Zoo therapy for Beslan orphans

By Kirill Sukhotsky
BBCRussian.com, Moscow

Grandmother Aza clutches two orphans at Moscow zoo

A visit to Moscow zoo is just one of the treats enjoyed this week by 35 children from Beslan, who lost parents in the school siege nearly a year ago.

The Russian Children's Fund - a nationwide charity - organised the two-week, action-packed trip as part of the children's therapy.

The kangaroos, lamas, elephants and seals delighted them, as did the plentiful ice cream at the zoo. Indeed, they reacted just like the other children there.

Psychologists say the best thing for the children now is to have dreams for the future, to replace the horrors of last September, when pro-Chechen gunmen stormed into a school in the North Caucasus, triggering a siege that resulted in more than 330 deaths.

Ambition

I asked little Seryozha Karayev what he wanted to be when he grew up, and got a very serious reply: "a philosopher or a diplomat".

"But above all I want to finish school with a gold medal and get a good education. I like maths and literature. I like reading poetry, and books about dinosaurs."

Lyubov Kryzhanovskaya: Helping orphans make a fresh start

He will go back to school next month - a year after he became an orphan.

Twenty-five children lost both their parents in the school siege. But all now have guardians, so they have not been sent to orphanages.

The Russian Children's Fund has pledged to help the children until they reach adulthood.

The rehabilitation programme is headed by Lyubov Kryzhanovskaya, a refugee from the battle-scarred Chechen capital Grozny.

She says each Beslan child victim has received 50,000 rubles ($1,765; £977) in a special bank account, set up to help their recovery.

Psychologists are working with the children in Beslan and holidays have been organised for them elsewhere.

Two orphans - David Beganashvili and Suzanna Chedzhemova - have now finished school and gone on to higher education, Mrs Kryzhanovskaya explains.

"Of course they took the exams themselves, but with our help Suzanna entered a medical institute and David went to study law at university. So we have some future specialists."

Grandmother's pain

Elderly Aza Tamayeva lost a son, daughter-in-law and grandson in the school siege.

More than half of those killed were children

She holds her two remaining grandsons firmly by the hand - they only have their grandmother now.

"Well, they're managing alright now, forgetting," she says. "They like Moscow, but they're looking forward to going home. They're still little, they don't understand anything. They don't even realise that their parents are dead."

Khetakh aged four and Timur, five, speak little Russian. Translating from Ossetian, Aza told me they liked the fish most of all at the zoo.

Alina suffered a serious spinal injury in the siege, but the excursions have cheered her up.

"When I go swimming my nerves calm down and in the sea the little fish swim around your feet," the little girl says.

Horse riding

The children have a packed programme in Moscow: visits to the Kremlin, botanical gardens, Tretyakov gallery, swimming baths and a boat trip along the Moskva river.

A businessman who owns a private race course invited the children round, too, Mrs Kryzhanovskaya said.

"He offered them pancakes with cranberry jam. They went horse riding and had coach rides. Yesterday the children spent three hours riding and didn't want to stop. One boy said: 'Can't we stay here and live in the stables looking after the horses?'"

At the zoo the Beslan children seemed no different from the others - except when a seal started grunting and a boy in the crowd said it was calling for its mother.

Suddenly the Beslan children were sad and rushed out of the enclosure.