As the Holiday's come to a close and the New Year begins it's
good to be reminded of more than holiday leftovers, getting back to work, and
putting away the Christmas decorations. It's never a bad time of year to pay
attention to those in need. Our photographer Lauri Laukkanen had an amazing
opportunity this year ----
Four months ago, in August 2104, the Finnish division of
Operation Christmas Child contacted me, and asked me if I would be
interested in joining them on their gift-distribution trip to Romania in
December. My family has been preparing shoeboxes for the
Operation Christmas Child-project every year for the past 5-6 years,
so the organization and their cause was already familiar to me. I was more than
happy to join them on this trip, and after making sure I could fit the trip in
my calendar, we locked the dates, and four months later I was sitting on the
plane, flying to Romania with the team
Our trip lasted ten days. We arrived in Cluj, Romania on Saturday
the 13th of December, and stayed in that part of the country for the first four
days. On Wednesday we spent about 10 hours in our van driving from Cluj to
Vaslui (the poorest county in the whole of European Union), where we spent the
remaining five days.
In Cluj we delivered gifts to local gypsy-churches, villages and
families. We were able to visit a gypsy-village called Pirita - they don't
allow visitors to enter their village so the the local church hadn’t been able
to visit them before. But they made an exception with us when we told them
about the shoebox-gifts that we would be giving out to them. This village was
one of the saddest places I’ve ever seen in my life. People living in shacks
built out of cardboard boxes and other trash. Dogs, cats, children and adults
all living together in a muddy, dirty, and wet environment. Children walking in
old dirty t-shirts, without shoes. But I’ll never forget the joy and happiness
that I saw in these children’s faces when they received
their Christmas-gifts! It was their first real Christmas gift,
ever.
The best part about this trip to me was the fact that I got to
work and connect with small children. I have always loved playing with kids,
and fooling around with these kids was one of the greatest experiences I’ve
ever had. Bringing joy to these children felt amazing, and taking photos of
them (and selfies with them) seemed to amuse the kids almost as much as getting
the shoeboxes did. :)
As a whole, the trip was pretty tough, both physically and
emotionally. We worked around 10-12 hours every day, and spent a lot of hours
commuting from one place to another, driving on some of the worst roads in the
world. Watching these people live their lives in some of the worst conditions
I’ve ever seen, was also a very tough thing to go through, emotionally
speaking. But even in these bad conditions we always saw happy children,
eagerly waiting for their gifts. And that’s what made this trip really worth it
all. :)
—
This here is one of my favorite photos from the trip - it was
taken in the village called Pirita – that muddy, dirty town. In the middle of
the crowd, I spotted this girl, patiently waiting for her gift, while people
around her were running, shouting and trying to make their way to the men
handing out the shoeboxes. For a brief moment, her eyes connected with mine,
and I smiled to her. She looked back at me and smiled a little. This was a
beautiful moment that I won’t ever forget.
Another photo that I like a lot, was also taken in Pirita. This photo tells the
viewer a lot about the life and the living-conditions of Pirita. The boy is
holding the hand of his mother, who is pregnant, waiting for another baby.
Their clothes are old and dirty. The ground is muddy. And behind them, in the
background, there are a lot of people just like them – all living in the same
poor conditions.
Each and every photo I took on that trip has a long story behind it, and it would take a hundred blog-posts to go through all the stories, but here are some of my favorite moments that I managed to capture during our trip:
No comments:
Post a Comment