It was a chilling October afternoon in Moscow, evident by the fact that my eyelashes were dusted with a layer of powdery snow as I heaved a box across the street. The six other eighth-grade girls on the bus had already begun to sift through the carefully-labelled boxes, brushing the snow off with their gloves in an attempt to keep the wrapping paper dry. I lifted the heavy box onto the bus, adding it to the wall of boxes that seemed to form a sort of barricade. We were preparing to volunteer at an orphanage for disabled children, most of whom were much younger than us, and we were ready to bring them their first Christmas.
On our way to visit the orphanage — the Vyshe-Gorodskaya Resource School — our teacher and the leader the of the program told us that there were nearly one hundred children there from different backgrounds and socioeconomic statuses: some didn't have homes to return to after class, some were mentally disabled, and some came from families who couldn't provide what they needed. The orphanage gave each child shelter, clothes, warm meals, and a school where they could each learn regardless of their handicaps. Because the orphanage resided just outside of Moscow, the bus ride took a little more than two hours, so my friends and I spent the entire duration laughing and singing along to the repetitive songs that poured from the radio.
The orphanage was quite small and situated in an empty field overgrown with tangled roots and weeds, so it was surprising to learn that the vast majority of the children that attended lived in the dormitories just beside the building. The walls were painted a bright blue, a sharp contrast against the gray sky and muddy snow. A few caretakers greeted us warmly as we arrived, offering us mugs of tea and small pies stuffed with cheese; they were called piroshkis and were a popular, traditional meal in Russia. After eating the food and warming our hands by the radiator, the caretakers lead a short tour of the building. They showed us the classrooms, where the children learned to write and read as well as cook and sew; a small playroom for the younger kids; the gymnasium, where we would set up our Christmas celebration; the dorm rooms where the children stayed; and the bathrooms, which despite their cleanliness, lacked sinks and stall doors. Because of the number of children at the orphanage, the caretakers explained (with the guidance of our local translator) that they needed to spend money on necessities — food, clothes, toys, and space heaters — but couldn't afford little things, like bathroom stalls. I distinctly remember that our teacher quietly pulled the group aside and told us that we would begin to raise funds to fix their bathrooms.
During the bus ride back to school, we all pitched into a discussion about what we could bring the children for their first-ever holidays. In many Slavic countries, western holidays like Halloween and Christmas were rarely celebrated, let alone recognized. To bring them a winter celebration, we decided we would hold a school-wide campaign to donate gifts, assigning each homeroom a specific child to buy gifts for. We were planning to deliver them during our winter break, which began on December 17th. This was relieving, as I would be departing from Russia and moving to Georgia during the final week of December, leaving the friends and memories that I had grown so fond of behind. When we shared our idea to the middle school principal, he was ecstatic! We were featured several times on the monthly newsletter to raise awareness of our campaign.
We braced the four-hour travel time and took another trip to the orphanage where we set up a presentation about Halloween and helped the children make bats from pipe cleaners and ghosts from tissue-paper. While we were there, we collected a few facts about each of the students at the facility. When we returned with piles of short but personalized biographies, we visited every homeroom in our grade, asking them to donate anything they could find: from toys and books to socks and scarves. We encouraged the homerooms with younger children to buy games for the playroom we hoped to expand.
Throughout the months that followed, we were sometimes excused from regular classes to collect and deliver gift boxes. We spent hours during and outside of school carefully gift-wrapping and labelling each individualized box, and once we were finished, we loaded them all onto a school bus.
One day, as I entered the classroom with a stack of boxes in my arms, our teacher was scarily quiet. She informed us that we would delay our trip to a different day after winter break, during January, due to a plumbing malfunction at the orphanage. I was devastated; after winter break, I would've already moved to Georgia. I would've already started my newest adventure. After discussing with my teacher and family, I decided with an aching heart that I would still help the other students prepare the gifts, even though I couldn't see the orphans one last time before I said goodbye.
I'll admit that it was rather difficult for me to come to a conclusion. The moving process itself wasn't the hard part; adapting to change had become second-nature to me, since that would be my sixth time moving miles away from what I had once known as "home", and I wasn't too bothered about leaving my friends since we promised to keep in touch through email and Skype. The first hurdle I had to cross regarded the gift box campaign. I spent my first day in Georgia sitting on the cardboard box that held our unassembled synthetic Christmas tree, gazing out at the snowless landscape outside of the window and reminiscing about the hours I had spent volunteering with my friends. Later that day, my friends in Russia called me to enthusiastically tell me how big of a success the campaign was within our school, but I couldn't share their excitement.
In an effort to comfort me, my mom left a torn-out sheet from one of her many motivational books on my rental mattress. It was a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson:
"To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded."
I realized in that moment that I had done something powerful just by contributing to the campaign.
