May the 10th little orphans from the Child’s Home in Kalinovka headed for the “Neon” Zoo club in Berdyansk. They were kindly invited by its director Valeriy Alexandrovitch. Some of the zoo inhabitants live outside, some such as fishes, snakes and birds live inside the zoo building. The zoo was certainly worth seeing!
I first visited the zoo when I was twelve years old and since that time I didn’t really enjoy this place. The reason of my dislike was probably a very meticulous zoo guide who spent more than half an hour in front of each cage telling me every little thing about each representative of the animal world, like for example, where they came from and how they lived in the zoo etc. It seemed to me awfully boring to watch animals. This unpleasant zoo attitude lasted many years till I again had to visit the zoo, but this time with a three-year old child whose excitement was impossible not to share! This little person who was ready to visit the zoo every day and endlessly watch the animal world really inspired me. That’s why I was delighted to show little orphans from a stone town this wonderful world of animals.
Unfortunately, like in most various Ukrainian institutions, we had to spend a great deal of time in our excursions for overcoming endless stairs. There were also no ramps for our little wheelchair users.
But we finally managed to reach our moment of glory! There was finally the first cage with “a sick dog” (this way our little zoo visitors called a fox that was dashing around the cage) in front of us. Besides the fox, there also lived a raccoon and rabbits in the open-air cages. Katya was mostly interested in fowls: she came to the cage of a goose again and again. Katya turned out to be a great zoology lover: she likes little and big fishes and even gigantic snakes we, adults, are often not ready to look at without our heart skipping a beat.
Just like children, we, adult people, were thrilled to see there such a great variety of colourful parrots we never saw at big zoo shops before.
Our little animal lovers were much more attracted by a proud black raven though. Everyone could not resist the temptation to thrust their fingers inside the cage of the raven but the latter did not miss his chance to peck some of the children.
Apart from birds, there was also a little squirrel that was, however, unnoticed by our little travellers. They already could not wait to their next exciting adventure – their trip to the seaside!
Like the last time when we were at the seaside, little dwellers of Kalinovka were absolutely sure we’d let them swim. Some of the children asked us to help them undress themselves, and most of them disagreed about just “making their feet wet”. Little Yulia seemed to be blissfully happy to play at the sand. Maxim was beaming with joy while we were carrying him from his wheelchair straight into the sea. His five-minute “swim” filled him with so many positive emotions. It looks like one is unlikely to experience such joy in their pursuit of money and fame whereas happiness is so close, one should only stretch their hands and make the first step…
Little Oleg tried to make his “first step” into the sea and the following moment he was already floundering on his back in the sea waves. Our volunteer Vitaliy came along quickly to support Oleg, so our little swimmer had no time to get scared. Our joys are often the same simple: special and “ordinary” children and even grownups can be the same happy.
Like former pioneers from the Soviet times, children from Kalinovka also wished to stay at the seaside longer. But we will definitely come back to the sea shore again and again.
Happiness of these children depends on you if you kindly support us with transport or make any donation that will enable little orphans to get away from their orphanage walls to the seaside or to the zoo once a month.
We’re grateful to everyone who has supported and keeps on supporting little orphans from the Child’s Home in Kalinovka. Many thanks to the Zoo club director Valeriy Alexandrovitch, our volunteers Tania, Vitaliy, Zhenya and Natasha.
We are also thankful to these children – Yulia, Maxim, Katya, Larisa, Oleg and Vladik for teaching us how to be happy about simple things around.
If you have any questions, feel free to contact the coordinator of the Child’s Home in Kalinovka – Maria by her cell phones: +38 0990235609, +38 0637336138 or contact the volunteers of “The Happy Child” Foundation.
You can help by using convenient ways of donation (PayPal, MoneyGram, Western Union, Webmoney, etc.)
