Thursday afternoon, after sleeping about 4 hours after my shift, I was already in Ploiesti, getting my new car numbers (PH 21 KLA – can anyone guess why KLA???) and lots of presents from Italy from my mom, cousin and aunt. We then headed for my grandma’s commune, Sihlea, somewhere NE from Bucharest. It was an almost 2 hours drive as we made a few stops on the way, delivering packages from Italy to acquaintances from their relatives working there.

What can I say about reactions? People looking enviously to my new car and to us in general, well I am used to that attitude of certain. The first look is revealing, it you catch it, cause then they will simply congratulate you and wish you the best in the friendliest way ever…

Then the babies come pouring: Aida, a friend of mine three years younger, that introduced her amazing son to me. She is getting married in September, and I was invited. Then words of other girls, all younger, married with children…No, I don’t get it! Most marry so quick because they get pregnant, except Aida who was with her future husband for a few years and who also had to deal with a pretty bad lung illness after having worked in Italy. For the rest, they just don’t know how cheap and safe birth control pills are…

Well everything in this village is somehow connected to Italy: people waiting news and/or stuff and/or money from Italy, people from here working in Italy, people preparing to go to work in Italy…It is not a treat but it generates money. Money for those living here, money for those working there, money for buses taking them there…

Why they choose to leave? No real options here: they can work in one of the close by villages for about 100 dollars per month, or try agriculture which is too much money spent on too bigger risks. So they choose to go to Italy…and the work there is sometimes hard, humiliating and underpaid. But it pays a few times more that it would ever pay here.

Those who stay around, well they get married and have children. Some because they are looking for a stability they have never had in what a family is concerned, like my friend Aida (divorced family, pretty messed up mom), or because they are really not able to do anything else. And if the husband also has some money, well then why not spend it!

What was life here 30 something years ago? Well, people were studying as hard as possible in school to get to college, leave the commune and have a better life. Now they can choose to pay for exams and diplomas, if they can afford it, or go to Italy to work for a better life…Easy money? Maybe. But given the humiliation, home sickness and real sicknesses caused by climate changes, you wonder, how is it still worth it? Easily, there are no better opportunities here…

Tags: Careers, Marriage, Children, Life abroad, Life in Romania, Romanian Countryside