LOST and FOUND update... gone astray

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.

Lost and found?

The Philosopher (see The metamorphosis of houseflies and hedgehogs) found her mother! 

On Wednesday she decided to type her mother's name in AGENT, the popular social networking site Russian speakers use.  She found a woman under that name and wrote her a message:
     "Do you know a man named {insert her father's name here}?"
Within a couple of hours she had an answer.
     "Why? Are you my daughter?"

On Thursday they met in the food court of the mall.  The mother cried.  The Philosopher didn't, but asked the 42-year old woman why she was crying.   The mother gave her 10 000 tenge (almost half a month's salary for The Philosopher) and bought her some shiny bits of plastic jewellery.

On Friday they met again.  The mother asked The Philosopher to move in with her.  The Philosopher said she'd think about it.

On Saturday I got a phone call.  "I'm at my mother's house. I'm moving in - tomorrow."

And just like that, 20 years of painful agonizing, perhaps on both sides of the relationship, entered remission!?  I'm still overwhelmed and amazed when I think of it.  But, while this may have the ingredients of a good fairy tale, I cannot just finish with the words: "and they lived happily ever after".  More than being a realist, I am also sceptical.  Concerned. 

I first heard about it all after their first meeting on Thursday.  As is usual when one of our girls has something to tell us, the story came out in bits and pieces and in no particular order.  I'm sure there is some sort of structure to they way they retell events, but linear chronology is not the framework they use!  As such, here are snippets of what she had to say, in no particular order.

     "I have her eyes, but she says in everything else I look like my father."
     "I'm родная!" (pronounced: rod-NAI-ya)
     "She asked me to live with her, but I don't know.  Of course, it would mean I could save on rent."
     "I'm родная!"
     "She said the doctors told her I was dead."
     "I haven't said anything to my hozaika (the woman she has boarded with for over a year and who has taken her under her wing).  She will only moan that I will leave her, and I'm not ready to decide that or argue with her."
     "I'm родная!"
     "She has her own 2-room flat - maybe she will transfer it to my name!"
     "She asked if I was 'offended/hurt' by what she did...I said, no"
     "She said her father was strict and she wasn't married, so she couldn't keep me."
     "I'm родная!"
     "I can't call her mama, that's just,.... I can't."
     "I'm родная!"
     "She said she was young and unable to care for me.  She looked for me later, but couldn't find me."

As you can see, most significant to her is this notion of being "родная".  The word literally means relative, and is commonly used in the plural to refer to one's relatives.  I don't think it's usual to use the word in the way she used it, but then again, her situation isn't exactly usual!  In this case she is referring to a deep longing that apparently has finally been filled - a longing for (biological?) attachment, for connection, for roots.  "I belong!"  In an earlier post I wrote about little G asking if she would still be detdomskii if she found her mother (see Will I still be an orphan if...?).  Now I think I understand a little more what she was asking.  In their world, rodnaya and detdomskii are opposites!

For me, the most significant part is the apparent contradictions in all the stories her mother told her about the circumstances of her birth and subsequent 'abandonment', and the speed with which everything else unrolled!  Who is this woman?  Is she really her mother, or some clever scammer taking advantage of an orphan's desperate need to belong?  Even if she is her biological mother, what kind of woman is she?  Will she take advantage of her offspring's desperate need to belong?  Even if she has good intentions, will she be able to act in her daughter's best interest or will the guilt and her desire to make up for what happened 20 years ago unintentionally clip The Philosopher's newly fledged wings?

Regardless - the emotional upheaval for both of them must be great!   Please God - as they establish their "rodnaiyedness", may they find healing from past hurts, mutual support in present circumstances, and freedom for future growth!

Doublethink - unreally real!

Doublethink - "to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them..." (George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty Four)

These past couple of weeks I have had a good dose of doublethink!  First there was the sudden appearance of the "officious commandant" at one of the institutions I go to sporadically to visit an adult orphan who has been deemed incapable of independent living.

    "Who have you come as?" she demanded.  "Only relatives can visit". 
When I pointed out that, being an orphan, my friend didn't have any relatives to visit her, her answer was:
    "I know she's an orphan, that's why she's here.   Only relatives can visit!" 

Then there was the cafe my friend and I stopped in to the other day after a huge craving for a hamburger.  The hamburger was, as I expected, NOT satisfying, but it was probably all worth it for my next installment of doublethink.  We seated ourselves and then noticed that all around us people were smoking and there were ash trays on every table as far as the eye could see.  Calling the waiter over we asked where the non-smoking section was. 
     "There is no non-smoking section"  she explained. 
We thought that a bit much, especially given that according to the law, smoking is not even allowed in cafes and restaurants. 
     "So what about that sign?" we asked, pointing at the large NO SMOKING ALLOWED signs posted at regular intervals along the walls. 
     "No smoking allowed.  That's the law.  That's why we don't have a special non-smoking section". 
 {shrug}
 I guess all cafes are smoke free, its just that some are more smoke-free than others!

Bittersweet birthdays

The Revolutionary turned 20 this week.  Last week I asked her about how she would celebrate. 

"I probably won't do anything.  I'll just wish myself Happy Birthday, like I wished myself Happy New Year as I sat all by myself at midnight on Dec 31."  Bravado mixed with self-pity.  I know that tone.  I think I've used it myself on more than one occasion.

"Well," I proffered, "we can at least have tea together on the day, can't we?  I want to make you a cake."   But that was where we left it.

The day arrived and I sent a congratulatory text message in the morning.  I finally heard from her in the middle of the afternoon and before I knew it, I was hosting her and 5 friends for dinner.  When I caught the birthday girl alone for a few minutes, I asked her how her day had been.  She said she had had a great day.  All day.  Except when she first woke up.

"I cried.  I don't know why, but I cried". 

I don't know why she cried either, but I feel like I can sense it.    A complex mix of joy and pain.  The celebration of birth infused with the pain of being abandoned.  But birthdays aren't just about marking that day you were born, they also mark annual growth.  How much more bittersweet then is the joy of being 'all-growed' up but not having a mum, not even a memory of one, to be proud of you?

The metamorphosis of houseflies and hedgehogs

Last night I had our two girls , the brave and fiesty orphan from my last post, and her graduate program-mate, over for the evening.  When they were living under our care, they concurrently experienced their first major crisis in their independent lives.  They had bravely set off on the long bus ride to their former residential college to collect their bank passbooks, returned jubilant from their successful adventure, only to have their excitement squashed by discovering that they no longer had possession of these precious books.   I wrote to a friend at the time:
     "... one went into hedgehog "curl up in a ball and cry mode" and the other went into housefly "flit about" mode - and neither had or have any clue as to how to cope with the crisis and figure out any actions to take.   I coaxed the hedgehog out of her ball for a few minutes, and got the housefly to sit still for a few minutes and we had a little chat for a while... The hedgehog at one point said that maybe "god gave and god took away", so I said, "Well, maybe.  If that's the case, then maybe you could ask him to give it back".  So they said they'd like to try that, and the housefly, after asking a few questions about how she could talk to God, came out with a very touching and conversational prayer.  After that, the hedgehog became more action oriented and was ready to do something about finding her book, while the housefly became paralyzed with I'm-no-good, life-is-no-good, what's-the-point-of-anything-pity.  After a couple of days of agony for the both of them, the bank books were found back at the college, in the spot where they had absent-mindedly put them down while being given a couple of items of clothing from a house-mother."

Their characters remain as distinct as they ever were, but over the past year they have matured immensely.  The brave and fiesty house-fly is as impulsive and intense as ever, but her intense emotions are now focused on the fate of the "Detdomskii".  Recently she bumped into a former class-mate of hers who passed on news of others.  "So-and-so is selling herself, as is this other one." 

I know both "so-and-so" and "this other one", and this news was painful enough to me, but to my girls the pain goes deeper.  Not only did they grow up with these other girls, but in the back of their minds is the thought: "That could have been me". 

"It's not right!" the fiesty one, now christened by me The Revolutionary, fiercely vented.  "The detdomskii haven't been brought up well.  The "bringer-uppers" (literal translation of the Russian for house-mother) aren't doing their jobs.  They say "Be quiet, sit still, clean this, do that", but they don't tell us about important things, and how to live.  The teachers, they teach us abcd, but nothing about how to get a job and keep it.  The detdomskii leave and aren't ready to live in the world.  I've been thinking about the detdomskii a lot lately.  We need to help them."

The hedgehog, now christened by me The Philosopher, inserted her own thoughts on the matter.  "But you can't help people that don't want help.  They have to want it first.  And they have to want to help themselves."

A bit later, as it usually does, the topic of their mothers came up.  The Revolutionary gave voice to her usual discourse that she wouldn't live with her mother if she found her and discovered she was rich. "But if she was poor, or sick, I would help her.  BUT..." and this is where the monologue took a new turn from her usual recitation.  "I will NEVER forgive her."  The Philosopher was immediately anxious to say something, but was unable to get a word in edge-wise for several minutes.  Finally she found a break in the one-way conversation: "You can't go through life with unforgiveness like that.  We have to forgive.  As for me, I'm just glad I'm alive, and I thank my mother, at least for that."

The whole evening was punctuated with moments that I wish I had captured on video, if for nothing else than to show our future graduates snippets of the wisdom they had to share about practical everyday living.  "Did you know it tells you on the box of (long-life) milk that you have to keep it in the fridge after opening?" marveled The Revolutionary.  "Detdomskii need to know these things!"

In the land of limited vocabulary

As mentioned in my last post, being an alien in another country and language, I have some idea of what it is like to handicapped by a limited vocabulary.  But what is it like to have an incomplete grasp of your own native language?

Last year, while on her quest to get into further studies (a quest that is ongoing by the way) one brave and fiesty orphan spent a whole day wandering around the city, asking everyone she met how she could find the POLITIKA on Boriseva.  When she finally returned home, unsuccessful, and explained how she had spent her time, we had to point out to her that there is no such building as the POLITIKA. 
    “What you were looking for is called a POLYCLINIC {local-speak for a medical clinic}” 
In all her 18 years of living, she had never heard this common word before, but had latched on to the familiar sounds in the word and come up with politika! (Unfortunately for her, there is also no street ‘Boriseva’ – she had misheard Mariseva!)

More recently, this past summer, little G came home from her first day at her new work.
   “How is it?” we asked. 
   “Good” she said, “but I want to work at a bank.” 
My colleague and I exchanged confused looks.  A bank? Where did that come from?
   “What do you mean?” we probed “What’s wrong with the restaurant?” 
It was time for a confused look on little G’s face. 
   “Nothing. I just want to work at a bank there.”…
Confusion reigned for several more minutes before the issue was resolved.
   “Ohhhhhh! A BANKET!” we finally intuited.  “You want to work at a banquet”. 
   “Yes – that’s what I said! A bank!”
Imagine how completely confuddled and befused she was when a few weeks later she was introduced to the BANKOMAT (local-speak for ATM)!  Poor girl.  I still don't think she really has those three words straight!

"Hussein says"... a great way to learn Russian verbs

Some of my best russian lessons have been had while watching, waiting and often participating in the fixing of bumps, bangs, scrapes and general wear and tear of Nadya the LADA and Freddy the VW.

Back in Nadya's day there was the time we were having her brakes seen to.  I was in the hoisted up car (not so unusual here), being commanded by a guy named Hussein (quite unusual for here, hence why I remember his name) and was responsible for pressing, holding, pumping and letting go of the brake pedal.  They say total physical response is a great way to learn a language, especially verbs, and I would have to agree.  I think however, that the words might not have stuck so well, if it wasn't for the fact that I was then able to use 3 of the 4 of them in teaching computer skills to our Tumdi 9th graders.

Before that fun hour spent in a barely heated, dimly lit, exhaust and smoke-filled garage, pressing, holding, and letting go of the brake pedal, I had resorted to a lot of sound effects in my first efforts to teach basic mouse manipulation skills to computer illiterate teens who gripped those mouse-s with steel trap-like grips.

"Just {click} this button once.  No {click}.  No!  Make it sound like this! {click}"
"Ok, to make this window bigger, first you need to {click} but keep it {cliccckkkkkkked}..."

Nope.  There's just no way to make a "press and hold" sound with you tongue.  I didn't even get to the "let go of the button" sound.  The kids were probably just as frustrated as I was.  Perhaps they should be called sound in-effects!

However, after repeated reinforcement with Hussein and the brake pedal, I was a master at these 3 russian verbs.

"Just press once.  Good"
"Ok, now press and hold,... good, and now let go."

Ahhh,.... the victory of using words... now I know what a talking toddler feels like!

It's just a shame that all my car mechanic words can't be as useful.  Thanks to a recent adventure with the gas pedal on Freddy, I learnt the russian word for throttle - for the space of about a week.  At the time, I checked my online dictionary and found that unfortunately I can't use it to say to little G, or any other graduate who is acting up:  "I could throttle you!!!" (lovingly of course)

Pity.  I suspect it would have been a helpful way to reinforce my new vocab addition.  Instead, the word has been relegated to the "might recognize it, but can't reproduce it" drawer of my brain.

Will I still be an orphan if...?

“If I find my parents, will I still be an orphan?”  Little G looked at me with her big, baby seal-like eyes and waited.  What a question!  Obviously something that she has given a lot of thought to lately.

Like most of the other orphanage graduates I have talked with, her conversations often return to the subject of finding her parents, or more specifically, her mother.  They all come out with the same line: “If I found my mother, I wouldn’t want to live with her, even if she was rich.  I just want to see who she is, what she looks like, and to ask her: Why did you leave me?  But, if she was poor and in trouble, I would help her.”

Today, however, was the first time I had heard this more philosophical line of thinking on the subject of absent parents.  Did she mean in the eyes of the law? in her eyes? in the eyes of the community around her?

Little G filled in my silence with some of her own reflections.  “I grew up in an orphanage, so I guess I will always be детдомский. And after all, Kenji has a mother, but she’s still detdomskii…”

Her thoughts are no doubt influenced by her new life living around ‘normal’ people – people with family, people with education, people with ‘upbringing’, and people with a misguided and unexecuted insistence, almost as soon as they meet our girls, that they can help them find their parents.

Identity, belonging and worth – core issues we all wrestle with to some degree or another. How much more for one abandoned at birth?  As I was confronted by little G’s desperate need to hear the perfect answer, I was even more convinced that these issues cannot be completely addressed by any human act, no matter how well intentioned or perfectly executed.