Three Sandwiches and a Pack of Chips

A recent encounter with a mother & child in Bulgaria reinforced our view of how little we knew of each country and its people, being transient travelers on a schedule. Indeed the sights and sounds on touristy circuits were a woeful way of peering into each country’s soul and problems. No tourist bureau would advertise their country’s social problems, or like Bosnia, their scarred war history. And it was typical how it was transportation trouble we got into that day that this chance encounter occurred.

In our sub-consciousness, weekdays had blended into weekends. And so we can only blame ourselves when the agent’s office in Veliko Tarnovo (Bulgaria) was closed when we tried buying sleeper train tickets on a Saturday afternoon. Scrambles abound, we opted for the only viable alternative of neck-breaking overnight bus ride.

She couldn’t speak our language, and we couldn’t speak Bulgarian too. But her hand-signs were universally unmistakable. Gesturing to her mouth in a feeding motion and pointing to the boy beside her, the mother asked for money/something to eat. Now we’ve heard stories of syndicated begging and even of women “renting” babies out to use them as “begging collateral”. So we offered her our packed dinner instead – pizza (quite tasty) leftover from lunch. The mother inspected the food, thanked us, and walked away.

But kudos to her persistence. She came repeatedly even after that (we confess that it does get annoying) so Willy took her to the nearby food kiosk and paid for her selection of three sandwiches and a pack of chips. Interestingly, she re-appeared beside us shortly and starting deliberately eating the sandwiches together with the boy, right in front of us. We wondered if that was to show us that they were bona fide hungry and appreciated the food we got them. But language did pose a big barrier as she just kept nodding and smiling when we asked and gestured numbers about the boy’s age.

Then they did something pretty heartwarming. When we boarded our bus and it stalled for 15 minutes before leaving (driver’s smoke break), they appeared beside our bus and starting waving goodbye, with the boy making a whole range of funny faces, laughing away, being swung around by his mother. For a full 15 minutes. We could only keep waving back, but not knowing where they live, where they get their next meal, or basically their life stories. Neither do we understand if there’s adequate or any social support in Bulgaria for the poor, or if these are the disadvantaged Roma people who drift around.

Spying On Your Neighbour

We hear that some of you are idle. They are not busy; they are busybodies. – 2 Thessalonians 3:11

Quite interesting how the devotional yesterday reminded me of a conversation with Simona, our apartment-mate here in Bucharest. We had been living in the ministry apartment and just 2 weeks’ back, there was a mission team of 12 pax from Idaho (USA) staying over for a week. A bunch of people in a confined space naturally entailed a higher noise level, and Simona shared with us regarding the “spying neighbour”.

This was a retiree who had lived through the communist regime where a full third of citizens were spying on the other two-thirds. Apparently you can’t even trust your own siblings and relatives. One wrong comment could get you placed on the dissident list, and God knows what would happen to you thereafter.

So our neighbour got real curious about the Idaho team and kept making a few excuses trying to enter the apartment to poke around. She then started chatting up the apartment block’s committee chairman (her good friend) and he started to take some action against these “noisy foreigners who might be a threat/nuisance to the residents” by pasting some notice on our door, and publishing a list of number of occupants per apartment at the lift landing. (Our apartment was listed as having 25 pax, as compared to the usual 2-4 pax per apartment)

Final straw came when they called the police in to gain official access into our apartment, wanting to see what’s going on. Our apartment’s owner (the missionaries whom we were volunteering for) finally got to know about the nonsense and stepped in to clarify. Pretty surreal tale of the communist hangover that still pervades parts of the society in the ex-communist bloc countries. Makes you wonder sometimes what information your neighbour (or country’s authorities) keep on you.

Camp Living Waters

After our recent 1-week stint at Camp Living Waters, we finally learnt to appreciate the toughness and tenacity of the (mostly foreign) construction workers toiling away to build up the concrete jungle that is Singapore. And I tell you my friends – handling heavy machinery is no joke. One wrong move and there goes your fingers. We also learnt much more about the plight of orphans here in Romania.


It is at this narrow strip of land 3-4 hours away from Bucharest, where kids from a state institution gather annually for summer camps run by some missionaries. Check out the website of Stepping Forward Romania for more information. The summer camps don’t run until July, so our volunteer work entailed the building of the camp’s tractor shed and slicing up logs. Not extremely fun given the moody weather that ranges from scorching hot, chilly wind to even a hailstorm that disrupted work. But admittedly, we learnt so much more about woodworks than we ever had. Enough to put together a simple birdhouse, but never ask us to build your house from scratch. We assure you won’t have a good night’s rest in it, staring at the roof.

We also managed to visit the kids at the state orphanage. It’s a terrible place for kids to grow up in – no adult role models, lack of discipline, some suffer from inadequate nutrition (literally, the look of stunted growth) and most of these abandoned children are frankly in a mess. Cami Mather from Stepping Forward Romania tells us that it’s not illegal in Romania to abandon babies/children, and that’s what many irresponsible or underaged parents do. Hospitals overflow with them, some lie in the same cot for almost a year since they got dumped there, not given names, and only getting identity papers (ie documentation) when they reach the age of 2. An awful way to grow up is an understatement.

The emotionally-deprived kids at the orphanage we visited (8-14) are desperate for hugs given to them by visitors, and while beautiful and completely heart melting, most of them don’t know how to react, play, cooperate, concentrate, or keep boundaries. As they grow into puberty, there is a difference in appearance and the neglect is actually apparent on their faces and physical bodies.

It not just a money thing, but policy factors weigh in heavily. The planning ramifications of Romania’s recent dictator Ceausescu (read more on this BBC link) and the pervasiveness of poverty, destructive beliefs, and low moral and ethical codes compound the problem. The only answer is love. Consistent, unconditional, long term love. The children don’t need that much material stuff. But like all children universally, they need love so much they can die from lack of it. Our hearts thus go out to those who work with them in love, and to those brave and selfless enough to adopt abandoned or even disabled kids. No wonder we call God’s agape love as amazing. His grace flows even as we people are a real messed-up bunch.

Pyramid Hunting

Our apologies for not blogging as much as we’d like. We’ve come to realize that our style of travelling in a general direction necessitates much last-minute sourcing of transport links and accommodation, and that sucks up time when we use a computer. That’s why we value books quite a bit – those thick ones that you can digest on long train rides, and inevitably, make our bagpacks look ridiculously big.

Based on some local advice, we headed out of Sarajevo to the little town of Visoko where some disputed pyramids lay. We’re certainly not experts in archeology. Merely curious tourists looking entirely foreign (being Asian/Chinese) in a small town where the pyramid saga seemed out of fashion, as evidenced by their incredulous looks and the bus conductor leading the chorus of laughter about 2 silly Asian tourists coming halfway round the world to see a slanty hill (we think).

The hillock looked nothing special. Just pretty pyramid-like from a distant and from satellite close-ups. Some excavations have revealed tunnel entrances and concrete-like slabs of stuff, but we’re not blogging about this. Check out this link to read more. What made our day a misadventure was how this stupid sign turned our 200m walk into a 1hr+ cruel uphill trek to the top of the pyramid only to find some obscure castle ruins and woolly sheep. But despite shivering in the wind, we were thankful how God kept the thunderclouds in the distant from pouring on us or sending us some sizzling bolts at the top.

Quite a bit of exercise we weren’t ready for, we confess. And by the time we descended and got redirected uphill again to the correct excavation site, it wasn’t so fun anymore. It’s like a slab of abandoned concrete left there by Stalin or Slobodan Milosevic when they left in a hurry. However we sought comfort in oddly witnessing a peacock displaying all its feathers near the road, and having a super nice security guard bring us through the underground tunnels connecting the pyramids, amidst a surreal landscape of grimy sheared sheep wool scattered on the grounds of abandoned factories.

Anyway please never come to Bosnia simply to visit these pyramids. It’s a beautiful yet recently wounded country that can offer so much more. We’ve also uploaded more pictures of Bosnia and Croatia on Facebook whenever we have more pictures to share, instead of stories. Please pray for us in our week ahead, as we head out to the countryside of Romania trying to be helpful in building a campsite for the orphans here.