Eleven-year-old Saule Sadykova was delighted by the sight of the birds nibbling at the feeders in the backyard of the home in western Henrico County where she was staying temporarily.
“Can I show you?” she asked, leading the way.
It’s not something she has seen in Kazakhstan, where she is from and where former Richmond-area resident Victoria Charbonneau met her in an orphanage in 2009, beginning a journey for both of them.
Saule’s energy, captured in a 2010 photo that shows her smiling broadly while being held in Charbonneau’s arms, was a contrast to very real obstacles she faced to having a normal life in her country.
She was born with a cleft lip and a club foot, and her left eye would not close — physical differences that made her chances of adoption slim, Charbonneau said. Because of her physical problems, her caretakers assumed she could not learn.
But since Saule and Charbonneau’s worlds have become intertwined, Saule has shown that the physical problems can be overcome, and their relationship illustrates the healing power of one person to make a difference in the life of another.
“Saule has given me much,” said Charbonneau, who now lives in Kazakhstan year-round.
“Her strength and courage in the face of many obstacles in her short life helps me push through when there are challenges. She trusted me last year to bring her halfway around the world to have three operations. I explained about the doctors saying the best option for her was to cut off her bad foot and give her a new prosthetic.
“She went into surgery with a bright smile on her face. … When she really awoke, she asked about her leg, and I was prepared for anger and distress. She wanted to see her new leg. I reminded her they couldn’t give her new leg till after the place where they cut off her old leg could heal. Instead of anger, she looked at me and said ‘OK.’ She got up out of bed with crutches that day and just kept going, never looking back.”
Charbonneau went to Kazakhstan for the first time in 2000 with a nonprofit to work in an orphanage. She was divorced and had two young children. Sitting in church one Sunday, there was a presentation on mission work. The presenter showed a photo of orphaned children and asked people to help.
“I really thought it was a one-time thing,” she said, referring to that first trip. “My two children, I adopted through the foster care system here in Virginia. I thought I might fall in love with one child and adopt that one child. I fell in love with 180 kids.”
Every year after that, she went back.
“They became kids that I knew. It wasn’t statistics, and it wasn’t a problem halfway around the world. It was very personal because I knew these kids.”
Charbonneau first met Saule in an orphanage in Ulan in East Kazakhstan. Her disabilities were caused by what is called amniotic banding syndrome.
“The fetus detaches a little bit from the uterus wall, and these long, stringy things get in the amniotic fluid, and then they wrap around stuff,” Charbonneau said.
Bands wrapped around Saule’s toes, leg and fingers, stunting normal development. A band that wrapped around one of her fingers caused the finger to detach. When she was born, that finger had attached to her face, affecting her left eye.
“The doctors encourage parents not to keep children with problems. … And yet she is a bright, bright child,” Charbonneau said.
Saule has been with a foster family, friends of Charbonneau’s in Kazakhstan, since January 2014. Last year, they asked for help with Saule’s medical needs.
“I didn’t know how that was going to work, but I loved this little girl,” Charbonneau said.
She came back to the U.S. in February 2014 with photos and X-rays of Saule and X-ray images from another Kazakhstan resident she had gotten to know and who also was in need of medical help. The woman, 29, had severe scoliosis.
“I just knocked on doors,” she said, asking friends for referrals to doctors who might be willing to donate medical care, Charbonneau said.
One longtime friend, Dr. J. Keith Thompson, a radiologist, told her to bring him the X-rays, and he would see what he could do.
Thompson, whose family of 17 children includes biological and adopted children, recruited physicians and surgeons willing to help for free.
“It all seemed to kind of fall into place,” Thompson said.
Saule had surgery in July 2014. The Hanger Clinic donated a prosthetic leg last year and during a visit to the Midlothian office this past summer, she had it refitted. Saule got to run, play, shop for shoes that fit over her prosthesis, and ride horses.
“Horse riding,” she said, when asked what she can do now that she was not able to do before. “Jump. I can jump in the bouncy house.”
Charbonneau said she would adopt Saule if she were allowed. Kazakhstan, a independent nation in Central Asia that was once part of the former Soviet Union, closed to international adoptions some years ago.
“Keeping children with birth families is really good, but if they can’t be with birth families they need to be with families,” said Charbonneau, saying that a lifetime in an orphanage is not ideal for any child.
“I’m not sure that Kazakhstan will open back up, so in the meantime I am committed to doing whatever I can for her so she can have opportunities for a good future. If she was adopted by another loving family, I would be sad, but want what is best for her ultimately so would be happy for her. It is never bad to have many people love you in life.”
In the meantime, she shares Saule with her foster family. In 2012, Charbonneau and friend Beth Turnock started a charity, J127 Ranch, to provide shelter for teens aging out of orphanages and who might end up on the streets. They also help single and widowed mothers who do not have a place to stay. They have rooms for 10 people to stay and run a day program that provides meals for children and that can feed up to 20 people.
J127 gets its named from the Bible, Charbonneau said, specifically James 1:27, which states, “Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.”
They run primarily on donations and have supporters in Kazakhstan and the U.S.; Saule comes to them five days a week.
Charbonneau recently announced on Facebook that they had met their fundraising goal to buy the property. Just two months before, they had $80,000 left to go of the approximately $170,000 total.
At the house, they teach the teens such basics as how to cook and why they need to be at work on time. They teach the youths to make peanut butter, which they can sell. They have sponsors who send money monthly.
“I’m just a regular woman who has been well-loved by many when I was hurting, so I can now pass it on,” Charbonneau said.
