How I became a host

The happiness that I met in spring 1998 was called Hanička. At that time I was working in a children’s care home during my practical training. It was a big care home reminding me of a factory for children. All my illusions about the happy live of children in institutional care disappeared. All children suffered from deprivation syndromes and I felt that it was my duty to help at least one of them see the real life. I had a naive idea that I would take a blond first-grade boy for weekends and holidays. However, the director didn’t like that idea. He told me that they were not a child-rental agency, that those children had biological parents who had abandoned them, but didn’t “lend” them. In his opinion, I was also too young. The only possibility would be to take an older child who was without any chance to be placed into a family and whose biological family showed no interest.

I was 22 years old. I couldn’t imagine that I would assume responsibility of an adolescent child and guide his acts as an older sister. It seemed pointless. At that moment, a sixteen-year old girl entered the room and asked the director whether she could already go to church. He looked at me inquiringly and everything was decided. “Hanička, would you like to go for holidays with auntie?“ “Of course, I would,” she said without hesitation. I was very proud then that I was so principled and willing to take any child – after all I was doing that for the benefit of the child! Before the summer began, the social care institution visited me without any warning. They said it was their legal duty and started to ask whether I had any criminal record, where Hanička would sleep, what she would eat etc. I didn’t understand why somebody had to examine my private life because of the charitable act I did and talked with me as if I were a potential paedophile and child trader. However, the law is clear and I put up with it. My partner and I were really looking forward to staying with Hanička. Such a good girl, she won’t make any problems…as a trainee aunt and carer I knew her by sight I wasn’t afraid that I wouldn’t manage.

The summer came. I called the director and told him what bus Hanička should take to come to us. „That is impossible,“ he said strictly. “You must come to pick her up, what if anything happened to her?” It was useless to persuade him that she was sixteen and could perfectly come by herself. We rented a car and drove there. We signed the liability certification (as when you borrow skis), got a negligible amount of money for board and food (about CZK 40 per day) and left. We gave the money to Hanka for her personal expenses.

The first shock came at the very beginning. During the two months I didn’t see her, she had transformed into a rocker and didn’t go to church anymore. She wore corresponding clothes, absolutely unsuitable for mountains where we were heading. We had to buy her proper clothes. There were problems also problems with food as she had aversion to almost anything except ice cream. “They cook for us, but it makes me puke”, she said. In two weeks we managed to convince her that there is a difference between food and Food depending how you prepare it and she finally started to eat. We had also problems with communication. The first two days she just talked and talked and we almost had a headache because she was like a small child asking never-ending questions. Then she was silenced and didn’t talk at all. We didn’t know what was going on, but later we made her talk again.

After one week we found out that she was wearing the same socks as the first day and that she didn’t wash, which was evident when you passed by her. It was very difficult to persuade an almost adult person that hygiene is absolutely essential and not to offend her. We had to bear in mind that we didn’t know what had happened to her, what experience she had and that it was impossible to re-educate her. After one week I was very tired because she was following me all the time as a small child and asking me whether she could brush her teeth, whether she could go outside for a while or watch TV. From time to time she called me auntie or even carer. She was driving me almost crazy. I spent whole evenings discussing with my partner what to do, how to behave etc. After a while I couldn’t stand it any longer and one day I told her: “Hanička, listen, I know that in the care home you can’t do anything without asking for permission, but your are a big girl now and this is a holiday time. I am not your auntie, but a friend and I don’t want to tell you what to do. You can do whatever you want, you can talk with me about everything and if you go outside, you don’t have to ask me first…” She stood there for a while absolutely amazed by the trust she was given for the first time, then she started to cry and didn’t speak to us for the following two days. I felt very sorry for her, but at that moment I couldn’t do more for her. We changed the way of communication, and tried to show her how to become independent because that was the primary ability she missed. We taught her that she didn’t have to spend all her money on ice cream, but to save them to buy something she had been always dreaming of. We taught her to read books because she of course could read, but didn’t know that there were books worth reading. I taught her to play musical instrument because nobody had ever offered her such an opportunity.

Once we were waiting for a bus and I told her: „It will be here in seven minutes.“ “How do you know that?” she asked me. “It is written here,” I showed here the timetable. She just looked at it with surprise and asked: “Here? Where?” I realized that nobody had ever taught her how to search in a timetable, as there was always somebody who drove her somewhere and she didn’t have to care about anything. The next evening we showed her how to use timetables and maps. We even took her to a restaurant, which was a shock for her as she was used only to the canteen in the care home. It seemed as if she had fallen from Mars. She often lied to us and made up stories about the horrible regime in the care home, about bullying and drugs and how she had to fight with it. She liked to fabricate similar stories and she did that very often because it helped her build her self-esteem and she felt she was somehow “extraordinary” and “normal” at the same time. We knew that her home wasn’t the best place for living, but on the other hand I was convinced as I worked there that such horrors were invented. We started to talk more about her future, or about the little she could imagine. She felt that the home would always take care of her. She knew she would have to leave in two years, but she didn’t have a clue what it meant. I took her also to a hairdresser in order to improve her hygiene habits. It is important for women to look and feel well.

When Hanička left her home she was like a child, but she returned as a lady who knew what she wanted from life. In the past, she had to attend a special school for children with low school performance. We couldn’t understand that because she was very intelligent and interested in everything new. Now she was convinced that she would pass secondary school graduation exams. She had to attend the apprenticeship centre because all the children from the home were going to the same school in the town… (It’s more economic for the care home and even for the children because they start working earlier, become independent on the state and when they reach eighteen, they can leave.) We wanted Hanička to go to a secondary school, but it was like to tilt at windmills. The institution, the legal representative as a parent, had to sign the application. We knew that that it wasn’t the end of our help, but the beginning. (As in A. de Saint –Exupéry´s Little Prince: You become for ever responsible for what you have bound to yourselves. You are responsible for your rose…“).

Two weeks following Hanka´s return to the care home she decided to reward us for our care. She flew away. We got a summons to give testimony at a police station. It was evident that it wouldn’t be good for her to be caught by police and we decided to look for her on our own. Otherwise, she could be sent to a correction home. She must have left with the boy she loved because there was nobody else she had. She must have flown to the mountains because she liked it there. It was a good guess. We called the friends in the mountains and she was there. She lied to them and told them she had two weeks off. She thought that she would live those years before becoming an adult in the forest, eat plants and sleep under the moss. We managed to convince her that this was not the way to solve problems. She listened because she trusted us. First, I was very angry with her, but then I realised that I shouldn’t be. We gave her freedom and then returned her to the home where she couldn’t have any. She must have felt very lonesome and confused. We realised that a human beings are very fragile.

Hanička spent with us weekends, summer holidays and Christmas. She found her own personality. We didn’t have to teach or to watch her so much. She learned very quickly how to cook, do laundry, go shopping etc. We just had to remind her that she shouldn’t take our help (or help of anybody else) for granted because that would have bad consequences in her life. One she started to talk about her past. She came to the home when she was seven years old. Her parents had died, the family neglected her and the uncle abused her. Her brother wanted to take care of her, but he was too young and poor. The court decided to place her into a children’s care home and she had never seen her brother again. She longed very much to have a family, several time she flew away from the home to put flowers on her parents grave. She remembered the difference between the care home and the real home. She couldn’t wait to be eighteen and go back to her brother although he hadn’t seen her for ten years.

She talked so much about her brother that I decided not to wait for her adulthood and look for him. Thanks to a little bit of luck we found him. It was a very happy encounter with lots of tears. It is quite difficult to understand why the life gets sometimes so complicated and why this child had to grow up in a care home when there was somebody who loved her.

Today I am 26 and Hanička is 20 years old. Two years and a half I “carried her like a steel ball”; I taught her “ to eat with a fork and knife” and substituted her family. Naively, I thought the whole time I was doing it for her (for a child from a care home) and a bit for my good feelings. In reality, it was her who enriched me for the feeling that I could share something with the others. We interchanged our views of life. So it was also me who has fallen from Mars.

One year after meeting her brother, Hanička didn’t write to us at all. After turning eighteen, she rented an apartment and started to study for her graduation exams. She found her desired family that means everything for her. Now she spends weekends, holidays and Christmas with her brother. When I called her to ask whether she would like to go somewhere with us, she told me: “You see, I am going with my brother’s family to the mountains, I will call you …“ She never did. It is hard to say that, but she didn’t need us anymore. I didn’t know whether to cry or to be happy for her. With a lot of effort (because human beings are like that) I decided to be happy. I put to our relation more than people usually do with friends and I even didn’t notice when it happened. I swore that I would never cross the path of any strange child any more!

When I got over it, I started to work in a foundation helping abandoned children. It is a very satisfying work and I was lucky to find it. I am very happy because my job gives a certain sense to my life. Only now I have found that what we did for Hanička is called “host care”. Officially, it is not permitted and only directors of children’s care homes after thorough consideration may issue permission and give somebody the opportunity to become a host – a guide through the life of an older child that can’t be put to any foster care family or adopted and that is abandoned. Since, I have visited hundreds of care homes and seen many children like Hanička who pass their adolescent years without any guide. Fortunately, the level of care homes has improved and each home is different. In general, the homes in towns can give children more opportunities than the homes in the middle of nowhere. If one home houses more than forty children, it still may have a “greenhouse” effect on the children (they can’t manage to do basic things) and gives rise to a deprivation syndrome (affecting people who don’t receive enough love, care and respect in their childhood).

Recently I got an unexpected letter from a friend of mine:
„Hello Miluška. How long haven’t we seen each other? … My brother is great and his family accepted me as if I had lived with them for ages. I have found my real home, but I couldn’t do it without you. I am glad that you were there for me. Let me know when you are free, the three of us could go somewhere for holidays. I miss you a lot. … Miluška, if I haven’t said that – thank you for everything. Your Hanička.“

I will have to make plans, Hanka is already grown-up, but Jirka is only ten years old and Jana is fourteen, I hope that the director will let her go with us. Well, it doesn’t matter; all of us will go together.

Mia Magenheimová (2001)

If you are interested in this form of care you can get more information on www.adopce.com .