The Philosopher seems to be settling in well with The Mother. Can it actually be that this is for real? I am still waiting to meet her, but it seems she is also wanting to meet The Англичанкие who are an important part of her daughter's life. Although anglichanki literally means women from England, our orphans have co-opted this word as their way of trying to put us, expat and Kazakhstani volunteers alike, in a category.
Sometime last week at the orphanage the kids all greeted us with excitement:
"Yesterday more anglichanki came, different ones! But they know you!"
And then, in the innocent way that children can be unconsciously painfully truthful, they added
"They speak much better Russian and Kazakh than you!"
Turns out they were not anglichanki at all, but students from the local university. To the kids however, it seems this isn't a word describing nationality, but a unique and otherwise indescribable "role" we, and now others following in our footsteps, play in their lives. They have no other word for us. Who are we after all? We're not houseparents, we're not teachers, we're not inspectors, we're not even 'sponsors' who come in an endless stream at holiday times trading candy and icecream and sometimes a dead sheep for a half-hour concert of song and dance and perhaps some brownie points for the next life.
We're adults, but we don't behave like other adults they know - we sit on the ground with them, we laugh with them, we talk with them; the key words being "with them". We're a foreign concept.
There is another word, the usual word for a foreigner, иностранка (ino-STRAN-ka), that is usually used when people want to point out my foreignness, my'other-ness'. But as noted before (Bruised butts...), to my ears that word often carries with it negative connotations. Anglichanki, on the other hand, is a label with a much more pleasing ring.
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