Very Special Delivery

Today was an interesting day, my translator is a college student and she had exams today so she was unable to join us on our trip to the baby house. I had to go to the baby house early today because we had to make a ‘special delivery’. My driver, Dusen picked me up at 8:30 this morning. I was told yesterday that we would be going to a hospital to pick up three babies, the ‘special delivery’, and transport them to the baby house. Off we go to a very remote hospital, we wait awhile and three nurses come out with three very small swaddled babies. Two of the babies were lay down on the back seat of the car, one of the nurses joined us and she held the other baby for the ride to the baby house. The nurse was a very interesting looking woman; she was all dressed up and had a shinny gold tooth. As it turns out, it was two baby girls and a baby boy, one was 12 days old, one was 5 days old and the other was 3 days old. Apparently at least two of the mothers were teenagers who delivered the babies and left. The babies slept all the way to the baby house, we pulled right up to a different door, a nurse came out and the three babies were swept inside immediately. There were a lot of images of that trip that I don’t think I’ll ever forget. The hospital was in an extremely remote and what seemed to be a very poor area. I say it seemed to be a poor area but I really can’t tell, it looked like many of the other areas I’ve seen as we drive out of the city to the baby house each day. All of a sudden I realized that these people may not be poor, this appears to be just the way they live in this part of Kazakhstan. It was actually enlightening as well as upsetting to realize how much we have at home and how little some of these people have but to them it’s just their way of life. Interesting and enlightening.

One of the things that I have to do everyday is to have a couple of pictures taken with me and BB. These pictures have to be dated and they will be submitted to the court with the adoption petition. The past two days my translator took the pictures, but as I mentioned earlier, she was not with us today so Dusen my driver had to come in to the baby house and take the pictures. Let me tell you a little about Dusen, he is a Kazakh who speaks Russian and he likes to talk! Dusen knows a few English words and when we try to talk if he doesn’t know the words in English he just switches to Russian and talks to me like I should understand every word he’s saying, it’s funny. Needless to say our communication is very limited. The drive to the baby house is a little over an hour each way. Dusen has a cassette player in his car and he plays a Russian/Kazakh rap music tape most of the time. My translator told me the people singing switch back and forth between Russian and Kazakh. Dusen also sings along to the tape on occasion, now that’s entertainment! So we go into the baby house and into the room where we are waiting for BB. Dusen notices that there is a piano in the room so he goes right over and begins to play. He plays a song or two and then he starts playing ‘My Bonnie lies over the ocean, my Bonnie lies over the sea’, I said, I know that one and he says American music, cowboy music. I just laughed at him, it was pretty funny.

BB was good today. He likes to be held and he likes to be held up high, good thing I’m tall! I have tried to put him on his blanket so he will play with his toys but he’s not too happy about that. The orphanage director told me through my interpreter that he wants love so he just wants to be held. Today was the first day he let me put him down on his blanket, he crawled a little and played for a minute or two and then he had enough. He also sat on my lap, which he hasn’t done before because it's not high enough up, and ‘played the piano’. He was banging on the keys for quite awhile. Hopefully he’s becoming more comfortable with me. We spent about an hour and a half together and then they came to get him. Tomorrow I am going to the baby house with my coordinator and the doctor for BB’s medical. Hopefully all will go well. Take care, Chris