Last week one of the girls in our Transitional Home for girls was
reunited with her family. The details are murky, but it seems that when she was very young her parents
divorced and her mother went to Russia to find work, leaving her with her
father. Other family members cared for her for a while but she was eventually
abandoned and found herself in a state home which she had to leave when she was
fifteen – at which point she moved to our transitional home. She is normally a quiet girl but is now so excited
to be reconnected with her family, who are now in Russia that she is bouncing about the place and bursting to tell everyone her news. As they say
here, ‘her lungs don’t fit in her chest’!
Sadly, this story of abandonment is all too familiar – we were
shocked to discover that in fact, between 80 to 90% of the 11,000 children in state
orphanages and homes in Kyrgyzstan have parents and family members who are alive but out of
touch – or who are unwilling to look after them. The 12 young people in Oasis’
transitional homes are no different. They may have ended up in these places
because of family breakdown, parents migrating for work reasons, or the
mistaken but widely held belief that a child can have a better life being
looked after by the state. Another of the girls in the Tranistional Home was
visited by her mother recently – she herself had been brought up in an
orphanage, and saw no reason why her 3 children (the other two are elsewhere in
Bishkek) should not have a similar upbringing whilst she works in Russia.
In other news... our colleagues who were evacuated in September are doing really well. Their son, Josh is doing all the things that a four month old should be and they are looking to return in May next year - hurrah! We have had some good snow which has all but gone as the temperatures have been relatively warm - minus five or so at night, but even up to about 10 degrees in the day. But there is some good cold weather on the way - Felix's ipod (which generally gives a pretty good forecast!) tells us that it will be minus 13 on Friday during the day and minus 20 at night. Bring it on!!!
