Newsletter - Summer 1999
Executive Director's Letter | Abbess Mariam's Visit | Children's TB Hospital | Kutaisi Psychiatric Clinic | What You Can Do
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Marusya and Mother Mariam in New York
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Letter from the Executive Director, Marusya Chavchavadze
Travels with Mother Mariam
Last summer in Georgia, I spent time with Mother Mariam and saw the progress she has made with AFG’s help at her orphanage for street children in Dzegvi. We talked about her hopes to start the Bediani project, to build facilities to take in more street children and to set up a medical facility at Dzegvi. She wanted to meet and thank her American Friends "…for your great love and for trusting in us and our activities." I invited her to come here. To my delight, the Patriarch of Georgia gave her permission to make the trip.
Her faith that God will help her do her work is unshakable. So are her spirits and good humor which saw her through ten days while I drove and she navigated through five states on a grueling schedule of receptions and meetings. From the moment she arrived at JFK, where she was mistaken for an Iranian by Immigration and whisked off to be fingerprinted, Mother Mariam kept up her strength by nibbling on Cherchkhela (walnuts dipped in grape resin and flour), food carried by Georgian soldiers into battle for centuries. After ten days I told her that if we only had another week, we could raise more money and her response was "If we had another week, I would be dead."
One is surprised to discover that Mother Mariam is only 34 and Abbess of a convent in the center of Tbilisi, where many Georgians in desperate need seek help. In spite of her young age, she has remarkable wisdom in finding solutions to overwhelming problems. She is a unique ambassador for Georgians because she speaks truthfully about their actual living conditions during this transitional period. "Everybody (in Georgia) was kind and good before this turmoil started….Civil war, ethnic conflicts in Abkhazia…and unemployment had a tragic influence on the whole nation…In short, it showed us that we were not a good as we thought we were. But on the other hand, we also have examples of amazing selflessness and heroism, and they are not rare, but evil is always more visible."
My admiration for her and her work was re-affirmed by seeing how other Americans reacted to her. Her AFG friends who met her described her as deeply spiritual, pure, impressive, practical, intelligent, realistic, mischievous and joyful.
On her return to Georgia, Mother Mariam wrote to thank AFG, "It is with great joy that I recall the days spent in the United States. I will never forget those memorable meetings, special attention and kindness delivered towards me during the visit." She also told me that she has already purchased three houses, two cows and two calves in Bediani and started building a medical facility for the children at Dzegvi. With our help her work in Georgia continues!
To find out how you can help offer hope and some relief to those Georgians in need, see our appeal.
I would like to especially thank the following people who gave receptions or shelter to Mother Mariam during her stay in the United States: Anne and Constantine Sidamon-Eristoff, Xenia Woyevodsky, Princess Irina Bagration, Damian and Efrosyni Robinson, Sharon Gans, Misha and Keti Popkhadze, Mamuka and Maya Tsereteli, Haycock Elementary School children, Lily Yeh, Charles and Gay Lord.
Marusya Chavchavadze
Abbess Mariam, known to her friends here as Mother Mariam, visited the United States on a whirlwind tour from March 5 to 13 to raise funds for her Dzegvi Orphanage and the Bediani Shelter Project and to personally thank the supporters who have made these programs possible. "Everywhere I went I felt kindness and the willingness of heart to assist me", Mother Mariam said, "I wish God to favor them and give them the possibility to do more and more kindness in their life."
AFG has been supporting Dzegvi Orphanage which takes in children from all religious and ethnic backgrounds since 1996. We have been providing funds for the renovation of buildings used for the education and housing of 100 or more street children in addition to much needed clothing and books.
The Bediani shelter was started in 1998 with Mother Mariam’s vision of a series of residences for homeless elderly and single mothers. This will be a self-supporting settlement that will also provide housing and rehabilitation for emotionally and physically handicapped who can no longer be supported by their families. Mother Mariam has stated that these shelters would not exist today without the ongoing financial assistance that has been provided by AFG. These additional funds will enable her to extend the housing for adults and children and to arrange workshops for teaching useful skills.
At two receptions, one in New York City and one in Washington D.C., Mother Mariam spoke about the return of Monastic life, the revival of religion and the phenomena of street children who are refugees or been abandoned in these desperate times of unrest and unemployment.
At Haycock Elementary in McLean, Virginia, the children who had been providing toys and books to the Dzegvi Orphanage sang for her. In Philadelphia Mother Mariam visited with Lily Yeh and the Village of Arts and Humanities where art is used to heal and empower neglected and impoverished children. Her favorite interview took place in Washington with inter city teenagers at Children’s Express who are studying to be journalists. She spoke to large congregations at St. George Greek Orthodox Church in Clifton, New Jersey and at St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church in Bethlehem, Pa. She spoke to the Russian community at the Tolstoy Foundation Center and Residences in Valley Cottage, NY
This deeply spiritual and inspiring young woman who captivates everyone she meets with her twinkling black eyes has boundless energy and enthusiasm tempered with serenity and grace. Anne Sidamon-Eristoff, the kind hostess of the large reception in New York City summed it up by saying "Mother Mariam is a truly remarkable young nun with amazing power and conviction, a kind of purity of spirit which is rare and wonderful."
A Gift of a Bronchoscope
A few minutes after midnight, January 7, 1999 on Eastern Orthodox Christmas morning, a new Fujinon flexible bronchoscope was delivered safely into the hands of Dr. Tengis Gwasalia by an American volunteer arriving at the Tbilisi airport. The bronchoscope is a gift from AFG supporters and initiates our commitment to improving the Pediatric Tuberculosis Hospital in Tbilisi in the fight against the current TB epidemic throughout Georgia. The new bronchoscope enables a more accurate diagnosis and places medications in specific areas of the lung. AFG, which has sent money for medicines since 1995, is seeking funding to replace the hospital’s antiquated equipment and provision it with much needed general supplies.
Urgent Appeal for TB Medicines
There is a critical need for medicine for the Children’s Tuberculosis Hospital in Tbilisi due to a dramatic increase in pulmonary TB and meningitis in children from infants to age 15. The director, Dr. Tengis Gwasalia, telephoned AFG with an urgent appeal for help. Two years ago, AFG donated $6,000 to the hospital to purchase medicines for children who would die without them. The supply has run out and the parents of his young patients are too poor to pay for them. Dr. Gwasalia has asked AFG for the following medicines or funds to purchase them. He needs:
- Ethambutol (regular and intravenous doses);
- Isoniazid 100mg and 300mg tablets or capsules;
- mantoux-PPD skin tests PPDC5TE and Pyrazinamide 2,000mg.
- He also needs X-ray film described as Curix Ortho HT-A 24cmx24cm or the equivalent.
The Story Behind the TB Epidemic
Each patient at the Children’s Tuberculosis Hospital in Tbilisi is a story in itself and fortunately for some there are successful outcomes with an outpouring of gratitude from their families. For some, however, there are no families to comfort them.
There are five children, four boys and one girl, all with tuberculosis, all from one family, all orphans. Their mother recently died from TB and their father was a victim of the civil war in Abkhazia. Dr. Tengis Gasalia is their only hope; the boys expressing their concern with pleading eyes; their little sister reaching for Tengis’s hand as they stroll the hallways together.
Nino Charvadze, age 3, needs 13 ampules of Ethamibuthol intravenously to treat her tubercular condition at a cost of $15 per ampule; Revashvili, 6 months, is diabetic as well as tubercular and in need of Desmoprisine; Koba Kakhidze needs a computerized tomography of the brain for tubercular meningitis. These are among the 40 or more patients in the hospital who are dependent on Dr. Gasalia and his staff for life sustaining medications.
AFG has just been accepted by Children In Crisis who have promised to provide the needed medicine if funds can be raised for the transportation. Karin DiGia, director of CIC has agreed to coordinate efforts to bring medical supplies to the Children’s Tuberculosis Hospital. Funding is needed for the shipment of these goods which would carry a value of approximately $200,000. The target date for this shipment is to be early September.
AFG hopes that its generous members will also help to fund a $20,000 campaign for refurbished hospital equipment including an echoencephalograph for ultrasound imaging of a child’s brain, an abdominal scanner and the basic hospital needs of beds, examination table, generator, refrigerator and ambulatory equipment.
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One month old Guram Oniani was brought to the hospital with acute miliary pulmonary tuberculosis and pulmonary meningitis and for five anxious months, Dr. Gasalia and his medical staff faithfully attended this tiny patient around the clock. Today little Guramiko is 15 months old, a curly-haired boy with rosy cheeks and normal physical and mental development. The outcome might have been far different. He might have been blind, deaf and unable to walk.
The Oniani family writes, "How many lives have you Dr. Gasalia saved in this hospital? How many sleepless nights have you spent taking care of your patients? Each day the children eagerly await your rounds with the announcement "Dr. Tengis has come". You have created a warm and healing atmosphere for the patients as well as their parents and those who recover leave the hospital with regret and tears. Our son was baptized in the hospital and God’s grace descended over him. Our family wishes to thank you, Dr. Tengis, for many such victories – to continue to save many lives with your concerned care, human warmth and great professionalism and our greatest respect and gratitude for saving little Guramiko. God bless you."
In Kutaisi, Georgia’s second largest city, Dr. Vakho Sikharulidze, a valiant young psychiatrist and his staff of two are trying to change the way psychiatry is perceived by a population which saw mental hospitals used as prisons for political dissidents during Soviet times. Dr. Sikhuralidze is providing a suicide hotline, therapy to Georgians with nervous breakdowns and treatment to drug addicts. His own salary he says wryly, is "symbolic" as his patients are too poor to pay.
"Political, economic and social changes in recent years have created hard problems for all society." Dr. Sikhuralidze told AFG’s Executive Director last summer. "People are under constant pressure of negative emotions, stress and other traumatic factors. Yet individuals are ashamed and frightened to seek psychiatric help."
Dr. Sikharulidze feels so isolated in Kutaisi from information from the outside world that he says sometimes he doesn’t even know what he needs to know. His most important need is a computer with internet access to obtain medical information from Tbilisi and the West. This will help him in his desire to promote ideas, process data and produce brochures for Kutaisi residents so that they will seek treatment. AFG seeks financial and mentoring support to start a small communication center in his clinic. Donations of a subscription to a monthly psychiatric journal and books on pharmacology would also be welcome. To learn more about what you can do to help, contact us now at AFG.