of Belarusian-ness and orphans

I am eating a cabbage carrot soup. I feel very Belarusian.

The leaves are falling left and right. Winter is almost here.

I won at speed scrabble the other night after 5 rounds of playing. My best word was “nascent.” I love that word.

I actually found a spelling mistake in someone else’s writing, which my 4 Belarusian friends failed to notice. The reason this is a big deal is because it was in Russian. Go me!

I visited an orphanage on Tuesday. Met a really interesting fella from Washington state who has been working at this orphanage for a while. He goes out to the fields with them in the mornings when they dig up beets and potatoes. He takes them to town to buy school supplies and toiletries out of his own pocket. He goes into the halls for every class break to hug the kids and walk with them for their extra 5 minutes. We visited with a lot of different kids. In one classroom they were making cards out of construction paper. All of their cards had hearts on them. A second classroom was full of newcomers. The boys all had shaved heads because of lice, and the one girl also had shortened hair for the same reason. They all had the same clothes on. While we were there they were painting the tables while the kids were still in the room for class time and it smelled awful. A third class was the oldest bunch of kids. Without having to be asked, they all simultaneously rose to their feet the moment we entered the room. A few of the girls in that class were amazingly beautiful. They could be models. But instead they are orphans. I remember one girl, Lera, had a particularly joyful countenance. She was always smiling.

Each orphan has his or her own story. How they got to be in this place. Most of them are tragic. Some still have parents, but their parents have either rejected them or are incapable of caring for them. Most of them that can’t care for them are alcoholics. Some mothers wanted an abortion and just drank and drank and drank in hopes of miscarrying… but the child was still born, and now suffers with the effects. One child witnessed one parent stabbing another. Another was put in an oven by her mother for a minute or more and still has awful raisin-like scars all along her right side of her body, and a badly mangled ear. The stories will break your heart.
They break mine.