Update on Mandinita
About three weeks ago I blogged about one of our girls at the Beauty from Ashes Center, Mandinita. Mandinita comes from a gypsy village about an hour’s drive from Oradea. The only place she can go to high school is here in Oradea and so we accepted her at our center.
The wall of her family’s house fell down and her mother was forced to go to France to work to make enough money to fix it. Unfortunately this has meant that Mandinita has had to abandon her schooling and go back to the village to take care of her three nephews and nieces. Her elder sister’s irresponsible lives have left Mandinita and her mother with the task of raising the out-of-wedlock children instead of abandoning them to the state, as many gypsies do. An honorable decision.
We were hoping that Mandinita could at least come to Oradea one day a week in order to keep up with her school work and the home schooling we were doing with her at the center.
For about two weeks we didn’t hear too much from her. A couple of days ago she came by to get her stuff. Her mother is taking the whole family – nieces, nephews, and irresponsible sisters – to France to work.
It’s hard to know what I would do in her place. An educated gypsy is still something of a novelty. Poverty is a way of life. Practical concerns come before “luxuries” like going to school. I would want my child educated. Mandinita has finished up to the eighth grade – I think her mother considers her fairly well educated.
The bottom line is that we have lost one of our girls. Her schooling has stopped. She has been uprooted and taken to “greener” pastures in France. Mandinita does not want to go. I tried to make light of it and told her that she better know some French when she comes back.
It is situations like these that produce so many abandoned children in Romania. Around 80% come from gypsy homes. Instead of judging her mother’s decision I have decided to applaud the decision to work to take care of her own family instead of seeking the easy way out by doing what everybody else is doing – abandoning their children.
I should also mention that Mandinita’s mother goes to church. The real solution to stopping the orphan problem in Romania is the salvation of the individual.
God’s servants do not abandon their children to the state.