Romania 2001

Building Romanian style

3 August 2001 09:49

This is the first proper newsletter for a while. I was very busy for a bit getting ready for the streetkids camp and it's taken a bit of work to get through all the mail since then. As a not-too-subtle hint, though, the ratio of personal and/or encouraging stuff to junk mail is pretty low.

In NZ it would take an hour trip to the local timber yard to get a trailer load of lovely kiln dried timber (and with the trailer supplied for free). Here in Romania it's a different story. We took four days to cut 450mm wide by 50mm thick planks into 4x2s for building a couple of timber frame walls. We started with a radial arm saw (ask a local carpenter-type person for a definition). When it kept jamming we tried using a circular saw, but it got loaned to a guy overnight and we didn't see it again.

Back to the radial arm saw with a new carbide blade (which only took half a day for 3 people to find). I noticed in the van on the way back from purchasing it that on three quarters of the circumference the teeth were all on the same way around. It cut better but the saw still jammed, taking half an hour to cool down each time before the reset button could be pressed. One of the Romanian workers here came to our rescue with his chainsaw.

Yes, our workshop has 4x2s cut with a chainsaw. Wait for the movie.

Because of a couple of things I did not go to the streetkids camp but did go for a couple of days before the camp started to help set things up. My main job was assembling a toilet. With big dreams I started thinking of a VIP toilet. They are a longdrop with a chimney that basically sucks flies and smells out of the toilet. They work very well. My longdrop, however, didn't end up as a VIP toilet.

We arrived at the national reserve after a 3 hour drive and for reasons that seemed good at the time chose an overgrown wilderness site down the road from where the camp was eventually held. Just one afternoon was enough to convince us that it was the wrong place and that we should shift. One example (that didn't influence the decision) - I found a really big grasshopper eating the rubber eyecup on my video camera. I gave it a poke and it just took another bite.

The heat was up to 44 deg C constructing the toilet building the next day. This was partly due to building it inside a large tent, but it was much better than building it in the sunshine.

A bunch of Scottish guys arrived that evening. They were staying for the 10 day long camp and helped us move things up the road to the site we should have settled on at first. Short grass and no grasshoppers, AND it had Scottish thistles, just to make the Scots feel at home. We had a couple of guys on the roof of my vanload as we went up the road in darkness, one of whom was wearing a headlamp! (The other one incidently was my gung-ho chainsaw buddy.)

The Scottish guys hadn't eaten anything in 12 hours, but they had brought food with them, so we ate at 1:30am and got to bed by 2am.

The next day it rained really heavily (making the Scots feel even more at home) which put our preparations back a little... well, a lot really. The streetkids and other adults arrived, then I had to leave, so the toilet building was assembled in my absence. I was told that they left a fair swag of space behind the seat so that adults' toes poked out under the door, and the seat was so high that kids' feet were dangling.

Oh yeah. The door would open on its own, and faced toward the camp. The toilet was described as having its own charm. The Romania word for outhouse is buda, pronounced "buddha." (Heh heh heh. And the door was supposed to face away from the camp, making it necessary to go "south of the buda" to get to the door. The Texan camp director I mentioned that to didn't get it. Not that he had anything to do with positioning the door.)

On the 2nd to last day of camp one of the Scottish guys collapsed, frothing at the mouth and nose, with bad pains in his lower stomach. They took him to a local doctor who declared him to have appendicitus and had two hours to live. He [the doctor] was also drunk and wanted to operated immediately.

Another opinion was sought. His life expectancy went up to 5 hours, then indefinite [from a third opinion]. That was last Thurday. On Friday one of the Scottish girls had the news as soon as she got back that her father was dying and so she was flown straight home (instead of on the following Monday). So on Sunday she wasn't at church but Mr Appendix himself was there as though nothing had happened.

The kids seemed to really enjoy the camp, and several accepted Jesus as their saviour. Cool. On that great note, ciao for now.

God bless one and all.

Ian
8 )

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