Compelling needs

Whenever we are getting ready to leave Romania for the Isle of Man it seems we experience a situation which reminds us why we are here and compels us to come back. Today less than a week before we leave Dorohoi we had a great time with the families at Cobila, and we were running just one last one errand at the end of the day; it started earlier this morning when we had been contacted by a grandmother we know, pleading for help for her and her family.

She lives in a small 2 room house with one if her sons, his wife and 2 children and a daughter in law and her son. At the time we were already out delivering aid and said we would try and call to see her after lunch.

As we drove down the lane to her house we saw the grandmother walking through the thick snow carrying a crust of bread and a jug of something. It looked like she was taking food to an animal. But when we asked here where she was going she told us she was taking food to the old house which we had stopped alongside.

It is a house we have driven past a number of times. We had given food before to the old man who lived there until he died a few years ago. We thought that now it was uninhabited. It turned out that her 37 year old daughter and husband lived there. The man who had died was her father.

It is an old house built of mud bricks, half of the house is falling down, the ramshackle wooden door led into a porch and then through another broken door into the room the couple were using to live in. With a temperature of -15C it seemed colder inside than out, the ad hoc soba was not lit and you could see day light through the holes in the walls. The lady was huddled under a damp quilt and was shaking with cold. We had fire-briquettes in the car so brought then in and also left some food which she ate immediately. As we were leaving the man happened to come back and he lit the fire. We  went back later with bedding and some hot food.

It was cold enough in there today, nothing short of a miracle that they have survived the past few days when the temperature has been down to -30C overnight.

We spoke to other NGO’s in the town to see if they were receiving help from anyone else but as far as we can tell they have not had any help and they have nothing, no jobs and no income.
We will go back in next couple of days with some more aid and see what we can do to help them access regular support.

Brrrrr its cold here

We had a busy day with various meeting to attend in the morning, then a drive (an hour) to Suceava to visit the Christian book shop for some Bibles which various people had requested.

It was so cold, the condensation on the inside of the windows was freezing, even in the car with heater going full blast. We knew a number of families who we visit in a village outside Dorohoi were struggling to keep their homes warm in such extreme temperatures. So we decided to collect some fuel bricks and food and visit them. It was about 5pm by the time we got there and the temperature had already dropped to -21C.

Delivering food and fuel

Chris and I were so glad to get back to our apartment and so thankful to be able to warm up in a centrally heated home. I cooked a Thai curry and we were soon feeling snug. Later in the evening when we went to do the washing up we realised that the boiler was not firing up. Thankfully we have an oil filled radiator so were able to keep our room warm overnight. When we got up the morning the aluminium windows in both our bedroom and lounge had think layers of ice on the inside and the temperature for outside was still showing -25C. We have found out that if we brush the ice and snow off the flue of the gas boiler on regular basis we can keep the heating running!

-25C outside this morning and this is the inside of our lounge window