BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

13/07/2006

Belarusian teen leaves with good memories

Family in Advance has welcomed Katya Baturina for 10 summers By Paul Garber CLEMMONS JOURNAL REPORTER Katya Baturina feels blessed by the love of two families. Katya, 16, will travel on July 29 to her family in Belarus. Until then, she will spend time with her other family, the Walkers of Advance, who have welcomed Katya into their home every summer for the past 10 years. "They're a really awesome family," Katya said about Lori and Joel Walker and their sons, Jacob, 12, and Jeremy, 11. The two boys have become like brothers to her, she said, and she has enjoyed a chance to live as an American teenager - going to the mall, eating at her favorite restaurant, and talking on the phone with her friends, Joslynn Thomas, 15, and Kayla Bowles, 16. Katya participates in an exchange program organized by the Pilot Mountain Baptist Association, but her time in the program is winding down. The program is for children 7 to 16, and this is Katya's last year. Her family and friends held a ceremony Sunday at Green Meadows Baptist Church to celebrate the time that Katya has spent here. The ceremony included music from The Shelly Moore Band, a contemporary Christian duo from Raleigh, Katya's favorite band. About 60 people attended a youth concert, and the crowd increased to more than 100 during a church service afterward. Kayla Bowles said that although she and Katya are from different countries, they share many of the same issues that affect most teenage girls, including how to make friends and how to deal with peer pressure. "We learn from each other," Kayla said. Katya said she wants to return here to go to college and find a career, but there are no guarantees. "I would like to come back here because there are more opportunities here," she said. In Belarus, "the education is good but it's really hard to find a job." Belarus was once part of the former Soviet Union. It became an independent republic in1991. Katya lives in Mogilev, a city east of the capital, Minsk. Since 1986, the country has suffered from the after-effects of an accident at the Chernobyl nuclear-power plant. The accident happened in the Ukraine, but about 70 percent of the fallout landed on Belarus, according to information from the U.S. State Department. The radiation release destroyed much of the country's agriculture, and many villages were abandoned. About 20 percent of the land remains contaminated. The exchange program gives the children a chance to get away from the toxic conditions in their homelands and gives them a chance to experience life in America, said Joyce Love, the program's director. This is the 13th year that Pilot Mountain Baptist Association held the program, Love said. This year's group includes 17 Belarusian children and an adult interpreter. The children also get a checkup from doctors at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, visit a dentist and get an eye exam, Love said. Lori Walker said she is praying that Katya will be able to return on a visa. She said she has watched Katya develop into a mature, confident and spiritual person. "From the first summer, the love that we shared has been immediate," Walker said. "She is like a daughter. It may seem like a cliche, but it's really true.

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