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Ann Returns for her 7th Trip with ORM
May 25th has been earmarked on my calendar for my 7th trip out to ‘my orphanage’ in Moldova. I call it that because it has become part of my life now. I may go out for two weeks each year but for the other 50 weeks it’s never far from my thoughts.
It all started for me when an advertisement caught the corner of my eye asking for volunteers who would make a difference to these girl’s lives, so in April 2003 I was among 9 volunteers who travelled.
I was horrified at what I saw, yet even then the conditions had improved so much for the girls from when they were ‘discovered’ by Suzie O’Connell in 2000. What amazed me was the girls with their limbs so twisted and deformed were smiling so much. They just seemed to thrive at the attention they got from the volunteers. The ‘walking wounded’ as I called the girls who could walk, some of them so badly, just seemed to thrive when they got your attention and when you took their hand to walk with them, you would think they would burst with happiness!
I seemed to be doing so little, like giving my attention to a specific group of girls, maybe in a group or play situation, or visiting in isolation. They crave for touch, and attention and this they most certainly get from the Irish Volunteers.
I have so many memories and of course the photographs, hundreds of them!! But one sticks out for me from my 4th visit. I was holding a lollipop and letting a little girl who could not move her hands or legs suck away on it for one and a half hours. A volunteer came into isolation and took a picture of her and me, and if I had not done another thing during that visit, I felt like I had made a difference in her little life by giving her my time.
If ‘Time is Money’ then the volunteers are bringing over the lottery to these girls every time a bus pulls up and deposits its current bunch of volunteers.
My life has been enriched by the orphanage allowing not only me to be a volunteer, but also my daughter Tracy and husband Pat.
What can the new volunteers expect? Expect to meet a bunch of strangers at 6am on the morning of the flight to Chisinau, but to return as a close bunch of friends. Some will make lifelong friends, so your life back home in Ireland will never be the same again either.
Last year as I walked to the bus, Vera came over to me, hugged me and said ‘will you come back to me please mama Anna’? I started to cry and promised her “I’ll be back” so I guess that’s why I keep going back. I feel for two weeks of the year I really can make a difference and so can you and what I get back from them is not ten-fold but a thousand-fold and lasts me 52 weeks of the year.
Ann Maleady
An Appreciation of Sinead McCreevy (age 25)
1983-2009
My first words with Sinead were at Dublin airport was when I asked her would she mind carrying a knitted blanket for me to the orphanage as it was too big to pack and I had three of them. She said no problem at all and as I gave it to her I saw 
where she had her arm in a cast. (She had a broken wrist) I hadn’t noticed it before as she had a scarf over it. Suffice to say I didn’t get my blanket back and Sinead handed it to me when we got off the bus! That was Sinead.
where she had her arm in a cast. (She had a broken wrist) I hadn’t noticed it before as she had a scarf over it. Suffice to say I didn’t get my blanket back and Sinead handed it to me when we got off the bus! That was Sinead. She was an immediate hit with the girls because they could associate with her, because she was ‘not perfect’ because of the cast on her arm. She was full of heart, full of love, full of craic and a choc-a-holic! But we had such fun in our two weeks in that dorm. She was the life and soul of the place, and if you thought you would get an early night to bed, well think again. She said life was too short to be sleeping, so I gave into the fact I wasn’t going to have too much sleep with her around. I was introduced by her to chocolate.
As a migraine sufferer I couldn't eat it (or so I thought), and when she spent all those weeks in hospital on the return of her cancer, I posted a bar to her every week. She was an incredibly positive person. You ended up telling her how you were instead of the other way round. From that first introduction at Dublin Airport and our two weeks at the orphanage she came into my life and that of my daughter Tracy and she has now left a void so big it’s hard to think of her and not cry. Our one regret is that she never saw baby Jack. May she now introduce the angels to the pleasure of chocolate in heaven! Sinead, you will never ever be forgotten by us.
Tracy and Ann xx
