Hair and Jesus in the Det-Dom

A student of mine volunteers every Saturday at a Det-Dom (children's shelter for orphans or those with parents incapable of taking care of their children). I found this out last semester when she told me she was not coming to my Saturday class anymore. At the time this really annoyed me, but it turned out not to be a big deal because I moved my class to a different day anyway. She still skipped the class relatively often. On a side note, it astounds me how people who do volunteer work are often incredibly irresponsible in non-volunteer life (i.e., school or work).

At the Fulbright mid-year seminar a lot of people caught Det-Dom fever from a presentation given by a grantee. I didn't. I don't particularly like children; however, I like doing volunteer work and my teaching schedule this semester is really light so I asked my student if I could go with. She agreed. At our next class, she informed me that this was a Christian volunteer organization. Says she, "We play with the kids and then we talk about God." As a rule, I dislike religious volunteer groups. I find it rather involuntary to offer help (juice boxes) on the condition that your client must listen to your religious opinions and repeat them before the help is forthcoming. I agreed to come anyway, mostly in the hope that I could meet with the administration and set up my own time to come.

The situation went from bad to worse when I met up my student and I found out that the Det-Dom is located in Pronsk, about an hour and a half from Ryazan by car. She took me to the group's shed on the edge of the city. Before we could leave, the group had to find a specific episode of The Flying House, a cartoon about a time traveling house whose inhabitants use it to hang out with Jesus. This involved an hour watching six tapes of the cartoon in fast forward. I tried to lighten the mood with various time travel jokes, but my references to Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure were not well received. (Another side note: I was treated to the episode of The Flying House where Judas betrays Jesus. I don't know the full background of this show, but I would assume the kids in the show went back to a backwater province of the Roman Empire for Jesus. Thus, they should know the Bible or at least the part with Jesus. Aren't they as guilty as Judas because they didn't tell Jesus of his future betrayal? Last side note: I'm not particularly familiar with the new testament but apparently one of the Marys washes Jesus's feet with oil and her hair. Disgusting and awkward for both parties, in my opinion.) Between the philosophical differences and the amount of time it was going to take I almost wimped out but I couldn't muster a good excuse and so I went with them.

Aside from a somewhat awkward ride there and back, it was really fun. The kids were great and took to me, mostly because the teachers and volunteers nearly all female, meaning I'm the closest they will get to a male role model. I couldn't really gage their living situation but they seem to be living a relatively normal life at least in comparison to some of the horror stories I heard about other orphanages in Russia. One very noticeable particularity was the boys' haircuts. A few boys had a normal haircut (as long as two inches of hair), the rest had buzz cuts. Of the boys with buzz cuts, most of them also had two inch long bangs hanging down over their foreheads. My student and two other volunteers did proselytize through activities, but some of their efforts were thwarted by the kids. My student had the children make a picture by coming up one by one and drawing a single thing. While the first three kids drew geometrical shapes on the sides of the poster, the fourth bravely put the sharpie in the middle of the canvas and drew a smiling Satan.