"I can't believe the news today. I can't close my eyes and make it go away"
Not just a rather trite reference to U2, but the actual, honest-to-God truth.
These were all genuine items of news on the lunchtime edition. Should I be scared that they are all related to death???
First up was the grizzly story of a mother and daughter were found dead in their flat. The discovery was made after...yes, you've guessed it, residents of the block of flats complained of the smell coming from their dwelling. It is thought that the daughter suffered a heart attack and the mother, who was bed-bound, subsequently died of starvation and dehydration. I put down the digestive, no longer feeling hungry.
Next was a story from my (new) home town, Buzău. Keeping on the same theme, a family stood with official documents of their relative who had been the posthumous victim of a gross administration error. This poor man had apparently been in the fridge of a morgue for TWO YEARS because his name got left off a list of some kind. There was a kind of bizarre altercation between the family and the staff of the mortuary which I didn't really understand and one woman barged inside what looked like a the concrete bunker and emerged, triumphant but shaking to confirm the man's identity. I'm not really sure of the upshot of all this was, but I was beginning to feel like I was watching some twisted misadventure in TV programming, a sort of Watchdog-cum-Romania's Worst Civil Servants. I'd certainly never seen such a strange culmination of stories on any news bulletin before. It was a far cry from the Anglia News* and its comfy sofa.
*as a little aside here, I would just like to share this investigative journalism gem from the Eastern Counties that I had the fortune to witness a few years ago. One of the top stories that evening was about the regions oldest lightbulb that had seen its light extinguished after 90 years of service. This could be "verified" by what looked like the regions oldest resident, who specifically remembered his father putting in the lightbulb (it being state-of-the-art technology back then) and was accompanied by the "testimonies" of various friends and neighbours who had taken an interest in the 40 watt bulb over the years. Shocking platitudes were bandied around, how the bulb would be "missed", a piece of the past "lost forever" and I think the old bloke even shed a tear. Report over, they returned to the studio where I expected to see the two presenters, not on the usual sofa, but inside barrels, energetically scraping the bottoms. But no, unabashed and comfortably seated they smiled inanely, inviting viewers; "If you've got an object that had lasted a really long time, FOR EXAMPLE A PEN!!!!, why not write to us as Anglia News… I bet the production team were secretly glad when Tony Martin shot that boy on his farm just to have something newsworthy happen in the region.*
So back to today's news, the next story was by far the most disturbing, not just for the information itself, but also the video footage. Inside a particularly sparsely furnished flat sat an old woman, crying as she has just lost her husband. Yet, for some reason I'm not able to understand (she's too poor, doesn't want to, no-one to help???) her husband's body is still in the flat. Zoom out to reveal the deceased on the bed behind her, wrapped in what looked an old carpet. I nearly choked on my cuppa! His face may have been pixilated but this didn't disguise the fact that it had turned blue. Underneath scrolled the all-important salacious information – this woman had slept next to the corpse for the past two nights! Cue pounding at the door as local residents demand that something is done; the old woman, resplendent in her apron, headscarf and wellington boots is angry and starts swearing, a crowd gathering on the stairwell. I check to see that this is still the news and not a Romanian Jerry Springer Show. There seems to me to be that nasty air of voyeurism; we're successful journalists and live in comfortable flats in affluent Bucharest, let's make some footage about how the other half are doing! It really brings home the huge divides there are here, and what a large number of social problems still need to addressed.
Outside the flats, a neighbour had cleared out the back of his old transit van, presumably to cart off the cadaver, whilst more people loitered outside, angling for few seconds of small-screen celebrity, where one day they could look back on the day they said "we're worried that if the dead body's going to start to smell" to the nation. Or some such.
So, in just a few minutes the news had come full circle, and we were back on the subject of decomposing flesh. At this point I phased out of trying to concentrate on what was said and just marveled at the on-screen banners – man in one year battle to prove his identity after he was apparently reported dead, children killed in house fire caused by gas leak – continued their morbid tirade of news. I reached for the remote.
If nothing else, it really has brought home to me just how different living in Romania is to anywhere I've been before.
And people think that I'm backward because I come from Norfolk! You don't know the half of it.
3 comments:
It's seems that you've been watching the five o'clock news, meaning "Stirile de la ora cinci", on ProTV. If not, there are schemes of this kind on each Romanian channel because, each must have it's share of sensational news. One of the explanations is rating. Because there are so many tv channels, the competition is tough.
Another explanation is the past. Being under the communist regime for 45 years, it's understandable. Before 1990, no news of these sort were available, even if it happened. All we could hear was about the greatest work of Nicolae Ceausescu and it's communist party. After the revolution, we wanted all and most importantly we want a western life style. Of course we can't afford it, even if we work "our eyes out" honestly, but that's a different story. So we sit in front of the tv, waiting and dreaming for it to happen. There may be some masochist trait in our spirit as Romanians and is related to knowing it all and especially about the others and using that information to hurt them(from the old saying: "Sa moara capra vecinului" - let the neighbour's goat die). But again, that's another story.
First of all welcome to Romania. Actually i currently live in your country ( i am romanian) i have been living in Wells Somerset for the past year. Ok i understand that you are one of the squeamish type.. And if the stories in the news offended you you should not watch them but that is reality it still happens whether or not they are showed on tv... And i know it is not pretty but it' s your choice if you wanna see it or not. And honestly in UK i have read the papers and learned that in your country (that you obviously portray as superior to mine) there 50 to 60 crimes( rapes,paedophiles, murders, thefts you name it) a week it just goes to show that they happen even if they show them on the news... My whole life in my own country i have not ever been attacked with all our gypsies and all but in the UK i have been attacked out of the blue by a drunken teenage girl who was with two other 2 drunken boys that attacked my boyfriend and his brother as we were just off to tesco to buy some fags... So if i was to generalise as you ate doing by seeing just two cities ( big cities = dangerous cities) maybe you should go to my home town Tulcea on the shore of the danube delta it's lovely it's quiet great clubs without manele( manele= gipsy music ) every single romanian with the least of self respect or dignity doesn't lisren to manele and by the way gypsies are not romanian they are an ethnic minority like asian or indian if they were it would be named gipsy land so please ask if you don' t know something it is highly offensive and also that guy is not a paedophile we are a really warm nation and we love children we are not afraid to hug them or go down to their level let go and be kids again... I agree that the show may seem sketchy and kitsch but... We are tryin' and we had a rough time we have learned to do somethin from nothin or how we say it. Din rahat bici...:)) So stop being so hard on us we are all people no
matter where we are from ... And oh i don' t like the fact that most people here consider that it is normal and natural for me to speak perfect english although they don' t know a word in my language or most times some of the people my age(21) didn''t even know how to spell correctly words in their own language... And the girls here drink way to much just my observations from my time here...and one last thing you can get some info on how many differnt matters we study in school and believe me we really study and maybe we seem like chuvs but you won't see a laddete in my country and we work like three times harder than anyone else for what we have so yeah maybe we seem as show offs but in reality we are just really proud of what we have accomplished( i have built a two storey house with just my brother and my parents a really beatiful house made of wood and i did this when i was 16 and what our first home before that we rented houses one after another so when my dad announced me that they are selling the house that we have just finished to leave to the uk i was devastated) si next time you talk about the superficiality of the romanians you may want to look at yourself because you mai just find out that you are maybe the superficial one for judgind too hastily( because there are plenty of poor orphans in your country and kids growing up without their dads or knocked-up teenagers or peole living on the dole and spending all their money on pot or crack i have never met a junkie till i came here and shared a house with a junkie and it has made our life a living ' ell so what i am trying to say is that you cannot descifre a country by takin a sample or by the television in that country we are not represented by the tv we are individuals please remenber that.. Thank you ... And do visit Tulcea Sulina or Constanya if you like hittin the beach in the summer:)
Interesting note from Anonymous. On the note of "manele". I listen to manele a lot: it puts me in a good mood. If you can somehow get past the fact that they mostly sing about women, money and their cousins who will come beat you up.. then manele ain't a bad genre of music! It's actually quite catchy.
Another thing, anonymous, is that I am sick of white Romanians bagging out gypsies. They may be a minority but they are stil part of the culture. Here in Australia, we have Aboriginals. They are given a hard time too because they're a minority, and they aren't considered to really be that important. It's sad.
But anyways, I was originally going to write to the author of this article, but lost my train of thought after reading anonymous's comment.
I go back to Romania from time to time and I too notice the news is really far out. WTF @ half the things that go on!? You're really gotta grow some thick skin for some of that stuff. Even stray dogs made me cry the first couple of weeks I was there.. but then I got use to it. Something i can't get use to are all the homeless children begging. A lot of their parents will beat them at the end of the day if they come home empty handed. You're often told not to give them any money because they'll just spend it on ciggarettes.. but it's really hard to refuse them when you see how miserable they are. :((
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