Taylor Smariga '11 -- 2010 Haney Fellowship Recipient
Taylor worked as a staff photographer for The Village magazine, which is based in Brasov, Romania, and focuses on aspects of local culture that those who run the magazine want to preserve and make available to a wider audience--traditional food, clothing, history, etc. In addition to being a staff photographer, she was taught a lot about photographic technique and the different things that can be done with digital photography.
"Romania: when we first hear the name, most of us conjure up visions of steep, foggy green mountains dotted with stony castles, along with screeching bats and a grinning Dracula. The reality is a little different. Over the summer, I travelled there on a grant from the William M. Haney Fellowship, offered to all Fifth Formers at the Abbey. I was on a photojournalism program, run by a company called Projects Abroad. My host family's house was an old Saxon one, meaning white walls, rounded corners, and a lot of stone. The woman whom I was staying with, named Rodícha, spoke no English whatsoever. Fortunately, another Projects Abroad volunteer from Germany was also staying with us, and she had thought to bring a phrasebook. It only translated from German to Romanian, but it was better than nothing. The food was, for the most part, what you would expect from Eastern Europe: potatoes in various forms, lots of meat, and sparse vegetables.
"There were definitely surprises, though. For instance, in Romania, Vlad Tepes, or Dracula, is considered a national hero. To the Romanians, he helped them fight for their independence against the Turks; he wasn't the pale specter depicted in Bram Stoker's famous novel. It was also surprising to see how far Western culture had—and hadn't—permeated their lives. They had cell phones, certainly—but in small towns, they also had horse-drawn wagons as the normal mode of transportation. Even on some of their highways, you'll see just as many horses pulling wagons as cars. Hannah Montana was also present in Romania, sold on t-shirts in popular tourist destinations alongside traditional daggers and homemade cheese. American songs crowded their music video channels, artists like Sean Paul, Rihanna, and Lady Gaga singing alongside the Romanian pop artists.
"More soberly, the poverty in Romania was shocking. It wasn't evident in the major cities, like Bucharest, or Brasov, where I was most of the time. In small villages, though, people literally lived in huts. Small children could be seen washing in the river, cleaning themselves and the laundry all at once. People stood in muddy yards, wearing plain bright cotton t-shirts and shorts streaked with dirt, talking to each other and milking goats. I stayed in what was obviously one of the nicest houses in the town, meaning that it had electricity—barely. The lights flickered every time water was running in the bathroom, and a few of the beds had hay bales in place of mattresses. For drinking water, our host drew water from a well and left it out in the kitchen in a huge bucket. The first evening, it was great, but by the next morning dozens of flies had flown in through the cracks in the door and uncovered windows, taking up residence in the bucket.
"It was definitely a shock to my delicate American sensibilities. At the same time, though, everyone I met in Romania seemed welcoming, and more or less happy with their way of life. Despite circumstances you or I would—and, in my case, did—consider uncomfortable, awkward, and unpleasant, the people were just as happy with the way they lived as we are. Romania improved my photography a little, and my spectrum for 'comfortable living' a lot. I have a distinct appreciation for the American way of life, materialism and all, but also a new fondness for fried bits of pork fat as appetizers and rides in horse-drawn wagons."
