Marching On

Questions about which kids found families are hallmarks of the end of a Lighthouse Project trip. While patience is a virtue I still need to cultivate, I’ve found trips like these might take a few months to completely sort themselves out. That said, some families were definitive enough that I am quite confident these children have found their forever families in Tulsa: Alexei, Denis, Ekaterina, Vladislav, Larisa, Eduard, and Sergei. Anton M. and Ivan have families seriously considering them, fomenting realistic hope within that I might move their names one sentence forward, soon. Three other children have families giving them some level of consideration, and two returned to Russia without any prospects of a family.

The January kids were still en route to Russia when I began anticipating my next trip, yet I confess more shock than elation at being asked last week to do a March program in Grand Rapids so close on the heels of Tulsa. Since I live there I could not argue that Grand Rapids was inconvenient, but the drain of my incessant efforts to stoke interest in January kids who might die if I failed has not, even now, subsided. Leaving on a Lighthouse sabbatical tempted, a larger tease than I would have expected. It would not have been for long; even in my three short visits to Russian orphanages I sensed an emotional permafrost that mocks the Siberian tundra. Nonetheless, it took a final appeal to the immediacy of that need by my friend Hope, the Lighthouse Project director, to extract a yes to coordinating a trip sooner than I would have chosen.

My favorite child from Tulsa was a freckled, blonde-haired nine-year-old who enchanted me, proclaiming his love of homework and English classes, and topping it off with a Russian-accented English rendition of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.” While I work until the wee hours of the morning on behalf of every child entrusted to me, I especially liked Vladimir. Occasionally there are kids so winning I cannot understand why no one picks them; I have settled on the explanation that it is God’s will and timing, and that their family must either be somewhere else or they don’t yet know there is a Russian child searching for them. For one of these reasons, Vladimir did not meet his family in Tulsa. A few years ago, the Russian government started compensating families for providing foster care to orphans. Foster care has become more popular in poorer regions than the rest of Russia as government payouts for care have increased. While I would not paint all Russian foster families with a broad brush, does it take a cynic to wonder if there’s a connection, and why only families in poor regions want to foster? And is it a coincidence that once kids reach the age of sixteen, when government payouts cease, many foster families suddenly lose interest in the kids and turn them out to the streets? The Lighthouse kids’ region is quite impoverished and Vladimir’s orphanage, my own kids’ orphanage “alma mater,” is a hotbed for foster care. A child of his age would most certainly be picked by a foster family before I could do the next available trip in June. By consenting to do a March trip, perhaps I can save the boy who stole my heart with his song from a lifetime without a family who loves him.

Also scheduled to travel is fifteen-year-old Katya. Only nine months from her sixteenth birthday, Katya will be unable to enter the United States on an orphan’s immigrant visa once she reaches that milestone. At the stroke of sixteen, hope of adoption is fruitless, leaving little to anticipate beyond an unspeakable future of degradation and a brutishly shortened life expectancy. A trip delayed until June would be three months closer to a sixteenth birthday promising to be anything but sweet. Maybe by taking action just a few months earlier we can rob the Russian streets of a charming girl who still has the audacity to dream of life as a chef rather than life as a prostitute.

The clock doesn’t stop for Vladimir or Katya. I must be as relentless.

Saturday Bits and Pieces

Bit observations, Day One:

Saturday found most of the Lighthouse Project kids at Oral Roberts University’s Mabee Center to cheer on the women’s basketball team, coached by birthday boy Vladimir’s host dad. The ORU Golden Eagles rolled out the red carpet for us, gifting us fifty-five comp tickets, welcoming the kids to center court during halftime for introductions, and inviting Vladimir and Eduard to the floor to participate in a time-out game of catching thrown rubber chickens in a bucket. While a victory would have been icing on the cake, we enjoyed the spectacle nonetheless. The game whetted the kids’ appetites for shooting hoops, which we sated in the practice gym while awaiting the arrival of the Tulsa World reporter covering our story. After interviews and a brief photo shoot the group dispersed and Vladimir was off to likely his first birthday party, thrown in honor of his ninth. Parties and chickens, both thrown for Vladimir in a single day…

I tried some Russian on Eduard at the game, but his English answers were proficient enough that I fought an urge to hide that my knowledge of his mother tongue was not. When volunteers were sought for the chicken game, he leaped from his seat with a gusto that ensured he’d be picked. Eduard caught eleven chickens in thirty seconds.

On the way to an outing Saturday happy Alexei of red helium balloon fame burst into tears. His host family, who’d endured two extra months of waiting to host him when his orphanage was stricken with the dysentery quarantine before the November trip, tried to console him but couldn’t understand the mercurial change. During their translator home visit, they found out the poor boy’s distress stemmed from his fear that he was being returned to the airport for not being good enough. His hosts’ “babushka” jumped to her feet and embraced him, and the family reassured him how they loved having him in their home. I wondered if it would comfort him to know how distraught they were when I had to tell them the day before the November trip departure he was unable to travel, and they’d have to wait until January.

When I called Ekaterina’s host mom in the morning for an update, she enthused, “She’s precious!” Ekaterina noticed carrots being peeled in the kitchen, reached for the knife, and polished off the job herself. After the game the translator and chaperone visited her hosts’ home; I went along as a hanger-on. Ekaterina told us her best friend at the orphanage is a “home girl”, so-called because her biological mother visits her occasionally. Ekaterina exuded a reflected glory in being in good with a home girl, as those with even minimal parental involvement are classified in the higher echelons of orphanage social strata. I found this revelation especially sobering, that a child could ache for a family so sorely that mere association with another child whose own mother visits a few times yearly would offer solace.

So ends Day One lacking enough fodder for a cohesive blog entry, but providing sufficient material to give incentive for one thousand more Lighthouse Project trips.