Poland Relief Trip

	We also delivered to the 3 Rotary Clubs of Krakow , 600 shoeboxes from the Rotary Shoebox Scheme, filled with gifts from children here , to be distributed to children homes and orphanages in the Krakow area . The bureaucracy of taking aid into Poland was something to behold - getting out with an empty vehicle was as hard as gaining entry into the country ! The
orphanage at Brzesko started out in that capacity at the end of the First World War but by the 1930's it had started to care for orphans and children who had been abandoned and who were mentally and physically handicapped. The Nuns who care for these poor children have a true vocation in life. In recent months the Polish Government has told the Mother Superior that the building must be modernised or closed , and , if closed ,
the children moved out ! Mother Superior is desperately seeking assistance from local firms to effect the works for free or at little cost - the Government is not providing any financial assistance ! Many local firms and tradesmen are responding to the call for help.We were able to help paint part of the orphanage and carry out some general repair works and in addition left Ł1,000 cash to help with the works required by the Government . A skilled tradesman’s monthly wage will be about Ł300 gross .
Perhaps our most pleasurable experience was to see Joe , a thalidomide child who has no arms or legs , when we presented him with a baby’s wheelchair - he can now go out for walks in the town with his mother and friends , something he has never been able to do before . Joe moved around and got on and off chairs at amazing speed and rolled along the corridors to get around the orphanage
There are many tales to tell about individual children but suffice it to say , regardless of their extreme disabilities they were so loving and all of them just wanted to be held and have somebody be with them alone - heartbreaking to see ! . 10 Nuns and various teachers and helpers care for the children most of whom have a mental age of no more than 3 . Conrad was 25 , bedridden with deformed legs who played with a mobile in his cot . Arthur , aged 10 , had just gone blind days before we arrived and this on top of the fact that he is deaf - he was the boy who was one the principal users of the special frame which we bought from Francis House and which we took in 1999 and whose teacher has used it during the day so she could have eye to eye contact with him . Anya had been abandoned as a baby and her leg muscles had not developed properly.. Another child had a deformed face which was totally covered in the "port-wine" disfigurement .
	The Nuns have basic facilities for their caring of the children but under the leadership of the recently appointed Mother Superior things are slowly changing but all within a culture of asking others to help them for nothing . The orphanage is very clean and the children are extremely well looked after but all within the constraints of little or no resources . So poor are the Nuns that
in all of our time there the Nuns never once ate with us . Despite their poverty they were so hospitable and generous to us. Because of the numbers of children , the Nuns can only spend a limited amount of time with individual children but we were able to share that burden albeit for a short period of time. I am pleased to report that the industrial washing machine which we purchased in April 1999 for Ł3,200 , so as to save the Nuns washing the clothes and nappies by hand , now stands in its full glory, albeit in the midst of some very antiquated washing machinery and facilities , in their washroom , with a Rotary wheel firmly attached to it. Our effort was no doubt a mere drop in the ocean - but it will help those devoted Nuns and 50 children who otherwise might not have had that little bit of extra tender loving care. There is an Old Chinese proverb: "It is better to light one candle than to suffer total darkness" We cannot and did not deal with the total darkness but we did bring some light , if only the light of a single candle.The world’s problems are a " bottomless pit of needs" which cannot all be solved at once or perhaps at all. We played our part and we made their world a little better . I believe that we have been able to influence the lives of those Nuns and children in Brzesko by our efforts in a way they could not have done for themselves, not forgetting also our gifts to those 600 children in the orphanages and children homes in the Krakow area.