Day Five- February 5, 2007

We awoke on Monday morning after another good night’s sleep. We had four appointments scheduled for the day, all in or around Tbilisi. Our first visit was at the Tbilisi Boarding School for deaf children at 10:00 am. The first thing we noticed there was that the entire building was warm on the inside. This was the first place we had visited that had a working central heating system. The building overall was in pretty good condition and it was bustling with activity. The school was the only place in Georgia for deaf children to learn and there were well over 100 children ages 6-17 who attended it. They were taught to speak and to read lips mostly because most of their families were not in a position to learn sign language. It also acted as a boarding school as many of the children lived at there because their parents were too poor to keep them at home and care for them. We were told that many of the children there had become deaf as a result of being given accidental overdoses of medicine when they were younger. We visited several of the classrooms and were given a demonstration by two of the students of their proficiency in reading lips and speaking. We were very impressed with the education they were getting. We were told that the biggest need there was for donated hearing aides and educational supplies for the children. At each classroom we visited, we gave out toys and art supplies. We also gave the director a large bag full of additional art supplies for the children.

Our next stop was only a few blocks away at the Tbilisi Infant House. The children here were all infants up to the age of five. Once they were six years old, they would be transferred to another location for older children. Again, this place was in relatively good condition, with a working heating system and many doctors and staff. The director there told us that Georgia was working hard for their children. The social welfare system had greatly improved in recent years and was very active in trying to keep families together. We were told that when they knew that a mother was intending to abandon her baby upon birth that she would be assigned a social worker that would try to help her so that she would be in a better position to care for her baby. The main reasons for families or mothers abandoning their babies were poverty and the stigma attached to being a single mother. We were told that most of the children there had families but that many of the families were just too poor to care for their children.

As a general note, we found this to be a big change in Georgia from when we adopted our children in 1996. In 1995, when our daughters were born, there were many true orphans in Georgia and many were in orphanages in which the conditions were just terrible so many of the children did not survive. Now, there are still true orphans in Georgia, but not nearly as many. The conditions have improved to the point that most had a place to sleep and food to eat but many still need a lot to improve their lives and chances of survival when they become adults. It seems as if most of the children we saw during our stay in Georgia had families nearby but were not able to live with their families because their families were simply too poor to care for them. Many of the children also had parents who were either in jail or alcoholics. It is sort of like a new class of semi-orphan children in Georgia. Approximately 55% of the population of Georgia lives below the poverty line with many of them living in extreme poverty. The real need as we saw it was to try to improve the living conditions for this new class of children and to set up working models at their orphanages and boarding schools that would give them a chance for survival upon their release at age 17 or 18. In order to increase their chances for survival, more of the children need to be taught occupational skills to increase their chances of getting a job. Many of the children also need access to psychological help to increase their chances of becoming healthy and functioning adults.

Our next visit was at the Tbilisi Children’s House No. 1 in the city of Tbilisi. We found the conditions there to be relatively poor. The main building was in poor condition and we were told that part of the building was being used by refugees and was not available for the children. We were showed a bathroom in the main building, which I found it difficult to imagine having to use. The floor was covered by about a half inch of filthy water and it smelled terrible. The director told us that several of the children that were there were new arrivals and that they had bad habits that contributed to the bathroom conditions. She described how when some children first arrive they are so used to not having any food to eat that they will be out of control and stuff themselves to the point of vomiting. The rest of the main building was old and very run down, with broken windows, no central heat, peeling paint, and bare concrete floors. The building contained activity rooms, homework rooms, and dining rooms. The administrative offices were also in this building. Adjacent to the main building were two relatively new buildings that were being used as dormitories for the children. They were in relatively good shape. We also noticed that the grounds all around the buildings were covered with trash and debris. We asked the director if she ever considered having the children help clean up the grounds and she said that the children refused to do any work like that. We were surprised by this answer because that did not seem to be a problem at the other places we visited. We felt as if maybe the director and/or her staff just did not think that keeping the grounds cleaned up was important. On a positive note, there was a small workshop on the grounds and we learned that a local wood carver would volunteer a few days a week to come and teach a few of the boys wood working skills. He was there when we were visiting and we saw him teaching the children. They were working with wood chisels and other hand tools and their work was very impressive and beautiful. The director told us that the boys really loved this man and their time spent working in the shop. Again, we felt the biggest need here was building repairs and personal items for the children.

Our last visit scheduled for 5:00 pm took us to the Tbilisi Rehabilitation Center on the outskirts of Tbilisi. We were extremely puzzled and disturbed by what we found there. We arrived at a large, two-story building in fairly poor shape nestled among the trees. We entered and were led to the second floor, where we saw several rooms full of bedridden children of all ages. The children all looked healthy but we were told that all of the children suffered from the same condition, which required them to stay in bed almost 24 hours a day. The condition was described as a bone disease or ailment that affected their hips to the point that they were in constant pain and unable to walk around. We visited with many of the children there and in many cases their mothers were there living with them even though they were not supposed to be. We were told that the children were all being treated, but that in most cases it took at least two years of medical treatment and staying in bed for them to get better. The main treatment was medication (which the parents had to pay for) and constant bed rest. Somehow, we had a hard time accepting that this was the best treatment for the children. It is hard to say though, because we really don’t know what it really was that was affecting these children. We spoke with several of the children and many of them had been there for over a year and were still not better even though they said that they were slowly improving. The rooms all smelled of smoke from the woodstoves used to heat them but they were warm. We gave out lots of gifts to all of the children including, scarves and art supplies.