Christmas Presents

The past couple of weeks have been taken up with distributing Christmas shoe boxes which were kindly donated by Blythswood Trust in Scotland. Yesterday and today we spent hours and hours finishing off parcels for all those on social security or single parent benefit in Kekech, the largest poor community in Arad with over 4000 people living there. We put all the boxes for a family into a separate bag or box and then took them to the homes.

When we arrived in Kekech the minibus was quickly surrounded by people begging us to give them something. It was so hard, we had to keep explaining that we only had parcels for those on benefits, even though we know many others are also very poor. We will be going back to give other families, but sadly there are more extremely poor than there are shoe boxes. Still, hopefully most of the poorest will receive this year.

One family we were especially glad to have gifts for is the family of this 20 year old mentally handicapped girl who has a baby and lives with her parents. We recently were able to help her mother claim a disability pension for her by paying 6 months back money for her national health contributions.

Kekech in the winter is a bleak place. The poverty is stark, especially in comparison with other areas of Arad. Most of the houses are more like shacks than proper houses although the home made wood burning stoves do make the wee houses lovely and warm inside. Most families have only one small room which serves as living room, kitchen and bedroom all in one. They have no kitchens or bathrooms, walk to the main road, in some cases several hundred metres to the pump for water and have an earth closet toilet behind the house. Life is not easy and yet people retain their humanity and are often surprising in their kindness and generosity to others - a lesson to all of us whose lives are so much easier and yet complain so much!