Orphanage

Hello People! Today I got to go to an orphanage. There was about 8 toddlers there, they just accepted 10 more so there will be about 20 total in the mornings and over 65 after 2PM when school gets out. They are guaranteed one hot meal a day and can do homework supervised in the building. It was really hard to hear that all of the kids have to leave in the afternoon and although some of them go to grandparent's houses, many of the grandparents are elderly and cannot provide well for them. But at least it's protection. The kids who are toddlers get taken home by the volunteers but the ones without anywhere to go sleep on the streets. And the streets are dirt roads. It's not like in the states where there are buildings which they can sleep under the awning of. Literally this area is beautiful grass fields, hills, and houses shaped like boxes. It broke my heart thinking of a possible 30 kids sleeping outside somewhere with no one to look after or care after them.

I asked about adoption but that is not common either. People will take in children possibly but a lot of times the owners of the orphanage have no idea where the parents are, if they died or just ditched the children, so they can't give their children away.



There was one girl in particular I fell in love with and no joke would have adopted in a moment but she was visiting with her Grandma and her Grandma wouldn't have liked that at all!! :)



So that was my day. I thought I would be a lot more emotional but it more just makes me mad. I wish this could be fixed right now but I can't fix it.. right now at least. And it was encouraging to see how much love those babies were getting at the orphanage. Really cared for.

Since then I have eaten lunch and had meeting of possible outreach thing we can do while we're here. I signed up to go to an AIDS orphanage and play with the kids/help out with homework, etc so hopefully I can start doing that soon.

I updated Facebook with a whole album of the orphanage so take a look. And I know some Mom's read this blog so if you have a Facebook I won't be weirded out if you added me! (Hi Mrs. Jensen)

Off to do more productive things on my day off... or take a nap? Haven't decided...

With love from Africa,
Paige