Our Romania trip diary 2014
Our Romania trip has been slightly delayed this year because of a total hip replacement for Danny. However after a successful operation we began the countdown to our 2014 trip to Romania.
30th May 2014
Joe and his friend Roger transferred lots of donated items from The 30th Rotherham Scout Group and The Rotherham Sitwell Rotary Club to our base in Sutton-in-Ashfield. This is a particularly busy time packing the many beautiful handmade and purchased items, into good sturdy boxes as we don’t want to take the risk of any of the donated items being damaged in transit.
5th June
We collect our hire van from GK Ford in Mansfield, from there we go straight to our friends at Midland Mobility and installation UK Sutton-in-Ashfield who so generously donated an electric scooter to a disabled young lady in the town of Codlea Nr Brasov last year. This year they have donated a larger scooter for her, and apart from this they have also kindly stored lots of other donated items for us through the winter at their shop, and now it’s time to collect these items from the shop. Then it is back to our base for the rest of the donated goods, and the final packing.
7th June
The van is packed and we leave for Killingholme to catch our ferry courtesy of Stenaline who so kindly take us free of charge on their overnight crossing to the Hoek van Holland.
8th June
We had a lovely smooth crossing and we arrived on time in Holland feeling fresh and ready for the drive to Romania. We planned to meet our Dutch friends en-route in the town of Woerden to make our final collection of new donated t-shirts and polo shirts. The van is now full to capacity and we are on our way once more.
10th June
We arrive in the town of Codlea and visit Julia. You may have remembered from our diary last year we gave her the electric scooter. She had no idea about the bigger scooter until we opened the doors of the van, how her eyes lit up. Now it was decision time for her, and she chose to have the larger one as she had turned the small one over while struggling to get into the seat due to her disability.
We left Codlea and made our way to our arranged overnight stop at the children’s home at Gimbav Nr Brasov
11th June
We made our way to the small village of Mehedinta to meet Joe’s friend Andy, an ex English Fire Fighter who came to Romania many years ago with Joe and many of his colleagues to help refurbish a hospital. This was the first time they had met since that project was completed, almost twenty years ago. Girls the world over are attracted to men in uniform and Andy, a single guy, fell in love and married Carman, a Romanian lady. They moved back to South Yorkshire where their daughter Ana was born. Then when Andy retired from the fire brigade, they returned to Romania to enjoy retirement.
Andy and Carmen helped us so much in the short time we were with them. Assisting in the distribution of many of the items in the wide spread villages. First we visited a kindergarten taking toys and children’s books. Then upon returning to his house we find his wife busy finding people who were in need of some of the many lovely garments that had been donated by our friends in Holland.
From there it was of to the Prahova County Hospital to give a trolley bed that had been donated to the hospital by the East Midland Ambulance service. The trolley bed hadn’t been in the building many minutes before it was wiped down and put into use. From there we where taken a little further down the road to meet a young lady called Martia. Martia is severely disabled, she was sitting with her three sisters. We asked if she would like to go into the city with her sisters on an electric scooter. After the question had been translated she just could not believe her eyes or ears! How happy she was as her father helped her into the seat, she pressed the forward button and as the scooter moved, words could not describe the look on her face, before we left the girls sang us a beautiful song that would have bought a lump to the throat of many a hard man. Our day ended at the house of our friends in the village of Mitita.
12th June
Next day it’s back to distributing all the gifts that have been donated, woollen blankets from the Seventh Day Adventist Church at Sutton-in-Ashfield, Pharmaceuticals such as paracetamol, toothpaste and brushes from St Andrews Skegby, & All Saints Stanton Hill, and lots of books, from the Rotherham 30th Scout group. After another long day we settled down to a good night’s rest.
13th June
Next morning we should have been heading for the leprosy hospital on the Danube Delta, but heavy rains had made the river extremely high and fast flowing, and having had experience of this ferry before, we made the decision to cancel our visit, the incontinence pads and other medical supplies etc would have to be given in the villages.
14th June
We were now on our way to the Vaslui region, and as many of our readers will know this is the poorer part of the country. Here you will find the people tending their crops. They still use Oxen and horses to pull their ploughs and carts. Here it is very remote, and life is very basic, but the people are so very warm and appreciative of your gifts, we stayed with our friends in Manastirea for two days, giving too many of the outlying villages. We left more books for the village School, the Rotherham 30th Scouts and Rotary Club sure did us proud.
15th June
We have already had a very busy week of giving the donated items to those who were in need. Next we made our way back over the mountains to Ghimbav. Our work was changing from giving aid, to doing 8 days of construction work, the venue is the Samariteanul Milo’s Children’s home. There was plenty to do, rendering walls, removing and repairing gates from the garden and the main gate to the home. This week the weather was not kind to us, unfortunately it rained for most of the week, but the work had to be done, come rain or shine, time waits for no man.
25th June
Our work was completed (for now) and at 5am this morning we started our long journey home.
27th June
We arrived back in Holland staying the night with friends, before catching Saturdays Stenaline overnight ferry from the Hoek van Holland to Killingholme.
This year our charity was once again overwhelmed with the amount of donated items, having so many items is a lovely situation to be in. This year, because we wanted to ensure we had the necessary time to do some much needed construction work for the orphanage, we were extremely grateful to have trusted friends to help us with finding the most needy recipients for your many gifts, enabling us to accomplish everything we wanted to in the time we had available.
Thanks again from People-in-Need to All our sponsors and supporters for making our work possible.
Danny Thompson and Joseph Walker
