World Street Children News :: Romania Streetkid News

Hello From The Gutter: Bucharest’s Street Kids

It’s only 10:30 in the morning when we leave and I start my quest to find some of Bucharest’s 5,000 street kids. Later I run into heavy opposition from many of the Romanian women I meet at the conference when I mention that I want to do a photo essay on the street orphans. The prevailing attitude is that it’s a hoax — that these kids are neither homeless, nor orphans, nor even hungry, for the most part. That they are the products of lazy parents who dress them in rags and send them out into the streets begging. Later, I will discover that some of this is indeed true, though only in the most tangential ways and that the real picture is even bigger and uglier and more complex than I had initially thought.

The kids I meet outside the presidential palace are very young, the oldest is only about ten. They live and interact with the 200,000 stray dogs in the city, a result of the 40,000 families made homeless when their houses were demolished to make way for the presidential palace. I can’t seem to make any inroads with these kids though — they’re probably too young and I don’t have an unlimited amount of time. They know two English words "money!" and "so hungry!" Myself, I only know four Romanian words, "bun" (good), "multumesc" (thanks), "va rog" (please), and "nu!" (no). So the only real conversation we’re able to have goes like this:

"Money?"

"Nai."

"So hungry!"

"Nai!"

Though it’s obvious looking at them they’re not exactly hungry. They have their pockets stuffed with loaves of bread which I’ve been watching them feed to stray dogs for the last twenty minutes. But, as the old saying goes,when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. Also, you probably don’t get a lot of money out of tourists holding up an empty plastic sack, presenting a pathetic face and crying "I need money for glue!" Huffing is a serious problem among street kids, nearly all of whom are inhaling the noxious fumes of a metallic paint called aurolac to get high. The paint is part of a Romanian tradition, ironically it’s used to paint the halos of religious icons. Attempts to make it illegal to sell aurolac to children in recent years have been surprisingly difficult. Before I go I pass out a couple hundred thousand lei and the kids run around laughing like they’ve just taken me to the cleaners.

Street Children

There are no accurate figures on the number of street children in Romania, but it is estimated that in the capital of Bucharest alone, there are between three and five thousand children living on the streets. Some of the children are as young as four or five years old, though the majority are adolescents.

Most of the children have fled state-run institutions or orphanages because of the poor conditions there or because they were being abused by other children or staff. The rest of Romania’s street children have fled broken homes or abusive parents. On the streets, the children earn money by begging, stealing, doing menial tasks or prostitution. They live in small metal containers (1 metre by 1.5 metres) which line some of the sidewalks in Bucharest, in one of the city’s main train stations, the underground or the gutters.

A few non-governmental organisations are trying to offer assistance to Bucharest’s street children. Some provide a day centre where children can take a shower, get clean clothes, a decent meal and some education. Others provide medical services or night shelters. But aid groups are hard pressed to meet the growing dem and.