Muralist  from Castletownbere, goes to Belarus to Paint
by Deirdre Keohane


Last summer Patricia Daly from the Beara Outreach group in C.T.B.asked me if I would do a mural with the children from Belarus.  Little did I think I would be out in Russia 3 months later.

And so, on October 20th with the help of donations from people in CTB, I left with 80 volunteers from Adi Roche's Construction Crew for the Nivinki Children's Orphanage/mental asylum near Minsk in Belarus.

The first morning, when Adi Roche brought us to visit the wards in Nivinki, I was really shocked, There was a real feeling of apprehension from all of us but Adi said,  " go on, you must see."
We slowly walked down the dimly lit corridors.  We could see there were dark little figures peeking out from behind the curtains. It was very quiet. At the end of the dark corridor where it was lighter, I realised just how many children there actually were. They were just wandering around aimlessly or sitting on the floor or on potties with their legs turning blue The smells coming from one dark room made us all gag.
This was the construction crew's job, to renovate this particularly horrendous ward and that same day they started.

My job, which was to brighten up the walls with some uplifting murals, was upstairs in a ward which had been renovated 2 years prior. The staff in the orphanage is made up of untrained women who are paid $10.00 a month. The wages are so low no one else will do the job other than these older
women. Often these women are drunk on duty. They are very good at cleaning, changing nappies and shovelling food into the mouths of the children but as far as compassion or any kind of love
goes, it is far and few between. One day I saw a very drugged up little boy being hit a couple of times in
the mouth by one of these women and another little girl being roughly shoved in the bathroom.

In Nivinki, there is absolutely no kind of stimulation; some unfortunate children spend hours, days their whole lives in their cots. The Cerebral Palsey children just lie around on the floor all day. By prying for questions, I found out that one lovely, 7 years old girl, named Elesa had never been out of doors in her life. For the 10 days that I was there, the majority of the children never left the ward.

Only half of the children in Nivinki have psychological problems, the other half suffer from physical defects, such as Cerebral Palsy or sight and hearing problems. Everyone is clumped in together.
Even more frightening were the children living there who did not seem to me to be all that ill.
Unbelievably there is waiting list to get children in. But, if you have a child with special needs in Belarus, and your total monthly wage is maybe, $30.00 a month, with both parents working
4 jobs between them, there is little else parents can do except give up there children to the state, at least you know they will get 3 meals a day....maybe.

Although I know I painted 2 beautiful murals for the children and I know that because of me Roma was allowed to paint for the first time in his 19 years of life, or Elana was taken out of her bed for the first time in months and Yuri had a load of fun drilling holes in boards and although I know and congratulate the builders for removing 50 years of excrement only to create a much more decent space for the children, the only feeling I went away with was, "My God, there is so much more to be done.... If only I could have done  more ..... if only we could do more."

But that is the way of Belarus.