too large for the thin foot of the child, hit the ground with a noisy splash. One is lost for good and ends up under a wheel. The boy takes off the other one too and breaths easier as if escaping a heavy burden. He does not like wearing slippers. At the end of the street, the old lady is waiting for him smiling and hands him a few coins for buying ice cream. The boy turns her down politely, but at the insistences of the woman, he gives in. “He is a good boy, altruist. He does not cause anybody any harm” says the woman gently. “Every time I have called him to help me, he has come. Now he comes on his own, twice a week, and brings me water.”
Ion is the only son and the eldest of the 4 children of Parea family in Targu Jiu. Born on 20 June 2002, the boy will turn 13 at the beginning of summer. Despite his young age, the parents left the house and the three younger sisters in his care: Raisa, Cristina and Petruta when they decided to leave for Germany to work, in the middle of June, 2 months ago. Raisa is the youngest. She is only 7 and is looking forward to start school in autumn. Cristina is one year older and is the trusted helper of Petruta, the eldest of the sisters, who is in charge of running the household until the mother comes back. When the parents left, at the beginning of the summer, they told Petruta to take care of the two younger sisters. “I watch them very carefully. I feel I have a great responsibility.” She is only 11 years old, but Petruta cooks, tidies, cleans and helps Cristina with her homework. The girls are doing homework every day. They do not like leaving everything for the last moment and they do not want to forget anything they have learned the previous year.
The parents, Pobirci Mariana and Parea Ion Marian, have decided to work for a while in the neighbourhood of the German town Wurtzburg in order to be able to keep their children in school and provide them with a decent living standard. The mother works in a car wash, while the father is a car mechanic in the same place. They work several months per year and send money back home so that the four kids which they have raised with care do not miss a thing. Before he left, the father gave Ion a piece of advice: “Be careful so you do not get into trouble”. The boy understood he should not start smoking or cause problems to the aunt who lives next door. She shares the same courtyard with them. Beyond this advice, there is more than a fatherly counsel. Maradona, the way the boy’s father is known to the people in the neighbourhood, found out what it meant to have your freedom fenced and only see your children from behind bars when he decided to provide for his family in an unorthodox way. Even if the neighbours are coy about the reason why Maradona went to prison, they all know that he was accused of theft and stayed behind bars for 7 months at Targu Jiu Prison on Vasile Alecsandri Street. When his time is prison was up, he came home and everybody saw a change: he got a job as a car mechanic at a car service in town and he “put away any dodgy ways of lining his pockets”, says Mr Nelu, the neighbour from no 11 house. Later, when children grew up and the expenses went up as well, the parents decided to go to Germany to work there for a few months. They left behind the old errors and wiped out the unpleasant memories of the seven months spent behind bars. Even so, his father did not hesitate to talk to his son about these things: “He told me I must not steal or else I end up in jail, and people are afraid of inmates.”
Ion’s aunt, Viorica Pobirci is the younger sister of his mother and lives in the same courtyard with Parea family. She says that at the beginning, would visit the girls every day and would help them out with cooking. Soon, Petruta learned to manage on her own and did not ask her aunt for help anymore. Nevertheless, she comes and checks on the four children every evening. She promised her parents she would keep an eye on them. “They are well behaved kids. My sister and brother in law have educated them very well. They sent them to school because they insisted on them studying and getting a good education. You know how hard it is these days to manage, especially when you do not have the same chances as everybody else”, confesses Viorica while she looks with her blue eyes at the six children around her: the four siblings together with their cousins, Oana and Isabella. She is proud that the six of them are doing well at school and that they made friends.
Ion confesses that there are days when his colleagues still laugh of him, but he knows that sometimes children can be cruel unintentionally, so he does not get upset. “They, themselves, will realise soon that they are wrong.” Ion did not get upset either, when in the sixth grade was wrongly accused of stealing 10 RONs. He tried to explain that his mother gave him 15 RONs on that day in order to pay for the Mathematics workbook. When his class master phoned home, his mother confirmed that was the case. Subsequently, the children found the lost money in the classroom, on the floor. The child was saddened by the whole experience. He is not a thief, just because he is Romani. He also knows that the prejudices will always exist. But he is not afraid. He was well integrated with the other school children. “I do not live among Romani. Nor can I speak their language. We speak Romanian at home”, says the boy relaxed, and his voice spreads in the warm air of the middle of the day.
VHe speaks nice, especially about Cezar, his best friend. Cezar is Romanian. They became friends the day he defended Ion. On the football field, everyone laughed of Ion. They were saying that he could not be part of the team because he was a gypsy and surely he did not know how to play. Cezar offered trusted him and took him next to himself. “I had a good game. We play together well and we are both passionate about football” remembers the boy between laughter. Since then, they became friends, especially since they attend the same school, St Nicholas, No 6, on 11 Iunie Street.
Ion is a happy child. He has learned from a young age what discrimination means. In the second grade, the primary school teacher avoided to name him every time he was raising his hand. The boy knew the answers. He learned from his father the multiplication table, way before he went to school, and he was the only one who knew it fully by heart in the first grade. However, he did not receive recognition for his efforts. Things did not improve after his mother had a discussion with the teacher, so his parents decided to transfer him to a different class. Since then, things went well for the boy. The parents taught him to be patient and understanding. Hatred was not familiar to him, in spite of everything around him seemed to teach him about it. He made new friends quickly in the new class. The teacher treated him gently. “She was treating me nice. She has bought me notebooks and fountain pens several times” says the boy with large, dark eyes.
Sitting on a bench, under a tree, Ion eats heartily from the ice cream he won through work. He says it tastes better when you work for it. His father taught him so. So, every time his father comes back from Germany, Ion helps him in the garage and tries to learn the business. He knows that, together with medicine and theology, car mechanics is a profession for the future. He likes learning as many things as possible. He wants to show that education is not conditioned by the ethnicity. “Some believe that if you are a gipsy, you do not know anything”, says the boy. Therefore he learned from his father geography, mathematics, and biology and every time the neighbours ask him questions, the boy surprises them with his answers.
The sun caresses his cheeks and the boy squints to protect his eyes from the intense light. When he is talking, he opens his eyes wide and a blaze bursts from the depth: “I want to become someone good!” His voice is adamant and sincere. Like an echo in a warm summer afternoon.
“Someone good”.
This article can be read here http://citescasertiunea.aser.ro/2015/04/23/187/.
