The Baby House is remarkable. One of our fellow travelers took a video during the tour our first day, which is the only way to really do it justice. But I’ll do the best I can with words.
Delphin Baby House is the home for orphans ages 0-3 years, for Kostonai and the surrounding region. The entire staff is female, including the director (Dr. Irinia, a physician), the pediatrician, a nursing staff, a massage therapist, and a music teacher. Not only is the staff responsible for both the daily and medical care of the babies, but they shop for and prepare all the meals, do all the laundry, do all of the interior decorating following the frequent expansions, (including painting and wallpapering the rooms in cheerful colors), and even make hand-made pillows to give to adoptive parents as gifts.
Babies are grouped together by age, and each age group has a bedroom, a playroom, and a bathroom, suitable to their age. Ahlia’s room, for babies aged 6-12 months, is equipped for 12
children, but currently houses only 6, with 2 caretakers present at any given time, plus visits from the various nursing staff. They each sleep in their own small crib, but share space in one of 2 playpens in the play room. The most coveted “hang out” spot is the bouncy chair, which is suspended by a rotating hook, and allows the babies not only to bounce, but to become airborne and fly about the corner. Since there is only one bouncy chair, the babies must take turns, and while they do so they are either in a little walker chair (most of them being too little to reach the floor, so the chair remains stationary), or in a play pen. At any given time, at least one or two are being changed, fed, held, walked outside (in a snowsuit that rival’s Maggie Simpson’s and deprives the baby of all mobility) or massaged.
While there are many toys available, they mostly remain on the shelves. We’re not sure why, perhaps because the caretakers attention is always absorbed by the baby they are currently tending, and they don’t want to risk the unwatched babies choking or destroying something. This is our best guess. At any rate, when we arrive each day to put Ahlia on the blanket, surrounded by a smorgasbord of toys, she cannot stop playing, handling, squeaking, biting, throwing them. When it is time for our visit to end, the babies go down for a nap, and each gets a freshly autoclaved binky.
We only had a brief look at the older children’s rooms, but they do more structured activities, and are often walking through the halls in groups, holding hands, most seem like they can’t be more than 18-24 months old. When they pass us, they will begin to say “Mamas y Papas, Mamas y Papas”, (sometimes prompted by the caregivers, sometimes spontanesouly on their own) and will get very excited. I inevitably get all teary eyed as I return their smiles and waves. I am tearing up now as I type about it. It is almost unbearable.
Before entering the living quarters, all new children spend their first 3 weeks at the baby house. They are kept in quarantine while awaiting test results for HIV, Hep B, salmonella, dysentery, typhus, and a few other ailments, and watched for signs of disease. In quarantine, the care is provided solely by nurses, no caregivers. There is room for 4 children at once, each space sealed. Dr. Irina told us that new children come every Monday, but for the last 2 Monday’s, no children have arrived. She is hoping that perhaps this is a sign of real change, as the country’s economic status continues to improve. Another sign of this change is the “hope room”, an initiative started by the current “first lady” of Kazakhstan. This program allows babies to come to the baby house from ages 0-3, without being placed up for adoption. Their biological mothers can visit anytime, and spend as much time as they like with the babies. Once the mothers are ready, the babies can go back home. The program is only open to young, single mothers with first time pregnancies, and about 50% of the children in the program actually return home eventually.
The Baby House also has a music room, a ballroom (where we had our initial meeting with the babies), a newly renovated kitchen where all meals are prepared (but no cafeteria – all the children are fed in their living areas), an infirmary with a collection of medical equipment that was wholly unfamiliar to me, a “salt room” where children at risk for respiratory infections spend time as a preventative measure, a sauna (really) and an indoor pool (yes, really). All the children visit the sauna and pool once weekly and we’re told that as a result, the toddlers can swim at a rudimentary level.
Outside there is no real playground, but there are a series of brightly colored “cages” (for lack of a better word) where children can sleep during the summer when it is too hot inside, and a large play yard.
Every room of the baby house is decorated with fancy linoleum, wallpaper and curtains (handmade by the caretakers, of course), and is filled with toys (mostly gifts from adoptive parents), and the walls are covered with photos of children from their post-placement reports (the reports that adoptive parents must file annually until their child reaches age 18, to help assure the powers that be that international adoption is a positive thing for these kids). The décor is modest, but it is cheerful and extremely child friendly. The caretakers are kind, and the babies in Ahlia’s room light up when the caretakers speak their names. All in all, it is a remarkable thing to behold.
Well, now we are huddled up together under two wool blankets on a single-size cot at the Hotel Askunur, next to the Almaty International airport, because it is too cold to do otherwise. When we learned we’d have to leave Kostonai early today, we were disappointed, but figured we’d make the best of it by visiting the open-air market in Almaty. It was too cold to go while we were in Kostonai, with temp staying around -25C. So imagine our surprise when we disembarked in Almaty this afternoon to a frosty -17C. Over the last 2 days I’ve learned that when it is this cold out, it hurts your lungs when you breathe through your mouth. You have to breathe through your nose, to give the air a chance to warm up. It does make your nose hurt, but that’s OK.
We celebrated Gotcha Christmas Night with a redux of The Knight’s Castle (erroneously called the King’s Castle in a previous post), and were joined by the Carbaughs, who had just arrived via London & Moscow. I am now using their real name, with permission, and will add again here how very much we enjoy their company. We were all in a stupor, but that didn’t stop us from getting up and dancing when greeted with an unexpected visit from Father Frost (aka, Santa Clause). Though Russian Orthodox Christmas is not til Jan. 7th, Father Frost seems to be more of a New Year emblem here, as do the decorated trees, lights and garlands that festoon Kazakhstan this week. Welcoming the New Year is a big, lengthy deal here, and apparently on New Year’s Eve everyone will dress up in costume and join together in Kostonai’s city square, regardless of the temps. But last night, as part of a major tour to kick-off his annual gift delivery gig on the 31st, Father Frost showed up at the Knights Castle in full regalia, along with a scantily clad female elf. As first order of business, he directed a game of Kazakh Roulette (where several 
people choose a shotglass from a tray, and only one is really vodka) before entreating us all to join him on the dance floor. Quickly singling us out as the oddities we were, he tried to get us to sing some American Christmas carols on his microphone, but none of us were drunk enough to oblige him. Instead, we danced with the Kazaks til we nearly dropped (and I've got the video to prove it - to be uploaded when we get home), and then finished off the night with ice cream cubes with chocolate shavings, before plunging back outside for the frosty 5 blocks to our hotel. From start to finish, yesterday was a singular Christmas which I know will never be forgotten by either of us.
As an aside, I would like to note how impressed I am with the division of Christmas and Santa here. It allows Christmas to remain a spiritual holiday for Christians, while allowing folks of all faiths to participate in the gift-giving and merriment. Perhaps this is part of the secret of how Muslims and Russian Orthodox live peacefully, in equal proportions, in this country. I was immediately reminded of my poor mother, and her sad tales of receiving 8-days’ worth of socks and underwear, while her Christian friends made out like bandits on the morning of the 25th. In some circles of our family, it is speculated that this may in fact be the reason that she ultimately married goyim, to spare my sister and I a similar fate (and bless her for it!). Anyway, my point of this paragraph is to propose that it would make a whole lot of sense for all of us, worldwide, to adopt this Santa-New Year’s tradition, and leave Christmas as a quiet and holy birthday party for those who choose to partake. It could be quite unifying.
Both legs of our SCAT flights this trip were on the infamous prop plane, I’m guessing ca. 1960. The aisles were covered with long carpet runners, with occasional patches of the metal floor exposed beneath. The overhead bins were like those on a bus, just open shelves showing wreckless disregard for the fact that contents may shift during take-off and landing. The seats folded down when not in use, and the tray tables were light-weight pieces of tin. Best of all, each announcement by the stewardess on the overhead was preceded by a piercing alarm, which, when jarring you from an exhausted stupor, sounds very much like a siren heralding the planes imminent crash to the icy tundra below.
Despite all that, the flight this morning was actually very peaceful, and so is this chilly, spartan hotel room. As Sal put it, it feels like we’re living in a Jason Bourne movie, and this is one of those quiet, calm moments before the next wanton bloodbath. Or, in our case, this is a quiet moment to bask in the short but joyful visit with beautiful little Aliya – before embarking on another 24-hours of air travel, and facing the crazy month ahead. We’ve got 5 weeks to squeeze in belated holiday visits, baby-proof the house, prepare the remaining paperwork , gather baby items for the 3rd and final trip, and create a happy purple bedroom for our newest peanut. I have not allowed myself to do much prep before, for fear it would jinx things, and now I can’t wait to get to started on it all!
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