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My son apart
18 February 2010
Petru is 13 years old and has lived in an institution in Moldova for six years.
His father walked out on his mother when he was a baby. He’s not heard from him since. When Petru was seven, his mother was forced to place him in an institution because of her financial circumstances. She now has another son from a different father. He, too, however, does not give her any financial support.
Petru’s mother is called Angela. This is her story:
My name is Angela. I am 31 years old. I have two children.
Life is very difficult financially. We live on my gran’s pension – she lives with us as well. We don’t have enough food. We don’t have enough money to pay for heating, electricity, water. I have a big debt for this house.
I had to give up my son to the institution because I didn’t have enough money to support him. No money for clothes or for food. We didn’t even have anywhere for him to sleep in house – no bed. So he had to sleep in a relative’s house.
That’s why I had to give him to the institution. I regret very much that I had to do this. But I didn’t have the possibility of keeping him at home – and at present, I don’t have any possibilities. I would be the happiest person in the world if he comes back. I suffer very much that he is not near me.
Everything that the institution can give him, I can’t afford. I can’t offer him any of this. He used to go to school with holes in his shoes in all weathers because I couldn’t buy him any new ones. We have very little space. I would like there to be a kitchen and a room, to allow us to have space. I would like Petru to have his own bed. I would like not to live in one bed with my baby. I would like to be able to buy some sweets or fruit for the baby or for Petru, but I can’t afford them.
And I don’t have the conditions here. The toilet is outside. The water from the tap is running dry. When Petru sees the conditions, with no water, no chance to bathe, he thinks about going back to the institution.
In the future I would like all children to be next to their parents, for them never to be apart, because it is very painful.
In the present moment, though, I see no future for my kids that I can give them. When he visits his friends and he sees what they get to eat, he asks me, “Why can’t I have these things, this food?” And he understands this, so that whenever he is given a biscuit or treat at the institution, he doesn’t eat it – he brings it home.
I would like Petru to go to a usual school. I would like him to go with other children to study. To be where children can go in the morning and come home in the evening and they can get good lessons. But we don’t have this possibility.
I will be the happiest mother in the world to have my boy by my side, day and night. It’s very painful when you’re separated from your child.
