THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 30, 1995 TAG: 9507270037
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ELIZABETH SIMPSON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 260 lines
FOR FIVE WEEKS Tatiana Gisele reveled in everything American.
The 10-year-old Belarussian girl bounced in her chair as she chattered about her favorite things: fake fingernails, McDonald's french fries, Nintendo. Pierced ears and aqua-blue swimming pools. Sunday-school class and Bible camp.
Then one day in mid-July, the lanky, hazel-eyed girl grew quiet as she sat in a hospital waiting room, about to make discoveries she'd rather not: Pills that would help measure radiation in her thyroid. A machine that scanned her throat. An ultrasound device that took pictures inside her body.
Her American doctor couldn't say for certain why her thyroid was enlarged. He could say, though, why he was checking all the places radiation collects in a child's body, and why he feared the swollen, irregular glands could be an ominous sign of things to come.
Tatiana lives in the independent nation of Belarus, in a city named Mogilev, 170 miles north of Chernobyl, Ukraine.
She was a baby when the Chernobyl power-plant reactor exploded April 26, 1986, in history's worst nuclear accident. Seventy percent of the deadly radiation that escaped from the plant fell on the plains and forests of Belarus, forever changing the lives of the people who live there.
And giving Tatiana a silent, tasteless, continuous, nine-year dose of radiation.
Not even a summer visit to Virginia Beach could erase that solemn reality. ``I know what they are looking for,'' Tatiana tearfully told Vitaly Korchevsky, her interpreter, as they walked through a dimly lit hospital hallway. ``They are looking for cancer.''
They're called the children of Chernobyl, these 10 youngsters who lived with South Hampton Roads families from mid-June until last Sunday.
Their five weeks here were literally a breath of fresh air.
Here they drew in air that wasn't contaminated by radiation. Ate fruit and vegetables they knew were safe. Drank water and milk that, unlike in their own country, was free of radiation.
``Breathing the air here I have another feeling,'' said Vadim Rogatskiy, the children's 26-year-old chaperone, also from Belarus. ``I feel very much different than in my country. I feel very well. I am not afraid to drink milk, I am not afraid to eat fruit. I don't have to think about the level of contamination.''
The children came to Virginia through the efforts of the American Belarussian Relief Organization, a Connecticut group that has been bringing children from Belarus to the United States since 1993.
The first year 60 children came to North Carolina; this year, about 200 children traveled to Ohio, Texas, Missouri, North Carolina, Georgia, Connecticut and Virginia.
The idea is to give the children a healthy diet, a clean environment, a psychological break. Although doctors can't attest to the long-term effects of such a visit, they hope that the trips will bolster the children's immune systems, at least in the short run.
No less important is the exposure to other mainstays of America: democracy, Sunday-school classes, and medical exams to screen for diseases that are striking down Belarussian children at alarming rates.
In the process, the children - ages 8 to 14 - learned what it means to live in America.
Olga Shablovskaya is tall, blond-haired, shy. At 14, she is the oldest of the Belarussian children who traveled here this year. One evening this month she sprawled across the floor of her host parents' home playing with Russian nesting dolls while ``The Brady Bunch'' blared on the TV.
In Mogilev she lives in a high-rise apartment building with her parents and brother. Her mother works in a store that sells furniture, and her father is a construction worker.
She explained all this through motions and gestures, tapping on tables and thumbing through a Russian-English dictionary, trying first one word and then the next. ``Economics?'' she asked, trying to describe her mother's workplace. Joe Nicolay, her host father in America, looked puzzled.
``Store?'' he asked. She nodded.
In Virginia, Olga is the unofficial daughter of Joe and Dawn Nicolay, a couple who have grown to understand and love her even though they speak a different language. The couple live in a spacious two-story brick house on a rural lot in southern Chesapeake. Joe had tracked news of Chernoybyl for years, through his work at Virginia Power. When he heard about the children's summer program at his church last year, he quickly signed up.
This is Olga's second year to stay with the Nicolays. Before she returned home last summer, she confided to Dawn, ``I love my mother and father. But I don't want to go home.''
So taken were they by the blue-eyed girl, the Nicolays visited her in Belarus last January, then paid her way back to Chesapeake this summer. They also sponsored a second Belarussian child, 14-year-old Sasha Podobed.
``My heart and soul is into doing this from here on out,'' Joe said. ``It's changed our lives.''
While staying with Olga's family, the Nicolays ate cabbage, potatoes and mushrooms. Olga's family stockpiled meat for weeks, which they served on saucer-sized plates on a small coffee table. Hot water for baths was available once a week. The power went off intermittently. And heat was sporadic.
Despite the austere conditions, the Nicolays plan to spend their vacation in Belarus again this year.
``It makes you realize how much we have in this country,'' Joe Nicolay said. ``And how little they have.''
At supper time at the Nicolays' house, Dawn served Olga heaping plates of home-grown corn, garden-fresh potatoes, chicken and biscuits. And vitamins just to cover all the bases.
Olga blushed deeply when asked what things she liked best about America.
``Busch Gardens, Busch Gardens, Busch Gardens,'' she said laughing.
For five weeks the children crammed in as many activities as they could: the amusement park, the beach, the swimming pool, the roller rink. They went to see the movie ``Pocahontas.'' They walked through grocery stores with more food than they've ever seen, and through shopping malls so full of merchandise they got dizzy. They got free dental checkups, gift certificates, haircuts and new clothing.
But always the shadow of Chernobyl fell upon them, even in a country thousands of miles away. The children all had medical exams while they were here, to screen for radiation-related illnesses. In Belarus, preventive medicine is virtually unheard of, and only the very sick get medical care.
``Why don't we check your heart,'' said Dr. Gregory Haase, a Virginia Beach family physician, who gave them free exams in early July as part of a Baptist medical ministry.
Eight-year-old Katia Kaplan, the youngest child here, giggled as the doctor put his stethoscope to her chest. She made faces at Jennifer Bung, the daughter of her host parents, and tried not to laugh as the doctor ran his fingers down her spine, then pressed the glands in her neck.
``Can you swallow?'' Haase asked. She swallowed, still holding back giggles.
``Again?'' he said, checking the size of her thyroid. ``OK, all done.''
It is this generation of children who will suffer most from the fallout of Chernobyl. The majority of them were born just before or after the accident. They will be exposed to the radiation longer than their parents and grandparents. Their young bodies are also more vulnerable to radiation, because body cells divide more quickly during youth, which increases their risk.
Huge tracts of farmland in Belarus are still highly radioactive, and little is being done to remedy that. Before the breakup of the Soviet Union, the government moved many families to uncontaminated areas. But the newly independent countries of the region have little money for resettling people or providing fertilizers that would reduce radiation absorbed by plants.
Meanwhile, the collective dose of radiation mounts.
The incidence of thyroid cancer, leukemia and other illnesses - especially among children - has risen. Belarus registered two cases of thyroid cancer in children under 14 in 1986. By 1994 that number had risen to 82.
While the children, at least the older ones, know about Chernobyl, they don't talk much about it.
``Yes, of course, we are aware,'' said 13-year-old Natasha Astapova through an interpreter. Then she shrugged her shoulders.
Vitaly Korchevsky, a Russian immigrant who lives in Virginia Beach, asked them whether they worry about radiation. ``They really do not want to think much about it,'' he said, after talking briefly with the children. ``They say they know children in school who have problems, who have cancer. But they believe they will be OK.''
Most of the children are too young to remember the day Chernobyl Nuclear Reactor No. 4 exploded. Not so their chaperone, Vadim Rogatskiy, who was 18 at the time. ``I remember it very clearly,'' he said. ``This day changed all our lives.''
At the time he was studying to be a radio engineer in Minsk, in central Belarus. He first heard rumors of the accident from physicist friends who said radiation levels were very high. Soon, reports over shortwave radio confirmed their suspicions of a reactor meltdown. But government officials waited a week before alerting the public.
``My friends said not to go out, to close the windows,'' he remembered. ``Many people did not believe it, though.''
Nine years later, Rogatskiy, a tall thick-shouldered man, is a radio engineer for a research institute in Minsk. Even though he and his wife have been married five years, they refuse to have children. They are afraid of birth defects, which have increased dramatically among babies born since Chernobyl.
``Radiation is not a thing you can see,'' he said, pensively. ``If you cut your finger, you see blood, feel pain. Radiation does not give pain. Sometimes it seems like nothing has happened. But it is everywhere.''
Rogatskiy has a device he uses to measure the level of radiation in his garden. He tries not to eat much meat or drink milk, which is likely to be contaminated.
``I don't think about it every day,'' he said. ``It is impossible. It is useless. You can't do anything about it.''
He did feel a certain weight off his chest while in America, though, and he was pleased the children had the opportunity to be here.
``They are not guilty of what they have suffered,'' he said. ``I like the children, I love them. Maybe because I do not have any of my own. I want them to be happy.''
One Sunday in July, the 10 children sat in a row of small wooden chairs at the First Baptist Church of Norfolk.
Most of the families sponsoring the children are members here. By now, the children looked Americanized, wearing denim shirts, Nike tennis shoes, Pocahontas dresses, sunflower barrettes.
Each clutched a thick book of Christian stories in Russian, and listened attentively to Korchevsky teach a class on Jesus Christ.
Most of the children's families in Belarus either don't attend church or go to Russian Orthodox churches, which have customs that are very different from this Baptist church.
The children's conversation occasionally strayed from the story about Jesus. They peppered Korchevsky with questions about the United States.
``Why are people so much better off here?'' they asked.
``Why are people so happy?''
``Why are they so friendly to us?''
The host families want to give the children more than good food and a healthy environment. They want to give them a sense of hope, whether it be through a Sunday-school class, a firsthand look at democracy or a kind gesture.
With three days left in the United States, the children gathered for a farewell cookout at the Nicolays' home July 20.
Host families said the children had become prone to quiet spells. The youngsters knew their summer here was almost over. They stayed up later at night to talk. When asked how they felt about going home, they scrunched up their faces and twisted their fists in their eyes - shorthand for sad.
Tatiana sat on a sofa with Cindy McWaters, her host mother, whom she had started calling ``Mommy'' a week earlier. The 10-year-old pointed to photos of herself - pale with dark circles under her eyes - taken when she'd arrived.
``Look at this,'' she squealed, in what had become her favorite English phrase. She was now deeply tanned and a few pounds heavier.
For Tatiana, the five weeks in America were a time of exhilaration: Celebrating her 10th birthday with a poolside party. Getting her ears pierced. Riding ``Escape from Pompeii'' at Busch Gardens.
It was also the summer she first felt the fear of cancer with a rush of tears in a hospital hallway.
And a summer of happy endings. The day after her thyroid was scanned, the tests came back negative. There were no nodules, no sign of cancer.
``I was very relieved,'' she said through Korchevsky. ``It was very, very good.'' She called home to tell her mother everything was OK, and her mother wept.
When Tatiana prepared last Sunday to return to her ninth-floor flat in Mogilev, she packed a new set of clothes, a Russian-language Bible, a Barbie doll, a Sony Walkman, gifts for her parents and birthday wrapping paper that she had carefully folded and saved from her party.
Asked what she liked best about America, she said: ``I like all.'' MEMO: Anyone who wants to contribute to the American Belarussian Relief
Organization, or who would like more information on sponsoring a child
or helping one come to the United States next summer, can call Allison
Culpepper in South Windsor, Conn., at (203) 493-7809, or Joe and Dawn
Nicolay in Chesapeake, at 482-2018.
ILLUSTRATION: BETH BERGMAN/Staff color photos
For 10-year-old Tatiana Gisele of Belarus, the five weeks in
Virginia Beach were a time of discovery.
A breath of fresh air
Nstia Matulkova, above, revels in the summer sun at Mount Trashmore.
Olga Shablovskaya, right, loads up on vitamins and fresh vegetables
at her host home in Chesapeake. Here, the children were able to
breathe air and eat food that wasn't contaminated by radiation.
Feeling for cancer
Dr. Gregory Haase checks Katia Kaplan's thyroid for telltale
swelling. Children exposed to radiation are at higher risk for
thyroid cancer.
Language barrier
Merry Barnett, a nurse and member of First Baptist Church of
Norfolk, works hard to communicate with Katia Kruchkova.
Hanging out
Right: Olga Shablovskaya and Sasha Podebed eat apples to bolster
their immune systems while watching TV in their host home in
Chesapeake. Far right: Pavel Emeliantsev and Sasha lean over Igor
Kononovich to discuss a question during Sunday school at First
Baptist.
by CNB