Daniela Brown as a child

Daniela came back

Tuesday, January 5, 2016
Twenty-four years after leaving Romania with her adoptive family, Daniela Brown returns to her country of birth.

My time in Romania is exactly how I describe the landscape—achingly beautiful.

If it weren’t for God and technology, this experience would be even more heart wrenching. These experiences are some of the most intense of my life. God is my comforter, translator and joy maker; technology is my get-out-of-jail-free card, my connection-to-family, selfie-facilitating lifeline.

When I meet the director of the volunteer agency and sit down for a cuppa, he asks, “Why Romania?” Something in my heart unlocks and I break down and sob. I hadn’t intended to share my story but he gets the truth right there in his warm, smoky office.

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I was born in a political Romanian jail to a woman labelled a prostitute. At the age of three, I was adopted out of the orphanage in which I’d been placed and grew up on the Hibiscus Coast in Auckland, New Zealand. My childhood was wonderful, full of carefree adventures and stubbed toes. But Romania has always been in the back of my mind. So, when God threw open the doors of opportunity, I knew it was time to go back to the country that had given me life.

Leaving New Zealand for the year was not an easy decision to make, but I came with the emotional and financial support of so many people. I launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for me to volunteer in an orphanage in Brasov for two months. After that campaign, I created pARTnership Romania, a platform that raises funds for Romanian community projects. pARTnership Romania raised an overwhelming amount of money through a benefit concert and a market photo booth—and now I find myself here.

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Daniela and Viorel Brown

Daniela Brown and her brother, Viorel Enarche, in Ploiesti, Romania.

After just 24 hours in Romania, I have learnt this nation has a lot of hurt and anger towards God. The belief that God is vindictive and unjust seems to be common here and that knowledge breaks my heart.

I volunteer in a orphanage on the outskirts of Brasov, a community that survives in stark contrast to the opulence of the city. It’s here that I get to spend the most enjoyable days, doing arty-flavoured projects. Art transcends race, gender, age, skill, and it makes for beautiful bonding moments. No matter what skill level or experience the children have, art will always be accessible. There is an instinct to colour that comes so naturally. The most precious project we create together is the birthday calendar. I take portraits of their beautiful faces. For some, this is the first time their photograph has ever been taken. This project brings out the stunning unity in the orphanage—truly a brother- and sisterhood. They put so much effort and pride into creating the art for their birthday months.

Romania, still suffering in the aftermath of the communist regime, has now closed its doors to foreign adoption agencies and many babies are left to die in hospitals simply because their families are unable to support them. The survivors end up in orphanages like this one. These incredible children. It infuriates me to know they are abandoned, blacklisted through an insane system. But in the same way, I believe God took me and called me out from the circumstances in which I was born. I have to believe He has also called them by their beautiful names. I have to.

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I don’t come to Romania with the hope that I will be reunited with my birth family, but I do come with questions.

During my first stay in Romania, I take a day trip to Bucharest with one of the other volunteers to find the orphanage in which I once lived. All I have is the photo Dad took back in 1990—no address, no phone number. We get off the train and walk.

I find myself drawn to a particular building for no apparent reason, pausing to stare through the fence posts each time we pass. We enlist the help of security guards and an antique shop owner and, using only the old photo as our compass, eventually find the spot in the photo. It’s the location to which I was first drawn, that exact place. The location is no longer an orphanage but is now the headquarters for child protection services. I leave a permanent marker—as a memento and homage to the orphans who once lived there—on the old orphanage fence.

It’s on my third trip to Romania that the unbelievable happens. I stay with the team from Love Light Romania—the organisation that is pARTnership Romania’s vision sister team—in a Roma village in Medias. Almost a year after the pARTnership funds were raised in New Zealand, they find their home here in the Albest Roma community, sponsoring food parcels to be distributed throughout the harsh winter months to children born into the cycle of poverty. For 144 children, these food parcels are the chance for a new beginning.

There’s also a surprise for me, too, a new beginning that I get to experience, just around the corner. Within my first 24 hours in the village, I receive information on my birth father. Within the first week, I discover my siblings—a brother and a sister I never knew existed. The mystery surrounding my beginnings begins slowly to unravel. I take a road trip to meet them, an experience that cannot be expressed in mere words. All three of Angelica’s children, together under one roof.

Each time I return to Romania, scales are lifted off my eyes. This time, the scales are lifted off my heart. Something on this trip tapped deeper into who I am as a Romanian, as a New Zealander, as an amalgamation. Loved, accepted, as both.

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Daniela Brown graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (Visual Communication) from Avondale College of Higher Education in 2009.