Funding Education Centre for Russian Orphans

It’s always good to write about those children who “make a mark”, who are successful, who ‘set a good example’, but of course there are many who are ‘ordinary’. 

Natasha came to us when she was four years old; the youngest of a large family of alcoholic parents - not an unusual story.  She was sullen, she resisted every attempt to communicate or to accept our way of life.  She believed only her older siblings, a wild clan, she was inward-looking, determined to trust no one.  For five years she fought us off, determined to accept no love, to do only what was necessary to survive. She was small and thin, and would sit for half an hour in the dining-room refusing to eat anything except a very small plate of the kasha (porridge) which she was accustomed to. Sometimes something amused her and out of her sour little face beamed a moment of sunshine, a smile like a spring flower.  As quickly as her smile was seen, she shut it behind a milk-curdling scowl.  “Just smile; smile!”  But no, she refused.

With infinite patience, her foster mother cared for her, loved her and accepted her. With her older sister’s encouragement, she participated in birthday celebrations, her own and her foster mother’s.  But as the teenage years began, she become more disruptive, as if torn between the destructive ways of her birth family and the harsh life she had experienced as a small child, and the life of Kitezh.  We came to understand that in spite of  all of the years in her foster family, she had not understood that she was loved, she simply didn’t recognise it.  It was as if the foundation stone of love which is imbibed in infancy, was not there. Natasha had reached a crisis. We understood that this feeling of love had to be tenderly kindled in her as if in a small child.

Now, look at that face.  Natasha has learned to smile, the meaning of love, how to give and to receive it.  She understands the magic of just a smile!  She is sixteen, popular and almost ready to take her place as true ‘member of society’.  This once bitter sullen little infant will leave school this summer and hopes to become a beautician.  This is the gift of Kitezh Children’s Community.

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