Homeless Russian Kids

This week, I'm going to write about an interesting article I read in BBC for kids. It is about how homeless kids live in St. Petersburg, Russia. This article made me think about all the difficulties families with little money and especially families with economic difficulties that live in places with lots of problems and a harsh climate have. This article was written by a girl named Laura that visited Russia and she visited the place were some of the homeless kids live.

The place were this kids stay is very dirty, it is underground, it has garbage, it is dark, and it is very uncomfortable to live in. The "beds" kids use are just a bunch of blankets piled up in a corner. This "beds" are shared with about three other kids.

The ceiling in the cellar was very low and we had to bend down the whole time we were there. It was filthy dirt, it smelt, and there was rubbish all over the floor. There was a pile of blankets in a corner, which the three boys shared as a bed.

Another sad thing that happens is that many parents abandon their babies. Sometimes because the parents are alcoholic or have problems with drugs and when the babies are born, they get many problems like a little girl that is about six months and she keeps shaking. The doctors that attended her think that this happens to the girl because her mother may have been alcoholic and they think that problem is going to affect her all her life.

What is really sad about all this, is that the Russian goverment doesn't help care for the children at all. The only support children get is from charity foundations like Children in Crisis. The main reason why all this happens is that Russia is a very poor country and the living standards are quite low. There is a big problem with being addict to alcohol in Russia so many parents abandon their kids because they can't feed them or they can't care properly for them. In some countries, if you can't buy food, you get economical help from the goverment, for example, in the UK but in Russia you don't. This is why lots of families beg to survive.

Many charity foundations, like Children in Crisis give children some food at night out of a van. Also, they give day shelters some money. In day shelters, the kids can play, wash up, visit a doctor, and get some warm food. In day shelters, also, kids can go to classes and learn how to read and write so when they are adults they can get a job and they can survive.

Monsters are Due on Maple Street Response

Monsters are Due on Maple Street was written about forty years ago. I think the message from this story is that monsters don't nessesarily need to be ugly, green, or big, we can be our own monsters. For example, after the blackout, when everyone is suspicious and loosing confidence, one of the residents of Maple Street, Peter Van Horn, who went to check if Floral Street had the same blackout problem came back from Floral Street and Charlie took a shotgun and killed him because he thought Peter Van Horn was a monster. Charlie is a normal human, but he was so scared that he killed his own friend. The real monsters that were controlling the blackout and all the events that happened said something very important:

Their world is full 0f Maple Streets. And we'll go from one to the other,
and let them destroy themselves. One to the other...one to the other...one
to the other...

I think the message the story has is true. Humans can be their own monsters when they are under pressure or in a difficult situation and they can cause a lot of damage and harm. This story was written a long time ago but it still is very important for today. It is significant because there are many wars and many people get killed but it happens because of conflicts between humans. An example of this is the this that are happening in Iraq. Many people are killed and the country is getting very violent. That all happens because of a conflict between some humans and the ones killing each other and destroying building and causing a disaster are humans. Also, in Iraq, an important reason of the fight that is happening there is that people don't agree so they end up fighting and making a lot of damage and accusing each other. That is similar to the conflict on Maple Street. In Maple Street people distrust each other and don't agree or end up fighting and there is a big conflict so both problems, in Maple Street and in the real world are real.

If the story was going to be transmitted again by TV off course it would need to be updated. In the original story, the things affected by the blackout are portable radios, and things that are not so popular now. Right now, modern things would be affected like plasma TVs, iPods, DVDs, computers, and things like that. Right now, people know much more about aliens and space travel. People have built space stations, have gone to the moon, and people have built machines that have taken pictures of other planets, etc. I wouldn't change the location of the story much. Maybe I would change the street name but I would make it a common street name, like Main Street. This shows that the problems can happen anywhere in the world because Main Streets and other little streets are very common. Finally, Tommy, the kid that told all the adults that the monsters didn't want them out of the street wouldn't get all his alien information from comic books. I think he could get them from other things like TV or things he reads in internet.