Bikkur Bayis

Well, as promised 33 posts back, we wanted to share with you our amazing post Pesach experience.  

It all started the morning after the night before.  The staff had thoroughly enjoyed a scrumptious meal at the Glick's, headed over to the local "banya" to relieve all the stress of the last 10 days of grueling, yet satisfyingly fulfilling work.  Most of us had a flight to catch the next day and got on to a bus heading to Kiev.  (After the ride we were of course ready for another visit to the "banya", but alas this was not to be, we had to make do with a quick trip to the mikvah).  Well, i had just said my final tearful goodbyes to all my devoted staff, as my flight wasn't for another three hours, which meant we would be separated for ten whole hours.  Amidst all the commotion, i nearly missed the buzz in my pants pocket.  "Hello?" said I, sending the sound waves over the Kyivstar network some six hundred kilometers east.  "What, change my ticket? But Arele, you must be crazy", at this point i found myself thinking that camp might have effected my Co-Head Counselor a bit too much.  "But we can write an article about camp in the states, and work out the leftover office work by email! I'm not getting back onto a 1972 Ukrainian bus just for that", I adamantly stated.  "The only way it would make sense for me to change my ticket would be if we were doing something that was impossible to accomplish from America, like visiting the kids in their homes or something".  I of course never thought that after having just finished camp anyone would be interested in traveling around on unpaved roads, through miles and miles of emptiness, just to have one more conversation with a kid.  I'm not too sure that i was quite ready for it myself.  "For sure", came the voice from the other side of the line, rousing me from my thoughts, "of course we'll do that, i'll go rent a car right now, and we'll be on the road tomorrow morning".  It took me several minutes to actually agree, remembering that "you'll never regret a good thing that you do", but several hours later I found myself on a turbo jet (or maybe just one of those tiny planes with these deafening propellers spinning in my ears), on my way back to Dnepr.

It was worth it.  The next morning saw us heading out bright and early in our Chevy rental to Krivoi Rog, where we pulled up at the Or Avner school.  As we were getting a guided tour of the newly renovated building, the bell rang and the kids poured out of their classrooms.  Yossi! Dovid! Aron!, the kids couldn't believe that we had actually come all the way just for them.  Anyways, we watched some camp pictures, both in the hallways, and afterwards in a classroom or two with the teachers.  We then joined the kids in the Lunchroom for "Obed".  With the kids begging for Lineika, (you should have heard the whoops!), and doing the camp rendition of benching, and a spontaneous "Ya Sezhu", the place was on wheels.  The visit ended with us bringing in a cake for the birthday of one boy who had been in gan yisroel two years ago, and couldn't believe that we remembered him.  The kids had a great time, and were sad to see us leave.  So were we.  

But not for too long. After a quick visit to one kid who hadn't made it to school that day, we were back on the road, racing the clock to get to Zaparozhye, before school ended at 3:30.  Pulling up at the school at 3:29, we were surprised not to see a soul in sight.  We found out from the "ochran" that school had finished 1/2 an hour ago, and would not resume till the following monday, due to an extended weekend.   Of course, we were not to discouraged from our mission, and promptly started calling children in their houses letting them know we were in town, and arranging visits.  It was just great to walk into their houses and see different memorabilia from camp lying around, a picture of the Rebbe on the wall, a star from the banquet in the china closet, and of course the camp Yarmulka on their heads.  Shmulik had to explain to his mom what tefillin were, and Lonya learned how to put his tefillin on by himself, and three days later when we spoke to him on the phone, had been putting them on daily. We ended the day with a wonderful supper by the Shliach's house.

We went on to visit Yosef Yitzchak, (a.k.a. Vladik b.b.e. (before bris era)), who live on a farm with his father's non-jewish parents.  He excitedly showed us around to the tractor and cucumbers, and it was just exhilarating to watch him chase the turkeys back into their pen, with his tzitzis flying, and one hand firmly holding his kippah to his head.

We also had two boys come to visit us in mironova. One came with his mother, who looking at the pictures, could not fathom how we got so much fun things done in such a short camp. Of course, i reminded her that she was looking at less than half of the camp, as we obviously don't have pictures from all the excitement of shabbos and yom tov. We gave Moshe Challah and wine to use with the kiddush cup he won in camp, along with the new Tzivos Hashem Russian Siddur, which he couldn't stop examining cover to cover.  Another kid, Lion, who had his Bar mitzvah in camp also came by Mironova, and he liked it so much he decided to stay for Shabbos!

Well that's a little taste of what it was like, and after that i can definitely reaffirm that "you'll never regret a good thing that you do".

Anyways, thanks Arele for the initiation, implementation, participation, and y'know...