Candy Bar of Contention

This fall’s vacation brought no joy to the pupils of the Volodymyr-Volynsky School for the Deaf. Last month, all their thoughts were riveted to Bedroom No. 1, converted into a storage room for humanitarian aid sent by German charity organizations. While unloading trucks, senior grade pupils managed to steal several boxes and had some pleasant moments, dividing footwear, clothes, and chocolates. Since the Germans began sending their aid to school, the once united community was riven by envy and suspicion.

QUIET CONSPIRACY

Superficially, the boarding school in Volodymyr-Volynsky seems a quiet place. But its ideally tidy buildings boil over with passion.

“Esteemed Editors,

“We want to be heard by all who care about the plight of deaf children in the Volodymyr-Volynsky Boarding School. Several times a year German benefactors send us their generous humanitarian aid, and we are very happy when we receive it. Unfortunately, we see the aid only when it is unloaded. Later our principal puts it under lock and key in storage in Bedroom No. 1 and the Hearing Cabinet, his hiding places. And that is the end of it. But we expect to be given confections and chocolates, clothes and shoes, shampoo and toothpaste, toothbrushes and soap. All these goods are hidden in the Hearing Cabinet located across from the laundry room.

“Although the humanitarian aid arrived on September 22, we were given chocolates only once. At the same time, our principal every day carries our chocolates and candies home in a bag. We can see this during recess in the school yard. He also gives them away to strangers, women and men, who come to visit him. The only thing left is empty boxes that we have to clear away.

“Esteemed Editors, please come and see for yourselves, we would like to talk to you. Please, come urgently because we will soon go home on vacation. We are afraid that when we return to school, the aid will be gone. And we will be waiting again for a holiday that never comes.

Sincerely yours,

Pupils of the boarding school”

There are 22 signatures of pupils from grades 8 through 12, several for each grade.

On that lovely morning when I came to the school only Deputy Principal Liliya Mykhailivna Lishchuk was available. Dressed up for warmth in a coat (the building which housed a children’s shelter during the Polish period was cold and damp), she explained that Principal Ivan Ivanovych Lunchuk, quite unaware of his pupils complaint, was away at a village to arrange for a delivery of vegetables to the school. She said that her 25 years of work in the boarding school allowed her to conclude that the letter had not been written by its pupils.

“The world of deaf children is limited and grammatically their style of writing is different.”

She honestly recounted how at one of the school staff sessions last year a teacher got up and asked why the humanitarian aid was not distributed among teachers, tutors, and auxiliary personnel. Then, following the teachers’ demand, representatives of senior graders were put on the commission to monitor aid distribution. She also admitted that the Hearing Cabinet had been used to store humanitarian aid because the existing storage rooms were full of German goods.

“The pupils got boxes of humanitarian aid. They could not take everything home at one time, boasting they received enough to provide clothing for themselves, their parents, brothers and sisters, even neighbors.”

CRYING WOLF

Some of the senior graders we saw playing tennis during their phys. ed. class were signatories to the letter. As word about our visit spread, the crowd of angry boys and girls around us grew. Had they been able to speak, the old walls of the boarding school would have collapsed from their ire. But all they could do was to explain by energetic gestures how the humanitarian aid was distributed. Liliya Mykhailivna obviously had a hard time translating their words, engaging in heated argument with the boys and girls. But their gestures were too eloquent to be misinterpreted. Moreover, poor speakers as some of them are, they could still make themselves understood.

The children’s grievances came down to one thing: the humanitarian aid was delivered only for them and was to be distributed on its arrival. They did not believe that after final clearance by customs (the official version why this time the distribution had been delayed) they would get anything, as part of the aid typically disappeared during vacation. The young people maintained that they had been given items bearing price tags which led them to suspect that they received merely things which their seniors did not or did not have time to sell. In a chemistry class that the principal teaches Svieta Rak challenged him directly, “When will the humanitarian aid be distributed?” But the principal just cut her short, saying he was in a lesson, however, failing to explain anything during the break. The pupils said they more than once saw the principal carrying humanitarian aid items home.

To be fair, Liliya Mykhailivna, who fortunately has nothing to do with distributing the humanitarian assistance, never tried to whitewash her superior, trying sincerely to convince the pupils that the goods will not disappear during their vacation. On the other hand, she insisted that the teachers, tutors, and servicing staff were also entitled to this aid. She argued that the principal has to look through the goods first in order to select such general use items as towels, bed sheets, and food. Even if the goods had price tags on, she continued, those could be from Germany. After all, she reasoned, the Germans had done so much good for the school by supplying furniture and now instead of congested bedrooms with 18 beds, there is more space with German bunk beds.

But the group of deaf children kept repeating the same gesture indicating that the humanitarian aid had to be divided fairly.

KEY TO THE SECRET PLACE

We have to agree that deaf children are very naive and trusting, and can be easily put up to such a protest action. The fact that their upkeep is funded by the state does play a certain role: they take for granted clean bed linen and abundant food. Their stipends, even a mere UAH 50-55, can be saved for family budgets. They are apparently not that advanced stylistically to draw up such logical complaints. It is a pity that discarded German furniture, a broken typewriter, a non-operational computer, or second-hand clothes eroded the spirit of togetherness that has ever existed between the children and school staff. With old buildings, bedrooms sleeping twenty pupils, the lack of a gym and session halls, a primitive outdoor toilet that 108 pupils have to use in rainy weather and at night, the school is definitely a disgrace for the local authorities. True, the foundation of a new school has been laid but there is no knowing when the walls will be built.

Ivan Ivanovych Lunchuk, for over twenty years principal, believes the German aid is a windfall for the school, with no budget funding whatever required to purchase clothes and bedding. He takes me to the larder where he keeps last year’s humanitarian aid. September aid is stored in Bedroom No. 1 which was sealed by a customs official. Lest the seal be torn off (which entails a fine for the principal), he ordered a padlock put on the door.

The warehouse consists of two rooms in a small outbuilding, with one of the rooms stuffed full with boxes of washing powder, clothes, and shoes. It is unbelievable how anyone can find his way through such a mess. The other is crammed with mountains of bedding, towels, and clothes on racks. Such things socked away for a rainy day have become the envy of many. The principal believes that only a part of the available supply should be handed out as new pupils will also need the goods and that the pupils were put up to write a complaint by two teachers who sell humanitarian aid goods on the market in their free time. These teachers just want to get their share of goods and sell them, he said. But one can hardly believe that teachers would kick up such a furor for the five or seven clothing items they would have received.

“Is there any way we can look into the Hearing Cabinet, where part of humanitarian aid is also stored and which was dubbed a secret hiding place in the letter by the children?”

But no key was found. According to Liliya Mykhailivna, the key was with Deputy Principal for Hearing Treatment Tamara Vasylivna who happened to be away at the city board of education. Meanwhile, the principal claimed that the key was with a teacher who would be back in an hour and a half or two. Tamara Vasylivna, back from the education board, was amazed, “Doesn’t the principal have a key?”

“Well, the humanitarian aid is a major pain,” exclaimed a young phys. ed. teacher. “We quarrel with each other, the children have changed so much, those who get chocolate bars with green wrappings envy those with red wrappings. Do they really need all these things? All they really need are modern hearing aids.”

“We know who is stealing the clothes from Germany. If you do not help I will write Kyiv,” a message of this content was secretly tucked to our cameraman by one of the older children. Either she or her classmate did not get the jacket she had wanted.