Many of the children in orphanages aren’t orphans at all but children who have been abandoned to the care of the state because they are physically or mentally handicapped or because their parents are too poor to look after them. And many of the children in mental homes aren’t mentally ill, but have been neglected for so long that they now seem so. Most of the children in all the homes are Pomaks (Muslim Bulgarians), ethnic Turks or Tsigani (Roma), racial groups which are subject to persecution throughout the Balkans. In many institutions the children are cold, unwashed and underfed. Nearly all the homes are bleak and squalid, with broken showers, blocked lavatories (of the hole in the ground variety), plaster falling from the ceilings, paint peeling off the walls, beds so soaked with urine that the mattresses are rotting. There’s a pervading stench of drains and sewage and boiled cabbage. Not surprisingly diarrhoea, fleas and skin rashes are prevalent. And since the homes have few if any medicines, illnesses remain untreated. In many homes (though not at the well-run orphanages in Široka Lâka and Haskovo) there is nothing for the children to do – no school, no books, no paper, pens or crayons, no games, no footballs, no skipping ropes, no television. Just a numbing purposelessness. In general, the babies are adequately cared for, but the system falls down when a child reaches three. From then till the age of 18, when the state washes its hands of responsibility for unwanted children, the daily subsistence allowance for food and clothes is the equivalent of 16p, and even this often goes unpaid.
On such a budget, meals rarely rise above the level of pepper stew followed by semolina made with water – supplemented by whatever gifts may be offered by visitors. But since so many of the homes are tucked away in deliberately remote locations the prospects of attracting passing charity are small. If the conditions of some of the homes are a shock, the passive acceptance of these conditions by officials at all levels of government is no less of a shock - but 50 years of Communism (preceded by 500 years of Turkish domination) have sapped Bulgaria of any sense of individual responsibility, or any experience of exercising it. Bulgarians are no less kind than anyone else, but they don’t realize that they themselves have it in their power to change bad systems to better ones. Despite the privations, the general torpor of life in the homes, and a certain simmering prejudice against them locally, the children seem remarkably fit and well-adjusted, even if many of them have no idea of who they are, where they come from and when their birthdays are.
