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The Box That Holds Everything

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Each month I meet, at a rent-controlled apartment complex in Norton, Virginia, friends who are doctors and professors, along with a bunch of our collective students. The professors grill burgers, the medical students do an educational activity–how your lungs work using paper bags and straws, germ glow wash your hands hygiene, teeth brushing 101–and the undergraduate students (mostly pre-med or pre-dental) create a craft that accompanies the activity.

It’s fun. People eat, they talk, they think we’re a church and they laugh when they find out we’re a bunch of academics and doctors. “Really? Not a church. Well, all the same, this is fun.”

We started at a new location in July of this year, which meant we had to build trust all over again. This is a population that doesn’t have a lot of reason to trust people who take a “benevolent interest” in them. Usually that ends up with them getting scammed. So we approached slowly, with school supplies.

In August, we went back to grill burgers, make emotional thermometers, and craft stress balls. The playground and picnic shelter where we going to meet was a mess. We found rubber gloves and big black plastic sacks, and hauled off a broken crib mattress and sheet set left by the trash can. The medical students ran to the grocery store and came back with bleach when they found the single trash can had become infested with undesirables.

None of the kids we played with after, making the stress balls and talking about anger management, said anything about this. None of the students said anything derogatory about the mess. We all had fun.

Next month, when I got there five minutes ahead of my fellow professor, four kids were at the picnic pavilion, lining the picnic tables up at one side. A little boy about the same size as the tree branch he wielded was using it to sweep the concrete pad clean. Two other boys had a small cardboard box they were filling with trash from the playground, dumping it into the single can and racing off to fill it again.

“We wanted it to look nice when you got here, so you’d know we were glad you were here,” said the oldest of the kids, Noah. Noah is transitioning. Two of the professors are also transitioning, and Noah spent a long time talking to them last month.

The picnic tables had been specially lined up, explained Skylar (a year or two younger than Noah, and the girl whose birthday we had celebrated in sudden made-up ways when we found she was alone for the evening, accompanied by two older friends who felt sorry for her because her parents wouldn’t be home that day to give her any party. The med students ran and found a candle for a cupcake and we all sang).

“We know you didn’t need them in a line, but my brother is autistic and he was helping and he needs things to be perfect and straight and all so we did it that way.” Skylar said with pride.

My fellow professors and doctors arrived, taking in the boy still sweeping with the branch, the kids busy picking up the last small bits of debris. Tori, the chemistry professor, smiled and produced a large tub of sidewalk chalk. Five minutes later the medical and pre-med students were studiously admiring artwork from the kids as they turned the basketball court all the colors of the rainbow.

That box, that box is everything. The kids were waiting for us, not passively, but with intent to make us feel welcome. Little kids who think we’re from a church and want to know how lungs work. Little kids who are teaching future doctors that poverty is not sin, nor passivity, nor a reason to dismiss anyone’s contribution to their own well-being.

The world can be beautiful.

Hey Ho, Hey Ho. It’s Off to Work–Again

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In Jack’s Wednesday guest post he continues his Romanian adventure – –

After a break back home, I returned for a second month-long stint at Ploesti in Romania. This time was more relaxed as I was familiar with the set-up and the folks with whom I was working. Not only that, but my kind-hearted boss, Alan, paid for Wendy to join me for the last two weeks, so it was a bit like a paid vacation!

While I was teaching during the day, Wendy made contact with a fellow folklorist in the local university, explored the town, fed the many stray dogs, and found the Pinot Noir from Prahova Valley in a local supermarket, which we loved—both wine and market. Along the way she began to make contacts for a visit she wanted to make in the future, connecting Scottish young musicians, dancers, and storytellers with their Roma counterparts.

During this time we had become friendly enough with some people to be invited to their homes – mostly small apartments in high-rise, Soviet-era blocks with extended families crammed in. We also discovered that most folk worked at least two jobs and sometimes three just to survive. We were frequently embarrassed by our relative wealth!

Wendy especially befriended two schoolteachers who would later host her storytelling club kids, and they were crammed into a studio apartment, working their day jobs as teachers and night jobs in retail.

Wendy could also join me for the lavish occasional evening meals presided over by the ex- secret-police chief, who was frightening because he was so affable. But his interpreter had been working for me all day, and he always kept her going through the evenings as well – we felt sorry for her. And maybe she didn’t find him quite so affable…

Wendy visited the famous clock museum, and we were able to make a trip to the even more famous ‘Dracula’s Castle’…

…where we discovered that you could buy wine called Dracula’s blood – made in California!

We also bonded with the young girl working for the hotel, serving breakfasts before school began. We invited her to visit us and discovered that her ability to get a passport was hampered by economics. Thinking we could help, we discovered that kids from Roma communities had to pay astronomical sums just to apply, and were often denied visas.

We enjoyed Romania overall, while aware of its many injustices, and became aware that the population hankered to be seen as west Europeans. Bucharest is often referred to as ‘the Paris of the east.’

Wendy was able to re-connect and take her group of young folk with help from the EU and the British Council to spend time with the Roma kids in the north east of the country, comparing their different but related cultures. She went back to the hotel on a quick visit, but the young lassie was no longer employed, and she couldn’t find anyone to tell her in English if she had ever made it to Europe or simply quit.

Much later when we had opened our bookstore in Big Stone Gap, Virginia, we hosted ‘international nights,’ and one was presented by a friend who was a Romanian immigrant. He had been present when the Ceaușescu reign came to an end, and Wendy and I had our knowledge of the country expanded by his stories. We always wondered how the secret police chief managed to get to be the head of a large, newly private company – – –

Maybe our lasting memory is that Romania loves gypsy fiddlers and their music but treats their Roma folk very badly – the same people who play their fiddles. We remember the kids sneaking into the yard outside our hotel to get water from the outside faucet. And the sweetness of the music. Life is complicated.