Interview with Ion Marcel (fragments)
A debt incurred years ago makes you uncomfortable and clouds your judgment. And as a bitter statement: any wrong steps where money is concerned snowballs into something as disastrous as losing your home.
I was born on November 22nd, 1971, in Bucharest. My father was a local, my mother was from Sibiu, I’m half-Transylvanian. Since 2001 I’ve been working as a teacher, because the factories where I used to work… the factories are closed or demolished and abandoned or turned into new blocks or flats. SC Danubiana was the first factory I ever worked in, as a chemical engineer. I have a bachelor’s degree in Organic Chemistry, I can teach chemistry, math, physics, as a substitute of course. I think you have to have a calling for teaching.
Photo: Bogdan Rusu
So, I worked as an engineer at Danubiana in 1998 and 99. I did my internship, as it were, until the summer of 1999. Then I worked for Sintofarm, where I was actually in my field, I started taking on responsibilities there. I also worked for SC Chimopar, even before I graduated, as a chemical operator. I did the low-brow labor as well – I cleaned, I carried stuff, the works. So I know what rough work is like. I worked for SC Sin until 2001, when I was laid off, because factories were going from bad to worse, they were being shut down and sold piece by piece. They would then put the land out for sale. That was my last job as an engineer, from 2001 I started teaching. I was unemployed, with my application still at the Board of Education of Sector 1 in Bucharest. My file had been there since 1998, when I graduated, just in case the factory jobs didn’t work out. So I started teaching high-school chemistry at a private high-school, I couldn’t get a job in a state school, it was really hard, you had to know the right people. My salary as an engineer had been twice the unemployment benefits, but it was still low. Now I don’t think you can make aliving off of unemployment benefits, the cost of living is so expensive. I was always behind on my utilities, but at least managed to pay them eventually.
In the fall of 2001, I got a job as a teacher for the Alexandra Cultural Foundation, where they had a high-school and a 3-year college, where I also met my second wife, who had graduated library studies there. But you know how it is with kids and parents. My mother didn’t really like my first wife, until she kicked her out of the house. My wife hadn’t been on her best behavior, either, what can I say…Then I lived with my in-laws, but eventually we got divorced. There were no issues with my second wife, except this time her parents didn’t want me at all, even though I hadn’t given them a reason to dislike me. It ended in divorce once again, after one and a half years. I was disappointed, but I filed for divorce and moved on.
In 2005, after some tests, my mother was diagnosed with cancer. In spring, lacking any other means, I contracted a loan for 6000 euro. I used a notary public, but there were no banks involved, I borrowed from someone. Not loan-sharks, just a regular, legal contract. I had to, for my mother’s tests, medication, radiotherapy. Some of these are free of charge, but if you wait for these…the appointments take long and they’re always running out of supplies, like cobalt isotopes. You have to go to the private hospitals so you can get swift and proper treatment. I had to pay back 8000 euro for the 6000 I borrowed. All of it had been spent on medication and in 2008, my mother still died. Later, one of my father’s cousins was diagnosed with cancer, a man with whom I had a special relationship. He’d been a technical supervisor at Ventilatorul and, after my father passed away in 1995, he was like a second father to me, being supportive morally and professionally. In his case too, the disease progressed and he became paralyzed, then passed away.
Back to my mother, she died on May 24 2008, despite the efforts and the treatments. On her 72nd birthday, December 6 2007, she was in Constanta. I had last seen her in the summer of 2007, when she came from Constanta, where she was living with her brother. He also became homeless after his wife left to work in Italy. What I wanted to say was that my mother was still very active – she was cooking, cleaning, walking around. What shocked me was that in January 2008, my uncle was at my door with my mother in a wheelchair, paralyzed on her left side. She had multiple brain tumors, 4th stage cancer metastasizing. And I was shocked to see her like this when I knew how active she’d been. The situation was very difficult for me. I had to make sense of the whole thing. A neighbor helped me out, together with his mother, who was a doctor. I figured out what I had to do and what to give her, then I called an ambulance and we went to the oncological institute. There I was told that she either stays there for palliative treatment or I take her home and administer the treatment myself. Her wish was to go home, so I signed an affidavit and took her home. I think I handled things relatively well and I learned what I had to do for her, without losing my job in the meantime. But my friend really helped out, as did two or three neighbors who used to come by. I had the teaching job and I also stayed home to tutor students. It was exhausting, both physically and mentally. After about five months, she died. I was really sad but also relieved, because I’d never seen her suffer like that.
The truth is I was very disconcerted at the time and I was not making the wisest decisions. So that’s when I took out that mortgage loan.
After her death I had to straighten out my life, to see how I’d deal with everything, including the financial issues. Until the fall of 2008, I was paying the installments without any problems, until the recession began to creep in. My last year as a high-school teacher started with a pay cut, and then the number of students decreased. During the second semester, the school closed and I was out of a job again. I could barely pay the mortgage anymore. I tried to find a decent job. I didn’t make a large amount, but I was better paid than in a state school, not to mention the extra tutoring. I’d had to drop some classes when I started looking after my mother, so I was falling behind on my mortgage payments. I had no other installments to pay, I had never taken out a loan for anything else before, not even for a TV set, everything I had I paid for it with cash, hand down. I wasn’t spending irrationally. I had the usual expenses – utilities, electricity, phone, food and every once in a while, a coat or something worth wearing.
I couldn’t find a proper job. I worked as a security guard and subway cleaner, both of these nightshifts. I could barely make ends meet, let alone pay the mortgage installments. The wages were terrible. I mean, there is money to be made as a security guard, but I wasn’t equipped for it, neither physically, nor by training. So I really fell behind on my installments.
In January 2014, as I was under pressure to pay, with the interest rate rising and no experience with loans and no one to advise me, I took another mortgage on the home. I definitely wouldn’t do this again. But this loan allowed me to pay the old loan.