BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

Posted on Wed, Jun. 15, 2005

Respite from their world

HEATHER HOWARD

Staff Writer

HICKORY - Scrambling up a tree in soccer shorts and sneakers, 9-year-old Iryna Pruhava looked like any other sporty little girl on the playground last week at Glenn Hilton Park.

That's a world of difference from the way Iryna looked two years ago, on her first trip from Belarus to the United States. "She looked gray," said Debbie Lockee, holding a photo of a rail-thin child with knobby knees and a pallid face.

To see that Iryna -- Ira for short -- keeps looking better, Lockee's family is hosting her through a program for children from Belarus, a former Soviet republic that was ravaged by the 1986 nuclear accident at Chernobyl.

Ira is one of about 70 Belarusian children visiting the Catawba Valley this year with the North Carolina-based American Belarussian Relief Organization.

The trips, aided by local churches and Unifour families, offer the children respite from living in a place that, nearly 20 years after the Chernobyl accident, remains contaminated and economically crippled.

Some children, like Ira, have made several trips; others got their first glimpse of the United States when their plane arrived June 3.

Six weeks of fresh air and clean food can help replenish the children's immune systems, which are weakened by malnourishment and radiation, said Lockee, coordinator for one of the Hickory-area host groups.

While they're here, the children will get medical checkups. And, away from the stress of illness and poverty, they'll get a chance to be kids.

"It's amazing," Lockee said, "what a little love and ... attention can do."

Beneath the radiation cloud

Most of the Hickory area's Belarusian visitors hadn't been born when reactor No. 4 at the V.I. Lenin nuclear power station in Chernobyl, Ukraine, exploded and burned during a test on April 26, 1986.More than 30 workers perished in the immediate aftermath of history's worst nuclear accident, which spewed lethal reactor fuel and unleashed more radiation than the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.

Thousands have since died, and thousands more suffer from thyroid cancer or leukemia. Millions have other health problems, including tumors, genetic difficulties and holes in the heart -- a condition so commonplace it has a nickname, "Chernobyl heart."

According to the United Nations, nearly 8.4 million people in the former Soviet republics of Belarus, Ukraine and Russia were exposed to the radiation.

Seventy percent of the Chernobyl fallout landed on Belarus, just north of Ukraine, according to the UN. The accident contaminated nearly one-fourth of Belarus and affected more than 2.2 million of its estimated population of 9.7 million people.

Today, tens of thousands live in areas plagued by radiation.

Chronic health woes are widespread, particularly among children. In some places, officials have reported childhood thyroid cancer at rates a hundred times greater than before the accident.

Raised on radiation-tainted food in a poisoned environment, many Belarusian children are malnourished and struggle with immune deficiencies that make it hard to fight off a routine cold.

3,100 children have visited

That's where the U.S. visits can help.

Studies show a few weeks of clean air and fresh food can help boost immune systems and reduce radiation in children's bodies, according to the American Belarussian Relief Organization.

The group got its start in 1991, when a Connecticut church hosted 13 children and two adults from Belarus.

Two years later, through meetings with political and religious leaders, the group formed the American Belarussian Relief Organization.

Since then, more than 3,100 Belarusian children have visited the United States through the organization, now headquartered in Zebulon. The group also runs summer camps in uncontaminated regions of Belarus.

This year, the organization has 674 children visiting along the Eastern seaboard, Lockee said.

The Hickory-area visits are sponsored by several churches, including Hildebran First Baptist, where Lockee is a member.

Host families are responsible for the visitors' airfare, though churches often pitch in to cover that cost, Lockee said.

Hosts must see that kids receive medical, dental and eye exams. Although they're asked not to lavish too much on their guests, host families often buy clothes for the children, who typically arrive with next to nothing.

There are birthday parties, beach outings and picnics, like last week's Hildebran Baptist get-together at Glenn Hilton Park -- a feast of fried chicken, macaroni and cheese, potato salad and desserts.

Dangling from a tree branch before dinner, Ira giggled, surveying new American friends from upside down.

At 9, Ira is the size of Lockee's 7-year-old daughter.

Lockee's old pictures of Ira show the girl in a T-shirt and shorts that still swallow her today. Doctors say Ira is 30 percent to 40 percent underweight, Lockee said.

But Ira's on her third trip to Hickory, and it shows.

Though she's still slight, Ira barely resembles the frail girl in Lockee's photo album.

"I didn't get sick this year," Ira said, grinning, through an interpreter.

Knew nothing of accident

Erina Demenkova remembers a time before children grew so accustomed to illness.And she remembers when it changed.

By May 1, 1986, nearly a week after the Chernobyl catastrophe, people in Demenkova's hometown of Mogilev knew nothing of the accident, which the Kremlin initially tried to hide, she said.

Demenkova's town, a few hours from Chernobyl, went about its usual May Day business, marching outdoors and waving flags, celebrating worker solidarity in the waning years of the Soviet Union.

It wasn't until a couple of weeks later that Demenkova's family learned what had happened, she said. It would be September before Demenkova received antiradiation pills, which should be taken immediately after exposure. "Then," she said, "it's just useless."

Several years after the calamity at Chernobyl, Demenkova watched five neighbors and family members, including her father, succumb to cancer in the span of a year.

Now an English instructor at Mogilev State University, Demenkova is chaperone and interpreter for the kids visiting the Hickory area.

The visits, Demenkova said, boost more than the kids' bodies.

Many of the children live in orphanages, either because their parents are dead or because their families can't care for them. And even for those who have families, getting by can be a struggle.

Last year, on her first visit to Hickory, Demenkova was amazed by the abundant hugs, the easy laughter, the way a stranger offered help in an airport. Belarus is more reserved, she said. And where sorrow is so widespread, smiles can be scarce.

Some are here to stay

These days, 8-year-old Mariya Eggers smiles a lot.

When Mariya first visited Sam Eggers and his family in Conover two years ago, the girl and her three brothers and sisters were living in state care in Belarus.

Like the Lockee family, Sam Eggers has before-and-after pictures of Mariya: One from Mariya's first U.S. arrival shows a pale, gaunt child with dull brown hair and purplish half-moons under her eyes.

Eggers and his wife, Linda, started adoption proceedings for Mariya right after her first visit, and she came to live with them last year. And the tiny, timid-looking girl in the photo has flourished.

The dark circles are gone, and her shiny hair is streaked with honey highlights.

Mariya, a rising third-grader at Oxford Elementary School, was fluent in English in six months, Sam Eggers said. She loves music and art, she said, in a slight southern drawl thickened with a hint of her leftover Russian.

Through the organization, Mariya's little brother, Vladimer "Vova" Mineev is visiting the Catawba Valley now. Until last week, Mariya and Vova hadn't seen each other in about a year.

If Rick and Margaret Ward get their way, the sister and brother will see a lot more of each other.

The Wards, who are hosting Vova this summer, want to adopt the boy and another of his sisters, 6-year-old Ira. (The family's other sister has been adopted in Belarus, Rick Ward said.)

The Wards already have six kids. How much trouble, he asked, could two more be?

But raising them isn't the problem. Getting them here is.

In October, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko halted adoptions after the U.S. House of Representatives passed an act questioning the legality of the election that led to Lukashenko's third term and threatening sanctions if the country didn't improve human rights.

Rick Ward agonizes at the thought of Vova in an orphanage.

Vova, who turned 8 on Sunday, is a whiz with the computer and a Lego fanatic, Ward said. He loves toy soldiers. He helps set the table without being asked.

Someone asked Ward what Vova was "into" back home -- what pastimes he enjoys in Belarus. "He's into eating and surviving," Rick Ward said, his voice catching. "They don't have anything."

Vova arrived in the United States earlier this month with an empty suitcase and a backpack that held a pair of underwear, two paper towels and a watch the Wards had sent to Belarus.

Ward, who studied Russian on his own for year in anticipation of Vova's summer visit, isn't giving up on giving Vova something better.

"If it takes five years to get him, 10 years, I don't care," he said. "And we will have him as often as we can until we can have him to stay."

Want to Help?

The American Belarussian Relief Organization works with children in areas affected by the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster. To learn more, visit www.abro.orgor call Debbie Lockee at (828) 397-7772.

Source:

http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/news/local/states/north_carolina/counties/catawba/11896987.htm