Wednesday 8 October

Today we drove a little way out of Bishkek to Tokmok, a centre for disabled children. The autumn colours on the road were extraordinary: bright yellows, reds and greens turning yellow.

This was probably the most distressing place I’d seen, I think. Very young children from a few months old to maybe two or three years old. I get a sense of, well, of the palpable love of the women and the lady who ran it, Tatyana.

Tatyana has been looking after children with disabilities for 11 years. But it was the faces of these tiny children (many of whom were clearly undernourished or psychiatrically disadvantaged) that impressed me the most. When we arrived, we sat down with Tatyana who talked about the principles of the centre. Most of the children have been abandoned because they have some deformity, either physical or mental, or because their parents just can’t cope. Trying to advance them in terms of their disabilities.

Tatyana told us the centre runs a hotline whereby a mother who’s in distress about a pregnancy and is thinking of abandoning her child can ring up and talk to Oksana, the social worker attached to the centre, who would then go out and counsel the mother. In many cases, she is successful in persuading the mother to keep the child. And then months later the mother will say to Oksana: “how could I ever think of giving up my child?”.

They deserve better facilities, better buildings, more equipment. Some of the children were very ill. They had serious mental and motor skill problems and they were housed in a very old building that I recognised as being probably from Tsarist times, which was quite rare. Very old floorboards, woodwork and old windows. Again, the western visitor is stumped for an adequate response in the face of what the women at the centre were trying to achieve, were trying to hold together. They were trying to give these children a life.

It was sobering seeing these tiny faces looking up at us. We must have seemed like weird, strange giants coming in with our camera equipment and books and backpacks and things. And these children reaching out. One little girl grabbed my hand and tried to pull me into the room, and I wondered how long they would be here and what their memories would be of this place when they were older. Will all of them have memories of institutions throughout their life and who would be the ones who would find a home?

We drove back to the hotel, picked up some sandwiches and carried on to the “Svetnik Put Centre for Street Children”, where we met the most wonderful, maternal figure running it, Valentine Ochetkova. She was warm and welcoming, with a big Babushka presence. The children there were fantastic. I loved it. These children were coming off the streets, often with a background of broken homes and alcohol problems. These young boys and girls are incredibly open, eager for contact, as always, the eagerness, the openness is heartbreaking. One little girl we talked to – Tatiana – was very sweet. Blond hair, spoke a few English phrases. She got very emotional when she talked about her life, and the fact that her father had died. Her friends put their arms around her and comforted her.

I think tonight my sense of everything is a dizzying realisation of the massive task facing not just Kyrgyzstan but the whole world. The crippling problem the world faces in terms of ignorance and poverty. Of course, ignorance provides a breeding ground for HIV/AIDS, drug abuse, other viruses, illnesses. The task is massive. The task of finding the funds, bringing awareness, supporting these outposts of aid and help that we have met on this trip. These are committed, brilliant people who are giving extraordinary energy, giving their lives to trying to secure the future of these young children. And it rocks you, it rocks me coming from a comfortable London life. It shakes you. It is not upsetting, but it shakes your preconceptions. You read the paper at home, you say “that’s bad”, “that’s sad”, “that’s tragic”, “oh that’s awful”, and then you have to get on with your life. And you do have to get on with your life, but during this trip I keep thinking of the fact that the world is a giant community now.this excuse of distance, time, doesn’t work. I can pick up the phone to London, get a good line from Kyrgyzstan. I flew here in nine hours. It’s nothing, really. We’re all so connected. We can’t spend every second of our lives worrying about another family miles away but we somehow have to factor it in where we can.