The Orphanage

I promised to write about the orphanage so here it is, despite the fact that I've been back home in the states for almost two months now. Well, actually, I'm not in the US right now, I'm in Canada! But that's another story for another blog post (hopefully soon).

Mindy got connected to the orphanage by meeting the orphanage director, Almaz, at church. Almaz is an amazing woman, worth telling about in her own right. She is Ethiopian but left the country when she was young, fleeing famine with her family. She lost some family members in the arduous journey, which ended in a refugee camp in Sudan (the direction of refugees movement is exactly opposite now). From there she came to America, was educated here and eventually became a social worker. She was with an adoption agency, and was saddened by how often a child that was already promised to an adoptive couple died. As she grieved with these couples, she became interested in working on the other end, where the orphans were originating. She returned to Ethiopia to run an orphanage



We visited the orphanage every Saturday during my visit to bring treats and read books to the orphans to help them learn English. The English learning is with the very tangible goal of being able to talk with their adoptive families. The kids were already quite impressive, with some of the older kids able to sound out printed English words. What words did they know best? Down to the toddlers it was: "Father" "Mother" "Brother" and "Sister".

The orphanage functions more as holding/transition zone for orphans soon to be adopted than a traditional orphanage. This means that it is much smaller than most government orphanages (max 40 children), and very Western. In this case, Western means that there are very strict sanitary and child care rules (propping bottles is a firing offense) and that the whole place is decorated beautifully. The children's rooms look straight out of Pottery Barn Kids (and some items are!). Beautiful murals decorate the walls, coordinating with the theme in each room, even the infants' bedrooms. It's hard to appreciate how miraculous this is until you've spent some time in Ethiopia, adjusting your expectations to 3rd world decor-- dirt and mismatched, cheap furniture.

The children are dressed in nice Western clothes and could be straight from the US, if it weren't for their shorn hair (a precaution against lice when they arrive) and their slight build. Most of them look about at least two years younger than they are, but then that's true of most children in Ethiopia. The contrast wasn't clear until the 8 year old boy of a visiting American family (a prospective adoptive family) joined us for 'Duck Duck Goose.' I feared for the orphans' safety as he chased them around the circle, considerably bigger and heavier than even the 12 year olds. True, his father plays for the NFL, as I later found out, so he was probably far above average for his age, built more on the lines of a linebacker than a child. In any event, I was holding my breath, expecting every second to see an expert tackle crush a delicate orphan.

I wish I could show you pictures of the kids, they speak for themselves: heartstrings-tugging babies, chubby, grinning toddlers, beautiful, wistful older children. They had beautiful names, too, Biblical ones (Henok [Enoch], Bingiam [Benjamin], Eob [Job], Rute [Ruth], Samaraweet [Samaritan], Bethlehem, Ephriam) and names with meanings that spoke of better times, times when they belonged to someone who loved them (Bereket [blessing], Amarech [her beauty], Tarikwa [her story]). Then, of course, there is B-i-dulu (by his luck), a perfect name for an orphan who arrived at the orphanage as a four pound baby and lived "by his own luck."

It wasn't nearly so hard as I understand it would have been in a state orphanage, with babies lying in bare cribs, desperately latching on to you when you pick them up, but it was still hard to see kids without parents, period. There had been a recent influx of babies while I was there, and even though there were several workers holding babies, it seemed like we were one person short: a baby was always fussing. I played with and held as many as I could, but it was painful to set down a baby, knowing they would soon be crying. Mindy sometimes drives Almaz to pick up babies, and they had recently picked up a 3 pound baby girl from the government orphanage. The orphanage had called Almaz and asked her to come pick up this baby, knowing they didn't have the resources to keep her alive. Very good care was being taken of her, but it grieved me to know that she didn't have the best resource for growth: a mother to breastfeed her.

But what was most heartbreaking was the causes of their orphaning. Some were true AIDS orphans, tragic enough by itself. But worse was the extremely common situation where at least one parent was still alive and just not able to financially support their child. Mindy told me about a pair of brothers (a charming toddler and a radiant baby) that she had picked up with Almaz. The mother was young and healthy still, but living in a dismal room behind a pub, clearly not living a lifestyle that would keep her in good health for very much longer. Mindy said she thought that their mother had been a very good mother, because both boys were so clean and their teeth were good. It was heartbreaking to reflect on uprooting such a natural arrangement, replaced it with an unnatural situation, no matter how wonderful the adoptive family or orphanage.

In all this I could totally sympathize with Mindy's distress. She, however, has to bear it longer and it hits close to home. Just a few days before I left, Hobtom came to Mindy with a request. She had a neighbor who had three children and AIDs. He wanted to give them up. Was there room for them in Almaz's orphanage? Mindy drove the family and Hobtom over to the orphanage for an interview, and listened while the father told his story. His wife had gone on a small boat to Yemen, an illegal method of immigration to the Muslim countries where there are more jobs for servants available. The boat had capsized, killing 40 people. His wife had drowned. Left on his own, the man had contracted AIDS. Now he was willing to give up his children, even though he was currently in pretty good shape, thanks to Antiretroviral medication. He wanted to be sure they would be cared for, even if this meant he could only see them once a month in the orphanage, less than a mile away from him.

This is one of the worst things about being in the 3rd world. True, in the West you are peppered with media pleas for orphans, starving people. But, as emotional as these can be, there is nothing the bombardment of the real thing. Everyday you see women on the streets with their babies, begging. Every day you drive pass the scales on the sidewalk--there so that people who think they might be loosing a dangerous amount of weight can weigh themselves. But what can you do? You can give to beggars who you deem needy enough, you can volunteer at an NGO. But in fact, probably the best thing you can do is hire house help, and pay them a fair wage. It feels less noble, but what you are doing is preventing the family rupture from occurring in the first place. Mindy tells me that before they hired Hobtom she was planning to leave her little girl with her husband and go to the Middle East to find work. The difference between a happy home, and tragedy, it appears, can be as little as a few birr (10 cents) a day.