For the original story, see the February 4, 2009, post.
I left for Ukraine in late April and met Galina for the first time in ten years. We met at a restaurant on Deribasovskaya Street. I didn’t choose the restaurant, but it was literally across the street from where Travis and I first saw her in 1999. After dinner, we took a walk down the same street we had walked to the Plastic Surgery Institute ten years earlier.
Galina is quiet, shy, and, according to Tanya (her adoptive mother), a well-behaved child. She is very self-conscious of her burn and usually wears a hat or scarf over her head. Tanya adopted Galina from a shelter in 2005. We don’t know what happened to her before that, and she doesn’t want to talk about her past. Galina now lives in a village an hour outside of Odessa with her grandmother (Tanya’s mother). Tanya told me that Galina wanted to move to the town because all the kids made fun of her burn at school in Odessa, and she wanted a new start. When one of the boys in the village started making fun of her, she punched him, and she never had any trouble again.
When I came back from the January trip, I had to search hard to dig up the photos of Galina from 1999. During my search, I came across Alla’s gravesite location. I hadn’t seen the grave since the summer of 2000, so I took the location information with me on this trip and went to the cemetery. Her plot was old, dilapidated, and covered with high grass. Typical of a grave that looked like no one in the world cared about the person buried there. My translators, Larisa and Ilona, placed flowers on the thin rusted metal pipe cross that marked her grave, but I could not stay there longer than 5 minutes and walked (almost ran) away from the site. As I left, I prayed a fleeting prayer that God would raise her from the dead. This whole experience with Galina opened up an emotional wound that time had buried. All this reminiscing has sliced open an old scar, a wound that might have healed on the outside but covered up a malignant mass of regret lying dormant just under the skin. The scar has broken open, and raw sewage is pouring out. It’s like the whole thing happened yesterday. The failure of losing Alla forever tempers all the joy of finding Galina. There is no finding Alla in a shelter, no adoptive mom to meet me on the street…she is dead and buried and rotting away in some forgotten grave.
On our way out of the cemetery, we stopped by an old man at the entrance who prays for the dead. I gave him 50 hryvnia (about $5) to pray for Alla, and when my translator, Ilona, told him Alla’s name, he repeated “Allitchka.” The way he said her name with such affection made me fall apart inside. I joked to myself that here is at least one person who cares for her….maybe his prayers could raise her from the dead.
Galina arrived at JFK on April 29th and flew to Virginia Beach on the 30th. Her first surgery was on May 7th. She has been back to the hospital for a few check-ups, and everything is going very well. The process involves several surgeries that will allow her hair to grow back on her head, so she will be here for approximately six months. Over the past few weeks, she has visited Times Square, the Empire State Building, the beach, a dolphin watch boat, the zoo, and even went through major surgery, as well as the Blue Ridge Mountains. I make every attempt to spoil her rotten, but Tanya will not allow it. I continually catch myself staring at her, just amazed by the fact that she is here. I wonder about her past, how she was burned, if she was abused by the people who used her for financial gain, how she ended up at the shelter, and the desperate loneliness she must have felt during those years. When I was looking for her old pictures back in February, I came across the initial visa request correspondence I had with the US Embassy back in 1999. An excerpt from one of their emails states:
Dec.7, 1999
Dear Mr. Rosini
I must ask you to reconsider your actions. It would be quite cruel to subject a homeless person…to a visa appointment they could never hope to pass. It would be cruel to bring someone to the United States for treatment only to have them return to Ukraine and a life on the street.
Sincerely,
Consular Assistant
US Embassy in Kyiv
At the time, I had no intention of letting her go back to the street. After I lost her contact information, I made a commitment to find her, and she would never return to the streets again. Now, 10 years later, as I look at her helpless, unconscious body on a hospital gurney, I reiterate the same commitment that I will do everything in my power to give this child a better life. As Jean Valjean swore to Fantine that “her child Cosette shall live in his protection and none shall ever harm her as long as he is alive,” so I promise that Galina will have every opportunity in life that I can give her.
Galina and her mom, Tanya, will initially be staying with my Executive Assistant, Beth Sirk. Anyone can set up a time to meet her if and when you are in Virginia Beach. I will be in and out of town, so if you cannot reach me, feel free to contact Beth directly: 757-472-0443 beth@frontierhorizon.org
I want to mention a few people who made all this possible. First, Nancy, someone who has made all my humanitarian work possible since 1991, has helped out tremendously. Nancy is possibly the most generous person alive. The help she gave to Galina is just a very small part of all the great work she has done to help the needy all over the world. Also, Ian, a native New Zealander who lives in Ukraine, has not only given financial assistance to Galina but also to many other orphan children in Odessa. He just opened the Cuba Cafe in Odessa, which, from all accounts, has the best coffee in Ukraine. And finally, Margaret Pascal, who has been a great friend since college and has been a great help to me and all my work over the years.
