A Journey Through Eastern Europe - 2005 – Part Two: Belarus

by Joel Rookwood

The Freedom of Belarus

Following a brief period in Russia I spent just over a month in Belarus, mostly working as a football coach with young people in deprived areas. My role included helping to run a kid's camp, organising an Operation Christmas Child shoebox distribution and working in local prisons, both male and female.

The first leg of the journey west came to a halt at a kid's camp, set in one of Belarus' vast forests. The camp was like nothing else I have seen in the former Soviet Union, and was certainly nothing like as basic as some of the other Belarusian, Ukrainian and Russian equivalents I had worked in before. It was designed and built by Japanese, German and Belarusian architects for the survivors of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

Although it is very dangerous for them to do so, many children still live in radiation-infected areas close to the border with the Ukraine, principally because they can't afford to move elsewhere. As a consequence, the health of many of these children is suffering, a factor that is again sadly often overlooked for economic reasons. The Nadeshda camp, situated 100km from Minsk, is a facility that provides medical treatment predominantly for those who still suffer as a result of the disaster, and helps them have a bit of fun during the summer months.

Around fifty kids had been selected from family homes and orphanages in the surrounding areas, and we assumed responsibility for them for the next fortnight. As staff our role principally involved looking after them in between their various health treatments. Arts and craft, woodwork, bible classes, cookery, sport, dance and drama, I was talked into doing the lot. Stripped bare of anything resembling a comfort zone, I was singing and playing my guitar one minute and attempting something spectacular with a paintbrush the next.

Needless to say I failed miserably at the latter, but in truth the kids seemed to appreciate the comedy of my inability all the more. Having learned my lesson early on, for the most part of the camp I decided to stick whenever possible to leading sport related activities, such as volleyball, football, basketball and swimming. I did also take advantage of some of the health treatments myself, and yet whilst the daily massage was a bonus, getting my gums ripped to pieces by the scariest Belarusian dentist in the world clearly was not.

Following an emotional goodbye to another set of kids I'm unlikely to ever see again, I went on to spend the next fortnight in the more familiar territory of coaching football, this time at various camps in the south of the country. However the majority of the young people to take part were Moldovan, and so I was prevented the opportunity to practice my Russian, and instead had to get by through ‘clear' demonstration and the technical device known as the blag. In fact I blagged myself around most of Eastern European during the summer, if truth be told.

The pitches available at our disposable were terrible, but the kids were ultra enthusiastic, and cared little for issues such as appropriate footwear. Teenage girls in high heels would think nothing of taking on a skilful lad with boots on and the ball at his feet. Stilettos down the calf: ouch. The coaching staff also played a few games against some of the older children, and against some of the local men's teams as well, who were particularly keen on instilling some local pride by beating the foreigners. With our team being predominantly Scouse, and therefore boss at football, the Belarusians were unfortunately however left disappointed time and time again with the results. Regardless of their bad luck on the field of play however, our hosts clearly enjoyed the experience, if the scores of after dinner toasts that followed every match were anything to go by.

The main focus of the work at these camps however, was to orchestrate the distribution of Christmas presents to the children. And yes, I know, we were about as far away from Christmas as you could get, but these are the kind of irrelevant facts that fail to interest Belarusian people.

The situation was that the charity I was representing had a substantial shipment of shoeboxes full of toys that had, due to red tape issues, arrived at their final destination ridiculously late. In spite of the delay, everyone involved in the project was keen to make the most of the situation by giving the boxes out regardless of what season it was. So that's just what we did for these Moldovan and Belarusian kids at the camps on our daily visits. Coached the kids, played against local teams and then gave presents out to the children.

I worked on a similar project in San Jose in December, and let me tell you, whether their Costa Rican or Belarusian, there's nothing quite like giving a box full of presents to a kid who has nothing except for the love of his maker and his family, together with the clothes on his back. Time and time again I had to fight back the tears as we watched the kids receive their gifts. One little boy came up to me as we were leaving one of the camps and tried to give me his box back. Apparently he didn't understand the process that had just happened. A ten-year-old boy who doesn't understand the concept of receiving a present – it was simply heartbreaking. In truth though, this emotional rollercoaster was nothing compared to what was to follow the week after.

In August of last year, I worked on a similar Christian project that involved going into youth prisons to coach football. It wasn't really about producing the next generation of professionals, as you can probably guess, but it did give the kids the opportunity to escape from the nightmare world in which they live, even just for a few hours. World power-lifting champion Arthur White, a cracking lad from the East End of London, came along and told his life story, of how God helped him escape from a violent drug-fuelled life, and his development into a clean but streetwise world champion. It's an incredible tale, and in every country I've worked in with Arthur, from Bosnia to Beslan, it has quite an impact on anyone fortunate enough to hear it. In the youth prisons, where violence reigns, it obviously takes on added significance.

This year's prison programme involved more of the same, with the added bonus of a girl's prison, and the scary supplement of a man's prison thrown in. For around 80% of all the inmates we worked with, the least serious offence that had been committed was rape. These therefore are basically houses for murderers. As well as help lead the coaching in each detention centre, I also had the incredible opportunity of interviewing some of the convicts for the charity's magazine. The guards normally select the inmates to be interviewed, often choosing some of the more colourful characters, probably to teach me a lesson. So armed only with a notepad, I would find myself locked in a room with a dainty female translator and the most scary man in a rough Belarusian prison full of murderers. Needless to say I didn't offer up my contact details as the interviews reached their conclusion.

Now I soon learned that many of the people locked away in these institutions are sick and twisted individuals, of that there's no question. You only have to be locked in an interview room with one, and look in his eyes, hear his story and watch him proudly show off the swastika tattoo that dominates his chest to realise that. Yet there are many who instead are trapped by circumstance and even injustice, and are just desperate to get out, desperate for a new beginning. I guess you could say that with most prisons, but if you saw the determination some of them have to turn their life around, and the horrific conditions these people have to live in …it makes Walton nick look like the Ritz.

Football coaching sessions and matches in the prisons are always times when you have to be on your toes. Barbed wire fences, armed guards and scores of riot shields hanging around the place as you enter don't fill you with much confidence. As a result you're always conscious of the possibility of seeing a bad tackle cause the place to erupt. I guess that's the risk you take.

Now in the boy's prison, some of the older lads like to improve their fighting capability by injecting Vaseline into their hands. The (apparently desired) affect of this irreversible process is that the hand swells to double its natural size, leaving a hand that is virtually its own boxing glove, with the metacarpals no longer visible. At the younger range of the age scale, I coached a lad with the numbers 1,9,9,2 tattooed across four of his knuckles. Intrigued, I inquired in my best Russian as to how old he was. “Twelve” was his reply. I'd say that was unbelievable, if I thought it was. So baring in mind the type of inmates you come across in these male prisons, as with much of the work we do, it's not about quality coaching sessions, or improving skill levels. It's usually a case of giving the inmates a break from the norm, a bit of fun in a harsh life of limited excitement.

The girl's prisons were a new experience for me this year, and we were fairly unsure of what to expect. The football coaching that we tried to run often deteriorated into random gymnastic contests between the inmates and the coaches, which were arguably even more amusing than trying to teach them football. The girls spoke far better English than some of their male counterparts, and as we sat with them at mealtimes eating their food with them, they happily told us about their own stories. These opportunities really gave me an insight into prison life, and the firm desire of the vast majority to leave it behind.

Whilst I just loved working with those girls, it was so hard to leave them, knowing that they would then be forced to return to their lives, which were mundane at best and cruel at worst. You could only hope you've put a smile on their face for a day or so, and given them a few stories and memories to laugh at after we had left. Hopefully too they reflected on the fact that people are thinking about them and, well, people care.

As they waved our coach off, I couldn't help but think of the cushy coaching job offer in the States I had turned down in order to come to Eastern Europe this summer …but who could stand coaching lifeless spoiled brats in Malibu when there are vastly entertaining and far more deserving Belarusian young offenders to work with?

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Russia | Belarus | Albania | Ukraine

Joel Rookwood

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