Welcome to Crossroads Central Asia

 

Nina means, I’m told, “little girl”.

Before meeting Nina we were given a brief description of her. We sat in the Community Care office, me and three Australian visitors, and listened. An elderly woman. 78 years old. Living alone. No family to speak of, save a broken relationship with a daughter.  One day, when cleaning windows, she had fallen. She badly injured her back. She could not leave her apartment. In 2003, she began to lose her sight.  Three years later, she was almost completely blind. Her case had been referred to Community Care by Social Welfare. “I’m so lonely – sometimes I forgot my Russian words,” she had told Dina when Community Care had first contacted her.

A month ago her second floor neighbour’s pipes had burst. The water had flooded her kitchen damaging the cupboards.

As I sat listening to her story, I expected her to be bitter and despairing. Usually people with such hard stories are like that.

But how wonderfully wrong I was!

Baba Nina is amazing. I hear her before I see her. We are bringing her a new cupboard up the stairs and though she can’t see us she can hear us. She stands, bent, both hands upon a short, wooden four-legged stool for support. Her coat is a tattered brown, her hair silver. She has come to the door to make us as welcome as she possibly can.

Spirit is a mysterious thing. I find it in people’s eyes. Nina’s are so bright.

We put the laminate cupboard in the kitchen. We stand back and Baba Nina begins her inspection. She stops a moment. She puts her head on the bench top and smiles.

Our Community Care team have been visiting Baba Nina once a week for several months. In the years before she lost her sight, Nina loved to cook. So when Dina visits, they cook dishes Nina has not tasted for many, many years.

For us visitors, she serves tea.  “First a little water in the pot, then the tea,” she says. “It must be leaf-tea for you. Leaf-tea!”

“I’m a passionate person,” Baba Nina explains. “I love books and music. And I loved to dance.” Her shelves are full of books and records, especially Strauss.

Only once I see a shadow. Sipping tea, I ask her what she did under the Soviet Union. She stills, her eyes distant and silent. I wait, uncomfortably aware of my question. “Beate has not talked much today,” she says finally.

So we talk about her cat. She tells us how the cat came as a kitten and ate all the mice. She tells how her cat was lost once in the very cold. And how when she had lost all hope the cat had appeared at her feet. How the cat had collapsed beside her upon her couch and had slept a day and night.  A cat that was lost had come home and found a place to rest.

 “You must come again for New Year. I have a spare room. Stay as long as you’d like.”

“What would my wife say?” One of our Australian guests asks.

“Tell her it’s a business trip,” Baba Nina twinkles.

 

 

 

 

Crossroads ships to a rehabilitation centre in Northern Kazakhstan which is seeing lives decimated by addiction transformed

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This report is a snap shot of the past year’s activities. It is about 12 months of trucks, boxes, sweat and paper work. But ultimately it is about people: men with tuberculosis, children with cerebral palsy, grandmothers immobilised by disabilities. These people, these disadvantaged, have each had their lives radically impacted by the different organisations Crossroads supports. In this report you will hear some of these stories and, I hope, hear some of their gratitude.

Please click here to download the 2009 annual report.