Beyond Diagnosis
“Extraordinary frankness is a trait characteristic for physically and mentally handicapped children as for no one else,” student of international relations at Prague’s Charles University Zdena Ceisova believes. Together with other Czech students belonging to the Charity Fund for Physically and Mentally Handicapped Children in Ukraine, Zdena provides assistance for wards of an orphanage in the village of Vilshany, Transcarpathia. An exhibition of photos shot by students at this orphanage, which has opened at the Embassy of Czech Republic, was also frank, though none of the diagnoses of our society common for such events were heard at the exhibition. It is impossible to hide from a look of a sick child under general phrases.
The Vilshany orphanage is one of the seven homes for physically and mentally handicapped children in Transcarpathia. 180 children live here. Most of them have diagnoses of mental retardation or oligophrenia. However, there are also a few healthy children who were simply consigned to the homes by their parents. Zdena Ceisova says that even attention, care, and good observation alone could heal some of Vilshany’s wards such that the mentally handicapped would have no more problems than regular non-achievers with complicated character. Unfortunately, there are only two doctors, four nurses, and six other care givers in the orphanage. The children have practically no toys. For many of them rough bricks provide their only diversion.
The orphanage’s director does everything possible to draw attention of everyone in the world not completely indifferent to the problems of his pupils. During the last ten years volunteers from France, Germany, Slovakia, the US, Poland, and Czech Republic worked at Vilshany. After a 1998 flood almost completely destroyed the house, the Czech Republic provided aid for its reconstruction.
Czech students first came to Vilshany in summer of 1996. Later seven of first volunteers founded the Charity Fund for Physically and Mentally Handicapped Children in Ukraine, which now gives Vilshany permanent support. At the fund’s cost the orphanage’s boiler room was refurbished. This June Czech students organized and paid for two weeks training in the Czech Republic for two care-givers from Vilshany. Every summer, in addition to regular help with feeding and bathing the children and other housework, Czech students try to conduct simple rehabilitation and relaxation exercises with the patients. Last year they managed to rent horses in the village to give children a chance to enjoy the company of (hippotherapy is successfully used all over the world to cure children with cerebral palsy and mental diseases).
Of course, not every child in Vilshany feels better after such treatment. Recovery takes a long time, and for some of these children even the most professional doctors could do nothing. But what is most hard for the students, Zdena confessed, is to understand that their wards are incurable. When they are 25, they will be transferred to a similar institution for adults, where conditions are much worse than those in Vilshany. Such asylums, in Zdena’s words, do not receive aid from humanitarian organizations, and the mortality is about 60%. Now a French-based charity is constructing special workshops in Vilshany where children with better health can learn to make candles and weave. Zdena Ceisova and her colleagues strongly hope that older Vilshany wards will be allowed to stay and work at the orphanage all their lives.
In Vilshany, Zdena says, the children are happy. They do not understand the language of their guardians, but they do not really care, because communication is all they have. They cannot afford to think of language barriers. The children are happy to meet anyone who talks to them. Of course, all this regards only those Vilshany inhabitants who can still respond to the world around them.
Little Adam, whose overlarge head keeps him bedridden, is always ready to share his joy and smile with anybody. He will never learn to fake it.
