Last Tuesday I met up with the 2 other girls that I’m working with here in Razliv, along with Nickolai who is the go between One Heart Bulgaria and the orphanages they work with. He took us by car to Pravets, which is a small town. The place that had been arranged for us to stay at was the “guest room” (I use this term very loosely) of a language dorm. The thing is, I’ve stayed in various places in Bulgaria and I know what a fair price for things is. They wanted to charge us 7 Leva each for a horrible, dirty, smelly room with no mirror, place to wash our clothes, broken sink, and to top it off it only had extremely hot water for our shower since the cold water was not working. I tried to take it all in, but then when I realized they were charging us 588 Leva (Around 300 Euro) for the month, which in Sofia would get us a lovely furnished apartment I became a bit irritated and felt like we were getting an unfair price. The girls felt the same about the conditions of the place and we asked if there was an apartment or house for us to rent for a month.
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| The shower that only had horribly hot water, so that I ended up having to wash my hair in the nasty sink. |
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| Clearly, where all the fun is at. |
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| Maybe we paid for the view? |
The next day Nickolai said he searched for us but could not find a decent apartment so the solution they came up with was to place us with one of the orphanage workers nearby the orphanage who has 2 spare rooms since her daughters are all grown up. The way Nickolai explained it was that we’d have our own house, so I was a bit surprised when we came and we were really renting rooms from these people. However the conditions are soooooo much better. We have our own bathroom, wireless, a washer, kitchen access, a beautiful garden and a really sweet couple we are renting from. There always giving us food. =) I’m sharing a room with a girl from Estonia, and then the other American girl has her own room with a foldout futon. The situation will be fine for the month.
Once a week we go to an orphanage about a 20 minuet car ride, or a 40 minuet bus ride away. We work with the local Peace Corps volunteer with the disabled children. The Peace Corps volunteer has proven to be a lot of help, and very welcoming. At first I was surprised by how “nice” the orphanage was. It was brightly painted and seemed ok, not what I’d come to expect from all the YouTube clips, and the BBC documentary on Bulgarian Orphanages. But then taking it all in and actually staying there for a few hours, you start to see the issues. Issues such as the fact that the children are fed mush everyday in & out that can’t be very full of nutrients. The kids that can eat on their own are fed a soup, but the others are fed very quickly and I’ll say without much care by the attendants. Of course it’s understandable when there’s one of you and 10 kids to feed you can’t spend much one on one time. Anyways I was under the impression that all the people at the institute were in fact kids. I was really surprised then that a lot of these tiny looking bodies belong to 20, 25, 30, even 35 year old people. I’m not an expert, and don’t pretend to be but I believe that this is due to a lack of nutrition, and a lack of specialized care for each “patient.”
The kids that can’t walk on their own are often left in their beds, or in their rooms to lay on mats, in corners, in beds, in chairs, etc all day long with little interaction with others. The common theme of body-rocking, and hitting their head that I’ve seen in videos which occur due to lack of human touch is evident here. What really breaks my heart is the realization that if any of these kids lived in the US, UK, etc it would be totally different for them. Given the chance and proper care I think some of these kids would have led a relatively normal life. There are 2 blinds girls particularly I’m thinking about. I’m not sure if they have other disabilities, I’m assuming so since they can’t talk, but given the chance when they were born to have been brought up in the US, I bet it would have made a world of a difference. I’m thinking of so many cases I want to share. For example one little boy curls up in a ball in the corner of his bed, and stays there day in and day out hitting his head. We put him in a blanket and made a sort of hammock to swing him on. The smiles and giggles that came from his mouth were priceless. The attention, specialized care, and just a human presentence and touch these kids need are heartbreaking. The underfunded, underpaid, untrained, and lack of staff and training opportunities is also sad. It’s easy to see why the employees become so unenthusiastic and hopeless about the situation. The director seems like a nice guy, and I’m told he’s really into looking for funding from NGOs, charities etc.
One of the problems he personally mentioned to us is what happens to the children who can walk, and have slight disabilities, once they need to be phased out. There’s a lack of housing, and programs for these children to go to. Behind the institute there’s a semi built building that was meant to be a house where these people can go and live once they are old enough, and learn how to live in a community setting (things such as cooking, laundry, day to day things.) However this project was funded by the Greek Embassy (cough, cough, I’ll try not to make an EU related jokes here) and has been put on hold the last 2 years. What I’ve noticed about Bulgarians in general, is that when I bring up orphanages and explains to them what happening in them there’s a lot of shock, sadness and headshaking, along with disbelief. I had a group of Bulgarians tell be how horrible it would be for me, how the children will take my things, and hit me etc. Oh, also how most of them were Roma. All of the above are of course stereotypes they’ve come to believe. I think that the issue of these institutes are tucked away in small villages so that there not noticeable by the public.
The other orphanage I work at 4 days a week is a 10 minuet walk away from where I’m staying, here in Razliv. Our hours are pretty short, from 2 to 6 but after 4 hours I’m always tired because these kids are a handful. First off, the kids are all adorable, sweet and of course yearning for attention. They don’t really listen to us, they hit each other a lot and don’t have any discipline so that’s hard to deal with. But there are always hugs and smiles from all. =) The problem with working here is that we are expected to have activates planed for the kids, which I don’t mind at all doing! But this week we submitted our schedule for the next week keeping in mind that the orphanage would only have basic supplies. On Tuesday we were told all they had was a couple of balls, plain paper, crayons, and get this…. surgical scissors for the kids to use. That can make planning stimulating activities for kids very challenging. Without supplies so far we’ve played games such as tag, duck, duck, goose, musical chairs, heads up seven up, kick ball, a couple simple art projects involving paper, and we’ve gone on walks. I think the children have enjoyed the time with us, but they can definitely be overwhelming. I just think about all the supplies a normal American classroom has and how I’ve always taken all of that for granted. Pictures of some of the kids are below.
Pictures of Razliv & the Razliv Orphanage Children:
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| Flowers the kids picked for me. =) |
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| Entrance to the Razliv Orphanage. |
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| Playing games with the kids. |
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| Stork nest near the orphanage. |
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| My little monkey. He knows he's charming and a cutie. I wish I could take him home with me. =( |
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| Children cherry picking on one of our walks in the village. |
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| Our luck with buses! Best part was that the driver did not have a mobile. On our way back from working with the handicap children. |
