Currently, there is one other volunteer living in the house with me. She is leaving tomorrow morning early and has been here for three weeks. Her name is Fiona and she is from Scotland. A friend of hers, Lynn, suggested she come her for a volunteer vacation. I had met Lynn last summer. Lynn is a good friend of Victoria and Valeru's and had managed to collect and ship around 30 strollers from the UK to the orphanage last summer. She has a charity in Scotland working with the orphanage and poor families in Moldova.
Two days after I arrived, the whole family (including Fiona and I) packed ourselves into the car and headed to the boys pre-school for a festival/bake fair. Victoria and I had made peanut butter cookies the night before to sell, but I'm pretty sure she had to give them away because no one had heard of them before. All the teachers took desks out of the classrooms and the parents set up shops of breads, Moldovan food, toys, and crafts. There was also music and entertainment. It might have been a bit of a talent contest because there were a couple of bands who played, a flutist, children would recite poems or sing songs, and a woman sang what sounded to be a traditional Moldovan song while children and adults joined hands and danced in a circle.
This summer, the Moldova Project raised enough money to take all of the children on an adventure day in Chisinau. They went to see a puppet show at the National Opera house, they visited the National Museum and got to take pictures with a children's cartoon character, they ate pizza and ice cream for lunch, and they got to go to the zoo. Most of these children had never been into the city, let alone to the zoo. And many of the children had never had pizza before. In all there were 27 children and a handfull of moms.
Fiona and I arrived at the National Museum on time to see the children take pictures with the cartoon character. Then we all walked over the to the pizza place. It was amazing to see how excited the children were to eat pizza and ice cream. After lunch, we all crammed onto a bus they had rented for the day and went to the zoo. The zoo was small but had a nice assortment of animals and the children were in awe. I made friends with a little girl who would blow bubbles at me as we walked along. We also met a couple of Moldovan volunteers who were fluent in English. One was just finishing Medical school and another was in school to be a psychiatrist. Neither job is paid well in Moldova and it was interesting to talk to them. Many mental health issues are not recognized in Moldova and the ones that are are treated with institutionalization.
After the zoo, the families got on the bus to head back to their village and Vika, Fiona, and I grabbed a cab to the center of town.
Monday was my first day back at the orphanage, but I only spent an hour there. First we had to get my blue book stamped by a doctor. I had gotten a blue book last year (literally a blue book with my picture in it and pages to be stamped and required by the government for all volunteers in Moldova). I also had to bring a letter from my doctor, which Victoria translated, saying I am healthy. Last year I didn't realize I needed such a thing and we had to give a little bribe to get a stamp. After we finished with blue book and arrived at the orphanage it was 11:00. I had agreed to take one of Vicotria's English classes for the summer in exchange for her helping me with my research. That class is at 5pm Monday and Wednesday, however, the bus ride to Gratesti is so long and involves two buses that we had decided I should leave the orphanage at noon, ensuring enough time for a nap when I got back! From 11:00 to noon I took two babies out for a walk. The first was a little boy named Dima. He is probably around a year old and is walking quite well (sometimes refusing to hold my hand). He loves cars and has to touch and point at every car we come upon, which isn't many in the orphanage compound, however, he also doesn't want to leave them. He has blonde hair and blue eyes and a very round little body. He hates going back inside and refuses to walk when he knows we are heading back in.
The second child I took out was a little girl named either Ariana or Ariadna. She is also probably around a year old and has brown hair and blue eyes. She also has infant acne on her face and hands. She can't walk very well yet and needs to hold both my hands as we walk. She likes walking in dirt, which is a big no-no at the orphanage so I often have to redirect her footsteps. I took each child out for half an hour and then had to head to the bus to get back to Gratesti.
The class I am teaching at Victoria's school consists of 5 teenage boys and one girl. They are all very sweet and are at an intermediate level. The first class I had with them, which was on the Friday after I arrived, we just played a game, which they all really enjoyed. Our next two classes consisted of lessons and games. The class is only an hour and goes pretty quickly.
On Tuesday this week, Fiona and I went to visit an ancient monastery built into cliffs. I had been to this monastery before but it is so beautiful I decided to tag along with Fiona. Valeru drove us, first stopping at what he called a boy's orphanage. I would call it more of an institution for boys and men with physical or mental disabilities. At the orphanage where I work, there are two groups of children with disabilities, however, these children are only allowed to stay at the orphanage until the are somewhere between the ages of 5 and 7. Then they are sent to the institution. Although the institution is very beautiful and has a playground, pool, classes, and craft lessons, many of the people who call it home could have fully functioning lives on their own, if given the chance. Many have physical disabilities that in no way inhibit their mental capacities. To learn more about institutions like this one, check out the book The Boy from Baby House 10. It's an autobiography of a boy born with cerebral palsy in the 1990s in Russia and grew up in an institution. He was eventually found and adopted in America.
Lynn has been working with this boy's home quite a bit. Currently she is trying to get funding to by some lifts and hoists for the boys and men (many of the children stay at this institution for the rest of their lives, which, sadly, isn't very long). The boys who have severe physical disabilities but are too heavy to lift, spend their entire time in bed. Most of these beds can move and the boys can be taken outside or into different rooms, but they nevertheless spend every day of their lives in bed. However, Valeru mentioned that often, the larger, more able-bodied boys will carry the boys who are more physically disabled outside so that they can enjoy the sunshine. He also mentioned that school lessons are a relatively new concept for the boy's home. In 2010, they started teaching the boys lessons.
When we visited the boy's home, Valeru pointed out all of the amazing artwork and crafts the boys make. There were paintings, weavings, papercrafts, knitted socks, etc. Valeru took us into a classroom and we got to meet many of the artists. One boy named Dima was a particularly good salesman for his crafts and Fiona and I both ended up buying one of his embroidered pictures.
Later, Victoria and I had a conversation about the life of people with disabilities in Moldova. Last year, I had met one of her students who was a teenage boy with cerebral palsy. His mother had fought very hard to keep him in school. All the specialists told her to send him to an institution, but she refused. A couple of months ago, the boy died due to a medical complication that, Vicotria believes, could have been prevented if the doctors hadn't been so apathetic about working with a child with a disability. They saw it as a waste of resources to save the life of a child with cerebral palsy.
Thursday was my first full day at the orphanage! I spent the day taking children out for walks. Dima and Ariadna are the only two who seem to be able to walk a little, so they were both taken out by me. While I was out with Ariadna, I spotted a child I had worked with last summer. His name was Artur and he hadn't changed other than growing a little. He still had his large ears and he still sucked his first two fingers. I itched to hold him, but had Ariadna in my hands. I talked to the caregiver who was with Artur. She remembered me from last year and we had a short conversation in my broken Romanian/Russian. After I saw Artur, I frantically searched the faces of the children running around the grounds for familiarity. I didn't see anyone else that I recognized.
After returning to the room with Ariadna, I took a three month old baby named Mikala out in a stroller. She cried as I laid her in the stroller so the first chance I got, I picked her up and rocked her on a swing. I held her against my chest so she could feel my heartbeat. Every time I hold a child at the orphanage I think about how much they deserve to feel my heartbeat, my warmth, hear my voice, look into my eyes, and how rarely they get such interactions. Once, last summer, I rocked a child to sleep and I thought that was probably the only time in his life that he was rocked to sleep in the arms of someone. As I learn about human rights in my International Social Work class, I think about how much of a human right it is to be loved, held, sung too, etc. And how many children, especially children growing up in an orphanage, have these rights violated.
At 3:45, I left my group and headed to the room of group 1, the group I know some of the children I spent time with last summer are in. As I walked in, a caregiver greeted me. I introduced myself as an American Volunteer and she told me to come back at four. Realizing that wouldn't work for me since I was meeting Fiona at 4, I told the caregiver I was going home and she looked confused. I racked my brains trying to think of how to tell her I just wanted to see some children and then realized I could just ask for them by name. I said the name of one of the children I had worked with and the caregiver said no, he wasn't there. I realized I needed Victoria's help translating, and left, sad that I still haven't gotten to see some of the children I worked with. About six or seven months ago I had a dream that I had gone back to the orphanage and had seen some of the children. In my dream, I hardly recognized them, and they wanted nothing to do with me, which broke my heart. Ever since that dream, my heart is aching to see the children once again. And every day I am unable to see them I am sad, and a little relieved. Today, once again, I thought I would be able to visit the children I had worked with last semester. We were just going to the orphanage for a minute in the morning, for Fiona to say goodbye. It was planned, the night before, that Victoria would go with us and would take me to group one to translate. However, at the last minute she could not go. Now, monday is the day planned for my reunion. I am so anxious, and afraid, to see them again.
Thursday after working at the orphanage, Fiona and I went to see the opera La Boheme at the National Opera house. Because the Ministry of Culture subsidizes opera and ballet, the tickets are very inexpensive. The government thinks opera and ballet are cultural events that everyone should afford to go see. We got our tickets for $9 and had amazing seats. Last summer, I went to the opera for $3. The opera was very beautiful.
Today is Vicotria's birthday and we are having a bbq this evening. Fiona and I spent the day visiting a wine cellar (it has one million bottles, however, it is not the biggest cellar in the world, although that cellar is in Moldova), having lunch with Valeru's mom in her village, and giving food to a poor family. The poor family is a family of five. The father is a shepherd and they have a large garden at their house. They lived down very steep, dirt hills and as we left their house it started to rain. The roads were soon flooded but we had made it to the main road.
Tomorrow is Children's day and there will be many festivities in Chisinau. On Sunday, a new volunteer arrives for two weeks and I am looking forward to getting to know him or her. Once again, I am having an interesting time here and look forward to more amazing experiences.
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