INSP has been asking vendors from across the street paper network to write letters to their 25-year-old self to mark the end of INSP’s 25th anniversary year. Many of the contributions involved looking back to the past, but 18-year-old Iso Numero vendor Anglia is thinking to the future. She is currently selling the magazine in Helsinki.
Anglia
When I turn 25, in about seven years, I see myself living in Romania in my own house. Now we live with my husband’s parents when we are there. I hope I will not have to leave my home country anymore; that I can stay there with my husband and child – or then, children – and have a possibility to earn a salary there. I will work and do everything for this dream.
I think I will still feel young when I am 25. I hope I will have done many things by then, that I will be an ambitious woman, capable of getting over the difficulties of life, to be able to cope with them.
Now is a difficult moment in my life: I had to leave my baby in Romania with my mother-in-law just two weeks after she was born to go earn money. I sell Iso Numero here in Finland. I am a good vendor and have my regular customers that know me very well. They ask me about the baby, I expect them to ask because I think they love me, but often it makes them cry and then I cry as well.
Even if I feel that it was a difficult choice to leave – I am not happy that I had to – I hope in the future I will be able to better understand different situations of life and will not have trouble making the decisions I need to make. If I had the possibility to earn in Romania, I would never have left, but it is expensive to have a baby there. I want to offer more for my daughter.
If I wrote a letter to my young daughter for her 25th birthday, I would want her to know I was here in order for her to have possibilities, that I work for her. I am here so that she doesn’t have to miss anything.
Check back in every day over the festive period for more #VendorLetters.
INSP members can download the #VendorLetters feature on the INSP News Service.