Why Slaves Don’t Leave

One of our Faceless team just posted a great blog on Why Slaves Don’t Leave. It’s really good….

kaylynlorraine.wordpress.com

The power of the apology

Yesterday, I saw a most amazing thing happen here in Ukraine.

One of our favorite kids here at the orphanage – Mischa – was hanging out, making some bracelets with one of the other kids.  I just happened to be in the room, working on an email.  

Mischa speaks no English at all, but for some reason, communication is not a big deal.  He has helped us completely with this building project, and has even started attending some of our group’s meetings.   As far as I know, Mischa, unlike many of the kids here, has nowhere to go for the weekends, so either he has no family – or his family is so bad he chooses not to go. Mischa has had the chance to be adopted twice, however he has turned it down, as he knows his little brother will be entering this orphanage next year, and he wants to be there to protect him.

We have a community snack area in a little “café” that they have built for the kids.  Throughout the day, we’ll leave food out for everyone to share.  Mischa had a very nice chocolate bar that he had added to the snack collection.  But it was wrapped, and no one had opened it.

Carol, one of the wonderful people we are working with here, wanted chocolate. And wanted it badly.  After a while, she opened the bar and had some – putting it on the counter.  When she realized that it was Mischa’s – she assumed that it was not to share and proceeded to drive all around this little Ukrainian village where we are staying in search of a replacement candy bar.  Which, she couldn’t find.

So she came in the room with Oksana, one of our English speaking friends here, and proceeded to apologize to Mischa.  Mischa didn’t quite know how to respond.  He kept saying that it was no big deal, but it was obvious that he really didn’t understand what Carol was doing.  She finally made him look her in the eyes as she said “I took your candy bar and it was wrong.  I’m sorry.”  He smiled, but I really think that was simply because he’s Mischa.

I followed Carol and Oksana out of the room to say that I thought it was a really interesting exchange, but Oksana just simply said “I don’t think he’s ever been apologized to by an adult before.”

And I couldn’t imagine it.  This kid is 18 years old. He has been nothing but helpful and kind and just straight up fun to be around.  He’s become a part of our little family here, and to think that he’s probably never had someone older tell him that they were wrong I just can’t fathom.  No one has respected him enough to say to him that his opinion mattered.  That he had a voice.  And that he was right.

It was a candy bar, and he was planning to share it anyway.  But that’s not the point.  Hopefully our little crew has been able to not only befriend some of these kids, but that they will know that we genuinely love them, care about them, and believe that they have a voice – an opinion – a face – and have a true purpose in this world.

Superstitions…

So there are a few proverbs that I’ve learned since I’ve been here in the Ukraine:
First – There’s something about that you can’t chase 2 rabbits. (Sort of a you can’t have your cake and eat it too reference….). Thus the advertisement…which I completely didn’t understand until someone explained it to me.  (Sorry there are 2 of these…don’t really know why there are 2!)

Second – Never put a mirror by your front door. (Because your money will come in the front door, and reflect back out)

Another – Girls can’t sit on the ground, as it will freeze their ovaries. I have no idea where this came from.

But this one really bothered me.

Never say nice things to a baby. As children need to earn praise.

I think this may explain a lot of what I have experienced here in this country. There is a harshness about the people here that I’ve never experienced before. In general, I’m not sure, everyone just seems a little sad.

I know some of it is simply their dialect – the harshness of the language and the preferred volume of speech just makes everyone sound angry.

But

There’s something about the kids here.  In just 3 days, they have blossomed into happy, loud, typical teens.  They seem to be desperate for attention and a little unconditional love to keep them going.  I know I’m drilling these stats in, but they have a 10% suicide rate among orphaned teens.  60% prostitution rate for girls.  70% crime rate for boys.

Something is very wrong.  But maybe it goes back to being as simple as being told as an infant that you were worthless or ugly or sub-par.   I’d like to try an experiment and see if simply encouraging children changes things.  If we start building these kids up from the start, if people gave these kids encouragement from the moment they are born and let them know just how amazing and precious they are…

It’s probably a bit idealistic, but maybe, just maybe that can be a little teeny amazing change in the world.

Made it into town!

We weren’t able to get the principal to let some of the girls walk into town with us, so some of the team and 2 of the students headed into town to buy supplies for s-mores.  We had brought along over 40 bags of marshmallows, so we were good on that front…we needed to buy cookies and chocolate!

With an exchange rate of 7.61 to 1, this was not a very expensive venture.

The people are fascinating – I wouldn’t call them friendly by any means – but the city is old and beautiful and I can’t wait to explore when we have more time.

3 bags of coffee, 2 bags of cookies, 6 chocolate bars (3 look amazing!), bubble water and gum = less than $20.  These kids might get more s’mores than they bargained for…

Hello Ukraine

Just for the record – Aerosvit Airlines doesn’t have movies (but they have video screens), music (but they have earphone jacks) or air vents…air vents would have been nice when the guy across from us took off his shoes. Hum….. But Kyiv looks like an amazing city and I’m looking forward to the week ahead!

Ukraine

Monday morning I’ll be landing in Kiev and heading to Vasylkiv Ukraine for a week that I’m sure will once again give my brain and my spirit a much needed reality check… Hope to be blogging and posting pictures, but not sure how much internet access we’ll have. FacelessInternational.com will have an area with pictures, video and posts (Video thanks to the wonderful people at Flip Camera!). I’m checking in with excitement, a teeny bit of apprehension and a whole lot of stress today.