Back in Dushanbe we visit a firm of lawyers, but this is no ordinary firm. Rights and Prosperity campaign and lobby on the difficult issue of children’s rights in state orphanages and special education schools. They were set up in 1998 to look into the legal rights of orphans. Back then orphaned children would often not have legal documentation and the cost of replacing these papers were too expensive – US$3. The work of Rights and Prosperity reduced the cost to US$1 and ensured that when it was not possible to afford even this amount, the children at least had access to the correct paperwork.
We discuss many such issues during the morning with these wonderful people, including the objectionable practice of arresting street children – in the past they could be jailed for up to 8 years for stealing a chicken. Still, problems remain. Today, young girls are imprisoned with adult women – in direct violation of international human rights.
The number of orphans and ‘social orphans’ is substantial – estimated at 1 in 5 children affected socially and up to 50,000 orphans. But there are no state statistics. Which means of course the government fails to give adequate provision to this problem.
It is felt that the problems of orphan and disabled children are largely as a result of civil war, and the very high birth rate in Tajikistan. But there are social issues too – parents abandoning able and disabled children to the state because of grinding poverty. In extreme cases, children are even placed in prisons by their parents… simply to ensure a hot meal for them. Poverty and state indifference side by side.
The government fails these children to the extent that no one department or minister is responsible for the ‘internats’ - the state schools for disabled and orphan children. Consequently, the quality of the individual schools fluctuates wildly along with local political whims. As with the other stories in this blog, a new budget for 2006 has been set for the Internats…but it is not clear what this is yet… or how it will be used.
We’re keen to go and see the Internats for ourselves. Rights and Prosperity explain that some of the directors might be taking the budget money for themselves and might not appreciate our visit. Moreover, there seems to be some nervousness from state officials around our visits.
Of course there was (rare) international attention for Tajikistan following the orphanage fire last week in which thirteen children were killed. So this nervousness around foreign visitors is perhaps understandable.
There are 14 ‘official’ Internats (others exist) in Tajikistan. We are to visit four of them and the first is on the outskirts of Dushanbe. It’s a school for children ‘who are hard of hearing or who have become deaf during their childhood’. Rights and Prosperity explain that the schoolteachers are often from the Internats themselves and not professionally qualified; resulting in massive skills shortages and instances of class overcrowding.
It’s another freezing cold day in Dushanbe when we arrive at the school. The pathways and steps are covered in sheet ice. We’re greeted by the deputy director (we’re not going to use the people’s names in this public blog entry). A nervous looking man, he leads us into an office strewn with crosswords and music playing on his computer – a computer which turns out to be the only one the school has. He answers our questions indifferently at first, doodling on a notepad but livens up when I ask him about why he works there.
He explains that of the 123 children at the school, only a few are in attendance today as there has been a holiday. The children’s ages range from 6 – 18 years and they are given a ‘general middle education’.
“There are a number of challenges for a school like ours,” he explains. “There is no special equipment for hearing. So it is difficult to conduct our school programme. All of our materials are in Russian but the state now requires us to teach in Tajik and anyway, all of our materials are old”.
We later find out that the school was first established under the Soviet regime in 1979 and nothing has been replaced since.
The deputy director tells us that there are 22 teachers at the school which means class sizes are good. Unfortunately, we see no evidence of this, so it’s hard to say whether we’re being given the truth. He also explains that the children receive four hot meals per day – a fact hotly disputed later by the Rights and Prosperity staff.
We have a sense that this is a man who genuinely wants to do this work but is prevented from explaining the true situation. He’d like to have leisure programmes for the children and life skills workshops. Currently they’re not able to offer these.
We ask to be shown round the school. It’s like a ghost town. Lots of classrooms are locked and we cannot see inside. We’re shown an empty – and freezing cold – girls’ dormitory, but the director doesn’t want us to take photographs.
Finally, we’re introduced to a small class of children and suddenly the place is alive for us. The children are speaking in sign language and they are very excited to see us.
We ask who is the youngest and eldest of the children and are introduced to ‘Bibi cha’, age 6, and Rahshona, age 14, together with their teacher – a stunningly attractive woman in a floor length black leather coat. Poverty does not discriminate. It affects the young, old, and the beautiful.
The children are happy – this isn’t a horror story of orphans chained to beds – but it is heartbreaking to see the conditions they are tolerating and hear of their home lives.
Eventually we get to talk with just the two girls and their teacher in a small dormitory, selected for us by the assistant director. Even the one that has been especially picked for us is extremely cold and the beds have rusty springs which gave up trying to support anything years ago.
Frances asks the girls lots of questions as Steven photographs them (you can see more of their answers in the image captions), but the assistant director is ever-present and appears to be coaxing the girls at times. When she asks Bibi and Rahshona if they get cold at night, their response is ‘yes, but it will soon be spring’.
Both girls are boarding at the school and only get to go home once a fortnight – despite their family homes being in the same city. Bibi explains to Steven that her father has gone to work in Russia and he cringes as he mistakenly asks what her daddy says to her when he calls on the telephone. But this 6 year old child is not downtrodden or self pitying – she simply explains that she cannot hear her daddy when he calls.
Silently, the group has been joined by the Director of the Internat. There’s tenseness in the room which Steven tries to allay by showing staff the photographs we’re taking. The director suddenly asks us to meet with her in her office, and we’re really not sure what we will face.
We enter a large, mostly empty, room. It’s no warmer than anywhere else in the school and the bookshelves are all empty. We labour the reason why we’re here; that we’re not trying to expose anything other than the scandal of poverty for Tajikistan’s people.
We needn’t have worried. It turns out that the Director is newly in post, having turned around the worst-performing state kindergarten, and she wants to tell us what she’s facing here.
“When I first came here, I saw the condition the children were living in and I was amazed. To work with healthy children is easier. Disabled children need your kindness, your attitude, every minute.”
She launches into the list of changes she has instigated. When she first visited the kitchens, there were no plates or cups. What remained was broken so she replaced everything and put tablecloths on the dining room tables.
The school could only afford to give the children bread for their meals. The director explains ‘we are now able to give the children meat twice a week. I’d like to do this every day, but we do not have the budget.’ She’s also managed to get some heating into a few classrooms.
These changes did not come courtesy of the state. She paid for them with US$2,000 of her own money. “Fortunately, my husband has a job which allows me to help.”
This woman has probably given more than her annual salary to try and make a difference to the school. But that can’t be sustainable and Steven says just that to the director. She nods sadly and explains their budget situation. They’ve applied for a 2006 budget of 200,000 somoni which includes all building expenses, salaries, taxes, and food. This is about US$60,000 to run the entire school for the year and they have not had the budget approved yet.
Of this budget, just 30,000 somoni (US$9,316) is allocated for food. Steven does the maths with the Director – it works out to just under 4.7 somoni (US$1.50) per child per week. ‘Now divide that by 7 says the director’. This hits Steven hard and he’s struggling to maintain composure.
We don’t think there are bad people here – this is yet another story of the obscene nature of poverty. The facts are these. This Internat has 21 cents per day to feed a child not just one meal, but three. There is next to no heating. They have no equipment. There is a teacher shortage and there are no specialist teaching skills coming through in the post Soviet generation.
The Director sums it up; “Nobody pays any attention to disabled children. During Soviet times we had more than US$6 per child. Now there is nothing.”
The story of Nikolai was perhaps the one that has been the most shocking of all that we've told this year. We're pleased to report that he and Lapina are alive and well, supported by our partner Resource Centre for the Elderly. Nikolai has joined a self-help group and the couple are surviving. 
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