I want to start by thanking everyone who commented after last night’s blog post. On a rough day, it was great to know that I have so many people all over the world for supporting you.
Despite another whirlwind of a day, I think I’m ready to share the story.
Right now, I’m in Moldova, the poorest country in Europe and one of the 20 poorest countries in the world.
Prior to WWII, Kishinev, the capital was 50% Jewish and had approximately 400,000 Jews. Post Holocaust and post immigration,there are only a handful of Jews left in the country. And the Jews have been subject to the same desperate economic conditions as the rest of the country.
I went to visit a NES (JFS/Children’s Initiative client), with several other staff people on Tuesday night. We were visiting a home where two six year old twin girls, Katia and Nastya lived with their mother.
We learned several troubling facts about the house before we went on the visit. First, the family was very poor. The father is not in the country and does not contribute financially. The mother does not hold a regular job and claims to bring in some income delivering newspapers. The caseworker noted the in the past the girls had regularly been left on their own for entire days and that the house was filthy on many prior visits.
And, most horribly, the caseworker told us that when the girls were 2.5 years old, they both, yes both, fell out of a third story window from the very apartment we were going to see.
I was prepared for things to be bad, but not as bad as I saw.
We walked up three flights of stairs in the complete dark. Not even a nightlight to lead the way.
We entered the apartment and were instantly hit by the smell. It was not clean. Not even close. Stepping into the entryway, the apartment was in serious disrepair and items were strewn about.
The girls were adorable. Bright eyes, identical twins, clamoring for attention as soon as we walked in the door. But their clothes were filthy. Not just old, but filthy.
The girls were starved for adult attention, I introduced myself in Russian and we were fast friends. They were climbing all over me instantly, and I spent part of the evening with one girl on each knee. They needed to share in the attention equally.
They were well fed and seemed quite bright, but I don’t think I’ve ever met two children who clearly needed to be loved more than these girls.
JDC provides the family with material support in the form of food, clothing, back to school packages, emergency relief and after school programs for the girls.
The caseworker told me she was relieved because she could actually walk in the apartment this visit. Sometimes the floor is too littered with garbage to find away in. She’s also relieved because she’s convinced the mother that it’s not OK to leave the girls at home alone, and she’s confident that the girls are supervised and getting two meals at school and the after school programs. She’d like to help the family immigrate to Israel where they could get additional help, but the father won’t give permission and therefore the mother can’t leave the country with the girls. They’re special to her, bright stars and there’s little else she can do.
You see, there’s no real child welfare system in Moldova. If she were to have the mother declared unfit, the girls would be sent to an orphanage, a fate much worse than the squalor they live in now.
So, she can only piece together a system of care and pray that the girls somehow make it.
While in law school, I interned in the Child Law Clinic, representing children in the Child Welfare system. I saw situations not nearly as bad as these girls have it, where the children were removed from homes and placed in foster care.
And it kills me, because here, I’m stuck.
There’s nothing I can do for these girls beyond what JDC is already doing.
Their caseworker is the best of the best, but she’s working in a flawed system.
I want nothing more than to pack these girls up and take them with me, but I can’t do that. So instead, I have to hope that our piecemeal system works, and we, as a community, can raise these girls.
