Yesterday I spent a good part of the day with C. at Yerevan's Children's Rehabilitation Center situated between Lake Yerevan and the district of Noragjugh (behind the American Embassy). In July, he had worked there as a volunteer and he had promised one of the patients to come back and visit her. He invited me to join him, both because he knew I'd be interested and for translation purposes. It turned out to be a very impressive and moving visit.

Some of the children staying at the Rehabilitation Center had an accident and now have to learn to walk and use their legs again. Other children were born with muscle diseases, still other children at the center are physically handicapped (sometimes mentally handicapped as well). One way or another they all need treatment to help them learn to use their muscles, arms, legs (again) or to keep their limbs from "dying off" due to lack of exercise (sorry if this sounds a bit morbid, but I guess you all know what I mean). As is usual in such circumstances in Armenia, the children's mothers are staying with their children, to take care of them, cook their meals, bathe them, etc. The mothers and children live in a house on the grounds of the Center with ten to fifteen other children. I noticed the children at the Center all had good supportive material, shoes and leg-supports clearly made to fit them. Also, the exercise rooms that we saw seemed to be fairly well equipped. C. told me that the Center had been supported (still is?) by a Swiss group, which had sent equipment and also staff to work with the Armenian staff.

At the Center I met Elada and her mother Rada, two normal-but-not-so-normal Armenians, like others I have written about in previous logs. Rada is a mother of four who fled Baku, Azerbaijan with her family at the end of the eighties. Her husband either died or left her, I wasn't able to get a clear answer to that. They now live in a small domik in a village near Massis. Because they are refugees and don't have Armenian citizenship, they are not entitled to a house from the state (at least, this is what I understood from Rada). Of course, they don't have money to buy a place. Rada can't find paid work, but she is working as a volunteer at an organisation supporting refugees, obviously dedicated to try to improve the situation of refugees in Armenia.

Elada is Rada's youngest child, she is sixteen. Elada had an accident three years ago, which damaged her spine. She was operated on two months ago and is now learning to walk again, which is why she is staying in the Rehabilitation Center. She told me she wants to be able to walk again by May of next year, so she will be able to walk (and dance!) during her "Last Bell"-ceremony when she graduates from high school. After high school, she wants to study medicine to become a doctor. Elada's leg was obviously hurting her while we were sitting and talking in their room and C. asked if he could treat her so the pain would go (he is a Reiki-master), but Elada refused saying she wanted to feel the pain, because she hadn't had any feeling in her leg for eight or nine months and it was just now coming back. Later, we joined Elada at her daily excercises in the training room and darn, this girl was working so hard! Not just she, but the other children in the training room as well. There was one boy, barely five years old, who was learning to walk and boy, was he working! Taking a few careful steps and doing the exercises obviously took so much energy from him, but he kept on going, he would not give up.

Despite all the hardships both Rada and Elada are so incredibly upbeat and positive, believing that everything will get better some day. I am glad I got to know these two very brave and strong women.