The Babies Home

While I have internet access, I want to do my best to explain the Babies home and try to post some pictures.

There are 39 children living in the home right now, ranging from 2 months to 4 years old. Unlike a typical orphanage, most of these kids are "half orphans": they have some family to return to when they are 4, but their mother either died, went to jail, went crazy, or doesn't have enough money to care for the child. So the Babies home takes them in and raises them until they are developed and socialized enough to "help instead of hurt the family", as they say.

The kids are loosely divided into three groups: infants (completely dependant), toddlers (walking but not potty trained), and the big kids (everyone else). I work mostly with the infants and toddlers during the day, while the big kids are at "school" (which simply seems to be another empty building in which they play). The schedule for the smaller children is a bit monotonous. When we arrive between 7:30 and 8:00 we change them out of their pajamas and "diapers" and move them from their cribs to a mat covered with a sheet on the floor.

Note: I use the word "diaper" here in the loosest sense possible. It is actually a piece of cloth (by no means soft or specifically designed for this purpose) folded inside a piece of plastic we tie around their waists. Needless to say, this method is almost completely ineffective (bringing a whole new meaning to the word "nappy" for me!). Once the infants are on the mat, we use only a cloth as a diaper (even less effective) and the toddlers run free, using the floor as often as necessary. Luckily the "guy with the mop" comes around about this time....

Then we wait. In the traditional Ghanian way, breakast at 8 frequently means breakfast at 9:30 or even 10. When the food finally arrives, we feed to infants one by one by bottle and the toddlers drink the same stuff out of cups. This, I think, is very impressive. These children can harldy walk and regularly pee on the floor, but they can drink out of an open cup with very little trouble.

We then bathe them one by one in the sink, dress them again in diapers and pajamas, and put them back in bed. Sometimes this takes until 12, so we finish and go for lunch, but usually we are done by 10:30 or 11:00 and are faced with the choice to sit around (as there seems to be nothing to do, even if we ask) or leave and sit at home instead. The afternoon runs similarly to the morning, with a bit more time in the cribs and no baths.

This schedule implies 2 things: 1. the infants and toddlers only eat twice a day and 2. they never go outside. Their entire world consists of 2 rooms, a hallway, and a bathroom for the toddlers (potty training involves making them sit on small pots on the floor of the bathroom twice a day until they 'do something' then returning them to diapers and their cribs). Whenever possible, I carry the children outside and we are working on being able to put the mat outside in the morning instead of on the floor of the same room.

The women who work at the Babies Home are very harsh with the children, which is frequently very difficult to watch and even harder for me to bite my tongue, but it is simply a cultural difference. There are no toys or books out for the children, either in the home or at the school. They entertain themselves with each other, sticks, and anything they pick up off the floor. The sad thing is that I have seen 2 locked storage rooms full of donated toys. Likewise, their clothes are ripped and dirty, and I have seen boxes of new clothes that aren't being used. There is not much I can do about that, so our solution so far is to take toys with us (bubbles, chalk, stickers), use them, and carry them home again. We are also trying to reorganize their clothes storage system, so hopefully we will be able to incorporate some new clothes into that.

One project I do want to undertake is installing a bookshelf of books in the school and hopefully setting up a story time with the big kids each day. I will let some people know when I am ready for donations of that variety. It is certainly not my place to change the way the Babies Home is run, but I am doing my best to help the children and leave a positive mark.

There is so much more to tell, but that will have to do for now. It takes about 10 minutes to post pictures, but I will post as many as my time allows. First is the market picture I was unable to post lost time, then a few from the Babies Home.

Here are the babies on the mat in the morning.