
Happenings on Mrs. Zamfirescu's street
As in many other cities in Romania, in the Ploieşti neighborhood of Bereasca there are problems with asphalting, garbage or snow removal. Lenuța Zamfirescu does not accept these problems as a given, but puts pressure on the authorities until things move.
by Vlad Odobescu
In the Ploieşti neighborhood of Bereasca, where Lenuța Zamfirescu has been living for 56 years, the asphalting machines entered one day, with a big mess. It could have been very good news if the streets hadn't needed sewers first. Even two or three days before, there had been a heavier rain, which had put water through people's cellars and pickled jars on top.
Mrs. Zamfirescu knew well that if the asphalt is laid, it will be long and good before someone endures to break it to break it in order to put the pipes, only when money will be found for such a thing. So he went out on the street, in front of the machines, and took the workers to the questions: "What do you want to do here?". To which the engineer accompanying the team replied serenely that he was taking the plunge. "How do you get to work? And my sewer where is it?". He also asked who pays to asphalt and then to break the asphalt, so that the things that need to be done can be done. She also replied, "Don't we pay all of us, from taxes and fees?".
The engineer seemed amused by the situation, so Lenuța Zamfirescu sat in front of the machines and said: "You do not asphalt". The neighbors were watching from over the fence the whole scene, but no one came out then to support her. She phoned the town hall and told them they could call the police to arrest her, but she didn't leave until she saw that the sewage was done first and then the asphalting, as it should be done. The machines disappeared from the street, it was a stage victory.
***
When he put himself in front of the machines in protest, Lenuța Zamfirescu did not think that this was a form of civic involvement. She hadn't inherited this revolutionary spirit from the family: she remembered that her parents would always tell her, "Be careful, mom, what do you do" and sit quietly in her place. Neither the place nor the times when he spent the first 30 years of his life — a corner of the city in a Romania stuck in communism — were gentle on the rebellious. He worked for 28 years as a statistician at the "Astra" refinery in Ploiesti and left during the period when layoffs were made. He worked for a short time in Italy, then in a flower shop in Ploieşti. Now she is retired and cares for her mother, who has been bedridden for 8 years.
He's a man who's had a hard life, and a hard life usually makes people feel small and powerless. Lenuța Zamfirescu feels, however, how a deep revolt grows in her, starting from the wrong things she sees around her, and this revolt must be put into words and actions, regardless of the consequences.
It happened to her even before 1989, "in the time of the late", when such starts could cost her freedom. She had gone to the seaside with her husband and two daughters, who were three and five years old, and returned home with two suitcases full of dirty laundry. But the water was closed and stayed like this for weeks. "And I got very angry. I made the phone call to the People's Council. I said, 'Dom'le, I want water, to wash my children and make food.'" Shortly after she hung up the phone, a black car came from the Party to her on the street. "You realize I was very scared. I was also alone at home with the kids. I was already expecting them to mattress me, I'll tell you honestly." But some gentlemen, dressed beautifully, in black suits, went into the water home on the street to see if the water was really flowing or not. "And they saw that I didn't have water. That's when the neighbors came out at the gate and they started to make noise too", recalls Mrs. Zamfirescu. Half an hour after that two full tankers came in front of the gate and the whole neighborhood came to get water.
***
After the discussion with the asphalting, Lenuța Zamfirescu spoke with her daughter, Irina, who had already been an activist for several years within ActiveWatch, in Bucharest, and told her that she had to do something to solve the situation. Irina was good at relating to the authorities and knew what buttons to press for results. So he drafted a petition, then asked his mother to go from door to door and collect signatures from all the neighbors, to ask for sewage to be put in.
"That's what I did," recalls Mrs. Zamfirescu. There were some more reluctant to give their personal data, but most of them signed. "We have collected about 500 or so signatures from the affected area; it was about four streets with about 300 or so families." About two weeks later, he filed the petition with the city hall. As a result of this approach, Mrs. Speranta came to the Bereasca neighborhood of Ploiesti. This is how he called the representative of the authorities, sent to defuse the situation. From the beginning, however, Mrs. Hope said that it could not be done. Because the area is in a valley, that the street then goes up to the end, and for the water to circulate through the pipes, you need three pumps on each street, and each pump costs one million lei.
"And I said, 'I'm not interested, it can cost two million lei. I mean, we're not part of this neighborhood? We're not part of this country?'" The taxes paid by the people of Bereasca were as high as those in the center, and in the center there were all the conditions. "I said to him, 'There's a saying to us: hope dies last. It's not going to be asphalted, you've got my word, until the sewer is put in!'"
And, indeed, after about a month or so, the teams of workers came again on Mrs. Zamfirescu's street, but this time they started sewerage. Because he showed that it is possible, in the following year he also received an award, at the Public Participation Awards Gala 2014, organized by the Resource Center for Public Participation (CeRe). On her diploma she writes: "Bereasca after Lenuța is known".
However, there are plenty of problems left in the Bereasca neighborhood: unpaved trees that touch the power wires when there is a storm; uncovered sewer holes, in which accidents sometimes happen; uncleaned streets of snow; street lights operating in broad daylight; unridied garbage with the weeks. Every time, she puts her hand on the phone and calls the city hall, and those in the offices already know her and answer her directly: "Yes, Mrs. Zamfirescu, what happened?".
She would like several of her neighbors to have the initiative and not come to her to call on their behalf. It's not like they have a file there, they just do what needs to be done: they insist until someone comes to solve it. "There are few who want to get involved. If there were one or two people in each neighborhood to crush [those in the city hall], it would be something else."
He would still go to the mayor with about ten people by his side to tell him about the neighborhood's problems. He thought about doing a civic initiative group a while ago, but caring for his bedridden mother leaves him too little free time.
***
One of the tips that Lenuța Zamfirescu gave to her girls was not to sit with their heads bowed when they do not like something, to have a backbone and to say what to say. "If you just say to the child 'shut up and listen,' 'don't do that, the police are coming,' it's not good. You need to let the child think with his head, see what is right and what is not. You just have to give him a boost, help him.' At Irina she likes that she is a warrior and determined when she fights for a better Bucharest: it means that she is doing the right thing.
He also has some advice for those who want to get involved in the life of the community and don't know how to do it. First of all, the problem he wants to solve needs to be real. Then, don't be afraid, because we're still living in times freer than three or four decades ago, and there's no one to do with them. They then have to be willing to insist, put pressure on the authorities, and when something "can't" they always ask why. And in the end, the satisfaction that you have solved something will compensate for the chopped nerves.
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