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Published: February 10th 2013
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Maramureș, the most isolated and traditional corner of Romania, has a rich cultural fabric. And the Christmas and New Year holidays bring them to the forefront. I was fortunate to experience those traditions while on a photography workshop with Davin Ellicson this past December.
I stayed with a local family in the village of Valeni. Valeni, like so much of Maramureș, is a farming community. Life is intense and physically challenging. You work hard in the fields most of the year. You grow, produce and make basically everything that you need. The only little shop in the village has only been there for a few years!
The family I stayed with had no indoor bathroom and the only heat was by leaky wood stoves in each room. The food and drink that they shared so generously all came from the farms and orchards of the village. The Christmas pig had been killed two days before my arrival. The smokehouse was adding its aroma to the air. And fresh meat with no hormones or chemical additives graced each meal. The blankets I slept under and the traditional clothes that so many people wore were all homemade.
But they had their television - and it was on in the background constantly.
In the daylight hours, the Romanian Orthodox Church was the center of life with long services that were well attended. And when not in church, there were the village pageants to attend. There the devilish spirits - draci - stood on stage side by side with Joseph and Mary, baby Jesus and the three wise men. Traditional white woolen costumes were the fashion of the day in this tightly knit community. And those close personal inter-relationships were constantly on display. Especially of interest to me was the afternoon when the entire village gathered in the main street where those same draci delivered the news of the past year - in poetry that they had written. Now my Romanian was not good enough for me to understand most of what they said, but the generally good natured laughter and moments of utter embarrassment that I witnessed were enough for me to understand that they were delivering a chronicle of some of the most intimate moments and inappropriate news about each and every member of the community - from teen to elder!
And the evenings? Well, they were given over to colinda! It started on Christmas eve when the young people of the village went door to door, singing carols while being rewarded with sweets and money. And it continued for the next several nights with the adults spending the night visiting friends and neighbors, all of whom opened their homes generously to the visitors - including foreigners like me. And no matter how much you ate and how much of the horinca, homemade plum brandy, you drank, you still had to have a bit more to be certain that you didn’t offend your generous host’s hospitality!
But there is conflict in the villages of Maramureș as well. Conflict between the traditions of rural Maramureș and an almost inevitable future. The conflict struck me early in my visit, as we hitchhiked the last seven kilometers into the village. We were picked up by one of the young men from the village. He had been out of the country, working in France. He told of how he worked 18 hour days, driving trucks 6 days a week - in order to bring prosperity back to his family in Valeni. He
drove us into the village in his beautiful new BMW and took us first to the new house that he was having built for his parents. He generously shared the fine French wines and liqueurs that he had brought back to Romania, sitting on the kitchen table right beside the traditional homemade foods that his Mother beamed over and the horinca that his father had made. As my time in the village went on, it soon became clear that almost every young person in the village was living and working out of Romania - hoping for a better life - for themselves and their families. The rich traditions that I was there to enjoy, will not long endure the temptations of the easier and more commercial life with which it competes. Especially when the young people of the village are constantly bombarded by ‘the good life’ on the television.
And to be fair, beautiful as the traditional life in Valeni is to an outsider who has options available to them in life, would it be as beautiful and alluring to me if it was my only option, if toiling in the fields year after year without modern
farm machinery was the only path open to me?
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Joan Perry (Mom)
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Very interesting.
Very interesting but a little sad. What generous beautiful people. I love the fluffy white coats the men tend to wear. I tend to think it's from animals they are raising. (?) Beautiful photos. Thank you for sharing your adventures.