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From Cow Tails to Top Farmer

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  • From Cow Tails to Top Farmer

    Moscow Times
    July 6 2004

    >From Cow Tails to Top Farmer

    By Jennifer Davis
    Special to The Moscow Times


    The farm has a barn with 10 cows and several pigs, an adjoining dairy
    to process milk and cheese, a garden, and grain fields.


    CAMPHILL-SVETLANA, Leningrad Region -- When Minka arrived at
    Camphill-Svetlana, his first job was to hold cows' tails. Now he
    proudly calls himself the village's farmer-in-chief.

    Minka, who has Down syndrome, is something of a celebrity in the tiny
    village, Russia's only fully integrated community for people with
    special needs.

    Thanks to a flamboyant, charming personality, Minka regularly takes
    part in local cultural events and is an active participant in the
    village meetings held every Monday evening.

    But that wasn't always the case. One volunteer recalls Minka's move
    in 1997 to this village nestled in the fertile, river-crossed lands
    surrounding Lake Ladoga and about 160 kilometers east of St.
    Petersburg.

    "He was assigned to help milk the cows each morning. At first, Minka
    was very frightened of them -- he was just supposed to hold the cows'
    tails, while I milked them," the volunteer said. "Within a couple of
    months, he started milking the cows himself and later he was the one
    waking me up at 6 a.m., pails in hand, ready to get to work."

    Svetlana, as residents call the village for short, is home to an
    international group of nearly 40 people who are helping transform the
    landscape for Russians with disabilities.

    Founded in 1992 by a group of Russians and the Camphill Village Trust
    of Norway, the community is designed to allow each person to
    contribute to the best of his ability. Svetlana is one of almost 100
    communities in Europe, North America, Africa and India run by
    Camphill, which was founded in 1939 by Austrian pediatrician Karl
    Konig.

    "The idea behind Svetlana village is to recreate social life," said
    Svetlana's British director, Mark Barber. "In modern society, people
    are increasingly lonely and living ever more antisocial lives. The
    wonderful thing about Svetlana is that it's such a positive attempt
    to recreate the world. Many people, both those with special needs and
    volunteers, have found their salvation here."

    Traditional village life revolves around the farm, and Svetlana is no
    exception. Its farm has a barn housing 10 cows and several pigs, an
    adjoining dairy to process milk, cheese and other products, a garden,
    grain fields, an herb workshop and an earth cellar. A bakery and doll
    workshop are also on site.

    People with special needs, who are referred to here as "villagers,"
    live together with volunteers, or "co-workers," in three houses,
    where they share meals and various household duties like preparing
    food and cleaning.

    Lena, who uses a wheelchair, came to Svetlana from Tashkent,
    Uzbekistan, in 1999 and works in the bakery. There she actively
    engages others in lengthy conversations about philosophy and
    politics.

    "When I got here for the first time, it was hard to get used to
    living without my family," she said. "At home, my family helped me do
    everything and here I had to learn how to take care of myself. This
    is especially hard for someone in a wheelchair."

    The volunteers come from all over Russia as well as Germany,
    Switzerland, the Netherlands, Britain and the United States. Barber
    is one of several volunteers who have lived in Svetlana for years and
    have started families here. Others come for six months to a year.

    Gamlet Saakyan, a volunteer from Armenia, has lived and worked on the
    farm with his wife, Yelena, and his 5-year-old son, Ilya, since 2000,
    and he said the experience has been priceless. "The great thing is my
    son doesn't notice the difference between villagers and co-workers,"
    he said. "He treats everyone the same. It's wonderful to see."

    The cheese workshop is run by Sven Dietsche from Freiburg, Germany,
    who is fulfilling his year of compulsory alternative service to the
    German military at Svetlana. Dietsche, who makes hard cheese, brinza
    and softer, sweet tvorog with villager Yulia, acknowledged that he
    was by no means an accomplished cheese maker when he arrived last
    summer.

    "I was introduced to the cheese-making process in one day, and the
    next day I was on my own," he said. "After a few months, Yulia came
    to work with me. At first, she didn't understand what was going on
    and couldn't remember the steps. Now she tells me what to do."

    Dietsche and several villagers have been going to a nearby market in
    Volkhov on Sundays to sell their wares. "We weren't very welcome
    there at first," Dietsche said. "We'd get a lot of stares and few
    people stopped at our stand. Now we've become quite famous."



    Jennifer Davis / For MT

    A bakery also operates in Camphill-Svetlana, a village designed to
    allow each person to contribute to the best of his ability.


    Russia's disabled, who were reasonably well looked after in Soviet
    times, have little support these days. Children with special needs
    can be a huge burden for already financially strapped families, and
    doctors often encourage parents to leave their children in the care
    of understaffed and overcrowded internaty, the state-run institutions
    where they receive little, if any, personal attention.

    Svetlana does not advertise, so information about the village travels
    by word of mouth. Interested families may approach Svetlana, but the
    village is not able to accept any applicants from institutions.
    "We've tried to take people from internats, but legally we have no
    way to keep them," Barber said. "Unfortunately, we're in this
    position where we can only take people from parents or guardians."

    Although volunteers usually come to Svetlana to work with people with
    special needs or simply to experience life in a rural community, many
    are also here to study biodynamic farming, which is practiced in all
    Camphill villages. Biodynamics, a form of organic farming developed
    by German philosopher Rudolf Steiner in 1924, views the farm as a
    self-sustaining organism within the surrounding ecosystem.

    "In traditional agriculture, the goal is to extract from the earth,"
    Barber said. "In biodynamic farming, the goal is to heal the earth.
    One of the great tragedies of our age is that we've lost a spiritual
    connection to the land. Biodynamic farming re-establishes that
    connection.

    "In fact," he added, "this is the same concept in our work with the
    disabled. We hope that by helping these people with special needs we
    will also heal ourselves."

    Although Svetlana got the land it occupies free of charge from
    regional authorities, it mainly relies on donations from the Camphill
    organization to keep going.

    "We don't currently pay rent, but this could end at any time," Barber
    said. "We don't receive any money or subsidies from the government,
    except for the villagers' state payments of about 1,000 rubles [$34]
    each per month.

    "Foreign sponsors are increasingly asking why the Russian business
    community cannot begin supporting such a project on their home soil,"
    he said.

    At the end of the day, the glue that holds Svetlana together is the
    hardworking community itself, which treats each villager with respect
    and kindness, Barber said. "One of the great secrets of Camphill is
    that at the center of the community there are these people with
    special needs, who have amazing social skills," he said. "And that is
    what somehow makes it possible for us all to live together."
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