February 3rd: Hands Together to Defend the Children

Howdy, don't you look mighty nice? I like your shirt today. Let's move on.

Today (Sunday) my parents and I, as well as five or six other people, went to visit an orphanage. There's a group that goes once a week to visit Hands Together to Defend the Children, an orphanage and school a few miles away from the embassy. The entire experience was as difficult and rewarding as one would expect- no, it was more so.

      As soon as we step out of the car, there are twenty or so children crowding around us, some smiling at us openly, others more hesitantly. Some just stare at our group for a while. Their ages range from 2 to early teens. They are clean, well kept. One little boy grabs my dad's hand and tugs at it. I smile at the little girls, wave at them. It is blistering hot.
     Inside the concrete building where they sleep and eat, it is cooler. Their caretakers have them line up in front of the table and sing a Welcome Song, which they do after several false starts and a countoff in French. Childish voices, wavering and careless of notes, tell us "welcome, welcome to you. Welcome, welcome to all of you." One of the younger boys keeps stealing glances at me, and as I wave at him, he ducks shyly behind a taller girl before peeking out at me again. As soon as they finish, the leader of our group pulls out a box of small prizes- lollipops, Barbies, a Hot Wheels set, various children's toys that are obviously, painfully, someone else's cast offs. Others are new and wrapped in plastic- such as a papery Disney princess toy that is reminiscent of a New Year's Eve party favour (blowing into one end to make the other end expand).
     A girl, around 5 or 6, ignores the toys and climbs on the bench where I'm sitting. She touches my hair, which is half up. When she tugs at the band and I pull it out, she laughs at how my hair suddenly falls all over the place. I give the band to her and she yanks my hair back into something resembling a ponytail, all the while chattering at me in Creole. I nod and laugh like I know what she is saying, and that seems to satisfy her.
     I am then led on a tour of the facility, going through three sleeping rooms and out to the kitchen. The sleeping rooms have five or six sets of bunk beds in them, thin hard mattresses on all. Mosquito nets are bundled into wads of yellow above the top bunks. Boys in one, girls in the next, babies and caretakers in the others. The kitchen is half outside, and the leader of our group, L, says that it is rice and beans, rice and beans, rice and chicken, rice and beans, every day. People have donated food time and time again, but the most common meal consists of rice and beans.
     As W- another member of our group- and I go back inside, three of the boys crowd around the doorway of a sleeping room. W stops to high five them and ask them their names. They speak a little English. Do you like football, W asks, and they grin and nod, showing gaps in their smiles where baby teeth have fallen out. I used to play football at school, W says. Football or soccer? I wonder, and he smiles and says American football. He follows the boys outside and I sit on the bench with the little girl who did my hair and another boy. They have a small battery operated keyboard (about a foot long) that plays prerecorded songs. They bang away on the small plastic keys, sending tinny music into the air. She grabs at my sunglasses and puts them on upside down, laughing at how they fall right off her little face. She then puts them on the boy playing the keyboard and I laugh. He looks like a miniature jazz musician, crouched on a dusty concrete floor.
      One of the caretakers sets a tiny girl on the bench next to me. She is crying and without any prompting from me or the caretaker, she winds her little baby arms around my neck and cries into my shoulder. She is wearing a denim dress and her hair is cut extremely short. She is two at the most, tiny and limp with heat. She continues to hold onto me and I pat her back, pick her up and walk her around. She stops crying and instead loops one arm around my neck and grabs the front of my shirt with the other. Her eyes are wide open and her head swivels back and forth. I give her the little Disney party favour and she holds it, unsure of what to do with it. I try to show her, but she just rolls and unrolls the tissue paper at the end, smiling when it snaps back. After she slides off my lap, another little girl comes over to me. Her head is drooping and I can tell she's tired. Sure enough, almost as soon as I pick her up, she falls asleep.
Human contact, that's all they need, says T, another member of our group. That's all it takes.
     I marvel at how true that is. The little girl- I am ashamed that I don't know her name- buries her head in my shoulder and snuffles in that baby way, her legs limp against my stomach. When I try to shift her postition, her head lolls back. She is deeply asleep. I am directed to one of the sleeping rooms where I carefully set her on the bottom mattress. She doesn't wake up, even when one of the caretakers adjusts her position.
     I go outside where a breeze is finally blowing. I am sweating like mad and I'm pretty sure my hair looks like I got electrocuted, but it is so damn hot that anything I do is futile. A small boy, B, cries when L tries to pick him up.
    He's mad at me, she laughs. I haven't been here in two weeks so now he's mad.
I smile at him and he comes over to me, arms raised. As I bend down, he jumps up so I am carrying him. He is the third child I have carried around today and my arm is aching, but I don't even think of setting him down. Instead, I sit on a chair with him in my lap until he starts to squirm. We go into the yard, which is dirt and rocks, a tree or two, an old and rusty car that looks like it hasn't been driven in years. A dog, chained to a post at the back, barks at us. I make a woofing sound and B does too. We grin at each other, finally speaking the same language- dog.
     Eventually he too starts to fall asleep. You get all the sleepers, Dad jokes, but he's sort of right. He is the second child to fall asleep in my lap today. One of the caretakers gently lifts him out of my arms, but he wakes and squirms until he is free. By then it is time to go, and it is slowly and with many goodbyes that we leave. They wave, they ask for high fives and hugs and fist bumps and more sweets and more high fives. One of the boys, also named B, runs around and around our car. He is wearing shiny black boots that must have been new. He dusts them off carefully before moving off to the side with the rest of the group so our car can ease out of the gate.
    W and I will be back next week, we decide. As often as we can, we will go. It's a bittersweet experience, poignant and sharp with guilt. Next week, I think, next week I will bring something to share.


To learn more about this particular orphanage, click on the link below. There are photos of the children as well as a video about the orphanage itself.

http://www.edvolunteers.org/defend-children-orphanage-new-house