Categories: uncategorized
Date: 02 August 2005 18:17:52
After graduating, in summer 1990, I moved to London, temped for a year here and there and then started temping at a well-known children's charity. Not much to say about that other than it was a foot in the door of the voluntary sector (a very strange sector generally, I have to say, and quite difficult to get into, but once you're in people tend to move round from charity to charity, which is what ended up happening to me). Whilst I was there I decided that although I didn't have a clue what to do I knew that I wanted to go to Romania, so had better do something about it. Not really knowing where to start, I signed up for an evening class to learn the language, which I started in 1992. I also started praying that I would find a charity that took volunteers there. At the start of 1993 a guy from my then church stood up and gave a notice to the effect that he had information about lots of charities that worked in eastern Europe, and if anyone was interested to see him. Which I did. I went round one evening later that week, and it turned out that he had done an aid trip to Romania in 1989 before the revolution and was desperately trying to maintain links as far as he could, as well as drum up more interest. He gave me leaflets from a few charities, and I contacted one, a little aid charity based in the north of England which took vans of stuff over to Romania and did up orphanages, clinics and the like. To cut a long story short I ended up, in the summer of 1993, in a team of people driving across Europe to help in the doing up of a building that had been obtained and which was intended to provide a residential facility for people with learning and physical disabilities.
That was a very odd experience. The charity was a Christian charity, run by Christians, but most of the volunteers were not Christians and there ended up being a huge amount of conflict between the Director of the charity and the volunteers. Without going into details it became a very traumatic experience and I couldn't wait to leave ... except ... something about actually being in the country grabbed me even more, so despite the awfulness of the conflicts between the Brits, I knew I had to come back for longer. But what to do? I wasn't a nurse, or a teacher, or anything useful. I needed an excuse to travel - so at the start of 1994 did a short TEFL (teaching English as a foreign language) course in London. I arranged with the same charity I'd been to Romania with the year before to go back with them in March, basically figuring "better the devil you know" (which is a bit of an unfortunate expression about a Christian charity, but there we are). I was assured by the director of the charity that they knew loads of people who were really keen to have English lessons, and they'd really like me to go, so I didn't need any more prompting.
The first couple of weeks I spent with the other Brits on the van, delivering aid parcels and generally meeting people. I was living with two wonderful Hungarian doctors (I was living in a Transylvanian town which at the time had a 54% Hungarian population, though I gather the Romanians are now in the majority there). After two weeks, the others drove back to the UK, leaving me there. With no job. And not one person who'd been remotely interested in English lessons. I was not happy - with the charity, with God - I'd given up work, left my friends, family and country to serve God and follow what I was sure was a calling to Romania, for what?
cue: EastEnders cliffhanger theme ;)