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Below are details of our first trip to meet the mystery boy from Orenburg. This is an adaptation of a shotgunned email home to our friends and relatives
Dear Friends and Family,
It’s one of life’s cruel ironies that has prospective adoptive parents presented with a choice that will last a lifetime at the precise time we are so sleep-deprived we cannot really think straight. Such was our dilemma. Moscow Again My stepmother Jake dropped Lori and I off at Dulles at 1:30 Sunday. We then waited until our 4:20 PM Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt departed. This flight lasted 8 hours. We arrived 6:30 am local time, waited in the smoke-filled terminal in Frankfurt until our 8:20 flight from Frankfurt to Moscow. That flight took over three hours. We then arrived in Moscow at 1:30 PM and had yet another SEVEN hour layover in Moscow until our flight to the city of Orenburg. Unlike our first trip with Matthew, when we were freaking out at Sheremetevo Airport because our driver/guide was 45 minutes late, we were immediately met by a “BJORK” sign held by a strapping handsome young lad named Ilya. Ilya is a Moscow University student who has visited America and has studied English. He speaks softly and well. His ice blue eyes have probably smitten several young ladies.
Ilya took us to another couple from Washington who were also on our two flights, Renee and Jack. . Renee and Jack are adopting an unrelated 2 year old boy and 3 year old girl from two different orphanages in this region, and are using the same Russian facliltators. We then met up with another couple from Germany who arrived for their second (custody) trip. Ilya and his driver took us across the city to the domestic airport. Lori and I looked out the window of this minivan and remarked at how we remembered all these sights like it was yesterday. We both agreed that we were more calm now than the first time, since we’ve done it all and it all turned out fabulous in the end. Also, our guide was gentle and soothing, quite the opposite of the volatile (but generous to a fault)Valentin.
When we came to buy tickets at the counted of “Orenburg Airlines” to get here, Ilya took all our passports and handed them to the clerk, who shook her head a few times during their conversation. After several minutes, still no tickets and more conversation. Not a good sign. All we needed was for our whole process to be knocked askew when the only flight that exists to this city from Moscow in time for our scheduled appointments with the local Ministry of Education was sold out. When pressed, Ilya said “no worries” and explained that the actual ticket purchase would have to wait until “Andrei” the big facilitator cheese showed up. In retrospect, I suspect the delay was because the six of use were to pool our resources to buy Andrei’s ticket, but he had not arrived yet with his passport. In Russia, you need a passport to do anything.
Andrei showed up at 6pm along with “Dr. Lada,” the private pediatrician we hired to evaluate our referral. Andrei is a gaunt man with angular features. He seemed used to barking out commands. He was taciturn but not necessarily unfriendly. His English is skeletal, and he frequently relies on others to translate.
Flying two hours east from Moscow, we arrived in the city of Orenburg after midnight and checked in at 1:30 AM this morning local time.
All to have to be ready to go at 9AM. Altered States
If you do the math, and consider that a guy like me can barely be comfortable in cattle class on an airliner-- much less sleep, that equals roughly 30 hours without sleep. Then, once I settle into bed, I can’t sleep. My mind became a dark fog of doubts. “What if this kid is not as good as was advertised. What if we have to turn this mystery boy down for newly-revealed serious medical problems? Will they find another child for us? Did I bring enough cash to cover a second professional medical evaluation? What if we go 0-for-2?? Do we just chuck the whole plan then? Gee it seems all these facilitators are about is money…. It’s all just a crass scam masquerading as charity….”
Your mind wanders when you’re that stressed and that tired, in my case into darkness. Lori and I had a middle of the night rap session while we listened to some quiet, comforting fare on our ipod speakers, and it did my mind good. I managed to get a couple hours sleep before our big day today.
The road trip
We met our translator Anfisa at breakfast today along with Renee and Jack, and she outlined our agenda. Andrei then joined us and told us more about this boy we were to see. It turns out we were to meet him not in an orphanage, but in the children’s hospital where he has been since four days after he was given up at birth! Andrei commented on what a beautiful boy he is (must have seen pictures on file at the ministry that morning).
First we went to the local Ministry of education office to be interviewed to authorize our ability to interact with an adoptable child. Last time, for Matthew, we were subjected to an interview by only one lady, “Galina” in Perm. Here, we were seated at a table with several bureaucrats of different agencies. The conversation was smooth and pleasant. Lori opted to let me do all the talking. She was exhausted too. I dusted off my old Russian, and tried to answer questions interpreted to me by Anfisa in Russian as best I could. Even though I probably butchered conjugation and tense (since I never bothered to learn them), I got a few ideas across. As Anfisa suspected beforehand, our interview was smooth since they had all reviewed our dossier and saw how we had already successfully adopted Matthew. They asked about him a lot.
That formality concluded, together with Dr Lada and a driver named Sergei, we hit the road to the metal-refining town of Novatroiske (sp), 300 km away from this city. We got off lucky with Matthew since his orphanage was right outside the city limits. Different story this time!
We passed umpteen slow-moving trucks on the two-lane road to Novatriske. The other couple (in the other car of our convoy) parted ways with us in the city of Orsk which is only 20 km from where we needed to go. Lori and I went in to sneak a peek at their referral, and the girl was very cute, but has not said much of anything. Par for the course for an institutionalized toddler.
At long last, we came to the city of Novatroiske. We smelled the city before entering it. Countless smokestacks were belching out smoke of various hues and foul smells. A toxic fog blanketed the first part of the city we entered. Gradually the ugly industrial zone cleared and gave way to other commercial and residential areas supported by the former.
The saddest place I have ever seen
The children’s hospital, like almost every other building we’ve seen in this country, was ugly and crumbling. We entered the building and were led down bleak corridors I had always envisioned in horror stories of Eastern European adoption. There were no cheerily painted walls and bright colors of the orphanages we’ve seen. About half of the light fixtures were dark- making the corridors like tunnels. I stepped over cracks in the floor and peered into rooms containing sullen kids, who along with their sullen mothers stared back at me. I felt myself vow to get this kid out of here no matter what. Three heads and no limbs? No problem, the boy could grow up to be a one man think tank…
We briefly met the head pediatrician (also Sergei) and waited for the boy as Dr. Sergei regurgitated the boy’s medical chart to our hired gun Dr. Lada. Finally, a nurse brought in a scared yet mellow little boy with sandy blonde hair and greenish eyes. He is indeed a beautiful boy, and I stood stunned at how we could be 2-for-2 in referrals of great-looking waifs! Lori’s persistent cough prompted Dr. Lada to issue Lori a surgical mask before holding the boy. The little boy was scared at this masked face holding him, and cried a meaningful, but not piercing cry. I asked the social worker what the boy’s name was. It is “Roman.” I too held him and stroked him and whispered his name. He cried at first then got used to me.
We learned that Roman’s mother is about 27 or so, black-haired, blue-eyed, and is single, never-married with a 5-year old already. She gave up Roman from the get-go since there is no money or much of a future in this city.
We were taken to another room, where Dr. Lada could do her exam. Inside this room were two other newborns wrapped up tight in swaddling cloths like mummies. I can only assume they had been abandoned too, for we learned that this hospital had a whole ward specifically allotted to house abandoned infants. They would occasionally cry, but I dared not touch them.
Roman tracked new stimuli in his environment alertly, and did not really fuss much at all. His right ear sticks out a bit more than his left, and his skull and face were a slightly diagonal oblong looking from the top of his head down. This Dr. Lada said, resulted from him being wrapped tight and left on his side for too long with not enough turning. It is something she asserted would correct itself over time because the infant’s skull is so malleable. He was born about three weeks early, and weighed a bit less than 7 lbs at birth. He is in the normal range on all his charts, including head size. He is at the low end of normal on the weight-for-height, as he is a bit on the lean side.
His main issue is that because he is in a hospital, staff have never really let him out of his crib to do ANYTHING, such as crawl around. Therefore, he could sit up, and could even support himself standing at the side of the crib, but he is not able to crawl. As a related deficit, he has overactive muscle tone in his legs and feet. His feet tend to reflexively point like a ballarina’s. Dr. Lada explained that this is not a congenital defect, but is an environmental one, and that his deficit can be overcome over time by massaging his butt, leg and feet muscles, and most importantly, by letting him out of his crib to ROAM, and to hold his hands and let him start walking with support, again and again. If necessary, some physical therapy may be required but his prognosis is good! He oriented himself to sounds around his head well, and he made eye contact with his caregivers readily and made some vocalizations.
We dressed him up in a funky green ensemble (including, of course, a beret) provided by a nurse and took him out front to help him walk on a bench. Back and forth we went as I held his hands. He took “baby steps,” and would usually walk as if on tip-toes, but after time, actually landed on his heel. He was really tired and zoned out before too long of our “bench” session. We came at a bad time, when he was expecting to be fed.
After discussing the big picture with Dr. Lada, taking this little boy into our lives is really a no-brainer that in the big scheme of international adoption from Eastern Europe. Roman is a keeper by virtue of the correctibility of his deficits. Even so, I could never bring myself to leave a child behind in that place. The staff were as warm and friendly to the children as is possible, but abject poverty is what it is. Matthew, being basically medically perfect and normal weight for an institutionalized kid, was a one-in-a-million anomaly. Little Roman is par for the course, but with nothing wrong that can’t be corrected. Our gut feeling was “yes” from the moment we laid eyes on him. Andrei arrived at the conclusion of Dr. Lada's exam looking for a yes-or-no answer. Did we want the boy or not? Wow. Badda-bing! Make a decision that will affect the rest of your lives. "Yes." And so it will go.
We concluded our day with a joint dinner (at 10pm) with the other couple and our two respective hired gun pediatricians. The chicken was actually quite good. Since we felt comfortable with Roman, we did not need to send Andrei scrambling for another referral while we were over there, and did not need to retain Dr. Lada for a second day to evaluate another child. After dinner, Dr. Lada and I sat down in a hotel alcove so I could pay her for her services. She reiterated to me her vote of confidence that little Roman would indeed grow into a fine healthy boy in our care.
Saying "We'll take him!"
Our first full day in Russia was a whirlwind, but it ended very well. Once Lori and I agreed that little Roman was a fine boy in desperate need of an improvement of circumstance, our facilitators began the process of making it so for him.
Anfisa our translator took us to the Orenburg’s official notary. She had prepared on a computer disk the Russian text of our formal petition to adopt Roman. As part of this petition, we had to state whether we intended to rename the boy. Lori and I decided we will re-name him Andrew Roman Bjork. We would have liked more time to ruminate, but in previous discussions on the subject we knew this was a name we both could live with if we were offered a boy. Re-naming him Andrew Roman would parallel exactly what we did with Matthew (who is Matthew Yegor Bjork). It would spare him teasing about the name Roman as a child (never underestimate the cruelty of the schoolyard), and he could then be A. Roman Bjork if he wanted the gravitas of his orignal Russian name in adulthood.
Irina the notary was a plump, congenial bureaucrat. Her office printed out a copy of our petition. Irina read it aloud to us, and Anfisa translated. Irina insists on not just rubber stamping documents as American notaries do (and as Andrei our head facilitator would prefer), but rather on reading the ENTIRE thing and having it translated aloud so that foreigners know exactly what they are signing their name to. Irina really appreciated that I tried to speak a little Russian, and gave us extra blessing that our process would be smooth.
On the road agin'
Then came the 3-hour road trip to see Andrew Roman one more time. Our driver the second day was Victor. The weather, as with the day before was gorgeous. We are so very glad we did not have to do this in the winter! Victor spoke no English but was pre-instructed on what to do with us once at the Children’s hospital. On the second day, there was a bit more traffic, but still was mostly rural 2-lane. The big hassle is passing trucks. Russian trucks move sloooow. Also, the livestock grazing at the roadside were more brazen. What I will really remember from these road trips are all the livestock roaming freely within meters of cars going 80mph. No fences. Goats, cows, chickens, and horses lazily grazed about and even laid down and relaxed on the dirt shoulder of the road. Victor would slow down whenever livestock were too close for comfort to the road. We never DID see any livestock roadkill, so I suspect the local motorists and the livestock have some kind of truce going.
We stopped at this roadside place again this day en route to Novatroiske. Cheap eats. A pig in a blanket (croissant) was only 9 rubles (about 25 cents). As we were finishing at our table, Lori whispered. “Jim, some guys with machine guns just walked in.” I figured it was the local law enforcement, but I did not turn around to look. I simply finished—real fast—and walked out. Russian cops can be very corrupt. I did not want to draw their attention. I glanced at them briefly as we hustled out, and they had the short carbine versions of AK-47s. I suppose it’s a legacy of old Soviet times, where every cop could have passed for a soldier. In context, though, it was as absurd as having cops toting around machine guns in small-town USA, like Willmar or Mount Airy. You never know, Chechen rebels could road trip a few thousand miles in order to storm in, burn the pork sausages and roll the beefy clerk lady for the $17 of rubles in the till.
As we entered Novatroiske, I asked Victor in broken Russian if we could find a toy store in town to get a small colored ball to play with Andrew Roman. He took us straight to the hospital, so I assumed he did not understand my request, or was otherwise disinclined to do so. Dr Sergei took us to Andrew Roman and a room in which he could play with us. We had until 6pm to play with him, then we had to return to Orenburg for a really late dinner and further instructions for Trip 2. By 3pm, it was getting blustery and cool. That nixed the idea of taking Andrew Roman outside.
There were no toys anywhere. It was a hospital, not an orphanage. Since we assumed when we left the US that we would be going to an orphanage, we only brought one toy with us, a little stuffed cow with teething appendages. So, we were in a bleak room and had to improvise. The room had an adult-size regular bed as well as a crib and an examining table. We assumed that this was one of the rooms they set up where a mother could stay with the baby while the baby was receiving care.
This kid had gotten to touch virtually nothing since his birth this past Halloween (2005), except for his nurses, so any object with color and texture would be an improvement over a bedsheet and iron bars of a crib. Lori thought Andrew might like her measuring tape. We also turned a near-empty bottle of bottled water into a shaker toy. The box for our disposable camera was also colorful. I took off my watch to try that too.
Andrew took to the measuring tape right away and began munching on it non-stop (see attached picture). Being Russian, he preferred the taste of the metric side. We had been told by the nurses that Andrew did not know how to crawl. Dr. Lada said that was a bad sign regarding his development. We wanted to put this to the test. We took the tape from his three teeth (after a slight struggle) and placed it one end of the bed, and then we sat Andrew Roman down on the opposite side. He fixated on the tape and got up on his kneels and crawled across the bed! It wasn’t a smooth turbo-crawl, but it definitely WAS a crawl. We repeated this a couple more times.
Much of the time, when he was not looking at our faces, Andrew Roman was transfixed on the window and the trees blowing in the wind outside. He has probably seen so little in his life. About an hour after we started playing with him, Victor our driver showed up with a ball! He DID understand, but did not want that errand to cut into our time with the boy. I reached to my wallet pouch to pay him for the cost, but he gestured he did not want money.
We savored all three hours we had with Andrew Roman, and tried to stimulate him as best we could. He pulled himself up at the end of the adult bed to look out the window, and grope for its fabric curtain and latch. At six, we said a long sad goodbye as we handed him back to a nurse. I gave the nurse the chew toy, and they ball and said “for Roman, please.” She nodded and smiled, but we have no expectation that they will be with him when we come back. If they find their way to any other abandoned child’s crib we will still be happy.
Dead guy on sidewalk
Once back in the big city, we had a closing dinner with the interpreter Alfisa and facilitator Andrei. The other couple and Lori and I all knew we would be hard-pressed to take back souvenirs second trip since we would have baby items, so we figured if we were going to get some Matrushka dolls to take back, we should get some during the layover time in Moscow, so Andrei made arrangements with Ilya the Moscow hunk to do just that. Andrei had reviewed what documents we still need for court. I had most of them with me, and handed them over. This time around, I was REALLY motivated to get a fast court date after all the time it took to get a court date for Matthew. Only a couple documents left, including the updated police background check. We got fingerprinted again in Baltimore back before we left, so we hope to get those clearance letters soon.
We left the hotel at 6AM the next morning with the other couple to catch our 8am flight back to Moscow and begin our 24-hour journey home. When we got to Moscow, we had a few hours to get across town to the international airport. Ilya took us to Moscow University, and there was a plaza overlooking the city where several vendors had set up tables to sell Russian trinkets. It was cold and rainy, so we all got what we wanted in a hurry and set out to Sheremetyevo airport.
The road to the airport was choked with severe traffic. We had been in stop-and-go for about an hour, and we were growing tense as to whether we were going to miss our flight. Ilya remained optimistic- a gentle “No problem” was a phrase he used often. As Ilya suspected, there had been an accident. An ambulance managed to make its way past us up ahead.
Several minutes later we came to the scene of the accident. Debris was scattered all along the curb of the road and sidewalk. We all rubbernecked as we passed the wreckage of a completely smashed car loaded onto a flatbed. Then we saw the corpse. It was laid out on the sidewalk, and was only partially covered. A lifeless arm and grimy hand at an unusual angle were still visible. Renee started sobbing in shock, and Ilya’s face turned ashen. When I saw it, my first thought was “Yep, we’re in Russia.” (or more accurately- "we're not in America anymore" where death gets sanitized). Our Moscow driver from our first adoption process told us how the Russian news media always gets corpse shots in its coverage. That the authorities prioritized freeing up the traffic lane over sensitivities to a dead motorist struck me as brutally practical. Traffic was a breeze after that.
Sad to say, that mangled body will probably be our lasting image of Moscow this trip.
That day in Frankfurt, we got security like I’ve never experienced. Our flights home were still relatively uneventful considering our layover in Frankfurt co-incided with the busting of the huge terrorist plot to blow up multiple planes on England-US flights with mixable liquid explosives. When we got to Frankfurt and struggled to find our way to the right gate for the final flight to Washington, the young man who frisked me was firm and thorough. Renee thought he fancied me. If I batted that way, I suppose I’d fancy him too. He was so thorough, he detected my money belt behind my waist, and gruffly ordered me to take it off and put it through the detector. Then, I was taken to a guardpost to have my video camera and portable DVD player chemically sniffed. A security lady told us in excited broken English about the terrorist plot, though she had only skeletal details at the time. We were so glad we did not have to fly through the UK.
We got back to the US without incident, and were greeted after customs by a friend from church holding a pink sign reading “Parents of Roman Bjork.” It was a very thoughtful touch and a great welcome home.
Now we try to get our few remaining documents and cash in order so that Andrei can secure us a prompt court date. Little Andrew Roman is noticeably more delayed than Matthew was at that age (9 months), and will need more catch-up and maybe even some physical therapy for his leg muscles, so we are very motivated to get him back to the States as soon as possible. Please keep him in your prayers. Pray too for the all little ones abandoned in that place, that they too can someday be held by loving parents instead of overworked nurses.
What will stick in my mind from this trip is the ascent from overstressed, skeptical madness to relief and joy in a 12-hour span of time, matched in my life only by the revelation that Matthew was actually healthy during our OTHER adoption's first trip.
As they say, it’s always darkest before the dawn. Thank you for all your support. Time for a nap.
Jim and Lori
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