The Shed That Fed a Million Children

by Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow

  ‘At the AIDS hospital where I work, we lost nine children over Christmas,’ she had written. ‘The rest are dying from AIDS-related illnesses or starvation. The situation is serious. The stronger children steal from and prey on the weaker ones and with two nurses for forty children, the smaller weaker ones are eventually starving. PLEASE help us.’

  By now we were beginning to receive many requests for help, but there was something about the tone of this one, a sense of sincere desperation, that moved us to act. Already our first truckload of food, clothing, toys and medicine was on its way to Targu Mures, and now I was here to learn more about the situation and what we might do to help.

  When I walked, shivering, from Targu Mures railway station, early the next morning, I was relieved to be met by Kristl, a small pretty lady, with bobbed dark hair and a big smile that never left her face for long. We made our way to a nearby cafe and over a badly needed hot drink she told me her story. She had first visited Romania as a tourist, been injured in a car crash and ended up spending a short time in a local hospital, before being flown back to the USA. While she was recovering fully back home, she could not stop thinking about the abandoned children she had met in the hospital wards in Romania and she decided that when she was well she would return to do whatever she could to help. After coming back to live in Targu Mures, she began visiting the hospitals and slowly a small group of Romanian friends joined her.

  Kristl explained to me that during the 1980s and early 1990s, thousands of Romanian children had been infected with the HIV virus during basic hospital procedures. Contaminated syringes, vaccines and blood had passed on the disease and resulted in Romania having the highest incidence of paediatric HIV cases in Europe. The fact that the majority of the children infected this way seemed to be Roma (Gypsy) – a marginalized and often discriminated against ethnic group – led to various conspiracy theories. Whatever the reasons for the contamination, all over Romania thousands of HIV-positive children who had contracted the disease during that era were living in hospitals – often abandoned by parents who had been encouraged by the authorities to do so. There were currently over 100,000 children living in institutions in Romania. The last communist leader there, the infamous Nicolae Ceausescu, who had ruled Romania for twenty-five years, had been overthrown only nine years previously. Along with his wife Elena, he had been captured, condemned to death and shot by firing squad. But the odious legacies of his rule were still horribly evident, perhaps most especially in the thousands of orphanages, hospitals and city streets where children who had never known the love of their families endured broken lives.

  Kristl, and her dedicated band of helpers, now visited some hospital wards in Targu Mures on a regular basis to spend time with the children, trying to speak and play with them. The situation for the children in the Hospital for Infectious Diseases – the ones she had described in her email – was the most terrible they had witnessed. The abandoned children there were neglected in every sense of the word. All of them faced the rest of their lives there and every week children were dying all alone in their cots. There was growing tension, even animosity, between the paid staff and these volunteers who were seen as being critical simply because their attitude to these rejected children was in such contrast to that of the nurses and doctors. The words poured out of Kristl as if she had been eager to tell the whole story to someone. Even amid this grim report a sparkling humour was evident. She was amused by her own everyday mistakes in this foreign land where she was working hard to learn the language and culture.

  ‘This morning when I got to my car I realized I had parked it very badly last night, trapping one of my neighbours’ cars. There was note on my windscreen,’ she laughed. ‘It just said Cretina. I can’t stop laughing about it. I’ll need to find the neighbour tonight and apologize.’

  I was struck by her bravery and strength of spirit, but especially by her very evident faith in Jesus. She had been raised a Baptist and even during those first conversations, we began to discuss our different Christian traditions and discovered that we held in common a love for the writings of C. S. Lewis.

  By the time I had drained my second coffee and swallowed the last bite of my chunky salami sandwich, I had learnt a lot about Romania and the particular situation Kristl and her friends were working in. Her comprehensive briefing complete, Kristl suggested that we head immediately to the Hospital for Infectious Diseases. We climbed in her old, battered car, where the sight of the crumpled ‘CRETINA’ note she had left on her dashboard prompted peals of laughter again, and we drove through some pleasant tree-lined streets, before she parked outside an inconspicuous brick building, not immediately recognizable as a hospital. We walked through the front door and made our way along dim corridors, without seeing a single member of staff. Kristl, by now, had stopped laughing.

  I will never forget the overwhelming stench of faeces and infection, or the silence when we entered the ‘ward’. In a cold, gloomy, bare room were long rows of cots, each one containing a child. Emaciated and dressed in torn, stained pyjamas, most were rocking rhythmically back and forth. From time to time the silence was broken by a moan or shriek. One girl began to bang her already bleeding head repeatedly against the bars of her cot, shrieking as she did so. Many of them had grotesquely swollen heads. Their faces looked wizened, almost like old people’s heads on children’s bodies. Some had limbs that seemed to stick out at impossible angles from their bodies. Their hair had been cropped short and I could not tell girls from boys. Most had scabs and sores and what looked like scabies. At first they seemed oblivious to us, but as we approached them some began to push their stick-thin arms out to us between the metal bars. Accepting the invitation, we lifted them and held them. They hugged like limpets, even when we tried to prise arms and legs off so as to pick up the next child now reaching out for a hug. Some gave me unexpected, beautiful little smiles. As the shock wore off (even Kristl’s briefing had not prepared me for this), I began to think I should take some photographs. Already I knew I desperately wanted to do something to help these children and realized that in order to persuade others to help us, we would need evidence that this was really happening. I fumbled in my bag for my camera and Kristl continued talking to the children as I began taking some pictures. She knew many of their names. She explained to me that some of them were unable to walk, at nine or ten years old, simply because no one had ever lifted them from their cots for long enough for them to learn. There were forty chronically sick children here and only two nurses on duty at any one point to care for them. It seemed that most had long ago given up trying to do so.

  Then a nurse entered the room for the first time. She looked unhappy to see us and her frown deepened when she saw my camera. She told Kristl (who already spoke pretty good Romanian) that she wanted us to speak to the director of the hospital and led us through some corridors to a small office. The director, a bespectacled, middle-aged woman with badly dyed orange hair, gave us a short lecture. She asked us to leave and left us with the impression that Kristl and her friends might not be allowed back.

  I felt distraught that I might have made things even worse, but back at her apartment Kristl and her friends, who had gathered to discuss a way forward, tried to reassure me. Over coffee and cake, they explained this was not the first time they had been asked to leave and that their relationship with the staff had already broken down. They explained how even the toys, pyjamas and soap they had recently taken to the hospital for the children were going missing, presumably stolen by the staff.

  ‘Thank you for the gifts you send them from Scotland, but as long as those kids are in that hospital we cannot really change their lives,’ they told me.

  Later that evening I walked back to the hospital on my own. For a very long time I stood outside the grubby brick walls and I prayed. I asked God to have mercy on those children. ‘Please, Lord, give them a new life. Let them experience love. Show us what to do. Please, Lord.’

  The next day I talked to Kr
istl about the idea of us creating a decent loving home for at least some of these children – perhaps a kind of children’s hospice where they might receive care and love during their short lives. She told me that she had been thinking and praying about the same thing, but explained there were many huge obstacles that would have to be overcome. The hospital authorities didn’t necessarily want the children to leave as they received funding from the government to keep them. Most Romanians knew little about HIV/AIDS but had a great fear and prejudice about this disease and so there would probably be strong local opposition to opening such a home. Qualified, caring staff might be hard to find too – although the amazing local volunteers and friends from Kristl’s church were perhaps good places to start looking. Then, of course, there was the small matter of finding the funds to open and run such a home, and the fact that neither of us had done anything like this before. Despite the realization that the odds were firmly stacked against us, a dream was born that day and, in retrospect, I am grateful that we were so naive about the scale of the problems and obstacles we would face.

  I began to travel to Targu Mures frequently. It was a town I grew to like very much with its Austrian-Hungarian architecture and beautiful town square that was closed to traffic on Sundays. In the evenings, if all my meetings were finished, I would visit some of the many churches there. Much of the large Hungarian population in the town was Catholic and so, most days, I could attend Mass in one of several of their churches, but often I would also visit the beautiful and huge Orthodox church, where I was struck by the beauty of their singing and their wonderful icons. Some Sunday mornings, after Mass I would also go to the ‘church’ Kristl attended, which took place in a meeting room in a hotel, and which featured a lot of guitar and piano-led praise music. Members of the small congregation were demonstrative and passionate in their prayer and songs of praise. I started getting to know a number of Kristl’s close friends here. Among them were Gusti and his wife Ibi, whose two gifted teenage boys led much of the singing in the church. One day, over dinner at their home, Ibi told me how she had been brought up by communist parents and knew nothing of Christianity. When she was a young child she became sick and eventually was diagnosed with cancer. She ended up in the same hospital where the abandoned children now lived. When she was there she had a mystical experience during which she met Jesus. She left hospital completely healed of cancer and with a burning Christian faith that never left her. I was happy to find myself among these people who believed in miracles and who unfailingly exhibited an attitude of great faith and hope. Together we began looking at different properties that might be suitable for our children’s home. Meanwhile, back in Scotland, I began telling others about the suffering of the children in the hospital and our need to raise funds to open a home for them. Just as our fund-raising for this project was beginning, a great-uncle of mine, Nigel Bruce, died. I hardly knew him, having only met him three or four times in my life, and so I was shocked to discover that he had left me a sum of money in his will. The lawyers sent me a note in which Nigel had written, ‘I know Magnus will know what to do with the money.’ The amount he left was very similar to the amount that we had estimated as a minimum requirement to buy and set up a home. Great-Uncle Nigel was right, I certainly did know what to do with his extraordinary gift. Once again, it seemed as if everything we ever needed was being given to us. Meanwhile, many generous supporters responded to our specific appeal to meet the running costs of the home. For the first time we had invited people to set up monthly donations so we could be confident about budgeting and we were amazed by how many began pledging regular amounts to us. However, fund-raising for this project turned out to be the easiest bit.

  After some weeks searching, during which we visited all kinds of properties in and around Targu Mures, we found what appeared to be the perfect place. It was a large, two-storey house, set amid cornfields on the edge of a small market town, thirty minutes’ drive from Targu Mures. The second time I visited it I was accompanied by my sister, Ruth, who was by now working with me and helping with a multitude of growing tasks. Being a gifted writer, she was beginning to take the lead on developing our style of communications with donors, including the production of our first newsletters. We would laugh about this, remembering how as children we played at producing our own little newspaper. We called it Craig Lodge News. It was properly laid out in columns with news stories, drawn pictures, adverts and even a letters’ page. It was nice now, as adults, to be producing ‘newspapers’ that we hoped people might actually read! At this stage we had no exact division of roles, or job descriptions, and Ruth was supporting me with whatever needed doing. So we stayed a couple of nights in the house, among the rolling fields, trying to learn more about the local community. At breakfast time a fierce housekeeper would slam on the table a jar of pickled vegetables, a chunk of white bread and a bottle of vodka, while Ruth and I tried not to laugh. I never did manage to acquire a liking for pickles at breakfast.

  Along with Kristl and our Romanian collaborators, we had discussions with various local authorities. We met the mayor of the town and explained what we wanted to do with the house. We asked for his approval and were delighted when he agreed to give it. He signed various necessary documents, stating his support for the opening of a home for abandoned children who were HIV-positive. We went ahead and bought the house. Two weeks later the mayor contacted us and told us there was huge anger in the town about our project and that he had even received death threats from people because he was supporting us. The people were terrified at the idea of children with AIDS coming into their town. He told us he was now withdrawing his support. After some fruitless attempts at entering into dialogue with him, and those in this community who were opposed to the plan, we realized it was pointless to persevere. Time for the children in the hospital was too short. We set about reselling the house while beginning to look for an alternative. Gusti, who himself ran a children’s home for an American church group, told me that they now had a property in Targu Mures for sale. I went to see it and found a well-built spacious house, in a quiet part of the city with large grounds. By now we realized that our best chance, given the strength of local feelings, was to open the home in the city rather than in a smaller community. This house was perfect for our needs but the asking price was far too much for us.

  ‘Are you interested in buying it?’ asked John, the American owner, immediately my tour of the house was completed. He was in his sixties, very spritely with bright eyes and a disarming direct style of communication.

  ‘I certainly am,’ I replied, ‘but we don’t have enough money. Even if we sell the other house soon, it is not worth as much as this one and so we will need to find more funding from somewhere else. I am sure we can do that but I don’t know how long it will take.’

  He asked me to tell him more about the project we had planned. When I had finished speaking there was a long silence.

  ‘I believe this is a work of God,’ he said firmly. ‘I would be happy for you to pay what you have now and then just pay off the rest when you have it.’

  He asked for no written contract, no specific timetable of payments and no interest payments. I was dumbfounded. We went ahead and bought the house based on this incredible offer. Suddenly things began to accelerate. The next major hurdle was the massive amount of paperwork required to obtain various permissions by local government and to officially take these children into our care. In some cases, and quite rightly, despite the fact most had not been in contact with their children for many years, we had to obtain the signatures of parents, giving permission for the children to be moved from the hospital to the new home. Armed with a list of names and addresses, Kristl and her new English fiancé, Matt, set off to find these people. After hundreds of miles driven on pot-holed roads, dirt tracks and endless searches in country villages, derelict farms and city slums, all of the necessary signatures were captured. The opportunity was taken also to invite the parents to visit their children whenever th
ey could.

  Meanwhile, perhaps the most important part of all was developing nicely; an amazing team of loving Romanian staff were being recruited. Many of them were those who had initially been helping Kristl visit children in hospitals, initially as volunteers. They were people who wanted to do this because they had it in their hearts to help these children, rather than an interest in personal gain. But we still needed someone who could lead the whole project and I had talked with Ibi about this. She was someone I admired hugely, but she was also an accountant with a good, relatively well-paid job in local government. While she felt very drawn to helping these children, she decided she could not give up her career at this time. I did not have long to feel disappointed before her quietly spoken, earnest husband Gusti, who already had experience running a children’s home, said he would love to come and work with us in that role. Having agreed details with Gusti on the final evening of one particular visit, I flew back to Scotland happy that at last everything seemed to be falling into place. Almost as soon as I arrived home, Ibi called me to say that just after I left them Gusti had become seriously ill. Over the next few weeks it transpired that he had had a stroke and would be unlikely to ever recover enough to work again. A short time later, despite the fact her own world had been turned upside down and she was now having to support her two teenage boys, as well as her sick husband, Ibi called me again to say she felt God wanted her to give up her government job in order to run the home. She wanted to make sure those children would be loved. And to that task she has been devoted ever since.