AFTER five days I have finally found someone to hand over the heavy shoebox I have been carrying in my luggage.

Living with his adopted parents and their three other children, 14-year-old Slava was more than grateful to receive the donated gifts.

Adopted by his aunt, the youngster now lives on the top bunk of one of two bunk beds in a room that acts as the bedroom, kitchen and every other room of a house in their wooden hut of a first-floor flat in Simferopol, the capital of Crimea.

Through an interpreter we learn that his aunt adopted him when his mother became a serious drug addict.

But just before he was adopted, his aunt Anya tells us, her sister also had another child called Andrei who was born with HIV and taken away by the government.

“I wanted to adopt him too but they wouldn’t let me keep him in these conditions,” she said.

We are told the youngster now lives in an orphanage. Anya does not want to see him because if he finds out he has any family he will want to live with them, but she will not be allowed to care for him.

After leaving the house which we later discover was actually built by Anya herself, I am told that our next stop is actually a children’s orphanage where 150 boxes are handed out by the Operation Christmas Child volunteers.

Afterwards I speak to a senior teacher who tells me they do in fact have in a separate class the younger brother of the teenage boy I had met earlier. Although I could not tell him how I knew he was there, I decided to find him to hand him a shoebox personally as well.

As a child with HIV, Andrei is living with nine other children who also have the condition. Meeting the youngster, now six years old, you can see the resemblance to that of his older brother Slava.

Ecstatic with his presents, Andrei alongside eight other young children turned their education room into a children’s party.

I am told each of the infected children take medication day and night and receive extra supervision.

The teacher says they never know what will happen to them, whether they will survive into adulthood or die before their teens, but the staff make it their duty to educate them and keep them as safe and as well as possible.