An example of true hospitality / lithuania

THE KERAMINAI KNOW MORE ABOUT THE FAMILY THAN BRUSSELS
From the lost of job to the choice to fostering 13 children because, although it’s not written in the official documents, “every person is a gift.”

“When we took in the first foster children, we certainly never imagined that something like this would grow out of it!” Jurate, 48, lives in Užpaliai, 100 miles from Vilnius, in Lithuania, with her husband Eugenijus, 2 children, grandfather, grandmother, and 13 foster children. You can understand the meaning of life, family and welcoming much more from this case than from the hundreds of files in the European parliament.
This story began 11 years ago, when Jurate and Eugenijus Keraminai made a decision that would mark their life for ever. In 1998, Jurate was director of the village kindergarten. There, costs were high and the children few, so they had to close. “The fact of losing my job, along with the desire to be of help for many abandoned babies in the area, made us think of welcoming some of them into our family.” They thought two, or three at most, added to their own natural children, was quite a large number. The children were minors coming from families in difficulty, some of them abandoned by their own parents. Alcoholism, mistreatment, and violence in the home are the order of the day in a society in which the families are more and more unstable and the divorce rate has reached 65%.
“The regional committee for children’s rights asked us to take in Kristina, Darius and Jurate. We accepted, making clear that we would not accept any more.” Some months later, though, Vaiva and Taura arrived (“They were in dreadful condition; we couldn’t say no.”) When Jurga, 17, came along, Jurate and Eugenijus realized that their house was too small. “At first, we bought the house of our neighbors, then came the offer of the former kindergarten, a bare building falling into ruins, but which was suitable for our needs. So we bought it and renovated it.”
They have some difficult cases. “When Dovydas arrived, he was two years old, but his growth was that of a six-month-old. He wasn’t crawling or speaking, and was undernourished.” The psychologists said there was no hope, and they had put it in writing: “retarded.” “It was enough for me to look him in the eye to know that he was normal. He only needed care.” Today, Dovydas is a child like any other; he is five years old and goes to school. He even plays the accordion. “With his ‘brothers,’ a small orchestra has formed. One has learned to play the flute, another the violin, and one even the piano. People come from the village to hear us.” And what’s more, Eugenijus, who is an engineer by trade, has taught the older ones a few jobs like repairing a tap or tending the cows and horses they own.
If Brussels is hundreds of miles from Užpaliai, the life of the Keraminai family is light-years away from the abstraction of those files. And according to one way of conceiving human rights, many of them should never have been born. “Nothing is more false than that,” Jurate replies. “Every person is a gift and can do something good in life. So we are going ahead with the experience of fostering. We receive from these children much more than we give.”