я втричаю (I've returned) at last!

Sorry for my long absence, as many of you have heard through the grapevine I have been having a lot of trouble getting consistent internet access for the past couple of weeks. Don't worry though, I have been keeping an exhaustive journal both in print and electronic text so I can fill you all in on what has been happening here. I believe the last time I wrote I was getting over being sick which was right around the time that I actually started my work in the orphanage here. After a week of touring the orphanage, a children's hospital and a special kindergarten that serves as a school/boarding school for children during the week (you’ll hear more about this later-some of the children have parents who are alcoholics and/or drug addicts and forget to pick them up each day or even each weekend and the children go home to live with some of the teachers for the weekend), I decided the best schedule to start out with would be to spend each morning at the orphanage. I planned to spend one week in each of the four classrooms and then expand my schedule to include time at the kindergarten and hospital. In this orphanage there are 4 'classrooms' and children are categorized by age and health status. I started the week with 7 children ages 1-2.5 years old. I spent the week arriving at about 8:30 when the children were up and dressed and ready for playtime and then stayed with them until after lunch and cleanup and they were put down for naps.

That first week I also set about getting settled into my own apartment. On Monday we went to look at a few options and by wed. I was moved in. It was quite different from any other apartment leasing situation I’ve ever encountered…for example…there simply was no lease, not even a simple handshake to ensure this landlord that I was going to live in her apartment and actually pay her each month. She handed me the only set of keys she had to the place (I know this because when she came by to get rent from me she had to call and ask me to let her in the building) and said good luck! There was no credit check, no background check, no reference check, not even a single question to find out if I was a crazy person or a drunk or if I even had enough money to pay her to live there one day, let alone a month. Like I said…very different.

I like my apartment very much, it is close to the center of town where the large supermarket is, as well as my friend's homes. It is also very close to the big park and the fitness center that is brand new in town (don’t be picturing Bally’s or anything, I saw one treadmill and a bunch of free weights in addition to the small walking track but still, it is something). I walk everywhere everyday but I really don't mind it. It makes me nostalgic about the summer I lived in Chicago when I never had to drive my car but just walked everywhere, for groceries, or to visit a friend. Those of us who spend most of our time in the vast expanse of land we call the Midwestern suburbs get so attached to our cars that it is nice to spend some time actually interacting with nature rather than letting it speed by my car windows. I have even begun to recognize some stray dogs that haunt the same streets I often use to get to work. I have named then all of course and I often bring scraps of hardened bread to toss to them during my morning walks. I'm sure my husband will find this deliciously funny ;) (Babe, can you guess the name I chose for my favorite little pup? It starts with G!)

I like to sit at my windows and watch the street below because there are always so many people coming and going...I hope don't mind my eavesdropping as I try to practice my language comprehension skills. Most of what is said is lost on me because people talk so fast but it is good to get more and more used to hearing the cadence of speech here. The way my building (and most soviet-era apartment buildings) is arranges is in the shape of a U so that each apartment has rooms that face the street and then on the other side rooms face a large courtyard where the entrances to each stairwell are. Most complexes I have seen like this each have their own little playground (all look like they were built 50 years ago) and colorful (read-- colorful 50 years ago) picnic benches where I can only assume people were meant to congregate with fellow building mates and have a joyous old time.
In the past years it is obvious that renovating one's apartment and own space has become a high priority for everyone here...as you walk the streets you will find more signs and stores advertising 'Euro Remont' then or any other type of shop. I giggle because it makes me think of Home Depot and Lowe's on every corner back home. Anyways, when you look at any given building you can immediately tell if people have renovated their own flat because they have new plastic weather-proof windows. Non-renovated ones are wooded and true glass and are often painted (50 year old) bright colors. For some unknown reason i find it immensely fascinating to study the construction and renovation trends and habits of any given culture (stranger still because I really have no interest in this in my own home...perhaps because I would actually have to do the work). For example, in the Caribbean and Mexico you will very often see construction occurring and it generally involves using a wrecking ball to smash down old concrete block buildings and then pouring new concrete walls and floors. In the US as well, buildings are often imploded or demolished and then rebuilt from scratch. Here in Ukraine however, this idea seems to be quite foreign. Instead, the trend is to remodel from the inside and to leave the outside looking quite shabby and aged indeed. In brief, a Ukrainian apartment building is like a box of chocolates, you never know which building may contain a delicious truffle all decorated and refined and which may contain an old, strangely colored marzipan which has become hardened and dulled from age. I haven't quite decided what to make of this, or why this has been the way of things...especially since most people here rent their flats rather than own them, so the more obvious motivator of home equity doesn't exactly factor in here for individual renters. But enough of that...I want to tell you all a bit more about my work...

So after spending a week with the young kids (1-2.5 years old) and taking a day to see a special recital at the kindergarten (again, more on this later) I moved to the older child group this past week. Here there are 7 children who are aged 2 years 8 months up to 5 years old. I found this room to be quite different mainly in the fact that the children were so much more independent. They didn’t seem to need as much direction in order to play nicely with their toys. The younger children upstairs seemed to be forever locked in vicious battles over toys (or anything one had possession of…one day I witnessed a battle over a scrap of fabric a child found at the edge of a bed…the two boys were smacking and scratching each other over the ruddy thing until I took it and put it in my pocket and suddenly they were both smiling again).
I will give you more details about my observations in both these rooms later but first I feel it is very important to let you know that I have felt humbled by the degree to which the administration and the caregivers at this orphanage have welcomed me and let me become a part of their daily routines. Many of them have readily given me jobs and allowed me to experience what their jobs are like. I have done a great deal of research and reading over the years about scholars and medical professionals getting to tour orphanages and even spend time documenting their observations as an outsider, but very few, if any, have been given the opportunity to share the job of a caregiver and actually feel what it is like to care for these children each day and try to help them grow and develop strongly while remaining acutely aware of all the barriers stacked against them.
I will forever treasure the conversations I have struck up with these caregivers (in very broken Russian but understandable just the same) in which they have told me about the times they used their own money to buy children new stockings to help keep their feet from catching cold, or when they brought their own leftovers from home to supplement the sometimes meagre offerings at mealtimes. It reminded me very much of conversations with teachers in inner-city schools or poor communities who say they would buy all their own classroom supplies when they could because they were not given enough money from the school to get each child a textbook.
What I want to convey here is that many of the problems I have witnessed here are problems that are not so far off from what many children in America are facing. As I continue to describe for you all the things I am seeing here I want you to pause and realize that these are not just problems in Ukraine, they are similar issues that many poor communities in our own country are dealing with. People tend to think that the US governmental system and social services system are so much better than what it could be in Ukraine but in many ways it is not. In many ways they are both as twisted as could be and the bureaucracy tangles truth in so many ways that those who need to understand are simply blinded and disconnected from the needs. I hope that my time here will not only help me better understand the Ukrainian system but will also give me insights about how our US system of foster care and education (public and private) is working (or not-working).