Day Three- February 3, 2007

We were up early on Saturday morning and again began arranging our gifts for the children and getting ready for the day. We had three appointments scheduled for the day including a visit with Mother Miriam, who is well known for her mission to help the homeless and orphaned children of Georgia. For our first visit, we drove approximately 25 kilometers outside of Tbilisi to an orphanage and boarding house in Saguramo, located at the foothills of a chain of enormous, snow-covered mountains in Northern Georgia. Again, it was cold outside, a few degrees below freezing, when we got out of the car upon our arrival at Saguramo. We were led into a large, old three-story concrete building which was freezing cold inside. We went into the small office of the director and were kindly greeted their by Dato. He told us that he had a total of 37 children, ages 6-17, living there, out of which 8 or 9 would spend the weekends at home. Most of the children were orphans or had alcoholic parents or parents in jail. Most of the children lived there full time and attended a school in the nearby village. The children would walk the 2.5 km distance to and from school every weekday.

The building with the director’s office was mostly abandoned, because it had no heat and was very large. The children lived and slept in an adjacent building, which was in very poor condition and was heated primarily by wood stoves. Since we were there on a Saturday, not all of the children were there. We went over to the other building and found approximately twenty-five children all in one large room with a small wood stove and a small TV. It was relatively warm in the room, but still required wearing heavy clothes to be comfortable. The room smelled of smoke and a window was open to bring in fresh air. Most of the children were watching TV and talking with each other when we came in. We were introduced to their newest arrival, a 6 year old boy who had arrived a few weeks earlier. He had been found living alone at the city dump. They knew nothing about his parents or even if they were alive, but he seemed to be a happy little kid as he followed us around and gave us big smiles. We noticed that he was wearing sandals and were told that they were all he had in terms of footwear. We were told that most of the children did not own much more than the clothes and shoes that they were wearing. The bathrooms were in awful condition, with holes in the floor for toilets and only one shower basin for all of the children. The bedrooms were also in poor condition with very old beds and mattresses and blankets. Each bedroom had between two and four beds and one small metal wood stove which vented out through a removed window pane.

There was a pile of scavenged firewood at the entrance to the building that they used to heat the bedrooms at night. Dato told us that the children were healthy and had enough food to eat, but that their current level of funding was not enough to make any building repairs or to purchase any personal or recreational items for the children. He then took us to the kitchen and showed us how the staff cooked all of the meals for the children on a larger wood stove. The kitchen also had a large gas stove but they could not use it because the gas had been turned off months ago because of non-payment. As we toured the facilities we could see the children interacting with Dato, and it was obvious to us that he cared deeply for these children and that they cared for him. When it was time to leave, we opened up the trunk of the car, spread out a bunch of new scarves, and let each of the children pick one. We were surprised to see several of the boys pick out pink scarves with little hearts on them. We left extra scarves for Dato to give to the children that were home for the weekend.



Our next stop was our visit with Mother Miriam at the Dzegvi Orphanage House, which is about 30 minutes from Saguramo. Upon arrival, we were led into an office where we waited for about 20 minutes for Mother Miriam to arrive. While we were waiting, we were served steaming hot green tea, which was good for shaking off the cold. Mother Miriam was striking when she walked into the office, dressed in all black with only her face showing. We discussed her work with Georgia’s needy children for about 45 minutes. She told us about the home that she had set up where she was reuniting abandoned children with their birth parents and giving them a place to live together. She had done this for several families, and was also doing much more work with several other orphanages in Georgia. She told us that there was a lot being done in Georgia for the children, but that there was still much to do. She believed that the orphanages outside of Tbilisi were in more need than the ones inside the city.

On our way back to the city, we stopped at a small village restaurant for a lunch of authentic Georgian cuisine. The food was very different but absolutely delicious. We also stopped for a few minutes to look inside a historic 5th century church. It was amazing on the inside, with stone walls, domed ceilings, and murals painted everywhere.

Our next appointment was back in Tbilisi at a boarding school for the mentally disabled. The school had about 200 students, of whom approximately 170 lived at the school full time. Most the students lived there full time because their parents were very poor and/or because the conditions at the school were better than at their homes. Thirty-seven of the children had no parents or home to return to. We were able to visit with many of the children there and it was apparent that many of the children were severely mentally disabled. The buildings were in better shape than the previous places we had seen so far. We were told by the director that the Japanese government had recently performed upgrades to the buildings, including installing new roofs. The building did have heat working in a few of the hallways, but that was all. Most other rooms were either cold or heated with small electric heaters. They also needed soft furniture for comfort and safety and toys to play with. The director told us that the government was working on setting up an adoption program and they were hopeful that a few of the children would be adopted by Georgian families. Georgia is no longer allowing any foreign adoptions. We gave her dozens of boxes of crayons, coloring pencils, and other art supplies to give to the children as we left.

On our way back to the hotel, we stopped at a grocery store and picked up some food to eat in our room for dinner. We were both very tired and looked forward to hopefully getting some sleep. We also packed our gifts for the next day in hopes of getting a few minutes of extra sleep in the morning. Just before bedtime, we both took melatonin to help us get some sleep.