Daniil Novikov is the foster father of a 14-year-old teenager and the chairman of the Pskov public organization “Help-Ka”, which works with orphaned children. In addition, Daniel helps our foundation to shoot video portraits of children, and maintains a blog about his family on our website. Daniel talked to a guy from an orphanage in the Pskov region and wrote a text about it.
We talk to Sasha in his boarding school in the evening, in the next room there is a “preparation” – this is when all the school-age children are gathered to do their homework for tomorrow. Every day, except Friday and Saturday, from five to seven. In the room where we talk about Sasha’s life, the four beds are the boys ‘ bedroom. After the summer renovation, it has become more beautiful: new furniture, modern curtains. It didn’t get any cozier.
Sasha P. Videoanketa
Sasha is 15 years old, and he is not like most of his peers, desperately exploring their independence and the limits of what is permissible in interaction with the adult world. Sasha is not one of them. If the other” starshakov ” boarding school masks have almost fused with the personality, then Sasha really lacks a place where he could be himself. Such a place is called a House.
Sometimes, during the holidays, Sasha’s home becomes the home of his grandmother in the regional center. The grandmother is increasingly ill, and does not always have time to issue a “guest” – a temporary residence permit for an orphan child in the family. Sasha is not exactly an orphan – “left without parental care”. My mother is alive, but she almost never calls – but sometimes she visits Sasha’s grandmother. Or Sasha is taken to the village where she lives. But this is rare.
Sasha lived with his mother until he was 11, and then, he admits, he was taken to a shelter because he stopped going to school. When Sasha was in the shelter, my mother for six months and could not take him out of there. So Sasha became an “orphan” and got into a boarding school.
Like any teenager, Sasha doesn’t like to talk about himself. He plays football, skates, has recently started taekwondo, and will soon be passing for belts. Sasha likes that now he can protect himself. I also like to walk. Two years ago, however, there was not much to walk with, but now there are friends. But Sasha doesn’t like noisy companies.
Previously, until one of the boarding school buildings was optimized by the municipality for a kindergarten, there was a culinary circle. Sasha was always happy to visit it, because there you could cook your favorite dish: fried potatoes. If Sasha is given a thousand rubles and allowed to buy any products, then in the store he will choose the ingredients for a good borscht, chicken, seasonings and potatoes.
On weekends, the boarding school allows you to sleep until 11, and Sasha is happy to use it. And on weekdays, it is necessary, sometimes, not only to get up early, but also to be on duty in the morning in the dining room. Sasha admits that he is too lazy to do it, but nothing can be done – the regime. And children spend genuborka in their “families” – so here are called different age groups. Sasha has the 7th “family”.
Sasha can’t refuse a service to adults – that’s how they taught him. He is even happy to help convey something or somehow show his responsiveness. By nature, Sasha is very kind-he loves cats and dogs, never offends a baby or a girl, does not hide treats from others, if there is something to share. But he is shy to ask for a “yummy”.
“But you are not shy with girls,” Sasha suddenly clarifies and tells how he began to get acquainted with girls of the same age in the camps from the summer before last, two per shift. But in a boarding school there is no such romance and can not be-here everyone knows each other too well.
When called up to the army, Sasha will willingly go to serve. And maybe it will remain under the contract – “we need to see what the conditions are there”. Sasha’s main dream is to become a professional in the automobile industry.
“I will go to work as a car mechanic,” Sasha is sure. — When I was a little boy in the village, Maxim was a neighbor there, disassembling mopeds, and now I saw him in the city — he works, gets well, I learned from him.”
Sasha has already learned to drive a car-in the summer, he cut through the village on the” four”, kilometers under 30-40 per hour. When Sasha starts earning money, he will leave money from his salary to save up for a used car. And the boy plans to pass the exams for all existing categories, and work as a trucker.
The boy wants to see other countries. Two kilometers from the room in which we are talking with Sasha – the border with the European Union, and the life plans of a teenager daily rush past him in the form of quite tangible trucks and car carriers.
“After 30 years, I will start a family, closer to 40,” says Sasha. – And then I got married at 20, divorced at 25-somehow not very much.”
Sasha thinks this way: if you start a family at the age of 20, you will not be able to feed it – you are not provided with anything, you are at work for the first year. And there will be savings – you can save up for a house by the lake, and get some unusual animals, for example, a python. It will be great if there is also a house near the Baltic Sea, somewhere in neighboring Latvia. But Sasha will come there with his family in the summer. And I would like to live in my beloved Russia.
“The seventh …” – the ringing voice of the younger girl is heard in the corridor.
“Family. Eat” – Sasha suggests fatally.
“Semyaaaaa, kushaaaat!” the voice repeats. Sasha clearly knows what words he will hear at seven o’clock in the evening. He has been living in a boarding school for four years.
The material was published together with ria.ru