Russia-Part I The Moment that Changed My Life Forever

A long flight has brought me across the Pacific to Incheon, South Korea. The fate of the rest of my life lies on a large island off the coast of Siberia; its name Sakhalin.  I wait impatiently in my small hotel room for the next day when I will travel on to Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Russia.  The long flight that brought me to Korea was pleasant on a modern and clean airline but soon I will be thrown back in time to an era of intrigue and exile. I climb the steps in the morning and depart eager to begin my latest adventure.

The plane lands on an airstrip that is concrete but the landing is far from smooth because the strip is plagued with cracks and potholes. The landscape looks like something I would see at home, large treed mountains line the horizon, aspen like trees surround the airport.  As I step down to disembark immediately I am drawn to what is different here.  CCCP it reads on the airport and the hammer and sickle are still displayed with prominence.  The trucks that come for the luggage are vintage 1950 and mechanics are working on other outdated equipment.  The equipment they are working on was made long before I was born but seems to be the only available in this far outpost of Russia.

Walking inside we line up to go through customs but the process is altogether scary.  Guards are unfriendly and my few words of Russian are no consolation when having to deal with their looks of scorn.  Their faces seem to say, "Why so much luggage?  Typical Americans."  I feel resented immediately.  Our driver is waiting and is even more angry about the luggage, wondering where he will fit it in the small car he has brought.  At last we cram every inch of the Soviet-era black sedan and head to our hotel.

Driving past heaps of garbage piled as high as houses and run down shacks I think of my times in other impoverished places and begin to make comparisons.  Jamaica with its ten-foot high fences hid its filth better, the shanties of several other Caribbean islands seem like palaces here, and Mexico looks like a 1st world country with all the amenities. My mood is transformed to melancholy as I think of the lives that are being lived out this way.  This island is one of the places the intelligent, educated people were forced to when Lenin and Stalin took over. Their hope was to eliminate the possibility of anyone criticizing the government or noticing the problems with it. These surroundings are discouraging.

Few streets are paved and our hotel is on a dirt road.  It is a few stories tall and has a restaurant. The elevator to our room is barely big enough for two people, let alone for our four big bags.  We have to stack and cram again and hope the weight limit is not reached.  Opening our room we are comforted by what will be our home for more than a week.  It has two rooms and a two-room bathroom set up.  

We are eagerly anticipating meeting Maxim and Nikolai, who up until this trip we had only seen in videos and photographs.  We should certainly be tired but neither Troy or I can sleep.  We turn on the TV to find it doesn't work very well.  We turn it back off and test out the bed.  The bed is large but it is lumpy.  Troy picks the best side and leaves me to suffer with the huge dip.  We try to sleep but to no avail.  We are waiting for our translator to call and say we can go and visit the boys.

We wait and wait.  Troy becomes impatient and decides to venture across the street to the market.  He says he will pick up a few things to get us through the week.  Without fear he leaves the hotel and crosses the street.  I watch him from the window.  He is back shortly with a few things.

At last we get the call we have been waiting for, Irene, our translator.  As Troy best describes her, "Here is our translator Irene, who speaks Korean, Russian and a wee bit of English."  Her lack of knowledge of the English language would plague us for this week and a half.  Her lack of timeliness would also haunt us.

In her broken English she constantly tells us "maybe" we will go and see the boys today.  "Maybe" we will go to court today.  "Maybe" we will take some passport photos.  She seems to have no idea that maybe means sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn't. The first day the only thing we manage to get accomplished is the exchanging of money in the basement of the travel center.  Do we go to a typical bank to exchange money, of course not.  We are led down the circular stairs past some "shady" shops to a door.  After a knock by our translator a man opens up.  We are to exchange money with him.  When you speak little of the language and are being guided by someone you have paid to trust, you exchange money in the closet of the business center and try not to question how much he stole.  Irene leads us back up the stairs and outside to the courtyard.  We spy a Lenin statue in a park in the distance.  We are exhausted and want to see the boys but today was impossible according to Irene, so we are forced to retreat to our hotel and wait.

The second day we were in Russia we finally were able to see the boys.  After much pacing and anticipation and my anxiety level being quite unreasonable we reached the orphanage.  We were funneled through the building making sure to not see the unmentionable parts.  We pass a small restroom and climb some concrete stairs, cold but red, to the second floor.  It is here, in the room we saw in the video, that we will meet Maxim and Nikolai for the first time.  It is a moment I will never forget and will cherish in the deep recesses of my heart.  The ladies walked in with Max and Nikolai.  They gave Max to Troy and Nikolai to me.  Nikolai instantly took to me.  We bonded in less than five minutes. He was so blond and so big for a baby his age.  I tried my best to fit the shoes we had brought to him on his feet but to no avail.  They were far too small.  Max on the other hand was so small for his age.  His frame was less that we expected and every piece of clothing was too big. Max, as a personality,  was also a more difficult case.  He would not talk at first. It took him awhile to release the permanent scowl that showed he distrusted everyone in his life.  Eventually though, he began speaking to Troy.  When we were able to take them outside to the playground and give Max some play cars, our relationships began to develop.  Max and I raced cars down the slide, he pushed Nikolai and I on the swing and he shouted any time a car would come into the parking lot.  His obsession with cars was instant. "Machinna, Machinna"  he shouted constantly.  He hardly spoke but once there was a car around, in his hands or he was in one, you could not turn him off.

Nikolai made very little noise but he was comforted by my touch.  He wanted to be held constantly and I did not say no.  He was heavy even as a baby.  He did not speak, in spite of being old enough. He also did not babble.  He didn't hardly make a noise.  After being home and researching I was not surprised by this but while in Russia I was worried.  He didn't cry when he should have.  He just sat quite.

That first day was both the most joyous and the most severely agonizing in my life because after spending the day with them I had to leave and return to a hotel room that felt even more empty.