The Shed That Fed a Million Children

by Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow

  We had chosen the ten healthiest children to take out of the hospital first – believing they would be likely to benefit most from their new home, which we had now decided to call Iona House after the famous Hebridean island of that name in our part of Scotland. Over the course of two days, the wide-eyed frightened children were driven carefully by Ibi and her staff from the hospital to their new home. The first few days were full of surprises and challenges for the new carers in the home. Most of the children did not know how to use knives and forks; nor were they used to sitting at a table to eat. Some were terrified and wanted to run away. Many of the children ate until they were sick as they had never had more than enough food put in front of them before. All of our advisors with expertise in HIV/AIDS made clear the importance of correct diet, and so from the outset we wanted to make sure we were able to serve these children very good and appropriate food. Most began to put on weight very quickly. The carers immediately began helping some of the children to learn to walk properly. Part of the garden had become a little play park and, for most, exploring outside was a huge new thrill. After the initial trauma of the move was past and we felt the children were ready, we decided it was time for an ‘opening day celebration’.

  On the morning of the party – their first ever – I spent time with the children picking apples and hazelnuts from the trees behind the house. Laci, a tough ten-year-old, giggled as he played with the puppies. It was a time of wonder and awe and I will never forget it. Mandra, for the first time in her life, wore a dress. Carla laughed at her and said she looked funny, while everyone else said she looked beautiful, which she did. Vasile spent that afternoon painting a picture of birds, rivers, mountains and trees, with paints recently arrived from Scotland. ‘I have a very good imagination,’ he explained to me when I complimented him on it. At sixteen years of age, he was a bit older than the rest of the children and had come to us via the local authorities rather than the hospital. He told me his story. His alcoholic father had abandoned him in a railway station when he was three years old. Since then he had lived in various orphanages until becoming ill and spending a long time in hospital. One day, a doctor who had been examining him left the room, saying he would be back a few minutes later. When after an hour no one had returned, Vasile decided to look at the doctor’s notes which were spread on the desk. That is when he learnt he was HIV-positive.

  ‘I hugged myself for a long time,’ he said quietly, looking at the ground.

  He explained that some time after that, when he was feeling suicidal, he was invited by some kind people to a Christian summer camp. ‘I loved it. After that I began praying every day that God would give me a family,’ he said, smiling. ‘But until now I could not imagine how God could ever answer that.’

  In the evening we had a barbecue in front of the house. The children crowded round, eyes wide with delight at this strange drama of outdoor cooking and laughing as the smoke chased us in the breeze. As the setting sun began to glow orange through the fruit trees, we sat down together to chew on succulent pork steaks, bowls of salad and chips, and we made a toast with our wine and juice. We had waited a long time for this. When we had finished the meal some of us began kicking a ball about in the fading light. Upstairs in the house one of the children opened a window and music began to float across the yard. Kristl, whose faith had led us to this day, got up and, taking Laci in her arms, began to show him how to waltz. I watched in awe as they, with big smiles on their faces, danced.

  By the time we had opened Iona House only twenty-four children were still alive in the hospital. As the ten children in Iona House began to settle in, our thoughts soon turned back to the fourteen still left in the hospital. We decided to build a second large house in the grounds of our existing one if we could find the money to do so. Around this time someone introduced me to Duncan Bannatyne, a well-known Scottish entrepreneur, whose public image was one of a gruff, hard, self-made man. I met with him for lunch in a restaurant near his home and, over our fish and chips, told him about our work in Romania and our desire to open a second home. He had been to Romania before and was extremely interested in what we are doing. Only an hour after having first met me he said he would give us all the money we needed to build the home and that he would like to come out with me for its opening the following year. He told me the date by when he expected it to be finished and left me with no doubt that I should ensure it was indeed complete by then. Luckily, we managed to stick to the timetable and in early 2001 Duncan and I travelled to Targu Mures. We were accompanied by Sister Martha, a young nun in white habit, who I had recently come to know. I had invited her to visit with us as she had huge expertise in the care of children with special needs and we were looking for help and advice. We made an unlikely group. Duncan, who I had already discovered had a huge and tender heart beneath his gruff, ‘hard-man’ exterior, was fascinated by the peace that this beautiful young lady, who had taken vows of chastity, poverty and obedience, exuded. Duncan quizzed her to try and discover why she had chosen this path and why she, who had nothing in the eyes of the world, was so obviously full of joy. We had some lively discussions about the meaning of life and in response to Duncan’s questioning she promised she would pray for him every day. The highlight of this visit was the official opening of Bannatyne House, which had allowed us to take a further ten children from the hospital. This brand-new house was to become the girls’ home, while Iona House would now be for the boys. Some of this group were much more seriously ill and disabled than the first group. Another celebration with all of the kids – there were now twenty of them – took place in our garden. Duncan, whom the kids loved, told us it was one of the happiest days of his life. After our lunch we sat outside and talked while the kids played around us. I noticed at one point that Duncan had disappeared for some time behind the house and when he returned he looked as if he had been crying. He seemed to be struggling for words. He told us he had just had an experience of God.

  ‘God wanted me to become like you lot,’ he said, trying to smile. ‘God gave me a choice. I decided no, and then He left me. But I can’t do it – I can’t give it all up.’

  ‘But God doesn’t want to take things away from you, Duncan,’ Ibi said to him gently. ‘He wants to give you something.’

  Duncan remains a good friend of mine and has given me and our work huge support over the years. In his autobiography Anyone Can Do It, he describes this encounter with God and I find his frank account of this experience disarmingly honest and humble, and I pray that one day he will find a way to accept that gift.

  Duncan’s generosity and the opening of Bannatyne House meant that now only four very sick children were left in that ward. So we set about raising money to buy a small house adjacent to our property that we could convert into a suitable home. During the course of completing this third home I visited the hospital again. One of the girls, Juliana, was continually banging her head, which was matted with blood, against the bars of her cot, while her skinny arms were twisted into the metal springs beneath her mattress. Her face was expressionless and she seemed oblivious to everything around her. I felt a surge of anger. How could the staff see her like that and not even do something to pad the cot or protect her head from the iron bars? The doctor in the ward, who seemed unable to see any worth in these children at all, and who was mystified why we were going to such great lengths to provide homes for them, pointed at Juliana.

  ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I have no idea why you are creating another home. She will certainly be dead before you even open it.’

  When I came back a few months later and for the first time visited our third home, Rosie’s House (named after one of the little girls who died in the hospital), I was met at the front door by Juliana, who was being supported by Ana Maria, a member of staff who had devoted hour upon hour to her care and was teaching her to walk. Juliana looked so different. Her hair was growing in and her head wounds had healed. She had already gained 5lbs in weight. She took my hand and began
to show me around her home. She was particularly eager to show me her beautiful, colourful bedroom. On her bed was a cluster of cuddly toys; her toys. That room in the hospital now lay empty.

  The running of these three homes was a daunting task for Ibi and her team. The children had a multitude of pressing medical and emotional needs. We had to build a network of experts around the core team of carers; doctors, physiotherapists, counsellors, psychiatrists, pastors and nuns were all involved. For the first time the children were able to benefit from anti-retroviral drugs and appropriate nutrition. As if this enormously demanding project was not enough, Kristl and Ibi felt compelled to do more for other suffering children in Targu Mures – especially those at risk of being abandoned. Working with the local authorities, they also began to support families caring at home for children who were HIV-positive. They also continued to develop their work in a notorious Roma community on the edge of the town called Hill Street. Twice a week we would trundle up a steep dirt track, lined by hovels, some constructed only of various pieces of plastic thrown over rough branches (a hopeless defence for the snows of winter), with containers of thick soup and bread. At the sight of our van, a swarm of children, each clutching a bowl or pan, came hurtling towards the queue, already forming as we parked. The race was not strictly necessary. There was always enough for the slowest of the seventy grubby, long-haired, barefoot children who lived on the street. These children lived in a chaotic and despised community, who to a large part survived by working on the ‘Rampa’, the huge city dump on the hill behind. Here they worked long hours to salvage goods for recycling. None of the children attended school. They were put off from doing so by the hostility towards their community from other parents, teachers and children, a lack of presentable clothing to wear and the fact that their parents often felt that their help on the rubbish dump was a more pressing priority than going to school. As we spent time with the people of Hill Street, we began to realize that nothing would really change there unless the children had an opportunity to gain an education. Eventually, we built a small kindergarten for the younger children and made a rule that only the children who attended for the day, and thus began to get used to a daily routine of learning, would receive a meal. And because of the promise of that meal their parents sent them, for the first time, to a place of formal education.

  Meanwhile, over the next few years, the lives of many of the children in our homes began to change more dramatically, and certainly much more beautifully, than we could ever have expected. A combination of medicine, nutrition, hugs, love and prayers produced miraculous results. As many of the children grew marvellously into teenagers and then young adulthood, we slowly realized it was not, after all, a hospice we had opened. But during those years since we took them from the hospital seven of the children have died.

  After two years in Iona House, Claudiu was the first child we lost, quite suddenly. He was a boy with learning difficulties and a happy disposition. The other children, who had been used to seeing their friends die when they lived in the hospital had, by then, almost managed to forget about death. They were devastated by Claudiu’s death. Next, it was Ioana, a beautiful, smiley girl, who never stopped moving and laughing. One week before she died she told us she had decided to give her life to Jesus.

  Then it was Attila, a hyperactive little boy with limited speech, who passed away very peacefully, the following spring. A week before he died, even though there was no medical reason to be particularly alarmed, Ibi had been overcome with a sense of foreboding and decided to celebrate his birthday early. When the other children had left the room, taking their balloons and laughter with them, he surprised Ibi by asking her to sing to him, which of course she did.

  Sany had grown from an unusually sweet little boy to a typically awkward teenager by the time he died. Big Codruta, who was blind but never stopped talking, then brave Olimpia, who had survived an operation on a tumour below her eye and who loved to play with her dolls, and finally Small Codruta, who lived in her own little world and who would only occasionally give us a glimpse of what she was thinking, all died over the next few years.

  Ibi and the other carers cherished each one almost like they were their own children and every death pierced their hearts. On each occasion they battled with their overwhelming grief and sadness while also trying to provide the other shattered children with the love and reassurance they needed. A certainty that each of those children died having experienced joy, knowing that they were precious and that they were loved, helped keep Ibi and the others going. And of course the marvels unfolding in the lives of the other children helped too.

  Most of the children we took from the hospital are now young adults. Some will always require intensive care, while others are living independent or semi-independent lives. Juliana, the girl who used to bang her head on the cot, the one that the doctor said would die before we built our home, is now a young woman. She needs lots of care but she is happy and she is certainly alive. Some of the young men are now in paid employment. Some have managed to build a relationship with their families for the first time. On one more recent visit, Laci, now a strong, stocky young man, who had recently found and visited his own family, asked if he could speak to me on my own. We found a quiet room and Ibi joined us to translate. I had always been particularly fond of Laci. He had an air of quiet reliability and faithfulness. When he was still a very small boy, I remember an occasion when Ibi had given him the task of looking after some vegetables in the garden. A few weeks later the staff found him watering the plants in the pouring rain and asked him what he was doing.

  ‘But Ibi asked me to water them every day!’ he answered.

  I noticed now, as he sat in front of me and began to speak, that the long twisted scar across his neck, chin and cheek had become more conspicuous, probably because of the refusal of his facial stubble to grow on the old wound. I am ashamed to say I expected him to ask me for help, perhaps even a request for money.

  ‘I want to thank you for taking me out of the hospital,’ Ibi translated his first words. ‘For giving me food and clothes. For giving my family food and clothes.’ He hesitated for a moment, looked at Ibi, and then went on. ‘Now I want to tell you that I have decided to go home.’ He cleared his throat as if to indicate the next statement would be the most important – the crux of the matter. ‘You see, I love my mum,’ he said, in perfect well-rehearsed English.

  This work with Ibi and the children in Romania taught me many things. It changed me. It showed me that faithful, unconditional love – the sort that I witnessed being lavished on those children unfailingly for years – can transform even the most hopeless situations. These experiences also led me to a view of what real charity looks like. The extraordinary giving of people like Mrs Duncan Jones – as well as my own parents – had planted some seeds, but these things I saw and experienced in Romania created in me a deeply rooted sense that charity, without suffering or sacrifice or even failure, is actually something else. Philanthropy perhaps? Or aid work? Maybe international development? Good things, all of them, if done well, but they are not charity. It was charity itself that attracted me and beguiled me with its beauty. It became something I wanted to learn how to practise.

  In the summer of 2010, nine years after we opened Iona House, I returned there for yet another party in the garden. This one would be the most special celebration yet; I even wore my kilt. That day three of the girls – Adela, Carla and Ilidi – wed their sweethearts. In their white dresses, they danced on the lawn with their new husbands. And long into the evening, we danced too. And each of them has since become the mother of a healthy child.

  5

  Into Africa

  Peace demands the most heroic labour and the most difficult sacrifices. It demands greater heroism than war.

  THOMAS MERTON

  Father Pat Maguire used to arrive with a roar on his very large motorbike in full leather biker’s gear. Among the regular visitors to Craig Lodge House of Prayer were many de
ar friends, but my children were always particularly excited about his appearances. Father Pat had become one of our biggest allies in the collection of donations for Bosnia-Herzegovina. His house in Dunblane had become a collection point for aid from that part of Scotland, and I would visit him frequently to load the accumulated goods from his garage into my van. After the hard work was over he would, over a cup of tea, tell me of his time as a missionary in Africa and his love of that continent. He talked a lot about the civil war in Liberia where several priests in his Order (the Society of African Missions or SMAs) were working. He explained to me that over half the population there were living in huge displaced camps around the capital Monrovia and amid them was an English priest called Father Garry Jenkins. He described the suffering and the needs of the people there, which sounded even more acute than those in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and began to ask if we might think about sending aid there too. We started looking at shipping costs and talked to Father Garry more specifically about the needs and the practicalities of moving the goods from the port to those in the camps. He was desperate for us to try it and reassured us he would oversee all of the logistics and distribution if we could just get the containers to Monrovia. And so, during 1996, we wrote up a new ‘list of needs’, this time for the displaced people of Liberia, and began to ask for help on their behalf. In addition to the food, clothes and medicine we had been sending to the former Yugoslavia, towels and soap were identified as urgently needed items for people living in extremely hot and humid conditions.

  Not far from Father Pat’s home is the world-famous hotel and golf course at Gleneagles. One of the housekeepers there, another friend of Father Pat’s, heard of this urgent need for soap. She and her colleagues then began to collect the bars of soap, until then discarded after one use by the hotel guests, and tie them in plastic bags for our collection. Over the next few years I became a regular visitor to one of the world’s most exclusive hotels, and for a while the back of my van began to smell very nice indeed. As well as soap, candles (also desperately needed in Liberia, but not required for more than one use in Gleneagles Hotel) became part of these consignments made ready for my collection. I always drove out of the beautiful grounds of that hotel smiling. There was something about transporting these sumptuous things, discarded by people of great wealth, to those living in abject poverty, that gave me great satisfaction. And although it was all done with the consent of the hotel’s manager, I managed to feel a little like Robin Hood and the Perthshire moor I drove across for a moment would become Sherwood Forest. When, some time later, we eventually wrote down our vision, part of it read, ‘that all those who have more than they need share with those who lack even the basic things’. Those kindly housekeepers in Gleneagles Hotel certainly made possible a spectacularly direct way to do that. It seemed appropriate that nearly ten years later the UK government, whose turn it was to host the G8 summit in 2005, chose Gleneagles Hotel as their venue and decided that this summit should concentrate on Climate Change and African Economic Development. Sadly, when they made those choices, they were entirely unaware of the soap and candle recycling initiatives that had been pioneered here. However, on several occasions since then, when I have attended meetings involving politicians talking about international aid and development, in order to combat feelings of dislocation and despair, I endeavour to conjure up the perfume of that soap and the mood it engendered.