Chapter Nineteen

FRUA Fun Continued:

 ... But Not Our Orphanage!

    The Amur/Blagoveshchensk thread was a massive one with many defending Amrex and Tatyana. Alysha maintained her stance regarding Tatyana, Amrex and the orphanage donation and how it was not reaching the orphanage. The happy, naïve post-adopters refused to believe it.

    How could somebody rain on the “facilitator/agency” as good, caring people cannot? Other people who had adopted from Blago, including the Towells, would make note that they did indeed see very sickly children at Elena and Oleg’s orphanage. 

    The rickets the children had. The “meals” of mostly starches and dried fruits. If so many donations and money had been brought there by American families and was being given as part of the “orphanage donation” in the money they were paying to their agencies, where had that money gone?  

    Were those posting and who had actually been to Amur so blinded by their own adoption experiences that they promptly forgot everything once they were home?

    A person posting as “Been to Blago” took umbrage at the $6,000 BBAS “orphanage and other incidentals fee.” 

    On Dec. 20 she posted:

Amrex never suggested to us that $6,000 goes to the orphanage.  We were told the orphanage donation is $1,000 per adoption, fairly standard fare in Russian adoptions.  By the way, you can get a receipt for this donation from your agency and include it as a charitable donation when filing taxes.

CP – the Amrex travel preparation site even mentions that a portion of your fees are donated to the orphanage and as such you are under no obligation to make further donations to the orphanage.  Of course, you are encouraged to and once there most of us wish we could do more.

Regarding the facilitators fee, wouldn’t it be nice if there wasn’t one, but that’s just not how it works.  Only those who adopt independently enjoy reduced faciliators fees.  Personally I would love to see more regions in Russia embrace independent adoptions.  Glad to hear that this one does.

    Alysha followed up to Been to Blago:

Yes, many indy’s donate $1,000 although it is never required…If you guys need proof of this $6,000 that I and other couples from my agency were told went to the orphanage, I will be happy to email you a copy of it with my name blanked out.  It says orphanage donation on the receipt…and Amrex doesn’t seem to care as long as they get their money.

I urge anyone going to Blagov to ask the orphanage director if she got $1,000 from your agency for your child…I highly doubt Tatyana or Svetlana would be willing to mention that amount to the director.  Weren’t you told not to mention your video or medical or agency name? Do you really think when they told you that, that they were operating completely legit? 

…I challenge any of you though, to not mention the money to your faciliator and present the orphanage with $500 or $1,000 cash to spend on them.  She [the orphanage director] will either pass out or kiss you.  She doesn’t see that amount on a regular basis.  If she did, the 2 or 3 couples that go at a time would be donating $2,000 or $3,000 at a time so why would she be so thrilled with a couple hundred bucks?  Ask yourself that.

    Alysha wasn’t making these things up — the $6,000 fee that Denise Hubbard had told her about and was written into the contract was a major sticking point for her. 

    Been to Blago responded kindly, but still maintained that the money was going towards the orphanage.

Just because the orphanage showed tremendous gratitude regarding your donation of a couple hundred bucks doesn’t mean that Agencies are not making donations here.  I believe it shows the graciousness of the orphanage staff and they probably would have been just as gracious were the donation $50.  They seemed very pleased with our donation of $400 worth of pediatric vitamins, shoes, coats, blankets and art supplies along with $200 cash, but I wouldn’t say they gushed profusely.  I got the feeling that donations, including monetary ones were the norm, not the exception.

The conditions I saw in the Blago baby home were generally in line with what I saw at three other orphanages in Russia and somewhat better in many respects.  In Blago the facility was old but clean.  The walls are painted with delightful, colorful murals of characters from children’s books.  The director’s office, where parents often meet with their child, had book shelves full of well worn toys that children helped themselves to. 

In the playrooms we saw many toys, again, often used, as opposed to the untouched displays I have seen in other orphanages.  The children and caregivers played on the floor together and the caregiver often led children the children in play.  Altercations between children over a coveted toy were handled by gently separating the children and distracting them with other toys.  Children were encouraged to be mobile as opposed to sedentary. 

I saw 9 to 13 month olds being encouraged to walk and the “escape” of a young crawler who climbed over a low cushioned barrier was met with cheers and smiles as the child was lovingly returned to the play area.  Toddlers were spoken to and encouraged to make sounds of animals. 

I saw children being held and comforted.  One distressed 7 month old was held for over an hour by a caregiver while we were on one visit and we were told the child was brand new to the orphanage and still adjusting to the change.  How refreshing to see that the distress of the child was recognized and they responded to the child’s needs with holding.

On their feet, the children wore hand-knit booties and their clothes were colorful with many pieces clearly from the U.S.

Unfortunately, I also saw small, under-nourished children.  Giardia is not uncommon here which further complicates the nutritional picture (Russians don’t treat for giardia, but let it run its course)…

I didn’t see children left unattended in large play pens where the most stimulating activity available to them is to ban their head against the rails…In fact, Dr. Downing considers this orphanage among the best in terms of health and development of the children.

    Been to Blago, in other words, had been treated to the “show and tell” segment for the Americans ... the same sort of thing the tsars used to do, putting up fake fronts of peasant huts to mimic happy living conditions. This tactic was later widely used by the Soviets, particularly during the famines under Stalin; it’s called “Potemkin villages.”

    Lenin, too, invented a term for the people who fell for this: “useful idiot.”

    Like too many foreign visitors to Russia before her, she seems to have bought it hook, line and sinker. What she was not able to see was Oleg being dragged up and down the halls of this same orphanage by one of these loving caregivers, or the bite marks on his little body. 

    Sure they were treated well, but in the same breaths, others would state the place was rather poor, but, oh, those caregivers surely loved the children!

    Try working with babies and 20 toddlers at a time for an eight- hour shift five days a week. It’s a job — a tough job at that.

    Regarding Dr. Downing considering this orphanage “among the best” he had felt the same way about Dom Rebyonka #2 in Perm.

    What Been to Blago could not praise in her post is this FACT: an orphanage is an institution. Institutions are not a replacement for a family. Nor are they a place to keep babies and young children for a great length of time. They are detrimental to a child’s mental health and physical well-being.

    Why are we to be impressed by a “distressed seven-month old …brand-new to the orphanage and still adjusting to the change” being held for an hour by a “caregiver”? 

    Nothing is sadder than a baby being placed in that orphanage at seven months of age. We should be disgusted that the baby’s final destination was an orphanage and that its biological family had no other recourse left but to place one of its members there.

    A distressed seven-month old baby should have been in the arms of its mother — bio or adoptive — not in the arms of a caregiver. Not living in a crib in a room with several other babies.

    It’s only the 21^st century. To think that the human race is still doing this to its helpless children — and people like Tatyana Dmitriyeva are profiting off our hopes and dreams while selling the children of her own disturbed countrymen. And that we are continuing to buy into this farce. 

    This huge thread was not only being read by us here in the United States and other English-speaking countries. There’s a reason they call it the World Wide Web, after all.

    It was being read and printed out in Blagoveshchensk by a very interested party who would be seething at some of what was to follow later in January. A very seething and trapped off party by the name of Tatyana Vladimirovna Dmitriyeva.

    Alysha, once she hit Russian soil, was about to blow the Tatyana orphanage donation spot sky high in January 2002.

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