Children of Chernobyl

[Music] an official announcement from the council of ministers there has been an accident at the chernobyl atomic power station one of the atomic reactors was damaged the consequences of the accident are being taken care of help is being given to the victims of the accident a government commission has been set up [Music] at the time belarus was really struggling it still is i think most people had either a denial possibly of what it meant or the impact and that was just a survival technique really i mean they they couldn't think about it all the time it was so devastating and others had the chernobyl syndrome which meant everything that ailed them they attributed that to chernobyl everything and so it was kind of either complete denial or just every second of every day was related to chernobyl and so when we started to reach out to those communities and the families and children there you found that they were convinced that just about everything was contaminated and certainly in some cases it was the groundwater had been contaminated you couldn't go out and grow food as you might normally do stores were empty and that's what i remember especially is that people were desperate to get anything at all when we realized what happened we decided to just survive i don't know we tried not to pick up mushrooms and berries so we tried not to stay under the sun i can't say that i remember that pretty well because i was like 15 years old only but that was scary because you see we got a lot of news from each other but we still didn't had any government respond on this accident people left their countries even country people left their homes definitely and the most scariest thing was that we didn't have any information in the former soviet union there were areas of greatest need and without question chernobyl was number one and so our church the united methodist church was asked to reach out to help different places in the former soviet union we sent over clothing and things of that nature on the front end and then we wanted to be involved with the families and the children and that's what led to children of genova so children of chernobyl was an effort to say okay how can we help these kids in a contaminated region certainly have to take them out of the contaminated region to build up their immune systems and so that was the the bottom line if you could bring them to america and in this case to alabama they could stay for a month or six weeks it definitely improved their immune system and the kids didn't speak english so then we had a team of translators that came over and they were amazing i met patrick friday who was actually the organizer of the children of chernobyl i don't remember probably it was like 1992 or 1993. my mom introduced him to me and i got a suggestion from patrick friday to move to alabama with a group of kids as my mom's helper as an interpreter we with patrick we visited each family with them with him we started with the coordinator of the district's small city druzny and the coordinator was among the families of or from the families who came from a chernobyl zone to tell the truth kids were absolutely different some of them came from towns it's not like cities but small towns some of them were from the villages and actually when we visited their places their homes we saw the poorest conditions where these children lived they had all these health related issues they needed dental work and they had thyroid cancer or we need to check for that things of that nature so we worked a lot in partnership with children's hospital and other medical facilities across the northern part of the state so the first question we're actually asked ourselves was if it is not so cruel to take these kids to america to show them this life to feed them with their good products and then to take them back in general that was a bit cruel but in details we were also happy that these kids saw another life so we hoped that probably their generation could change something in our country too i remember being in the airport in minsk the capital of belarus and all those families were there and i was telling them about what was going to happen and they were reluctant and yet for them this was their chance think about your own kids would you be willing to send your children let's say they're seven or eight years old to a foreign country to people you don't know and so that was the look on their face that concern that that fear and yet in the middle of it was this this is their one their one opportunity to get out of this country to get out of the dead zone and for their lives to improve and so the parents were happy as well it was a somberness and a happiness together i first heard about children of chernobyl through our church i think my first real experience with it was a year or two before we had ivan come stay with us some other families in our church hosted being a teacher being somebody who loves kids i thought oh my gosh this is amazing they're really helping the helpless they're helping the kids of this disaster i emailed patrick and i said okay when you start taking post-family applications i i want to get in here there was a little hesitation because at that time my husband and i didn't have any kids and after lots of conversations with patrick they did decide that we could be a host family we all met at a church they brought all the children to a church and the host families met them there [Applause] it was early morning so there was a a couple and i really don't know how to talk with them how to explain them something or yeah she was like like my second mom so yeah it was really cool that they became a member of their family that time yeah it's like five minutes and that's it and all of us have been praying for this each one of you i see today i know you've been bringing this together and your families talking about it i think that their families american families had prepared very well for their trip for their well they welcomed kids very well belarusian kids didn't know any the majority of them didn't know any english words i told them some english words some names of fruit and meals just for them that of course mcdonald's was the first and the most interesting cafe or just restaurant for them and so the kids we would once they got to alabama we would try to set up a phone call if we could and i remember one child said to his mom and the translation came through i live like a king and he said that because the house had more than one room and he'd grown up in one room another family came to me and said we've got a concern our child must really be sick because she's eating all the fruit and we put it out on the table and all the fruit is gone and so i went back to her uh you know separately just to see how she was doing i said how do you like the fruit juice oh it's wonderful said i only have an orange once a year if i'm lucky for my birthday and here in america i can have an orange every day we did things like going to the zoo and going to the space and rocket center shooting a rocket that didn't shoot but he and my husband built a rocket and went out to a ball field and tried to shoot that off looking through the telescope at the stars at night things like that just trying to make his time here fun we did play dates with some of the other families so that he wasn't um just here and but pretty much every day they had activities where we brought the kids and they all went and did things together so it was a pretty busy schedule for the the two and a half three weeks he was here i was very excited it was really interesting for me to explore the world alabama it's a very warm state and that is why it was interesting for kids that parents organized swimming lessons for kids and guys especially boys they liked like when they were taught to play baseball it was rather difficult for me to explain what is going on there on them but nevertheless they enjoy this [Music] i still think that there are now children's minutes in each church when all the kids they just come in front of their church seat and the preacher told them some stories some bible stories the kids were exposed to a family setting where prayer and engagement with god your faith journey was a daily thing and so what we saw was the kids going back to belarus and i remember being there in belarus and one of the kids was telling his story and he said well mom i learned to do this and he grabbed he said everybody grab a hand he said and he started praying he said i learned to pray in america so when the departure time came obviously people just couldn't leave the child at the bus they needed to go with us to wherever else we were going so it was kind of like a caravan we just didn't want to let go and ultimately putting the kids on the plane there wasn't a dry eye everybody was crying i'm still touched by that they showed their parents their friends that life is different the world is the same everywhere it's just your attitude to it this is very important for this year's young children to understand that they have abilities to change their lives better to make it better each child could be in america only once that is why i think it's very important that we could bring many different kids and that program was successful good to see you this is alyssa i'm lisa say hi see that it was beginning of my of of my today's life it was not just it was not just a three week project it was not just a little vacation for a kid that that wanted to come and experience something new it was a new family it was crossing those borders and and really making a relationship and seeing how other people live and how um different cultures um can all come together and i don't know i mean it was life-changing for us i mean it was an impossible situation to get the kids here to get their visas to get the plane tickets to raise the money just all the practical things it's just a miracle every time the kids came and they came we had four or five groups that came over the years 250 kids and staying with families all over the state so i just look back on it and just thank god for the fact that we could reach out to so many families and children and then continue that journey with them to the present day during all my trips to america i guess i was crying all the time i mean these trips showed us that we are humans we are persons we are people with hearts first of all people everywhere common people everywhere they are they have the same needs they help could help each other in different situation and i think that it helps our belarusian people not only to get the help but to give the help to people who really need it [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Alabama Public Radio

Views: 3,094

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Id: 7KxP2zNteI0

Length: 15min 41sec (941 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 21 2020