We went to Latvia for a week during Spring Break. We got in touch with UNICEF Latvia director Ilze Doskina. Through her we were directed to several NGO's that did children's service projects. The first two confirmed projects fell through. The first one was to put a roof on a recently burned down home. UNICEF Latvia was going to help us with financing and would get local crews to volunteer to do it, but then they got too busy, and she forwarded us to a Mother's Crisis organization. Through them we were going to renovate the apartment of a family with a disabled child and blind parent. However, this also fell through because they thought it would be too complicated. Finally, we were able to work with Mission Pakapieni (steps), a purported mission that really had no relation to religion except that the directors were Christian. They collect donations from abroad and deliver care packages of formula, clothes, toys, etc to "large" families in Latvia- usually more than 3 kids. Large families are stigmatized because it is hard to take care of so many children, and it is thought that the parents keep having them out of carelessness. Very often they are impoverished.

When we got to Latvia it was cold and blizzarding. Pakapieni is based in the small city of Tukums, but we were going to help a family in a rural village not too far from there. For four days we stayed at the Pakapieni office/house which had three guest rooms for sponsors/volunteers. Bill Shultz, the director, drove us to the small town of Zemite about 20 miles away through the snow and ice and introduced us to the Starka family.

Dace Starka had five kids, aged from 8 to 2, the oldest was a girl and the others boys. Their abusive father threw them out of their farm earlier that year and sold everything they had to for alcohol. The mother had been a drinker too and Pakapieni kept a watch on her to make sure that she didn't return to the bottle. The mom, kids, and grandfather of the family all lived in a community owned "apartment" in an old farmhouse in the country. There was another apartment downstairs. The apartment had a kitchen, two small rooms, and small hallway. All of the walls were covered in soot, because the apartment was heated with a big stove in the kitchen and a smaller one in another room. The big stove was used to cook and to heat. There was no running water in the building, and the kids got water from a well in the courtyard and kept it in bowls in the hallway. There was no toilet and no outhouse- they used a bucket and dumped it outside. The mom and kids all slept in one small room.