No Matter How Well You Feed the Wolves

March 29, 2012

American University of Central Asia’s students from the Anthropology department have taken an unusual tour to night shelters, orphanages and the rehabilitation centers for strays to find out why the number of international programs addressed to help orphans is growing every year, while the number of forsaken children is not going down.  An article spotting findings of the research and interview with the researchers was placed in Vechernii Bishkek (of 16.03.12) and we are happy to share its translated version with you. 

 

 

Back to the homeless shelter

Future anthropologists called their research “Begging children”. Students’ initiative was supported by “Soros-Kyrgyzstan” fund and AUCA’s Social Research Center. It was clear from the first stages of the research that the survey was falling out of the scope of this subject only. Having talked to the kids and their parents, tutors at orphanages, homeless people shelter workers, our students comprehended that this problem is a very deep and dramatical one, not as it seems at a glance. 

 -Our goal was not only to outline the problem but to find the models of its solution, which could be used in managing the problem, - said Ruslan Rahimov, AUCA’s associate professor in Antropology. – We wanted to look into the situation from the Social Anthropology point of view, in order to find out whether socially unsettled parents and poorly sustained shelter-care facilities are the only factors that cause children to be left out on the streets. We have revealed interesting facts. Ironically, no matter what an absolute scum a parent is, his/her children always try to come back home. We have become aware of hundreds of cases when children liked their alcoholic mother and a father, former prisoner for murder, more than the caring rehabilitation center tutors. They run away from better living conditions back to their cardboard dwelling, where they can join their parents.

 We met a 15-year old girl in one of those rehabilitation centers, who had gone through hell before getting there. Her alcoholic and drug addict parents beat her constantly, made her suffer from hunger and make her beg for living. After she was put to the center, it was like she was reborn. She gets to eat four times here, children here are provided with brand new clothes, not the used ones as many people think. Children go to school, participate in out-of-class activities. But in spite of all this, the girl always wants to visit her degraded parents, just to check if they have changed. This reminds me of a Russian saying: “No matter how good you feed the wolves, they will keep longing for the forest”

  -To be honest, when we started this research, it seemed to me that children run away from the shelter-care facilities because of unbearable living conditions there, because the government doesn’t take good care of them and they prefer wandering about the streets, rather than being under such care –says Tatyana Resnyanskaya. –I thought parents abandon their children out of despair and hopelessness, moral crisis. But in fact, the reasons in both cases are totally different. The story of a large family was quite impressive to me. The big family’s mother decided to remove the burden of caring for many kids and put them to the rehabilitation center. Having found out that, the kids’ grandmother housed her grandchildren and started asking people for alms. A lot of people responded to that by sending her money, food and clothes. Not longer after that kids’ grandmother put them to the rehabilitation center and took all the donations herself. Most people still drop by that house to donate, but kids were long gone. It turns out, poor kids were abandoned twice, by their mother and their grandmother.  

 

“I WILL NOT WORK AS A KITCHEN MAID!”

 

-I was startled by a shocking story,-said Kamila Muslimova. –It is a story of a mother, who brings up her multiple children alone, all with little difference in age. The family starves as their mother is jobless and has only 9th grade education.  The older children beg on the street to survive. A foreign organization decided to get involved and help the family not just by giving them some money which they would spend right away, but by getting their mother employed, in order to have a permanent income.             

  Obviously, not having completed even a high school education, she did not qualify to work skilled jobs. She was offered a job as a dish washer at the café. Guess how she reacted to that? With a squeamish expression on her face, she turned it down with arrogance and said: “I don’t want to work as a kitchen maid!” It turns out, the fact that her children beg on the street doesn’t bother her much. Getting a job with honest earning doesn’t make her feel comfortable, you see. You don’t get to feel compassion towards these types of self-satisfied mothers, but I sincerely feel pity for her children. The most upsetting thing about this is that the number of people who refuse to lead decent lives is very high. They’d rather beg on the street by exploiting their children to do so, than working for living.

-Easy money is like drugs, it doesn’t affect just grown-ups, children get addicted as well –said Tanya and Kamilla. “Instead of sitting for hours at school, why not making easy money “- is their reasoning. Little vags operate in public transport for example. They board buses, trolley buses and beg money from commuters throughout a day. They become good psychologists, identifying who will give them alms and who will turn them down in advance. This is not a mere means of earning money, but this is also a game for them.

   Among those strays, there are quite a few, who lost their parents on the June conflict, according to what students said. Most children fled their relatives’ homes just to wander about the streets. They come to the capital city, mingle with the same destined kids as they are and start looking for adventures. Some operate so –called “flower business”. They pick bunches of flowers from the Eternal Flame monument (where newly weds usually stop by to lay flowers) and sell them to the passers by. After selling the flowers, they catch up with people and ask them to give the flowers back, so that they can resell them to the other passers by. They try to elicit peoples’ compassion, but if passers by refuse to give them back, kids start misbehaving and giving them attitude.  –Others operate around the shopping malls, frequented by foreigners. They ask them to give alms.-said our researchers. SUV driving men give them up to 20 soms, thus raising the alms rate. If you give them 1, 2 or 5 soms they refuse to take it and wait until you pull out 20 soms bill. They get so cocky that Chinese sports suit is not good enough for them to take, like people should give them adidas brand. We witnessed a girl from the rehabilitation center playing drama just because the pants she was given did not have her favorite design.

 Those kids don’t even know how to do simple things like keeping personal hygiene. Tutors struggle to get them even brush their teeth, wash their socks and panties. We need to hand it to the kids’ tutors for being patient and for trying to pay attention to every kid to the best of their ability. This was another observation of ours. It seemed to us that the tutors got not less embittered than those who are under their care, because working with the problematic group like this for little salary is a real ordeal.

 

Who is a great grandmother? –Child abandoner

100 Bishkek residents of different ages and social status were interviewed on a frontal polling held by anthropology students. It was revealed that more than half of the interviewed give alms to children beggars, because they feel pity for poor kids, who don’t have any choice but to wander about the streets in hot and cold weather. 14 percent of the interviewees don’t give money to the kids but feed them.12 percent of who responded, never give alms and ignore anyone asking for money.

-We instigate the children to some extent by giving them money. As we don’t know what they will spend it for. Buying them something to eat sounds like a better idea, because you will at least know that they will not spend it for the smokes or booze. It is forbidden to beg for money in all religions for a reason, it is deemed a sin. By the way, near the Central Mosque of Moscow, there is a banner saying that it is forbidden to beg around this area.-said our students.

 Most of our fellow compatriots think that social service workers need to enhance their service by forming a separate organization, which would coordinate the centers, responsible for caring of children. However, according to our surveyors, this will not bring about much of an outcome.

-We witnessed a case when a woman who hasn’t reached 20 years old age brought her second child to one of the centers., -said our students. –She put her first child to the toddlers sheltering house, and luckily the child was adopted. Now she has brought her second one, who she didn’t want too. When asked “why are you giving birth to the kids you don’t want?” she replied: “I was dating with a boy, and this just happened”. It turned out, her mother lost her as a kid in the flea market, so she grew up in an orphanage. Ever since the survey started, we have met different types of hereditary vagabonds. There are families (I don’t know if you can call them “families”), which have been abandoning their children for five generations! A great grandmother happened to commit adultery, and it has continued ever since. All mothers of this lineage lack mother instinct; they are all “child leavers”.

 

-What do you think is the solution to this problem?

-My personal speculation is that it is easier for the government to sustain rehabilitation centers, taking children to the centers from irresponsible parents and deprive them of their parental rights, than intensifying work with unsettled families. –says Ruslan Rahimov. By the way, the procedures of depriving parental rights in Russia is well-adjusted and is up and running. But when it comes to having a complex approach to the problem by trying to integrate strays into society, no one gives a thought on it, because it is very laborious and time-consuming. Government holds a paternalistic policy. But as we can see, it is not quite successful. A more flexible approach should be applied here. Well obviously, there are cases, when the only way to save a child is by isolating him/her from her trouble-parents. But if the situation is not that bad and it is still possible to get lousy fathers and mothers back to their senses, it should be done. That’s because we are convinced that nothing can replace child’s own family, not even the best rehabilitation center.

 

• An insight view

 

Project Manager of “Sezim” crisis center

Bubusara Ryskulova

 

-Some of our government officials and community-based organizations members are proud that there are more than 700 child-care shelter facilities in the country. They should cry instead! The more child-care facilities, the poorer we live. Our governing officials should think of adopting a law about foster families. It has long been applied in the west. People, whose children already grew up, can adopt one more child and provide him their care and love. These types of families should be supported instead of multiplying child-care shelters. There is not a single organization which would deal with social orphans’ problem. Our “Sezim” center works with women, there are the centers which work with homeless children. However, no one works thoroughly with the whole family.

 

Alexey Petrushevskiy

Rehabilitation center director

-Poverty rate is 70 percent in our country. A term “social orphan” has appeared lately which means a child has a father and a mother and they are not alcoholics, drug addicts and are not gamblers but they are jobless. Not having money to provide their kids with everything they need, kids are forced to go to the child-care facilities. Therefore, the government has to support the family.

  We had a case. We received a phone call and were told that some family fell apart, a father left for Russia to work, mother succumbed to alcoholism and children were left unattended. We called the family and children support department of the region. They contacted the local village borough in their turn just to get the answer, saying everything’s fine out here, the family is doing alright. I had to get one of the departments for child and family support staff members and visit the family. It turned out, the mother did indeed give in to alcoholism and she went somewhere after locking up her kids. An electric stove was on at home…   Local government does not gain much from dealing with local orphans. Therefore, government should intensify its role and functions of the department for child and family support and it should give proper punishment to its employees who ever have a negligent attitude towards his/her employment duties. Otherwise everything will carry on like this.    

 

  

 

                                                                                 

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