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Sewickley couple becomes orphans' connection to gifts, supplies and hope
Sunday, February 06, 2000 By Bill Steigerwald, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
SPLIT, Croatia -- During their trip to Croatia in early January, Jim and Marlena Geren couldn't visit the orphanage they have been helping in Marlena's hometown of Split, the beautiful tourist town on the Dalmatian Coast 300 miles from Zagreb.
But they have been to the orphanage twice since Christmas of 1998, when they gave out Christmas presents to 140 children and delivered such valuable luxuries as a new laptop computer, a printer and educational computer programs. Marlena Geren's brother, Marlon Culic, spent three months teaching basic computer skills to the children.
The orphanage, one of eight in Croatia, actually has two facilities. Orphanage Maestral, in the middle of the busy, car-filled city of 200,000, is home to 72 children up to age 6. Orphanage Kastel, in the quaint resort village of Kastel on the Adriatic, has 68 boys and girls ages 7 to 18.
Tatjana Vukman is the director of both orphanages. She says 80 percent of the children have been taken away from their parents by government social agencies because their parents have drug and alcohol problems or are criminals. People want to adopt the children, but the law makes it very difficult, she says, and only one or two children are adopted each year.
Vukman said her orphanages are underfunded by the government and don't get enough help from private sources. She can always use TVs, radios and CD players, plus basics like underclothes, socks and shoes. But by far her greatest need is for money to repair the orphanage at Kastel, which is located in a monastery built in 1890.
The orphanage for the younger children is full of heartbreaking sights, but at least it's clean and well-maintained.
In Kastel, it is another story. The building itself is beautiful and sits on a large lot less than 50 yards from the shore of the Adriatic. But the roof leaks badly, the inside is in a sad state of disrepair, and the building has only four showers for 68 boys and girls.
Vukman says it would take at least $1 million to fix. Based on visits to Kastel on Jan. 12 and 13, when half of the children were away on Christmas break, it is a cold, shabby and dirty place with hard floors, not much heat and no charm except for the framed children's paintings along the hallway walls.
The kitchen has been updated, but meals are eaten off metal plates. The children sleep five and six in small, high-ceilinged rooms with bunk beds, cheap dressers and little else. A few bedrooms are brightened by the posters of Will Smith or of "Baywatch" stars. A few have throw rugs on the floor. But they have no electrical outlets, are badly in need of painting and plastering and contain few personal belongings.
On the second floor, in the girls' wing, 11 girls share one stark, grungy bathroom that has a tub and a shower hose. One of the girls is a 14-year-old whose mother spent her whole life in the orphanage at Kastel and then became a prostitute.
She says she doesn't know who her father is, just that he was Arab. She was left at the orphanage about six years ago by her mother, who was killed by a car while crossing the street in Split last year.
Her half brother, who is 23 months, now lives in the orphanage in Split. She visits him when she can and says she would like to take care of him some day. Her brother's father, a junkie, won't let anyone adopt him.
The teen-ager, who speaks English and Italian as well as Croatian, says she has had a hard life, but she is happy. She likes living at Kastel because she can go to school, which she didn't do before she came. The worst part about living at the orphanage, she says, is that although she feels she gets love from teachers and friends, she misses "family love."
She hopes to live in Italy some day, where she says she has good friends and people who care for her and are kind to her. She says an Italian family who has visited her five times in the past three years wants to adopt her, but one of her counselors says that is just a story she has made up.
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