Imagine your life changing 360 degrees right in midstream. You become someone with a very old soul. A book on an Oprah show, a circus oddity or a museum antiquity.
I remember being so strong at one time. A mother of six with a disabled epileptic child, a churchgoer, a cook, a boyscout leader, a home-school mom, a singer, and a republican. Funny, huh? These were the hats I wore, but were they ever really Kate? This was the dilemma that brought so much upheaval.
3 years down the road, a divorce, and a sudden move to Romania, I sit here on this computer with a European husband and much of that former courage lying dormant. My initial awakening is now cooled and again I am trying to reinvent myself. Who am I really? How do I hold on to it? How do I express it?
This blog is the beginning. Welcome to a wild ride at the Chronicles of Kate!
gentledove said,
May 9, 2008 at 8:07 pm
I read your blog with a great deal of interest Katlin
Shelly Roberts said,
September 10, 2008 at 5:30 am
There is another Romania, Kate. And I’m sorry that you didn’t get to see it. This is my second “tour of duty” in Bucharest and how things have changed in the four short years between my stints.
There is almost hope in the cities now. Where before the young people in the city often had three jobs, and so did all their siblings, now the personal income taxes are a more manageable 16% instead of the brutal 50%, and people are getting paid ON the books instead of under the table. There are jobs from multi-nationals looking for the last remaining profitable markets, and Romania is the largest of the post-socialist countries, there for the biggest Proctor & Gamble/Coca Cola opportunities. And then there’s EU money, which has mostly torn up all the streets, but it’s for repair, not out of old age and crumbling cobblestones.
Though they won’t admit it, there is almost optimism here now. It goes against a long tradition of people being helpless to the state or the conquerers who came, for hundreds of years before that, to this advantageous takeover opportunity.
No one exactly tells the truth in the cities as well as the countryside because that could get you or your family members killed. And because in the olden days all accomplishment belonged to the state so “who cares?” That’s no joke and makes doing business here a lot like trying to interpret the inscrutable Japanese at the bargaining table.
My first tour here was a lark. My current one is a relatively celebritory event with marked success and a handful of native friends I can trust. It’s true, I’ve never lived in the poverty of the villages. But there is a huge migration to the opportunities in the cities. It helps to be younger rather than older, of course, but the upper middle aged and early senior citizen displacement is an abhorant but predictable result of the move to an uncontrolled state with its resultant casualties. Still, there is strong family connection here, and the city-zens I know feel a strong responsibility for their left-behinds. And there is also great respect for the people who are managing in “de Tara” (the countryside) .
I’m sorry you had to leave and miss the happier ending. Will it ever be perfect? Will I ever get to satisfy my own particular longing for Skippy peanut butter and Kellogg’s Cornflakes. Unlikely. And do I secretly thank any appropriate dieties that I carry a blue passport, even in these exasperating political times? You betcha.
But I just didn’t want to leave all your readers thinking that Romania is only filled with Gypsies, horse thieves, internet bank fraud specialists and the destitute. Every country has some of these. And Romania has a long way to come up to EU or the world’s standards. That’s the bad news. But the good news is that from what I can see from here, they’re doing it. And it’s working.
GRACIELA said,
December 28, 2008 at 1:34 pm
I appreciated too much all your words. They helped me a lot to know and understand the social and economic situation in Romania. Iam very interested in the mentioned country, as I had no much idea about nowadays facts. I have to recognized that I specially liked your lasts few lines as they are full of hope, and by them you really showed us, the readers, that a better future is possible … although, i am really sure, that a vast range of people don´t share your way of thinking. “…And Romania has a long way to come up to EU or the world’s standards. That’s the bad news. But the good news is that from what I can see from here, they’re doing it. And it’s working…”
REALLY ADMIRABLE…
Susanne said,
December 30, 2008 at 12:38 am
Indeed, Shelly Roberts