"Shall we now go home?"

By Valentina Rotenko

At the end of October 2003 three young, lovely children - in a very bad condition, however - came to live in our shelter home in Moscow. For one month and a half they had been kept in a hospital in the city of Maloyaroslavets. They were placed there after the imprisonment of their mother - the father already being in prison. The hospital personnel had tried to move them into orphanages, but no establishment agreed to accept them. The reason was that the children are Gypsies, and 2-year-old Gannah is not a Russian citizen. Somebody who knew about our shelter home had seen the poor and sick-looking children when visiting the hospital and advised the personnel to contact us.

We were shocked when seeing the children for the first time. They were dirty, thin and neglected, hardly lifted their eyes from the floor. Fear and confusion were seen on their faces. We visited the children a couple of times, in order for them to learn to know us. When the time came to leave the hospital for the first time in one month and a half, Alyona looked straight into my eyes and asked, "Are we now going home?" What a joy it was to answer: "Yes, we are!" For the first time in their vagrant and unstable life, these children were going to have a safe home.

When we arrived, all home children gathered around the newcomers and began to discuss how to take care of them and deal among themselves the tasks! "I will be taking care of this girl", even the small Angela said. "But she is bigger than you", I explained to her. "Nevertheless!" Angela insisted.

The siblings had to go through a thorough delousing, and their heads were in such a bad shape that we had no choice except shaving them short. Poor Alyona had her wonderful black and curly hair cut off.

Next autumn Alyona will start school. We are already now preparing her, because she is much behind her age mates. She knows how to count to ten, but she does not know any letters yet.

Little Gannah doesn't speak Russian, but understands some. With her sister she speaks the Gypsy language. Through playing and games we teach the children to speak and to enrich their Russian vocabulary.

Ruslan, the little brother, is still a baby. According to the mother he is one year and ten months old, but when looking at this tiny child you wouldn't give him even a year. Now Ruslan has begun to walk without support. He listens very carefully when somebody talks to him.

The siblings have already become friends with the other home children, and the bigger ones continuously stay around them to play and help. Everybody is really like a one big family. Nationalities - and we have several of them in our home - don't play any role here!