TC/1413

Drumquin man shocked by conditions in Romania

A man whose wife was killed in the Omagh bomb atrocity of August last year found her decision to take in a Romanian child is now helping him cope with the tragedy.
Kevin Skelton, from Drumquin, recently returned from Romania where he had been investigating the possibility of taking 11-year-old Andreea Crozac back to Ireland from the orphanage where she lives and formally adopting her.
Andreea has stayed with the family for the past three summers ever since Mr Skelton's late wife, Philomena, answered a newspaper advertisement seeking families to host visiting Romanian children.
Mr Skelton said: "I got involved before she came, raising money, but I'm far more involved now.
"It helped us over Christmas. She was here just before the bomb anniversary as well and it might help us over Christmas this year. It gave me something to think about, rather than sit in the house, when my family were at school, feeling sorry for myself."
Mr Skelton will not be adopting Andreea and her sister Nicoletta now that he has met their mother, who visits them at the orphanage every day.
"She was afraid I was going to take the child from her. But I wouldn't do that. She said I could take her as often as I liked," he said.
Andreea's mother cannot afford to look after the children, but visits them every day and takes them home at the weekend.
"At least she comes to see the children. There are other parents leave the children in there and never come back. They just dump them there," Mr Skelton said.
"When I got involved in this first I always wondered whether I was doing right in bringing the young ones over here. Now that I've talked to Miss Donia, the head of the orphanage Andreea's in, I know I'm right.
"She's thinks it's great, for the children can get over here and see what family life is. The mother, if she was able, would have them with her all the time but for 95 per cent of people there's no such thing as family life. The weans are just dumped in there and no one seems to care."
Mr Skelton travelled to Romania with other members of the North West Romanian Orphan Fund which organised trips to Ireland for the orphans. The group visited three of the orphanages where their Romanian guests live.
Shocked
He was shocked at just how poor conditions were throughout the country. Even the place where he stayed in Fagaras, billed as the town's top hotel, had no hot water and very low levels of sanitation.
What funding the orphanages got from the Romanian government could only be spent on the buildings themselves and not clothes or food, according to the director of the Orphanage at Codlea.
Mr Skelton said: "I can't understand that you would think they would try to feed the youngsters. The grub they get is nearly always bread and maybe water or spuds. The bread is as hard it is like a brick."
"I went to the boys orphanage in Victoria. The boys are in it from the age of 6 to 16 years old, 124 of them and they are sleeping in bunk beds. The mattress is no thicker than a sheet on top of springs."
"The country as a whole is very, very poor. There's youngsters running around the streets with a wee bag in their hand sniffing glue to keep the hunger down," he said.
The value of the currency the lei - has plummeted, with 29,000 lei now equivalent to a pound sterling. Two years ago, Mr Skelton said, a pound could be exchanged for 7,000 lei.
For a painter earning a million lei a month, government-controlled heating eats up 800,000 lei, leaving the equivalent of only £8 for a family to live on every month.
"Unless the EC or the Americans are prepared to invest in it, it's not going to get any better. The charities can do a certain amount, but if the help dries up on them, I don't know what's going to happen," Mr Skelton said.
"As long as I'm alive I'll bring Andreea back to Ireland as often as she wants to come back. I wouldn't like to think that when she comes to 17 and she's finished in the orphanage that she'd be out on the streets. Quite a few have finished up that way.
"It costs £8,400 to bring 21 of them out in summer-time, and people were saying 'would that not be better sent to the orphanage?'" Mr Skelton said.
"There's a point in it certainly, but the heads of the orphanages maintain that a trip to Ireland does them more good than giving them the money out there."
Mr Skelton has appealed for anyone who can donate mattresses or old toys to contact him on Omagh 831503 before December, when the North West Romanian Orphan Fund will bring a lorry load of goods to the children.
The charity will also hold a fundraising dance on November 19 in Drumquin Social Centre. The event, featuring Northern Sound and Jimmy Buckley, will be from 9.30pm to 1.30am and costs £6. The money raised will go towards bringing the children back to Ireland next summer.