Madre Terra in Boten, Romania

When asked to describe what projects are under way at the Mama Terra project in Boten the founder and organizer Aurel Duta replied “um… well, we have a compost pile.” Despite this I took the morning train “personal” the 1.5 hours (to cover only 50 kilometers) to Boten and missed my stop. I hopped off at the next station called “Titu” and biked back 3 kilometers along a dirt track over the wheat fields stubble to broken concrete shed by the tracks marking Boten’s stop. I biked on over the hump where the tracks crossed the road and rattling on the wavey packed dirt & rock surface kept an eye out for the current onsite volunteer, an Australian named Nathan who described himself on the phone a few minutes earlier as “looking like a peasant, with a half goatee and walking barefoot.” What I saw when I finally spotted him was a foreigner loping along and when he drew closer I saw a man with a round jaw and very bright piercing blue eyes which seemed permanently popped open so all sides of the iris stood out against the white.

We walked back together to the Mama Terra house through the village streets, Nathan greeting very few people as we went and telling that “after six months here I call this village ‘sodom and gemmorah’ – the villagers look normal enough but all they do is steal from each other and screw each other” he paused and squinting concluded “last week there was even a murder here.”

Near a spiffy white church we turned into the yard of a plain traditional housefront backed by a scrubby yard of dead vegitable plants and a small well – this was Mama Terra. “You see there are no kids here. Origionally this place was serving a sort of educational free day care function for the village but since some kids stole a few million Lei (the very inflated Romanian currency) and the police came over the child care aspect (which it appeared had been the only aspect) has been stopped.” Aurel Duta, the project organizer, seldom comes by. “He is too busy serving on the boards of several international aid and NGO groups.

All this leaves Nathan spending his days in contemplation, toughening the soles of his feet on the unpaved roads, and walking to a secluded bend in the nearby river (where a nice, fat multicolored fallen tree trunk serves as a bridge and diving board) and swimming with a beautiful but fifteen-year-old English-speaking village girl named Flori. Flori used to volunteer at the Mama Terra center when it ran the day care and is considered by Nathan and former volunteers to be the success story of the project – a local who has been enlightened through contact with foreigners. Nathan told me he and other former volunteers are conspiring to help get Flori out of this village and to a western country where her possibilies will be greater “and she wont just end up 16 and pregnant.”

I only stayed for one night and after we swam and watched the very red sun go down over the wheat fields we walked the 15 year old Flori back home to her mother and returned to one of the two village bars for a drink. Nathan drank a beer and unloaded his word hoard. I sipped my large frosty mug of orange soda and sat on one of the many broken plastic chairs set around moldy tree stups in the bar-shack’s yard, local men coming and going, being served sometimes by the shirtless enormous-bellied proprietor and sometimes by his hot-pants clad unsmiling daughter as they sat chatting at the other stumps set over the hard dirt snack-package littered landscape. Nathan continued to reflect out loud about his strange feelings about the village, Flori and life in general.

After some time the place suddenly cleared out and a reeling, shirtless thin and muscley Gypsy man appeared. He stood over us both and pointing a swaying finger in front of my face asked me in Romanian who I was. This was quickly followed by him asking if we knew who he was. Before we could answer he grabbed a man who had just walked in and threw him back out onto the street turning to us and saying he could tear any man in this village limb from limb. “ I am Mariano, the Gypsy Duke of Boten!” he shouted, one finger raised and told us about how just three days ago he had been released from serving a twelve year prison sentence for killing his wife.

The Duke kept leaving and coming back, throwing out everyone who wanted to come in the bar, standing indescisivly near Nathan (towards whom he appeared to be feeling a growing dislike) who out loud to me was contemplating unexpectedly pummling the Duke in front of the Duke’ eleven siblings standing around the doorway. Eventually Nathan listened to the hotpants waitress’s sagacity and opted to skip that last beer. During one of the Duke’s exits we slipped out towards Mama Terra with Nathan asking me as we walked about my philosophy on the world’s ills and for the first time in a long time I had to present my thoughts to another (such as they are).