Orphanage life-Unscensored

What is orphanage life like for real?

I've struggled with how to explain this question for over 10 months now. I started writing this post  months ago and every time I sit down to write it out...I fail to find the right words. Partly because I am still learning. There is so much that I do not yet know. Learning the way things are done, and why they're done that way takes a long time in a new culture.

It is not something that can be understood overnight. Or a week. Or a month.

This is a completely Burkinabé run orphanage. It was started by a Burkinabé woman and her husband who's a pastor here. There is no western influence on the procedures, discipline, nutrition, or structure here at all. All the staff are Burkinabé, so naturally it's run according to their culture. And coming here and learning the way that they do things in this culture has taken time because it is often very different from the way we do things in western societies. But each day that I come here I learn a little bit more. I see more. I understand more. I learn how to love more.

And so it is my goal to articulate this world of the abandoned and rejected in an accurate and uncensored way that will open up that door you see and invite you into this room. To help you become a distant participant in the lives that live here. To show you what life is really like in this place.

I am not an expert. I can't even speak as an authority, or even as someone who's visited many orphanages. I've visited only two during my time here so far. And each one is unique and different. But this is the one I devotedly come to twice a week, every Wednesday and Friday. So I can only say with first hand knowledge what life is really like here. It is limited, and but a glimpse into this world...but I will do my best to share my glimpses, and open up that door for you to share in this reality.

So without further ado, here is an uncensored account of the orphanage I serve at.....

I drive through the narrow gate, round the corner of the dirt path, and pull my car up next to a wall covered in clothing left out to dry in the sun. As I exit the car I can hear a chorus of shouts coming from behind the wall, "Na-sa-da! Na-sa-da!". I approach the door and a mass of children tackle my legs and squeeze me in delight. I look down and see faces smiling back up at me, arms reaching high, shouts of "Tikima!" "pick me up!" echoing from each of them. I bend down to kiss their heads and wrap my arms around them. I shuffle my way inside the door, they cling to me as I reach to set my bag down, and then I am tackled onto the floor by a sea of the most beautiful brown faced children.

And so my day with them begins....

This is the main room of the orphanage where we spend most of our time.

The room on the left is a tiny little kitchen where the workers cook the meals. The meals here consist of boiled potatoes, couscous, spaghetti noodles, or tô, mixed with a red tomato based sauce everyday for lunch and dinner. The babies receive bottles of milk, but the older kids no not. During the hot months all the kids get a cup of water, but only during the hot months. The rest of the year they have very little fluid intake. They do not eat meat, fruits and very little vegetables, usually nothing more than tomatoes, potatoes, and onions. The workers add oil to the dishes to help the children receive additional fat, and sometimes they will make a local peanut sauce to help get them some protein, but other than that...their diet is sorely lacking.

They do not go without out of cruelty or intentional neglect. There is simply not enough money to pay for a well balanced meal for this many children, three meals a day, every single day. Mostly they eat just two meals a day, with no snacks in between. The younger kids are required to share a small bowl of their meal with one or two other children, because there is not enough food for each child to have their own portion.

(My friend Christa who introduced me to the orphanage.)

And while the meals are enough to hold them over and keep from starving, the food does not contain enough nutrients, and the children show the results of having an inadequate diet with many children suffering from swollen bellies due to lack of proper protein, causing their tummies to swell with fluid.

The older kids aged 3-6 yrs. sit on the floor and eat their boiled potatoes or noodles by scooping them up with their fingers. They actually provide utensils here for the children to learn to use, but they rarely pick them up, as culturally most Burkinabé eat with their hands.

Once the younger babies have eaten the workers scoop them up by one armpit and lay them on the tiled floor to have their bottles.

It's an interesting contrast because, in the States we are so delicate with babies. The first time I saw one of the workers scoop up a baby by one arm pit, with the baby dangling sideways, I think my eyes popped out of my head. If we saw a mother in the US handle her baby in that manner, we'd be judging her and contemplating whether to call social services. We would be thinking her incompetent, cruel, unfit.... and any other word we could lash out at her in our heads.

And then to lay the baby down on a hard cold floor that is smeared with food and ants to drink their bottle....that's something we don't do in western societies. Again, we handle babies delicately. We lay them in cushy nursing pillows, ultra padded swings, or plush cribs. If we do lay them on the floor to rest or take a bottle, we don't put them down on the cold hard kitchen floor, we lay them on a baby quilt we received at our baby shower which sits on top of our carpet.

But there is no carpet here. There are no specially made baby quilts or hand crocheted blankets. There are no nursing pillows or padded swings.

There is a hard cold tiled floor. So that is where they lay to drink their bottles.        

And it's not wrong....it's just different. And in all fairness, it's more practical. Every week that I come there is sure to be at least one child that throws up their meal all over themselves and the floor. They don't burp babies in this culture so many times the kids just have an air bubble that needs to come up, but in the process all their food comes up with it. Or, they're just plain sick. The workers also cut the tips of the bottle nipples off so the children can drink their milk faster, and each and every week the kids will chuck their bottles on the floor and their milk will spill out of it. The daily messes of these near 20 kids is a whole lot easier to clean from a tiled floor. So that is where they lay.

After they eat the all the kids from about 8months and up who are not potty trained sit down on little training potties before they lay down for bed. They have to sit on these little pots until they go, so before long they will be scooting all over the floors with their pots talking to each other, reaching for toys to play with to pass the time. As the workers are cleaning up from lunch the kids are going potty, but because they require kids as young as 8 months to sit on those they will frequently pick up the potties of those who have finished and dump their contents all over the floor, because they're too young to know any better. This orphanage is not the most sanitary place at times. Some days it can smell pretty bad from the constant smell of urine and feces collecting in a dozen unchanged diapers and then training potties filled and spilled onto the floor. But with a limited staff, it is hard to maintain decent sanitation at times.  

Most days there are just three lady workers on duty at a time.

Those three ladies are responsible for tending to the needs of around 25 children which include...
cooking their meals,
preparing bottles,
feeding them,
changing diapers,
cleaning all the kids training pottie
changing dirty clothes,
bathing them,
and then of course all the maintenance cleaning that must be done...
mopping the floors,
washing dishes (all by hand of course),
hosing off the beds and mattresses (that is how they clean and disinfect...they literally take a hose and spray everything down, even the furniture)
washing the clothes,
folding the clothes...
all in a building with no running a.c. or fans. They do have an a.c. unit and a ceiling fan in the main room, but they're too expensive to use. So they sit in the stifling building and suffer through the heat, sweat dripping down their heads, clothes soaked through, because it's too expensive to pay for relief.

I think it would be easy to read this and think, "That's not so bad...taking care of 25 kids in an orphanage isn't 50 or 100 like in other places. That's doable." I think it would be too easy to read through this and not the reality of this life penetrate our hearts.

But if we relate this to our American mindset.....

a mom having one baby and one toddler at home to care for is a lot.

I know, I've been that mom. Coming home from the hospital and having a very active two year old wanting to play and needing to be cared for, plus now having a newborn baby to take care of and ALL the stuff that goes into those days of caring for two kids. I had two (still do)...and was dead on my feet most days. The idea of having to cook dinner at night and then clean up after the kids were in bed was taxing. It always amazed me how quickly one toddler could totally trash a house and how much laundry one little baby went through.

Many days I felt maxed out and overwhelmed with two kids.

In our culture having a family of five kids is considered absolutely massive.
Taking care of twins requires a whole other set of mommy juggling powers.

Imagine having 20 toddlers, newborns and school aged children to take care of at the same time.

It's a lot.

That's a lot of kids for three women.

The women do their best to stay afloat but it is hard for them. One worker is in charge of preparing the meals, as they do not have a separate cook, and it takes most of the morning to prepare over twenty lunches without the modern conveniences of Handi Snacks, GoGurts or PBandJ's.

That leaves the other two women to oversee the rest of the needs of the children.

So what ends up happening is most of the time the babies spend much of their days in their cribs staring up at the ceiling, talking to themselves, spending hours in their soiled diapers. There are simply not enough hands to hold them so they just leave them in their cribs. Or they are taken out of their cribs and just placed instead on the mattress in the common room or deposited on the floor to fend for themselves.

The children learn at just a few months of age to occupy themselves and be content with minimal adult interaction, relying on themselves to self sooth or handle conflict.

That is why volunteers are so needed.

The children need to be taken out of their cribs before lunch time. They need help feeding so many little mouths. The kids need one on one attention. Which is usually more like four on one attention. They need someone to stimulate their minds. Someone to sing to them. Someone to give them eye contact and tell them they are special and seen and loved.

(This is my dear friend Chloe, who was serving in Burkina for a few months and helping out at the orphanage three days a week. She returned back to the U.K. in March)
So we go. And we help. We feed babies and tickle them and chase them and love them. Most of the time they are pretty much satisfied just having a lap to sit in. A chest to lay their head against. A hand to hold.

This is baby Elliel. (pronouced Ell-ee-el)

I leave completely dirty every time I'm there. I'm always getting food spilled on me and I've been peed on my fair share of times. They don't have awesome absorbing Pampers over here. Instead they have cloth diapers...but not the really nice cloth diapers that so many moms are buying these days. These cloth diapers are literally a piece of fabric comparable to a sheet. Except this is the crappiest cheapest low thread count cotton sheets you can find and would never buy. And then imagine that the crappiest cheapest sheets are now thirty years old and they are so thin you can practically see through them. That's what they wear. With the added security of a plastic bag tied around them for good measure. They have had nice cloth diapers donated, but the kids are rarely put in them. Again, this is a completely Burkinabé run orphanage and they are used to tradition and old ways and despite the new ultra absorbent diapers at their disposal, they never get used because in their minds the old ones work just fine. Even though they don't.

The younger children sleep in a room behind this wall in individual cribs, but the older children sleep together on this mattress I sit on. No beds of their own, or personal space to be had. The toys scattered about belong to no one and everyone. They have no personal possessions. Nothing to call their own. Everything must be shared when living with so many other kids.

Even the volunteers who come. They must share us, and it's not always easy.

As we sit and play the kids precede to fight over us. Usually whoever latches on to me first gets me for the few hours I am there. The kids will push and cry if they feel another child threatening their space with me. They stake claim to me when I come, and they don't want anyone invading their space. They don't get a lot of attention. There are just too many kids and not enough workers to spend time with them all. If I have to stand up to walk around, the child in my lap will either forcefully cling to my chest to be carried refusing to be put down, or latch onto my legs as I walk and I literally drag them around with me. So, if one or two kids have claimed my lap, I will use my arms to tickle the ones running by. Doing my best to reach out to, quite literally, as many kids as I can.

This is Iyda (pronouced Eye-ee-dah). She's my friend. She is around 4 years old and has been abandoned twice by her mother. She now lives at the orphanage. She suffers from epilepsy and has a fungal skin condition all over her body that causes her skin to be severely dry and her nails to be eaten away. But it has not been treated since I started coming here due to lack of finances. And also the fact that she is functioning and it's not causing grave illness it's not a priority to treat. Just last week I sent this picture to a doctor I know here because I got tired of coming here each week and seeing her skin in such bad shape, and he gave me the name of a prescription to buy to treat her skin with, so hopefully within a couple weeks she will begin to improve.

Many of the children in the orphanage suffer from a variety of problems and conditions. Many of them are left untreated as well due to lack of finances, ignorance concerning their condition, or lack of proper health care to adequately treat them.

It's not uncommon for me to arrive and see a number of children sick with colds, running fevers, or have mysterious outbreaks on their bodies. Many times, because the workers are few and overworked, they are unaware that a child may be suffering from a fever. I've lost count of how many times I've had to ask them to take a temperature and administer medicine. And because they simply don't have time to sit down with each ailing child, they just leave them laying on the cold tile. Or in a sling wrapped with wet strips of fabric.

It is heartbreaking to come and see the children laying on the floor, sick and alone.

I look at these kids and every time I see Marvelly and Sydaleigh. They want the same things. They want someone to come and scoop them up off the floor and cradle when in their laps. They want someone to rub their heads and tummies and sing them to sleep. They want someone who will wipe their noses. They want someone to stop what they're doing and lay them on a chest to draw in the comfort that comes from a steady heartbeat. They want someone to not shrink back in disgust when they throw up everywhere, but someone who will stand firm by their side even in their sickness. And when they are sick, it hurts my heart as if they were my very own children.

And when one dies, if feels as if I just might break....

This is baby Anna. She is almost six weeks old in this picture but looks like she should still be in the womb she is so small. She can't weigh more than three pounds in this photo, if that. She was not thriving when she arrived at the orphanage back in November but she was bigger than this.

On December 5th of last year I arrived at the orphanage and immediately sought her out and noticed that from the week before she had gotten smaller. I actually thought they received a new baby, because the one that lay before me was even smaller than baby Anna. But it was not a new baby. In the few days between our visits she had shrunk considerably and had a nose tube placed because she stopped taking her milk.

Before the kids were laid down for their nap time on this particular Wednesday the workers had taken all the little babies out of their room to hose off their cribs and I saw her laying off to the side on this bouncer, quietly crying to herself, her cries so quiet I almost didn't hear them above the noise of the other kids.

There was no one to hold her. Too many other kids demanding attention and chores to be done. So me and Marvelly went over and sat next to her in her bouncer. She was tiny. Swimming in her onsie, just skin covering bones. Me and Marvelly sat, and we picked up her small hands and tucked our fingers inside. We sang to her the ABC song and The Lord is My Shepard at Marvelly's request. Somewhere deep in my spirit I knew that her life lay in the balance. So I began to pray over her. Quietly pleading for the Lord to intervene and usher in healing.

Unfortunately baby Anna died the next day. 

The following day, was their Christmas party that we attended and later that afternoon she went to be with our Lord. Turns out Jesus answered my prayer and ushered in healing after all...just not in the way that I wanted, not on this earth or in her body.

Marvelly still talks about baby Anna and tells me how she is going to see her in heaven. That is one thing I most assuredly know to be true. Unfortunately, what we will never know is why she couldn't live. Why such a small precious baby, her life just beginning, had to die.

They had a doctor come out and examined her prior to her death but he couldn't find anything wrong, no reason why she would not be thriving. The doctors here are poorly trained and lack proper schooling needed to adequately diagnose problems. It's painfully hard to watch someone suffer from something that could be easily treated back in another country. Here, so many treatable conditions are fatal. And too many people die as a result of inadequate healthcare.

I have come to discover through our time here that death is such an integral part of the Burkinabé culture, it is much more accepted here, because it has to be.

The gal sitting down in the orange shirt is Bibatta (Bee-bah-tah) and the little girl with the yellow shorts is her daughter Jennifer. If you look closely you can see that Bibatta is pregnant with her second child. Sadly, after giving birth close to Christmas she wouldn't know the joy of seeing her child grow up, because she abandoned him at the orphanage.

A lot of people ask me what are some of the circumstances that bring these children to live at an orphanage. And this is one example. Bibatta was a widow. She had her daughter Jennifer with her previous husband, and after his death, she got pregnant by another man. Her family refused to accept her new child into their family and told her she must either give him away, or she wasn't welcome to return home. Faced with the difficult choice of either surrendering her new baby to an orphanage, or finding a way to support her and her two children as a widow, all alone, without a family's support....she sacrificed her new child.

This is very common here is Burkina. All too common. People have very little options here. They face hardships that we will never be able to grasp. And sadly, not only did Bibatta have to sacrifice her only son, but baby David didn't live past three months of life.

David died on Easter Sunday.

The night before he became abruptly sick. The orphanage director, Patricia rushed him to the pediatric hospital where he stopped breathing in the car on the way there. Once they arrived the hospital staff tried to turn them away saying they could not help. But Patricia insisted that they try to treat him and convinced a doctor to help so he engaged in CPR and successfully revived him. But David was so severely dehydrated the staff was not able to place an IV until hours later. He crashed two more times, and was revived, but after the fourth time he stopped breathing, they could not bring him back. His body was too weak to fight any longer.

And he went home to live with the Lord, and they could never reach Bibatta to inform her that her son had perished.

This is Sydaleigh holding baby Jean. Thankfully, she is here today because of the Lord's divine leading. On Monday January 14th, the Lord led a man who was out looking for his donkey to an abandoned brick house where he discovered two baby girls lying on the ground completely covered in blood. They do not know how long those babies laid on that dirt floor before the Lord directed that man to them. They were never able to find their mother, not knowing if she in fact even survived the birth. Thankfully, the man took mercy on the babies and scooped them up and brought them to the police department where the police then brought the babies to the orphanage.

My friend Chloe was at the orphanage when they arrived and she said Jeanine, the barely smaller of the two sisters, was void of all color, cold, and looked as if she was already dead. Somehow, though, both girls were still alive and breathing. The babies weighed a mere 1k500g and 1k600g. Chloe and Patricia rushed them to a Catholic clinic, where sadly, Jeanine later died. Three days later I visited the clinic with Chloe to see baby Jean and collect her sister's death certificate. We got to look at baby Jean from behind a window and by the grace of God she looked good. Like she might actually make it.

We will never fully know the circumstances surrounding what happened to her mother the night that they were born. We will never know why they were left alone to die, or where the mother disappeared to. I have learned from children like Jean and David, that you can not judge the mothers. I am learning, very painfully, that like Bibatte, the women here suffer through daily horrible desperate circumstances that I will never be able to relate to. This past year has been a year of learning new depths of grace, mercy, forgiveness and love, extended to those who make desperate choices based on desperate circumstances.

And while Jean may never grow up knowing that she had a twin sister or knowing the love of her birth family....praise be to God she will still get to grow up knowing the love of a new family.....a month after Jean was released from the hospital she was brought back to the orphanage. And last month she left the orphanage forever as a beautiful thriving little baby to go live with her new forever family.

It's not easy coming here. It's not easy dealing with the pain and loss associated with these children living here. It's hard to see some die and others live. It's hard to see some rescued and the others you know are out there that will never be found. It's unspeakably hard holding children one day and then arriving two days later to discover that they perished. It's hard when there are no answers. Or answers I want to hear. It's heartbreaking to see children discarded and witness the suffering associated with abandonment.

And while I don't have all the answers about why these children had to end up here, or why some get to live while others have to die....I still know that I serve a mighty God. And He grieves more deeply for the brokenness of this world than I do. And He loves these children and has called them by name. He has a plan and a purpose for their lives. And it has been one of my greatest joys, and deepest sorrows, coming here to partner with Him in His work in the lives of these young kids.

For a while after coming here I struggled to know my purpose in this place. Many times I would leave and feel so broke down and weary wondering what was the point of it all. I would come week in and week out and get pushed away, slapped in the face, hit and bitten, yelled at, have my hair pulled, be peed and puked on, be swarmed by mobs of children and never able to break enough pieces of myself away to satisfy those around me. There were times that I would leave and as soon as I closed the door to my car, the tears would fall. There are so many kids. Am I even making a difference? What was I really giving them by coming?

And then one day the Lord whispered,  "You're giving them a mother."

And over these past ten months of coming here, with the Lord's continued help, that is what I have become.

I have become their temporary mother. And these kids have become so much more than just "orphans" to me.  We have been building relationships each and every time that I come. I know each and every one of them by name. I know there voices. I know their laughs. Their cries. I know their personalities and what makes them happy. Just as I would if they were my own children.

It makes my heart all kinds of happy to know that the Lord is honoring us with the responsibility to come here and show these kids love, to model what a family is...until their forever families can come and be the ones to do that.

There are a lot of mommies out there who are far away in their home countries, caught up in the bureaucracy of finalizing their adoptions. They stay awake at night wondering how their child is doing, if they are eating well, sleeping well, being taken care of and protected, and they are just counting down the days until this is all behind them and they can be a family.

I know what those mommies are feeling, because I am one of them. I too am counting down the days just like them until we can bring our son home to us. 

And what makes my heart cry in deep joy, is that I know a dear woman who is being a mommy to our future son...until I can get to him and bring him home to me. She loves him. She prays for him. She sings to him. She cheers for him.

And as an almost adoptive momma, there is nothing that makes my heart so settled in this process as to know that there is a person where my child is, loving them as if he were her own. I have had the pleasure of meeting some of these children's new parents on occasion, and I pray that their hearts can rest in the same peace, knowing someone is back here loving their child well for them.

And so that is what I do for these children and their parents. I try to love them well, as if they were my own.

I cheer for them and celebrate their successes. I am a person who can be here to see them take their first steps when no one else is around to notice. I have had the honor of watching some grow from babies to walking machines, like my little Noah doll. 

I have had the privilege of shouting for joy when Rosalee starts pulling herself up to stand on her own.

I get to be a someone that God has placed here to go bonkers when they reach new milestones. When a new one crawls. Or rolls over for the first time. When a little one stands. I cheer and shout and whoop and holler and praise all their efforts to share and eat their lunch all gone.

I get to be a someone who soothes wounded hearts. Encourages them not to hit, or bite. To model what love looks like. That is what I hope to impress upon Sydaleigh and Marvelly to do when they come with me; to love them as if they were their brothers and sisters. Because that is what the Lord asks of each of us, no matter where we are or who we're serving...to model Christ's love.

"So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other. Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples." Jn.13:34-35

There are many kids here, who in just a couple of months will be in their new homes. They are in our lives for but a moment. And I want us to love them well while they are in it.

If I could sum up my experiences and lessons from serving at the orphanage this past year, it would be this....
 

Orphanage life.....it is a place of abandonment. But it is also a place of healing. It is a family of twenty unrelated siblings living, fighting and loving together. It is a smelly cesspool of bodily fluids. It is a bright toothy smile boldly displayed against the backdrop of a chocolate face. It is the collision of cultures. It is a bridge for understanding. It is friendship. It is frustration. It is learning to bend. It is sickness. It is death. It is abounding joy when a familiar trusting face arrives. It is the sticky delight of Dum Dum suckers on Fridays. It is loss. It is a place where children lay in wait. It is patience. It is an opportunity to reach out and love "the least of these", the forgotten, the rejected. It is mercy and glory. It is forgiveness and grace. It is hurt and exhaustion. It is the greatest contrast of joy and pain all rolled up into one. It is not ideal, but it is better than their alternative. It is the effects of a broken world that led them here, but the divine power of a life giving God that will ensure they do not stay. It is the hope of something more to come. It is redemption.

"You, Lord, took up my case; you redeemed my life." Lam. 3:58

*Please remember Emé, Elliel, Immanuel, Paul, Noah, Euriel, Rosalee, Gloria, Sacondé, Flora, Elysée, Iyda, Jean, Rebecca, Sherif, Amelie, Nounja, and three newborn who recently arrived in your prayers as they live at the orphanage and await the day when they can be united with their families.