“Oh, how hard it is when your mom is sick! It’s all because of Tekla!” – says seven-year-old Luka and strokes his mother on the head. The mother of four children has been chained to bed for more than one year. Five-year-old Gvantsa, four-year-old Eva and one-year-old Tekla are sitting in bed with their mother.

“Beautiful dolls are for rich kids, and they have a bike too! If they want – they will lend it to you and if they don’t want – they won’t! – 5-year-old Natalie says. Mom says we are poor. Often, we don’t even have food. And I dream of a bicycle!”
“I close my eyes and imagine that instead of soup from a social canteen, I’m eating delicious food – food I want to eat!” says ten-year-old Mariam.

Ten-year-old Venera has no friends. She is sure that she will never have them. Nobody wants to be friends with beggars. “I feel like I’m being avoided. They don’t sit next to me, they don’t want to play with me. They don’t say anything, but they behave in such a way that it hurts here,” – Venera says and puts her hand to her heart.

“It’s good that you came, because I either offend my mother or my grandmother all day long. Now I was going to offend my sister,” says a frowning Nikoloz, defiantly hugging his sister. You have come on time! I couldn’t offend my sister.

Tell me honestly – is it a shame to be poor? Is it a shame when there are not enough slippers for everyone at home, and your socks get torn on an uneven floor? Is it a shame when you can’t close the doors, and snakes crawl into the house through the holes? Is it a shame when children tell their mother that they are really hungry?

This is not even a house, but the skeleton of a house, where you can see all its bones. Only lath remained of the outer walls. This shack is so rotten that you can break off any piece from it with your hand. And it is so dark inside even during the day, that you need to turn on the light to see each other. Light is on all the time – two dim light bulbs. When you stay there for a while, your eyes get used to darkness, and you start to distinguish the faces of the residents. And there are nine of them – six children and three adults. They live in darkness and crampedness.