What Linda and

Fritz Apfel want people to understand is that

life in a child care home in Latvia is not the

nightmare conjured by movies like "Little

Orphan Annie" or news shows filmed in

Romania a few years ago.

Latvians are

"a very proud people, who want to take care

of their own," explained Linda Apfel. She

visited several orphanages as she traveled to the

Baltic country to adopt her four children.

"There are not

a lot of caregivers but they work constantly with

the children," she said. "They are all

very loving, and there's a lot of music, lots of

hugging."

Two of the

orphanages were once old hunting lodges. During

the Soviet regime, four or five families were

assigned to large homes such as these, somewhat

as depicted in the book and movie, Dr. Zhivago.

Fritz Apfel

described dark wooden beams, curving staircases,

crystal chandeliers, 10-foot ceilings. In one,

"They basically knocked out old walls, and

put in plaster and new wiring, and made it bright

and attractive." There was money "for

the kids, but not much for upkeep" after the

Soviet system collapsed.

"The money is

not going into somebody's pocket," Apfel

said. "Everything they need is available,

but it's four times as expensive [as here]. A

little microwave we could buy for $60 here costs

$300 to $400 there."

One facility, with

60 to 70 children, had no clothes dryer. In wet

weather, laundry was hung around the house.

Another had lavish grounds, ideal for children,

but with no lawn mower they had no place to play

outdoors.

Every effort is

made to give the youngsters the advantages of

children whose situation is more comfortable,

Apfel said. "The older ones got to do all

kinds of things: they went to camp, they took

field trips, they went to operas and plays and

water parks. They know who Robin Williams is;

they saw Flubber!

"They went to

regular city school, not just an orphanage class,

and the whole school was invited to the grand

opening of the town's new McDonald's."

Most of the

children in orphanages have one or both birth

parents living, Apfel explained. But in Latvia's

poor economy it is sometimes difficult or

impossible for some families to keep their

children at home.

"Their parents

give them up out of love," Apfel said.

"If a family

is down on their luck, perhaps unemployed or on

drugs, whatever, they can place a child in the

child care system until they're back on their

feet," Linda Apfel said. "The state

follows up, like DFACS [the Department of Family

and Children's Services] here. They look at the

home life situation - it's somewhat but not

quite like foster care."

And, as with two of

the Apfels' children, it sometimes happens that

the birth parents lose their parental rights. At

this point, the children may become eligible for

adoption.

The problem, Apfel

said, is that "In Latvia, once children

reach 15, they're out of the [children's] home

and on the streets." Nine years of school is

required, and free, but high school or vocational

training, for which there is a relatively low

fee, may be out of reach in a country where

unemployment approaches 30 percent.

"It's slightly

better now than when we first went over,"

said Apfel, "but you have to at least have a

high school education to get a job. In Latvia, if

they didn't have money for high school, they

couldn't get a job, and they were out on the

streets."

The Latvians

"don't want the kids to leave their

country," she said. But since international

adoptions have been allowed, three out of four

adoptees go to foreigners, most of them

Americans.

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