CHILDREN AND TEENS

My name is Natasha. I am fourteen years old and I have only been at the Transit-Center for two weeks. I came here because my mother drinks. When I was a baby, she left a bottle of wine under the bed and I drank it. It was really funny because I crawled around and sang lots of different songs. Anyway, one night she got really drunk and left home to go to another city. So I lived alone for four months, and then the police brought me here. I like it here because the teachers and kids are nice, but I am scared that my mother will be banned from her parental rights because I don’t want to be taken to an orphanage. I don’t want to live with my mother though, because she beats me for anything I do wrong. I want to live with my aunt, because she never beats me. And she wants to take me, but I can’t live with her yet because I’m not eighteen and my mother won’t give her permission. But my mother is still drinking, so I hope that if she is banned from her parental rights my aunt will take me. She said she would come find me anywhere in the city... I think she really loves me.

My name is Lena, and I am fifteen. I’ve been at the center for about a year, and I don’t like anything about it. Yeah, I have friends here, but they all come and go and I am still here. I’ve lived here longer than most kids. I used to live with my father and step-mother, but my father died and my step-mother did not want me to live with her. I don’t want to live with her either, but I also don’t want to live here. I miss having freedom; here you can’t really go out. But I don’t have any other options. I have only one uncle, and he got married a year ago so there is no space for me. He doesn’t want to take me anyway. I will probably be taken to an orphanage soon. What makes me scared? I don’t know. I’m scared because I don’t know who can help me.

Nadia is a spunky fifteen-year-old from Moldavia. She has lived in the center for a few months, along with her four cousins. Her family are gypsies, and she was taken to the Transit-Center when the police stopped her on the street and she didn’t have proper paperwork. She doesn’t know when she will be able to go back to her family, because “no one tells me anything. I’ve been here for five months, and every time they say, ‘soon.’” It makes her sad when her father comes to visit and then has to go, and she is scared that she will never leave the center. What keeps her going is that she is with her cousins. “If they weren’t with me I think I would cry all day.” She says she is happy though, when teams come to visit the center.

Fifteen-year-old Andrei came to the center by choice. He had been living with his half-sister in St. Petersburg, but is from Uzbekistan and wanted to go home. “I didn’t have any reason to stay here so that’s why I’m going back.” Andrei had been to Russia once before, to see his mother. “I hadn’t seen her in about ten years. But she didn’t take me to school, and when my grandmother learned about it she brought me back home. My mother is still here.” Andrei will live with his grandmother in Uzbekistan until he is eighteen; after that he says it’s his choice where he will go.

Fourteen-year-old Anya hides her pain and loneliness behind a tough exterior. She proudly shows off her piercings and a tattoo- made not with ink but by carving the design with a knife- to anyone she meets. She is quick to hit or yell at any of the kids in the center who upset her, but always curls into a ball on the couch afterward, hugging her knees to her chest and trying not to cry. On her left arm are dozens of cuts, some old scars and some painfully new. A camouflage bandana covers her shaved head, but she takes it off sometimes to look at her reflection in the mirror and sigh. “I’m so sad that they cut my hair,” she says. “They thought that I had lice but I know I didn’t. I cried for two days.” Anya had left the city where her family lives to come to St. Petersburg with her band, and she lived with the guys in her band until the police brought her to the center. But now, “I miss my home,” she says.

Twelve-year-old Misha says that he is in the center because he is a witness in a court case, and it is dangerous for him to live at home. He lived in an apartment with his mother, and one day while walking home he met a group of guys. “They said, ‘if you don’t work for us, we’ll beat your mother and kill you.’ So they made me work for them, and I was telling people where to buy drugs. And then I went home and told my mother and we went to the police. And so they sent me to this place. That’s why I can’t go home, because there is danger for me.” Normally, Misha enjoys lots of different activities: wood-working, using computers, going outside... but right now, “I can’t be happy until this case is finished. I’m afraid I will be killed.”

Anya is a beautiful fourteen-year-old with long, dark hair tied in ribbons. She has a contagious smile and laugh, but when talking about her family or past she does neither. Normally playful and talkative, she now sits slumped in a chair with her eyes focused on the floor.  When asked why she is at the Transit-Center, she sighs deeply and after a long pause answers, “Ok. We had some problems at home, and my mother went to the police station and I was sent here.” She says that it is difficult to be at the center because “I don’t have my parents with me here... I have no one.” This freckle-faced teenager is not unlike other girls her age; she likes to paint, sing and dance, she is afraid of arguments, and she wants to go to university and travel the world as a flight attendant. But she deals with much bigger struggles than any girl her age should have to face.  Despite being surrounded by other children, she is lonely and says that all she wants is to be with her family. What makes her happy? “When my mother is next to me.”

Anton and Vadik came to St. Petersburg together after running away from a medical center where they had been receiving treatment. At ages thirteen and eleven, they look about seven or eight. Both boys are shy and don’t say much, but Anton does have a special hobby. “I am a poet; I write poems. I don’t remember any; they are in my notebook at home.” The boys say that right now, “I just want to go home.”

This is not Vasya’s first time living at the center. He had been here before, and when they sent him home he immediately ran away again to wander the streets. The first time seventeen-year-old Vasya left home, he came to St. Petersburg with his older brother. Vasya doesn’t know where his brother is now; “he may still be in the city or he may have gone home. I didn’t live with him at home; I lived with my father. But I can say I lived alone.” He says that while living in the center, nothing can make him happy. “You’re in these walls, and how can you talk about happiness? Maybe they show a good movie; you could watch it and maybe smile for ten minutes. That’s it.” When asked about his childhood memories, Vasya replies, “No, I don’t have any stories. I don’t want to remember it.”

*All names of children and teachers have been changed.

TEACHERS

My name is Elena Ivanovna, and I have worked at this center for three years. I used to work at another center, where we had kids from only St. Petersburg. It is harder here... I think the difficulty is that the children are from all over the former Soviet Union and there are different ages and nationalities. Of course, it is hardest when we get a very young child. It’s very difficult psychologically to see what has happened to such a young child... for me that is very hard to see. I think – how could parents leave this child without any care? But I chose this work because I can’t not think about it. Because I have a heart, I cannot just look at it as a fact.
 Here we try to first give the children a warm welcome and then teach them how to take care of themselves, because many of the kids don’t even know how to use a comb or brush their teeth. Their parents never gave them proper training. We also have school here; sometimes there are children who are ten years old and have never been to school.  Many of the children have low self-esteem... there are some who are afraid of something or closed off, but when you work with them every day and give them attention and try to build them up, they begin to smile. Sometimes we get children, who don’t speak Russian, and it is very stressful for those children, but we try to be mothers for them. Usually if a child has run away from home, they are sent back to their families and it is fine. But if the parents’ parental rights are taken away, the child is sent to an orphanage and their future is decided there.
 This work is very hard psychologically. There are jobs where you can go home and forget about your job, but here it’s not like that. You cannot forget about this when you are home.

My name is Olga Petrovna, and I’ve worked at this center for four years. The main difficulty here has been the age difference and the different religious and national backgrounds. Recently, there have been lots of nationality confrontations among adults in Russia, and it’s hard to explain to children why these confrontations happen. We don’t usually have these confrontations among the children though, except there were cases where some of the children were skinheads so of course we had problems with those children. The children come and go and different children have different problems.    
Some of our children come to us after living on the street. There was a boy named Vanya who lived on the street for a long time and had no parents. He used to live in the basement of an apartment and he tried to take care of himself; he wasn’t using alcohol or cigarettes. He was a bit aggressive toward the other children and the process of adaptation took a long time for him, and then eventually he was sent to an orphanage. He was very glad to be there. We also had another guy, Igor, whose parents’ parental rights were taken away. He lived in a cemetery for a year. Now he is in an orphanage.
 There are so many stories; each child here has a unique story. There was a girl named Katya; her mother left her.  Her stepfather refused to take care of her, and that’s how she came to us. Now she is in an orphanage. Or Alyosha and Sasha, here now; neighbors saw the children on the street and called the authorities, who brought them here. We couldn’t find out anything about the children, not even their surname, so we showed them on TV. Their parents have problems with alcoholism so they will lose their parental rights and the kids will be sent to an orphanage. There are so many different situations.

*All names of children and teachers have been changed.