Ettore Malanca

For a long time I had wanted to do a story on the children living at the North Station in Bucharest, the capital of Romania. But I could never make up my mind to go, probably because since the collapse of communism every single international media had covered the topic. Finally, in 1996, after reading a report on the dramatic increase in abandoned children (between 80 and 100,000 children live on the streets or in orphanages), I decided it was time to go.

My first contact with the children was a total disaster. For a whole week, I just couldn’t do any work. They were so used to seeing reporters that it was impossible for me to go further than the usual clichés. All of them asked me for money. Finally, Mikhail, a boy who had found a ball, asked me to come and play with him behind the train station where he hung out most of the time. So I put down my cameras and organized a football game with all the kids that were there. That is how I began my month-long journey into their wretched life. Many impoverished Romanians abandon their children, thinking that they will somehow be taken care of, as in the days of the communist Welfare State, while in fact the country is advancing full steam ahead into market capitalism. And it is the children that pay the price of this cultural gap.

Aged 7 to 14 (which is also their life expectancy), many of these street kids have fled orphanages that have virtually no amenities and often under-qualified staff. Hardened by survival in a world awash with day-to-day violence, the children are really little adults. They often act ruthlessly toward those who venture into their world. Most of the girls prostitute themselves; AIDS is rampant.

Their drugs are a poor man’s drug, a solvent that they all inhale. A lethal poison that gives them a feeling of freedom, but which eventually costs them their lives.