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| << July30, 2006 - July 30, 2006 - Special Treat - Sharlett Hunt |
July31, 2006 - July 31, 2006 - Storytime Tapestry Contributors: Norma Liles; Keith Ready; Mary Carter Mizrany; Joyce Lock >> |
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Storytime Tapestry Newsletter The newsletter devoted to spreading love and cultural
awareness throughout the world. Special Treat – Dorine Houston I am please to announce another new writer for Storytime
Tapestry. Dorine Houston becomes our 343rd
writer. I hope you will enjoy her story
and great her in the special Storytime Tapestry way. with Mental and Physical Impairment © Dorine S. Houston, 2006 "More tea?" She was smiling at me, this pretty teenager. Somebody had, at some point in her life, decided she had a mental impairment and she had been doomed to live in an orphanage for mentally impaired children. Thing was, I couldn't see any signs of impairment. After she had finished her hostess duties, I asked my interpreter to help me chat further with her. Marina, as I shall call her, told me that she and her friends had helped the orphanage cook make the tea and the delicious buterbrot, open-face sandwiches so beloved in fruit and sweets platters and set the table. They had ordered the pastries from a bakery in town. Marina, aged about 15, showed no undue shyness at talking with me, a complete stranger and a foreigner who could converse only with the help of an interpreter. She knew how to make eye contact as she went around the table offering tea and making sure her guests were eating enough as well as when I sought her personal conversation. I saw her and the others beam, eyes sparkling, when the orphanage director complimented them on the good job they were doing as hostesses. (I knew what was going on thanks to my excellent interpreter). because she is lucky enough to have landed in the Children with Mental and Physical Impairment in Grebenikovka. Grebenikovka is in the Trostyanets district of Sumy oblast (province). Sumy is the oblast in the northeasternmost corner of Ukraine, on the Russian border. The city that serves as its administrative center is also called very small, a rural area. That was certainly the view from the car window. Americans in the Eastern Europe adoption community have all heard the horrible stories of orphanages for special needs children that may at best be dumping grounds or cages and at worst, death houses. Grebenikovka does not fit the stereotype. As a matter of fact, none of the orphanages in Sumy oblast fit stereotypes, largely thanks to the commitment and hard work of the Baptists of Sumy Church of Grace, who have spent years providing material and spiritual support for the orphans of the region even at sacrifice to themselves during periods of severe economic distress in Ukraine. The director at Grebenikovka is an extraordinary woman named Olga. Olga never married; the children at the orphanage are her family. She is as determined to prepare them for a successful adult life as the best of real parents. She wants them to have a sense of accomplishment and the pride and self-esteem that accomplishment brings. She wants them to have presentable social skills. She wants them to know how to work, to have a good work ethic and a solid sense of responsibility. She is wildly successful. Between 16 and 18 years of age, Ukrainian orphans are pushed out of the orphanage. The government helps them set themselves up in dormitories where they can share a room with one to three others and get their first job. If they succeed, they are on their way, but if they fail, they get no second chance for help. These young people may become homeless or criminals. Despite their handicaps, Grebenikovka graduates consistently represent the highest percentage of successful young adults. They are among the ones most sought after by employers. Thanks to Olga's wisdom and hard work, these young people know how to put in a good day's work and please an employer. They have the basic skills to maintain their home and not lose the apartments the government helps them get. Every child in Grebenikovka learns two basic skills, agriculture and embroidery, boys and girls alike, the ones with mongolism and the ones who seem normal. All of them become competent farmers working the fields and orchards owned by the orphanage. Some of the produce supplements their own diet. It shows in their healthy faces. The sell much of it at the local market, and with its income they can provide other things they need. They have bought some sows and breed them. They raise the piglets to the appropriate age then sell them. In addition, every boy and girl learns how to do traditional Ukrainian embroidery. One advantage to embroidering is that it teaches a child concentration, patience and attention to detail. Another advantage is the enhanced self-esteem artistic achievement gives. It teaches them to stick to something and see it through to completion even in the face of challenges and substantial time commitment. When they sell their work, the income provides for an improvement in their standard of living. In addition to the usual orphanage used clothing that comes from humanitarian aid boxes, every year, each child gets a brand new outfit from the same market where ordinary local families buy their own new clothes. The money comes from their own work, and when they go to the city, also use the money to improve their own living space. I saw nicely papered walls there, nice furniture, good carpets on the floors and attractive curtains decorating the windows. Portraits and icons hung on the walls wre draped in traditional Ukrainian fashion with towels of their own handiwork. They were very eager to show off their latest improvement, a bathroom. I was at Grebenikovka on December 4, 2005. They told me that one of the bathrooms had been completed just four days earlier, every last hriven of it paid for with the autumn's embroidery income. They were rightly very proud. You enter the bathroom and turn on a bright fluorescent light. You see the sparkling clean ceramic tile walls and floor. To your right, a door leads to a row of new ceramic toilets. To your left, a row of sparkling new white sinks has hot and cold running water. Beyond them, another door leads further left to showers with hot and cold water. In another room, they had displayed their embroidery, and expressed regret that their stock was low. They had just sold much of their recent work at a craft fair. I inspected piece after piece, mostly traditional Ukrainian ceremonial "towels", including some magnificent wedding towels. Some pieces had general floral designs and others had lovely Christmas and Easter designs. There was still plenty from which to choose. I emptied my wallet and gave many of my purchases as Christmas presents. I enjoyed making a serious dent in the stock they had! Friends and neighbors who have seen the embroideries displayed in my house admire them for both their beauty and the perfection of their workmanship. I bought an especially large wedding towel. It is long enough to serve as a runner on the dinner table. The director called over a boy who appeared to be about 14 and introduced him as the one who had made that towel. We chatted briefly with the help of the interpreter. He was polite and able to look me in the eye while we conversed. The impression I got was that he might have an IQ just below average. He would not be a burden to any family that might adopt him, however. He is skillful and has a good sense of accomplishment. In a would be in the mainstream and after ESL, need very little if anything in the way of special services. Personal attention might even bring him into the fully normal range. Other children and teens in this orphanage are surely only learning differenced/disabled, not actually retarded. the ones who have all the facial features of Down's syndrome. They would love to join families that are looking to add a Down's child. The children I am preparing to adopt accompanied me on the visit. The director talked warmly with them and even gave my girl one of the beautiful wedding towels her children had made. I look forward to the future date when she marries here in the traditions such as binding her and her new husband's arms together with that wedding towel. Olga spoke of her pleasure at seeing two orphans on the way to having a new mother and a home and family in added with an air of sadness that it had been many years since any child was adopted out of Grebenikovka. She supposed nobody wanted children with disabilities. So many of her children looked to be very close to average! I am certain that they would be delightful sons and daughters for US and Western European families! She must not realize the number of Americans there are who would choose to adopt a child with special needs and only want to know where to find them. Have you considered adopting from heart and family for a young Ukrainian orphan who has had as loving and stable an environment as any orphan could hope for in an orphanage and who has not been so deprived as to be damaged by it, yet who would love to have parents to call his or her own? Are you among those who actively seek to adopt a child with Down's syndrome? Are you open to adopting a child who is no genius and may well never even be college material but who knows how to work and how to be respectful, and whose stable relationship with the director and staff at Grebenikovka would indicate a capacity to bond lovingly with you? Contact me if you want to adopt one of these wonderful children and teenagers. I do not represent any adoption agency nor do I charge a fee to head you in the right direction. I just know volunteers from the church who know the children and would be happy to learn that you want to adopt. All that matters is to see the very special children and teenagers of Grebenikovka get a chance at the happiness of parents of their own—and your joy at being the parent of a very dear child. They sell their embroidery at what the local market will bear—which I consider far less than what it is worth. I volunteered to sell it here for what it's actually worth and have been sent pictures and a price list. Ask me if you're interested (ukraineorphan@earthlink.net). You can choose from the pictures and place your order to have the design of your choice made to order. ADvocating story -- Dorine Subscribe to The Global Epicure, a free daily cooking ezine mailto:global-epicure-subscribe@yahoogroups.com Interested in adoption from http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SumyUkraineAdoption/ |
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| << July30, 2006 - July 30, 2006 - Special Treat - Sharlett Hunt |
July31, 2006 - July 31, 2006 - Storytime Tapestry Contributors: Norma Liles; Keith Ready; Mary Carter Mizrany; Joyce Lock >> |
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