Following the Call: To Romania with Love

     Look at my baby boy - isn't he cute?" Christine Tinberg motions to the photograph on her desk of tiny Florin, who peers through the bars of his crib, all brown eyes, olive skin and a shock of dark hair. Tinberg, a blond-haired, blue-eyed energetic woman, looks wistful as she reflects on the two months she spent caring for Florin and hundreds of his fellow Romanian orphans.

     She had hardly heard of the impoverished country and couldn't pick it out on a map. What she wanted to do was to compete in the bicycling season and fulfill a lifelong dream.

     Tinberg, a Pepperdine physical education instructor, had raced across the West in summer 1998 for the first time, and she looked forward to giving it another shot.

     After all, she knew no one in Romania, she had no traveling companion, no organizational support, and she
didn't know the language.

     Though she liked children, common sense would have told her to stay home.

     The world first learned of Romania's thousands of forgotten children in the early 1990s, after the 1989 execution of communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. Early reports about the orphanages broadcast by 60 Minutes and 20/20 shocked the world: images of rows upon rows of rusty cribs, the wards tied down with their legs strapped to their chests.

     Many ill and all severely malnourished, the children languished, neither developing speech nor mobility skills. They and their accommodations were filthy, and their attendents were too few and uncaring to be of help. The orphans were viewed as social outcasts, not worth spending money or time on. The reports spurred international outrage and relief efforts.

                                             * * *

     It was August 1998, and Tinberg, 32, found herself in a tiny church in Colorado during a biking trip. That morning the church had a guest speaker who had just returned from Romania. He showed pictures of a massive number of babies, unattended in their cribs, diapers dirty, staring at the ceiling. He told about the lack of human contact and the institutionalized setting.

     Tinberg, a 1989 Seaver College graduate, had always loved children and had a soft spot for babies. The speaker's words struck a nerve. "I just started crying, big heaving sobs," Tinberg remembers more than a year later, her big blue eyes again growing wet. "I knew there was something happening inside of me."

     Tinberg left the church to collect her thoughts and found herself alone in a ditch. She says she clearly heard a voice in her head giving her instructions on what to do with her sorrow. "I could recognize this voice as coming from an outside source," she said. "It told me, 'I did not give you such compassion and sensitivity so that you could sit around and cry, but so that you can do something. I want you to spend your free time with needy children.' "

     Tinberg took the words to heart and set out to find these needy children she was supposed to help. Perhaps she could work with underprivileged kids in Los Angeles.

                                             * * *

     When Nicolae Ceausescu took over Romania in 1965, he had a vision: he was going to single-handedly transform his agricultural nation into an industrial giant. To accomplish this, he first took over the family farms that once fed all of Romania and much of Europe, building huge factories in their place. He financed the construction with foreign loans. Knowing he needed a huge labor force, he outlawed birth control and abortion and taxed families with fewer than five children. 

     To pay back his massive foreign debts, Ceausescu exported much of Romania's remaining foodstuffs, leaving too little at home to feed the skyrocketing population. Communist policies forced the people to give their homes, farms and possessions to the state. Soon they also gave up their children, as thousands of Romanians found they could not afford to keep them.

                                             * * *

     On Tinberg's return to California, she couldn't stop thinking about the orphans. She mentioned the church service and its effect on her to a friend, who told her about a woman who had adopted a Romanian child and headed a relief organization. 

     Tinberg contacted the woman and learned that the organization, Hearts for Romania, was preparing to ship food, clothes and supplies to help the orphanages. Tinberg volunteered to collect used sporting equipment from Pepperdine's athletic department. While gathering balls, bats and rackets, she met several Romanians involved with athletics. One was a tennis coach, another a star swimmer.

     "I thought, 'This is weird,' " Tinberg said. "I had never heard of the country, outside of (Olympic gymnast) Nadia Comaneci, and now I had met two Romanians in the span of two weeks." 

     Hearts for Romania founder Diana Curcio invited Tinberg to come with her to visit the orphanages the following summer. Tinberg agreed to consider the idea, but dismissed it after doing Internet research.

     She was anticipating the cycling season, which starts in March and continues through August. "I wanted to go to Colorado, ride my bike, play, stay in the warm climate," she said. "What I read of Romania didn't meet
any of those interests. It wouldn't be rest but work."

                                             * * *

     An estimated 100,000 children are stranded in Romania's orphanages today, though some relief workers say it's closer to 200,000. Thousands more live on the streets.

     With millions in foreign aid pouring in, the children now get enough food, mostly soup and bread. Curcio said that studies have tied the lack of nutrition, particularly protein, to underdeveloped brain tissue.

     The babies are fed, clothed and changed like clockwork, but exist with little human contact. This causes what psychologists call attachment disorder, when the children become unable to bond with others, which can lead to severe behavioral problems.

     The orphans attend public schools, but social prejudice and lack of parental attention ruin many of their chances for quality education. When they turn 18 they are handed their walking papers, despite a lack of
education, money and job prospects. The stigma surrounding the orphans keeps many from gaining employment.

     Curcio said that a good number end up homeless, the young women working as prostitutes and the young men living in the sewers, begging and stealing to survive.

                                             * * *

     In December 1998, Tinberg took a spill in Topanga Canyon and broke her clavicle. Doctors told her it would take eight months to heal completely, wiping out any hopes of racing. She first assumed the injury meant she couldn't travel. She began to think, though, that perhaps she suffered the injury so that she wouldn't focus so much on exercise, opening the door to extended travel. 

     But then she learned that Curcio would not be going, after all. Efforts by Tinberg and Curcio to find other groups traveling that summer were fruitless. "I thought, 'Well, I'm not going then, because I can't go by myself,' " she said. "That wouldn't be safe or wise."

 * * *

     Diana Anderson has been one of Tinberg's closest friends since the two were Pepperdine roommates in 1986. Now next-door neighbors in Topanga Canyon, Anderson served as a "prayer partner" through Tinberg's months of consideration.

     "My husband and I sat and watched her struggle with what seemed to be common sense and what seemed to be God speaking to her," Anderson said.

     One night in March, a friend of Anderson's told Tinberg about a book about a female Christian missionary who traveled alone to Hong Kong. "It addressed so much of what Christine was contemplating," said Anderson, who got the book, "Chasing the Dragon," off her bookshelf and assigned it to Tinberg to read. 

     Tinberg continued praying about the idea through the winter months, while a series of sermons at the Culver Palms Church of Christ in Culver City deeply affected her. "They seemed to be speaking exactly to every concern I was feeling," she said, adding that she now felt that God was leading her to go to Romania.

                                             * * *

     Tinberg bought her ticket on March 24, 1998. She had been in contact with missionaries and relief workers, who encouraged her to come. Curcio arranged a place for her to stay while in Craiova, where she would assist
in the orphanages. Shortly after buying the ticket she learned that the United States was bombing Yugoslavia, Romania's neighbor to the west. Still, her e-mail contacts assured her that the situation was safe.

     At this point, Tinberg was determined to go on the trip, even though her mother - now her biggest supporter - urged her to stay home.

     Tinberg picked up a Romanian phrase book and began studying.

                                             * * *

     There are four orphanages in Craoiva, Romania, an industrial city of 300,000 about three hours from Bucharest. 

One houses infants through 3-year-olds, and the others care for children 4 to 18.

     The infant facility holds 220 orphans, or more accurately, "abandoned children," according to Curcio. They lie in their cribs all day, picked up only to be changed on a five-hour cycle or fed, with their bottles propped on towels. One worker is responsible for 20 infants (in California the legal standard is one worker for every six babies).

     With no mobiles or toys to look at and only a white ceiling above, Curcio said the babies soon focus on their noses. About 20 percent end up with crossed eyes. It is eerily quiet in the baby rooms. The infants stare vacantly, having given up crying because no one ever comes.

                                             * * *

     Tinberg landed in Bucharest on April 27 and arrived in Craiova the next day. The family she had planned to stay with lived in one of the worst sections of the city, she soon discovered.

     The tiny one-bedroom, smoke-filled apartment was home to four adults, and Tinberg was to sleep in the
bedroom while the others stayed in the living room. She was supposed to pay $300 a month.

     When she went to the orphanage the next day, she made friends with three women from New Zealand who were also there to assist with the orphans. They asked Tinberg about her living situation and were appalled at her answer.

     The two-bedroom apartment the New Zealanders were sharing in a safer part of the city cost $90 a month. A fourth roommate had just moved out, so they invited a grateful Tinberg to take her place.

     Tinberg's new home was also a lot closer to the center of the city, which was important since she had no car. The orphanage for the older children was just five minutes away, and the infant orphanage was a 30-minute walk.

     She soon developed a pattern. She spent her mornings at the infant orphanage, holding the babies, feeding them and "loving on them."

     "Mainly what I did for them was what they didn't get a lot of - human touch," she said.

     In the afternoons she went to an orphanage for older children. She played games such as "Duck, Duck, Goose," which didn't require equipment. Sometimes she took a group to a nearby park, so the kids could play on grass. The orphanage yard was concrete and had bits of broken glass everywhere.

     She also arranged for two students studying physical education at the University of Craiova to help supervise, as the children could get feisty.

                                             * * *

     Returning to the United States on June 27 was difficult for Tinberg, who had come to love the orphans. One in particular, Florin, made a place in her heart.

     "It's so hard to walk out of the orphanage each day and know that my boy (Florin) will probably not get touched again until I come back," she said. "I think of him every day. I think, what are they doing now? Well,
they're laying on their backs, looking at the ceiling." 

                                             * * *

     Curcio first visited Craiova's infant orphanage in 1990, when she and husband Bruce picked up their new
daughter at seven days old. Things have changed since then, she said, because of the worldwide media attention. The children are better clothed and cleaner to prevent illness. The buildings, though deteriorating, are washed regularly, with several showing fresh coats of paint. Still, children are pushed through the system, receiving little human touch, and even less affection and love.

     "They're constantly putting money into the buildings and not into human life," Curcio laments. "It does look a lot better, but you have the hearts and souls of little children in there. What are you doing for them?" 

                                             * * *

     Tinberg is setting up her next trip to Craiova. She plans to leave shortly after finals in April and stay three months.

     Of course, that cuts right into the cycling season, and Tinberg is now healthy and able to compete.

     "It doesn't matter anymore," she said. "I had wanted to do it for years and years, but I just don't have the desire to do it anymore."

     Her fervent desire now rests with Craiova's orphans, and how she can best help them. She has been in frequent e-mail contact with the New Zealand women and with a professor at the University of Craiova. She hopes more students will help her play games with the kids. 

     Since her trip, a Christian mission organization, World Wide Youth Camps, sent Tin-berg supplies for Vacation Bible School-type activities. It also connected Tinberg to Eastern European Mission, which plans to give Tinberg 500 Romanian Bibles to distribute.

     Of course one of the things Tinberg most eagerly anticipates is holding little Florin again, and she just might get to take him back to the United States when she returns. An Idaho couple, relatives of Pepperdine sports medicine professor Dr. Laurie Nelson, is trying to adopt him and the paperwork could be completed in time for Tinberg's trip home.

     Tinberg's face lights up when talking about the possibility. She had considered adopting him herself, but realized it wasn't realistic. When she learned a few months ago from another volunteer that Florin, who was "too temperate" during the many hours she spent with him, "cries all the time," she was deeply saddened.

     Months after her trip, her eyes sometimes tear up when she talks about him. "I felt bad," she said, "as if it was my fault, that once he knew what love and attention were like, he misses it."