Here is an article I read in the Anchorage Daily News. It is very much like a WB story. It is a true story and after reading it I thanked my lucky stars that I live in the good old USA. It certainly makes me appreciate the things I have and I don't necessarily mean tangible assets. A home, health and family are far more important than a rise in DGIV share price....
MAGADAN, Russia - On a snow-packed
incline between a row of trash bins and
concrete apartment towers, Maria
Zhuravlova gripped her son's wheelchair
and slid down the slope.
She used the wheelchair to keep her
balance and her boot soles for skis. I ran to
catch up with her.
"Most women would fall down," Maria
shouted, laughing, "I don't."
Hilly streets are the easiest of Maria's
obstacles. But she takes them all on with
the same attitude.
She's a single mother with a disabled son in a society that shuns such children,
living in a city with a punishing climate and miserable economy. Yet Maria isn't just
surviving - she seems driven somehow to be happy.
She was 19 when she gave birth to Pavel, whom she calls Pasha. The 8-year-old
boy has a scar on the back of his head where doctors installed a plastic tube to
drain excess spinal fluid. It was this fluid that damaged the part of his brain that
controls his legs. It's a congenital neurological defect.
She said the doctors told her he would be incapacitated for life and urged her to put
him in an institution.
Her husband blamed her for producing an unhealthy son, she said, and he was
angry that she wanted to take care of him herself. He divorced her that year.
Her ex-husband is remarried with a healthy daughter of his own. "Good for him,"
she said. But he hasn't provided his son any money for five years, and there are no
effective laws in Russia that would force him to pay, she said.
Women with disabled children find it difficult to remarry in Russia, she said. With
the current economic crisis, it's hard enough supporting a healthy family. She said
men don't want the financial burden of a sick child.
There are no wheelchair ramps in Magadan. A tiny woman, she must carry Pavel -
who is half her weight - up and down a four-story staircase twice a day.
The school system won't let Pavel attend school unless he can walk. Moscow
doctors said he might be able to walk with a cane after surgery and physical
therapy. He was scheduled to have the operation this summer, which would cost
60,300 rubles, about $2,400. But the collapse of the ruble has pushed the operation
beyond her reach, Maria said.
Inflation has reduced the value of Pavel's monthly disability payments to about
$20. Her mother's salary of 700 rubles has lost so much of its buying power, she
said, that she spends it entirely on disposable diapers for Pavel.
That completes the list of problems. Here are Maria's solutions:
Maria goes to medical college and hopes to work as a midwife soon. Her father,
who works as a government lawyer, helps out financially. In addition, the windows
in Maria's two-room apartment are covered with plants and flowers. In early fall,
when she sells most of her plants, she said, Pavel can drink milk every day.
She and her parents have a 5,600-square-foot vegetable garden outside town. She
gets there by bus. She can grow everything but tomatoes. In the countryside, she
collects raspberries, currants and wild blueberries. She makes her own cough
medicine from herbs.
Maria raises parakeets in her apartment. She has four adults and six chicks. Each
parakeet that she sells can buy a week's worth of diapers.
She has always had a talent for animals and plants, she said. She's teaching Pavel
her skills. When he grows up, she said, he can make a living raising and selling
birds.
When she attends college, she leaves Pavel with the grandmother of a disabled girl
Pavel's age, Elvera. The two children are close friends, and the grandmother doesn't
charge any money.
When Pavel was born, he was hospitalized for several weeks, she said. She didn't
breastfeed him or bond with him. When she took him home, she felt he was just
"another small sick animal" to take care of.
By the time he was 2, she had grown to love her son, a bright, cheerful boy with
keen sense of humor. It's that love, she said, that keeps her strong.
There's no use crying over something you can't change, she said. For a year and a
half, her classmates at college never knew she had a disabled child.
"I almost always smile," she said.
As she jostled with Pavel at Elvera's apartment, she seemed a woman at peace with
the herself and the world.
When I asked her to describe her philosophy of life, she replied with two words:
"Hakuna matata."
I don't know this Russian word, I said. What does it mean?
"Hakuna matata. Hakuna matata," she said. Then she mentioned "Liev Czar," the
"Lion King."
She was speaking Swahili. Then she began to sing, as Pavel and Elvera rocked their
bodies to the Disney song.
"Hakuna matata," she sang, adding the rest of the lyrics in Russian. "What a
wonderful phrase. It means no worries for the rest of your days. It's our
problem-free philosophy. Hakuna matata!"
Pavel and Elvera cheered. |
