David

While we were in Russia our team was presented with the option of adopting an ex-prostitute, her daughter and her niece and nephew for a period of time. This is the story of David.
David was 5 and he was the oldest, Abina is his sister and she is 2 and Angelina is their cousin and she is 1.5. The situation is actually a little different than what I was told, so I will line it all out and hopefully it makes sense...the whole situation is rather messy. Angelina's mother (Oleya) was a prostitute, but David and Abina's mom is still a prostitute. Oleya and her sister do not have a good relationship. There is some abuse that goes on and Oleya is forced to watch David and Abina on a regular basis while her sister goes and "works". Sometimes it will be for days in another city and other times it is just for a little while. Oleya has never really been taught how to raise children because she and her sister are orphans, so sometimes she leaves the kids all by themselves to work or run errands. She has no money because she is not employed and cannot be because in Russia in order to work you need papers that say you are a citizen and you also have to have ownership/attachment to a building. Why I am not really sure, but because she is an orphan she doesn't have the necessary papers to work.
Oleya has become friends with the base leader's wife Sarah, and they have been working with her and trying to help her get papers and set up a new life out of prostitution. Since they know the situation and they have been wanting to help Oleya out, when David and Abina's mom left to prostitute in another city, they decided to bring in Oleya and the kids to help them out for about 10 days. The team's part was to help take care of the kids and Oleya and to help them with food. I have such a soft heart and couldn't say no to the situation, so Ben (my co-leader--who is more soft than I am) and I decided that we were more than willing to absorb costs into the team and take them in.


Russia is known for the lack of ability to plan for the future. So we talked about a date while and then all of the sudden we were asked to go get the kids and Oleya and bring them home(not anywhere near the day we thought we were going to). Because there were eleven on the team we decided it would be better if only a few people went to get the kids and just two people meet them at the door so that they were not overwhelmed with a new environment and a large number of people greeting them. Two of my girls wanted to do it, so Miranda went with to get the kids and Mica was the one to meet them at the door. It was really a cool thing, but it made me realize just how hard it is to adopt a child, especially one that you don't speak the same language. David adjusted really well to staying with us. He was surrounded by people who were playing with him, loving on him and showing him what a family is supposed to look like. He is such the little man...very helpful and very smart! Abina was sooooo shy. She hated all the new people and did not really like any one on the team but Ben and Miranda only because Miranda was the one to take care of her during the day. I tried to make friends one day, but her and Oleya are really close. Oleya is not her mom, but she is with Abina all the time for the most part and she was also sick the entire time she was with us. I got myself into a pickle with Abina when one morning I was helping watch the kids and Oleya needed some time to be alone. There was a playroom in the house and so we took all the kids into the playroom and Abina started screaming for Oleya. I would not let her down and out the door and she screamed even louder and got herself all worked up. From that moment on she avoided me like the plague and screamed every time I came around. It was really sad to watch her because (although the child has an iron will) she was sooooo sick and had a fever and aches and was in a new place and just did not do well with us at all. Angelina was pretty good, but she stayed close to her mother as she possibly could. David and I got along well though until the day before he left.

David is an amazing little boy. He lives with his father some of the time, who actually has another family, so he lives a pretty "normal" life with his father, step mother and other siblings, but when he came to us he had just come back to his mom for a while. He is one of the happiest boys who is so content just doing his own thing, but he is reallly loving and loves to play with people. We had a coffee house a couple of days after they came and he mingled with all the people who came and was a little part of our team. He also loved Ben and being part of the "boys." We arranged a place for him in the guys side of the house next to Ben so that he would not fall off the bed and because a rule in Russia is that a child can never be alone with just one adult. There was no room for him in Oleya's room, so they did some arranging and he stayed with "the men." Our day off was just a few days later and I was planning to go iceskating with some of the Russians and part of the team at IKEA, so I decided to take David with since Abina was sick and Oleya stayed with her daughter most of the time. I thought it would be a fun adventure :) We had to walk to the bus station which is about a 25min walk with long strides, so David did his best to keep up with the team, but he and I were dragging behind. We got on the bus and he had a blast with a balloon he had found in his pocket. I blew it up for him and we got plenty of dirty looks from the other Russians on the bus because in public you are stoic, and I let this child have a balloon and bounce it around on the bus :) When we got to IKEA we had lunch. I don't know if he had ever been to a mall before, but the mall we were in was massive. Not as big as FlatIrons, but for a developing country it was huge. There was a food court so we decided to eat first. (oh I forgot to tell you...he doesn't speak any english and I have by this point only learned a few key words and phrases) So we head up to the counter and I ask him what he wants to eat. He tells me "gamborger" which I assume means hamburger. I was looking to see all the options and all of the sudden I am pushed up to the counter of something equivalent to KFC and David is telling me he wants a hambuger. I was so embarrassed, and I was only guessing at what he was saying, so as I am being propelled forward by this upset five year old to the counter of chicken I am forced to ask for a hamburger in a language i don't speak. The lady at the counter I think understood where I was coming from, so she pointed to McDonalds next door. David and I walked over and the people there were really understanding as well. She pulled out a menu and David pointed to the things he wanted. Finally happy we left the counter to find a seat in the food court. Aunt Connie you had two boys, so you know that when they are distracted it is really hard for them to eat the food in front of them, and I was trying to be a good mom and make sure he ate his apples and hamburger before he got the toy so he wouldn't be so distracted. That worked for a little while, but then I gave up and we got the toy out.
After finishing lunch and figuring out how to work the toy we spent some time at the ice skating rink in the mall. It was really cool to teach David to skate and sooooo much fun for me because I hadn't been in a while. I used to want to be an ice skater so i thought it was really cool that I was ice skating in the same country where Ekaterina Gordeeva and Oksana Bieul learned and became world champions :) (ah the dreams of a little girl) Ben, my co-leader, took David when he got tired and I was able to skate for a little longer, but when i came back David has this huge grin on his face as he is holding a 20oz Pepsi bottle and a giant lollipop and has the soda mustache and sticky all over his face. I like being the aunt because I can do that and then give the kid back, but this one was in my care for the rest of the day...I was NOT happy. We went on an adventure through the mall to shop for the other guys I was with and poor David was dragged along until we found the remote control car section. You know the kiosks with the really cool remote control planes and cars that you can play with. Thinking that shopping for jeans with the guys was going to be really boring we stopped and looked at the cars for a little while and David started chattering again. I caught a few words here and there and tried my best to answer, which was the biggest mistake I could have ever made. He thought I was agreeing to buy him a remote control car and when I would not let him purchase one he was cute to pout in about 2 seconds. One of the guys that was shopping with us was Russian and was able to explain a little bit to David what was going on....he didn't speak English, so I didn't know what was going on, but it doesn't take much to read a child who has been denied something he thought he was going to receive. My heart was so for him as these English speakers were taking care of him and couldn't understand him and he couldn't communicate and at 5 having to deal with no one understanding. He went into a pout for the rest of the day, even after doughnuts from Ikea. The hour bus ride back I was getting evil stares until Ben made him angry and then he came and cuddled with me until we got home. I thought things were ok once we got back home, but as we were having a meeting, David came and crawled up in Ben's lap and flipped me off! I could not believe it....and as I told him that was not ok, he burst into tears. I thought I had compassion and then I met David and God broke my heart all over again. I also learned that adoption is not the easy route......YIKES! Our team headed out to a village two days later and as we said good-bye knowing that the kids were going home the day we were leaving, David asked if we were coming back. We told him we were leaving and the only question he wanted to know was who he was going to sleep with when he went home.