Sharing

The kids sleep late the morning after their arrival. With eight bunks in their room, we are one bed short. The first day, I held up a sleeping bag, and asked sheepishly who would use it. When all hands shot up, some waving to increase their chances, I realized apologizing for the lack of sleeping bags would have been more appropriate.

Host dad Simon is very hip with his hair spiked; Igor is smitten with the look. Walking up to him, Igor utters an inflected “Um,” points to Simon’s head, and runs his fingers through his own hair. Simon helps Igor and two other boys coif their hair like his. Igor, especially, is proud, and I don’t see him again without spikes. At the end of the week, he asks Simon to give him the gel.

After breakfast, Irina sequesters the kids in their room while we ready our gifts. When they return, we question them about their lives. Igor enjoys singing, so I ask for a song. For once, he acts bashful. “We shall support,” Ekaterina encourages him. It’s sufficient inducement, and he obliges with a haunting melody about a chained eagle. Zulya tells us Lora, her aunt, nicknamed her “Pelmini,” after Russian ravioli. Alexandra likes to sing, but cannot be cajoled to do it now. My first glimpse of her personality comes when she glows, speaking about her friends. Alexander, safe in the certainty of already having been chosen by an adoptive family, divulges a few tidbits about himself, then adds in a small voice, “What else do you want to know?”

Several of the kids are in foster care, just for the summer, to give them an experience with a family. I wonder, but don’t ask, why these families don’t care the rest of the year. All the kids have farm jobs with the families, which none appear to object. Igor smiles, noting that when he finishes helping with the hay, there’s always cake on the table awaiting him. Ekaterina and Zulya dream of going to America. Asked what he wants to be in the future, Igor deadpans, “A star.” With his personality, it’s hardly far-fetched.

When the kids query us, one horrifies me with, “If you had to take one of us to an island, which one would you take?” There are more kids than adults, and I warn the families not to answer. We’re asked about our houses, if we live in apartments, and if we have our “own children.” Zulya wonders if we’re waiting for great-grandchildren. When they ask about money, Trevor offers to show them a US dollar bill. It is the most excited the kids get the entire trip, and the hosts decide to give each child one to keep.

After more than an hour of questions, the kids get their gifts. Much energy is spent sorting through their bags, comparing contents, and displaying the loot. We derive as much pleasure watching their joy as they get in receiving. One Virginia family I’ve spoken with for over two years sends a wrapped gift for each unhosted child, along with a card. The kids know they should open the card before the accompanying gift. Each asks Irina to read theirs to them, and they listen with rapt attention.

By the time we leave for lunch at MuMu, the 10% chance of rain Moscow meteorologists predicted has become a 100% chance. There aren’t enough ponchos to go around, so Igor and Vladimir share. After eating, we find the Ferris wheel commemorating Moscow’s 850th anniversary operating, even in the inclement weather. It costs about $8 for one revolution, but we enjoy a view of Moscow its birds would envy. Unassuming Alexandra is so giddy to board that she pushes Joyce, her host, through the turnstile. She wears a nonstop grin the entire ride that Joyce claims was worth the cost of all our tickets. With the child so hesitant to assert herself, I am thrilled we did something she enjoyed.

After the ride, we visit an old park next door built to exhibit the agriculture and industry of the Soviet Union. Now its eighty-odd pavilions mainly house small shops, but it’s still a weekend destination for Muscovites. At the Friendship of the Peoples fountain, sixteen gilded maidens, each dressed in a costume of a different former Soviet republic, circle sheaves of wheat. The fountain, on a list of the ten most beautiful in the world, aimed to honor the bond of friendship between the republics, united under the glories of communism. While the fountain isn’t running today due to rain, and the union it celebrates has collapsed, we still find it worthy of its top-ten billing.

Some of the kids have a few rubles for the trip. I don’t know where they got them, but assume they’re from the summer foster families. Zulya is itching to spend hers, and after the Ferris wheel we pass carnival games. A man is chanting into a megaphone, though we’re the only ones here. Zulya pulls me aside and insists on playing his game. I think it’s a waste, but when she wins a Russian-speaking stuffed cow, her joy is boundless, and she shows it to everyone. The last day she is still clinging to it, and even I must admit the happiness she’s derived exceeds in value whatever she spent to win it.

Back in the metro, Simon is clutching Sergei’s hand. Inside, an elderly woman, box at her feet, holds a corrugated cardboard sign. As the rest of our band moves toward the escalator, Sergei pulls Simon back. Simon counters, wanting to stay with the group. Sergei resolutely refuses to budge until he has reached into his pocket, pulled out his rubles, and dropped some in the lady’s box. Simon is very moved by Sergei’s generosity. Though little in this world is his, he fights to share what he has. His teacher extolled his “nice soul”, and it’s shining through here.

We eat dinner at the hotel, then some of the kids ask to play in the rain at a playground. Every fiber of my being screams “Nyet!,” but when they ask me to take them, I hear myself agreeing. Igor marks the way with sidewalk chalk, so we won’t have trouble finding our way back. Both my compassion and my skimpy Russian restrain me from telling him it’s unnecessary, as I have a very good sense of direction. Two cats watch us out a screened window along the way; I love cats and instinctively call, “Here, Kitty, Kitty, Kitty!” several times, mesmerizing the kids. The next morning they tell Irina and insist I demonstrate my cat-calling prowess to her.

When we’re done at the park, I retreat exhausted to my room. Exhaustion is reassuring, like a report card, that I poured everything into my mission today. It’s been a profitable gleaning of insights into the kids’ personalities, details I hope will help me help them. Sinking into sleep, I revel in how Sergei’s kind gesture in the metro enriched us all.

I hope he is repaid a thousand-fold.

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Giving Up On Sasha

In Moscow: Day 8

Yury Luzhkov had a brazen plan, and ever the politician, made an audacious promise to accompany it. Weary of the snow that falls on the country’s capital, and sick of the expense of cleanup, the mayor of Moscow decreed in mid-October that it would not snow in his fair city this winter. With the approval of the city council, Luzhkov hired the Russian Air Force to spray clouds outside Moscow, encouraging snow to fall before it reaches the city limits. We wake up Sunday morning to find Mr. Luzhkov no different than American politicians: full of expensive promises he can’t keep. A light blanket of snow has fallen, likely the first of many this winter, the mayor and the Russian Air Force’s attempts to control the weather notwithstanding.

We walk through Luzhkov’s snow to an English-language church service in an old theater school. Attended mainly by ex-pats, translation into Russian is provided via headset for Russian speakers. Midway through the service, the kids leave for children’s church, which Faith translates for them. When our service ends, we find Faith standing on a bench directing the entire class. Nothing in the scene surprises me; Faith is a natural ringleader, no matter who’s involved. I shake my head in bemused wonderment. “We learned about the Christmas story,” is Faith’s only explanation, as though it clears everything up. We lunch at a little café in one of the theater’s nooks and crannies. While the wait is insufferable, the food is tasty and inexpensive by Moscow standards. A sink on the café’s back wall substitutes for the napkins they do not provide.

The metro whisks us to the city center and Kremlin. Along the way, we stop in front of the Lenin Library to feed pigeons. Anton, twelve, catches several and gives them carefully to other children. Some kids feed sunflower seeds to birds tame enough to eat out of their hands. We circle the Kremlin wall and honor Russia’s Unknown Soldier. Turning right, we climb a hill beside the State Historical Museum, and get our first glimpse of Krasnaya Ploschad, known to Americans as Red Square. At the far end of the square stands Russia’s most iconic symbol, gloriously flamboyant St. Basil’s Cathedral. It’s the ninth time I’ve seen it, but cresting the hill by the historical museum, it still takes my breath away.

Built in 1555-1561, legend claims Ivan the Terrible was so smitten by its design that he blinded the architect to ensure a masterpiece its like would not be constructed elsewhere. While Ivan was not above maiming and killing, the subsequent activity of the St. Basil’s architect suggests the legend is only that. More recently, Josef Stalin thought the cathedral obstructed the exit from Red Square, and he entertained repeated notions of its destruction to facilitate his military parades through the square. Today, gazing in awestruck admiration at an edifice without equal, we are debtors to the architect who curbed Stalin’s ambition, trading his freedom for airing his opinion, doing time in the gulag for threatening suicide if the folly was consummated.

The kids pose in front of the cathedral and most good-naturedly pose in the chill. We retreat into the ritzy GUM Mall (pronounced “goom”), home of upper crust western merchandisers like Cartier, Dior, and Estee Lauder. A glass and steel arcade covers the three-story mall, and bridges span the main hallway. In Soviet days, the mall was nationalized and never suffered the shortages for which the rest of the country was infamous. Faith used to wait for hours in lines here that snaked through Red Square for the opportunity to buy whatever GUM had in stock. It was advantageous to know an insider employed here; this inside information might glean a shopper a coveted item otherwise unavailable. Faith once went to GUM to purchase shoes. When she reached the head of the line, those available were three sizes too small, but she dared not bypass them. Such was life in the Soviet Union. Paradoxically, things in GUM today are less attainable than in communist times; grossly inflated prices ensure most people there are working, browsing, or warming up.

On our way out of Red Square, we see two men dressed as Cossacks outside the State Historical Museum. The kids stop to ogle them, and the men browbeat us to pay for a picture. As we hesitate, Faith works her magic. The men ask her if the kids are orphans; when she says, yes, we’re here to spend time with them, the Cossacks tell us to take the picture free. I ask Faith later how they knew the kids are orphans. “They have good eyes, and know orphans when they see them,” she says cryptically.

We enter a bookstore, and Dima shows us a section where he has already read most offerings. The store is distressingly overcrowded, making browsing a bane rather than a pleasure. I recall an insightful book I read about marketing. Researchers observed shoppers in stores to determine how many times they could be jostled while looking at an item before they abandoned it and moved on. They found buyers would tolerate being bumped from behind twice, but not thrice. The researchers called this result the “butt brush effect,” a name and concept burned into my brain. While in this bookstore, I conclude the research was not done in Russia, since the butt brush effect would come into play after three seconds, and the bookstore would go out of business within days. Of all the things that would make life in Russia doleful, I find the overcrowding everywhere to be among the most egregious.

On the way home, we visit my favorite Russian store, Eliseevsky’s Gastronom. Formerly known as Gastronom Number One when nationalized in the Soviet era, the supermarket sells gourmet foodstuffs and houses my favorite pastry counter in the world. The ceiling and walls are carved and gilded, and chandeliers illumine the products. I worry I’ve irritated Faith with my incessant requests for Eliseevsky’s and their peerless chocolate croissants, but one bite reminds me I can withstand her impatience. Faith thinks I should buy a croissant in a street underpass and save the Eliseevsky mark-up, but the ambiance of the store is worth every ruble to me.

All week, Alexander M., eight, known by his nickname Sasha, is challenging. He lags behind, fights holding hands, and struggles with correction. I worry as we walk through the metro, holding his hand at times as he strains to get away, that someone might think I’m a foreign kidnapper. Sasha doesn’t cooperate at St. Basil’s and whines at the smallest provocation. Every few minutes our walk is punctuated by, “Sasha, nyet!” or “Where’s Sasha?” He worries me because his getting lost could shut down our program, and because the way he’s acting, he’s not likely to find a family. I can’t in good conscience put a child like him on another trip when other kids also needing a chance will be more compliant. Sasha needs good parenting, and I hate to think at his age, his behavior on a single trip might doom him to a lifetime as an orphan. I desperately will him to behave, more for his good than ours. When it doesn’t work, I decide dejectedly there are other, more likely candidates for adoption. Knowing there are more kids than families, Sasha's second trip would take a chance from another child. I resist giving up on anyone, but can’t harm other innocent kids who need families as badly as he. It’s a helpless feeling seeing an eight-year-old unwittingly making a major life decision alone and unawares.

There’s nothing feel-good about it, just a good faith judgment call, trying to help as many kids as possible get home forever. But right now, I have no reason to believe Sasha will go anywhere other than back to his orphanage.

***

See accompanying photos and videos here.

I'm Lovin' It

In Russia: Day 7

Halloween dawns Saturday, but no one dresses up in Russia. Faith makes blini, thin Russian pancakes like greasy crepes, filled with a cream cheese-type mixture and topped with fruit and sour cream. When I know what she’s whipping up, my response is instinctively Pavlovian. Faith is a talented cook, and I love her authentic treats.

Leaving the hotel, we stop at Gorky Park. In summer, Gorky is crowded with families enjoying pricey rides, but today it’s abandoned, except for a man selling rides on a reindeer and a balloon saleswoman by the gate. I’m mystified who their clientele is at this time of year, and I wonder if they’ll find a single taker today.

The cold is everything you’d expect from Russia. The wide boulevards bustle with an eclectic mixture of Soviet-style jalopies, compact European cars, and high-end luxury sedans of Russia’s nouveau riche, so larger streets have underpasses where pedestrians cross. The Gorky Park underpass houses an underground art gallery, where we linger a spell. Confession: I’m less interested in the paintings than the warmth, as this one is enclosed and heated. Outside again, we wander through a humble statue park. The kids stand by an oversized globe called “World of Kindness.” It seems especially fitting for our international group, which is melding famously. At the end of the free park is the Soviet Statuary Park. I am fascinated and want badly to visit. It’s frigid, though, and the rest of the group is disinterested so I defer to them. Faith asks the kids if they know Stalin, Lenin, and Khrushchev. Serious Dima, twelve, and my star of the trip, raises his hand and says he has. Faith confides, “It doesn’t mean anything to them. He’s heard the names, but he doesn’t know the deeds.” She seems bothered by their historical ignorance, lamenting we only learn from history when we study it, but allowing it’s not the kids’ fault. Leaving, I plan I’ll return in January, when it’s even colder.

Europe’s largest city, Moscow is a sprawling metropolis, so we hop the metro to get around. Constructed under Stalin in the 1930s and 1940s, it’s a transportation wonder. Deep beneath the surface, the subterranean stations were intended to serve as bomb shelters during World War II. Unfathomably long escalators transfer passengers to the bowels of Moscow, where they catch their trains and reach their destinations expeditiously. Moscow’s metro is the busiest in the world, so efficient it’s rare to wait more than a minute for a train. A bargain at about 60 cents per ride, the metro is much quicker than navigating the Moscow traffic above ground. A destination in its own right, some stations are works of art, with mosaics depicting scenes from the life of Vladimir Lenin, statues extolling the wholesome virtues of the Soviet worker’s life, bas reliefs of cultural pursuits, chandeliers, and marble. My only reservation about the metro is the crowd. Our adult-to-child ratio favors the kids, and it would be easy to lose a child in the throng. Each time we exit a car, we do a frantic head count to ensure all are accounted for, and we breathe easier when we’re all together again. Faith cajoles the attendants at almost every entrance to let the small children on free, and they find her powers of persuasion irresistible.

We go to the cosmonaut museum, situated at the base of a giant rocket-topped monument for Yuri Gagarin, Russia’s first cosmonaut. Back in the 1950s, Gagarin was the first man in space, still a matter of considerable national pride. Faith asks the kids to name the first cosmonaut and Dima raises his hand, giving the correct answer. The cosmonaut museum surprises me; I would not have guessed such a state-of-the-art museum existed anywhere in Russia. At less than $1 for children and about $3 for adults, the price is right for potential adoptive families. The quality of exhibits is uniformly high, and the kids are mesmerized by the space vehicles and the interactive computer displays. Yulya, twelve, and Larisa, ten, listen with rapt attention as a guide describes a single exhibit to them personally for over 30 minutes. We see two stuffed dogs, Belka and Strelka, who went into space as canine cosmonauts. I appreciate the exhibit information in Cyrillic, since I feel no guilt for not reading all of it. The cosmonaut museum is a hit, and a sure destination for our January trip.

On our way to the Durov Animal Theater, we pass October Square, an electrical wire and exhaust-filled nod to the communists who long for the good old days of the Soviet Union. A large statue of Lenin, the only one still standing in Moscow, supervises a mess of traffic like Big Brother. Before the show, we try a different McDonald’s for dinner. Packed with Russians hungry for a taste of America, it epitomizes chaos. It takes brass to eat at McDonald’s in Moscow, at least if you plan to sit whilst you eat. Faith asks diners who look done if they are leaving. Not enough are, so she starts pleading if some of our kids can sit at their tables with them. I am appalled she asks, and shocked when all say yes. By the time we have our food, Faith has somehow finagled seating for 19 together. Sometimes I rue Faith’s brass; other times I am awestruck. My emotion now is primarily awe; otherwise, we’d all be standing with our Big Macs. For ease, I order ten Happy Meals for the kids, and the cashier is taken aback when told the quantity. She hears I hardly speak Russian, and she thinks I have misspoken. The number and industry of McDonald’s cashiers in Russia is staggering, so I document it for the blog while waiting. This act of international restaurant espionage elicits a passionate tsk-tsk from a guard I hadn’t seen. Russian businesses seem sensitive about photos; if you wonder if picture taking is permitted, take one and gauge permissibility by the response. When the meals come, I am most unhappy to learn a Russian Happy Meal is boxless and toyless. The kids don’t mind, and attack their fries and Coca-Cola with vim; I doubt they know they’ve been gypped. Eating shoulder to shoulder and bumping elbows with the twelve around our table for six, we marvel how McDonald’s tastes better in a foreign land.

Leaving the restaurant, night has fallen. We hightail it to the Durov Animal Theater, worried we’ll be late. I haven’t been to a single museum or performance venue in Russia where attendees keep their coats. Cloakrooms are ubiquitous in Moscow, staffed by blue-smocked attendants who seldom outpace glacial speed. I study them for signs of job satisfaction derived from repetitiously collecting strangers’ coats and hanging them on hooks all day, but find none. We sit right before the lights dim, in time to see a pig pull a wagon, a porcupine jump fences, a hippopotamus waddle in circles, pelicans fly from the rafters, and crows play basketball. The show is mildly amusing, but not enough for me to fend off sleep. In the darkened theater, I doze, only to awaken with a start when a loud noise indicates the end of an intermission I hadn’t known started.

At the end of a full day, we return to the hotel to regroup for tomorrow with our hearts full, our hands cold, and our cheeks rosy. Sunday we’ll find Russia’s most famous sight in our scopes, and I can’t wait to share it with the kids and families. In the hustle of our sightseeing, I wonder if anyone is falling in love.

I'm loving the trip, but can hardly wait to see the results.

***

See accompanying photos and videos here.

Golden Arches, Golden Domes

In Russia: Day 6

Bleary-eyed and dragging, my host families from Michigan, Oklahoma, Indiana, and Illinois file into the hotel at about 1:00 p.m. on Friday. Even after the flight and the 7-8 hour time change, they’re anxious to meet the kids, who've been waiting almost six hours. The meeting lacks the customary fanfare of a US trip because all of us, kids and families, have traveled overnight, but it’s just as well we skip the drama since half the kids lack official hosts. Shortly afterward, we tackle the day’s sightseeing. Without the introduction of who goes with whom, it’s interesting to see how families and kids pair up on our walk, and how kids flit from family to family, in an apparent attempt to cover their bases. It’s a foreign dynamic compared to previous trips. Since I don't have other potential adoptive families to draw from this time, I worry at first when the “wrong” child is with the “wrong” parent, but eventually decide it doesn’t matter if everyone notices all the kids. An added benefit: it is less obvious which kids don’t have families this way. While I’m far from happy about the host to orphan ratio, watching how everyone is soon comfortable with everyone else, I realize this idea was a sheep in wolf’s clothing.

Scarcely out of our hotel, we turn left on the busiest street in Moscow, just in time to see the street closed off and a motorcade of black Mercedes limousines sandwiched by a phalanx of motorcycles speeding down the road. Faith says it’s the president of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev, and commands us to wave. We do, but his tinted windows keep us from knowing if he reciprocates. He’s returning home to the Kremlin, just down the road from where we’re staying. Faith claims the kids are celebrities now that they’ve seen a car holding such an important person, but they don’t believe her.

We’re hungry. Plans to visit Moscow’s only authentic pizza restaurant fizzle, but we spot a restaurant marked with golden arches on our way. The kids vote to eat there, but when we enter, the place is so busy there’s nowhere to sit. We end up at MuMu instead, an atmospheric joint specializing in Russian food like pelmini and borscht. It’s delicious, but the kids would prefer something a little more American.

We wander Arbat Street, Moscow’s pedestrian promenade, lined with little shops selling matryoshka dolls, trinkets, and Russian kitsch. We pass a shriveled old woman wearing a sandwich board incongruously advertising tattoos. In our sleep-deprived delirium, nobody buys anything, and nobody gets a tattoo.

At the end of the road, we see the golden domes of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. The largest church building in Russian Orthodoxy, the original cathedral on the site was built to commemorate Napoleon’s departure from Russia, and consecrated in 1883. In 1931, Stalin issued an edict, leading to the church's destruction. Plans called for an audaciously monstrous “Palace of the Soviets” to be built there. Blueprints crowned the structure with a garish statue of Lenin over 300 feet tall, but instability in the ground due to the nearby Moscow River rendered the plan untenable, and the project was abandoned. In its place, the world’s largest open-air swimming pool was built. Faith and Dima fondly reminisced swimming there, playing hide and seek in the steam of the pool on savagely frigid days. They had mixed emotions when, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the pool was demolished and the church faithfully reconstructed according to original specifications.

Darkness falls early in Russia, and after the cathedral, we call it a day, boarding a bus back to the hotel. Faith tells the driver the children are orphans, so he lets them ride without a ticket. As we thaw at home, parents work together in the kitchen, creating a scene of domestic bliss while the kids play behind us. Ramen noodles and pickles are dinner. It isn’t fancy fare, but it beats beets and white meatloaf. As I retreat to my room to write, the same sensation I always have when kids arrive floods my psyche. I know I’ve done all I can for this moment, it’s here, and it’s time to see what God has in store for the kids and their futures. I’m praying that it’s something special.

My head hits the pillow at 3 a.m. I sleep quickly, but not before mulling a smidgen about how privileged I am to play a role, and how honored to be entrusted with a first stab at this unfolding, grand adventure.

See video here.

Socking Despair

Artom huddled in bed in the evening, knitting socks while his roommates played, unshamed by the eleven-year-old’s industry. His handiwork provides a little comfort from the cold, but is impotent to combat the emotional frigidity that permeates everything. In his region, vodka is a staple and cheaper than milk. Accordingly, children become social orphans when their parents prioritize drink over the needs of their offspring, forfeiting their parental rights. Summers here are short, and vitamin D deficiency rife amongst the inhabitants, who seldom see the sun. The orphanage abuts a prison in this forsaken North Russia village populated by aggressive thieves not yet behind bars. Many orphans’ parents are imprisoned, but not for the political “crimes” that once doomed Soviet-era prisoners to live, work, and die here.

Years ago, there was no industry in the region, but in the 1930s, Josef Stalin brought jobs, of a sort, when he decided to connect five large lakes there by a canal stretching 141 miles from the White Sea to the Baltic. A megalomaniac’s monument, the canal offered the bonus of disposing of Russians whose existences Stalin found inconvenient. While some of the more than 100,000 sent to work on the canal were criminals, more were intellectuals, political prisoners, and victims of reprisals and informants. Ill-equipped with little more than pickaxes, shovels, and rudimentary wheelbarrows, prisoners downed trees, chipped through rock and frozen earth, and hauled it all away, completing the 30-mile artificial stretch of the canal in 20 months.

In the backwards organization of the gulag system, criminals ran the camps; others would have realized, and cared, that much of the workforce was comprised of the persecuted upright. Their families seldom knew where they’d been taken, and whether they’d lived or died. Enduring inhuman conditions, tens of thousands perished from overwork, starvation, disease, and freezing.

One of the ironies is how little the canal benefits shipping, given its insufficient depth for most ships, but how mightily it affects the orphanages of the region. Stalin’s heavy hand populated the area in the early years of the twentieth century but orphaned thousands in the process. Many of the region’s residents are descendants of those who somehow survived the gulag and Stalin’s canal project.

Faith, the translator for all our Lighthouse Project trips, grew up in the Soviet Union long after the canal’s completion, but the surrounding area was such a feared byword for the oppression of the state that her family countenanced no reference to it, so great was the fear of ending up there. When she visited the region in February, interviewed Artom, and saw him at work on his socks, she fought the sensation she was walking on skulls. Gloom smothered everything with a despair denuded of hope. At the orphanage, a strangely invitingly-named shell of a structure, Artom’s teacher welcomed her, exhibiting wooden objects carved and given her by prisoners with the decorum to feel remorse over orphaning their children via their prison sentences.

Meanwhile, palpable despondency reigns. Artom knits his socks, trusting he’ll better himself by the exercise. He likely hasn’t given it much thought, but his busyness with yarn and needle is faith’s defiant act. Even a waif, still hoping adoptive parents seek him out, can play his bit role to help himself, his friends, and his region shrouded in hopelessness.