Sanyu Babies Home

I knew I was apprehensive about visiting the orphanage.  It was something, for some reason, I felt I needed to do, but I also knew it would have strong emotional effects, whatever those may be.  “Spending time at a place like that will force you to focus on everything but yourself,” my mother kept telling me over the phone, “you really should give it a try.”  I love children, and I prefer to experience as many sides of a place that I visit as I can so that I can feel like I almost know the place when I leave.  The intense poverty that East Africa faces leaves countless babies and children without homes, and it is a side of the place I am in that I could never ignore.  Still, I knew I was putting off the visit.

One day, finally, I hopped on a boda and made my way towards the Sanyu Babies Home.  It is a Catholic orphanage that houses abandoned or mistreated babies from one day old to four years old.  After that the children are either adopted or sent to other orphanages.  I had a brief meeting with the administrator in which she asked a few questions about my background, then how long I’d be staying in Kampala.  Then she told me the best times for me to come would be the next evening from 3:30-7:00 and Saturday morning from 8:00-1:00.  I was instructed to bring my documents for photocopying.

The documents were never photocopied the when I arrived the next day.  When I went into the administration office with my passport I was told to wait outside.  The secretary would be right with me.  Just outside the offices is a large pavilion with a grass thatch roof and picnic tables.  I was going to sit in here and read while I waited, but today there were balloons hung and a large cake in the center of the table.  Everyone was sitting around as though they were waiting for a birthday party to start.  In true American fashion, not wanting to intrude, I walked down the walkway and a set of stairs to sit on a cement wall and read my book while I waited.  This did not last long.  If there is one thing I have learned over the last 24 hours it is that these children do not wait for you to come to them.  They are not shy or polite or discriminatory when choosing whom to love.  That is not what life as an orphan does to these babies.

After I’d been reading for about five minutes a little boy of about four years old caught me from the corner of his eye and his tiny, snot covered face unfolded into a beaming smile as his hand began violently waving in my direction.  “HELLO! HELLO!” he began shouting as his short, wobbly legs began running towards me, his uneasy body teetering above.  I didn’t even have a moment to recognize that this child was coming towards me.  He just came running, jumping into my space, throwing his wiry arms around me until his hands clenched onto the back of my shirt like robot fingers.  His head was buried in my lap and he was mumbling in half Swahili-half English about my name and his name and what I was reading.  Within seconds I was surrounded by toddlers, tiny fists clenched to my skirt and my shirt, scrawny arms and legs reaching up and grabbing my hair and climbing into my lap.  I had no idea how to react.  I looked around to the adults for some guidance, but they all seemed completely unfazed by the display, distracted by other babies and toddlers in laps and arms and on the floor.  Another little boy with droopy cross eyes and a roly-poly belly latched onto my hand and started pulling me, “COME! COME!” he said in muffled English.  And that was my introduction.  No, “here are the children, here is where we work, here is what you will be doing.”  No, “what is your name? where are you from?”  No one ever asked me anything, the children just pulled me in and sat me down at the party.  Soon another volunteer handed me a baby, “You don’t have any baby in your arms,” she said, “and I need to go do something so hold Sylvester.”  Then she added, as an aside, “oh, and they were out of diapers so he’s not wearing one.  Sorry!”

The party happened to be for a little girl that had just been adopted.  What an introduction to the place.  I could tell instantly which girl it was.  She had braids weaved into her hair and this brand-new, nicely pressed hot pink dress with rhinestones on it.  All of the other children were covered in old food, dirt and snot.  They were wearing mismatched clothes of every size and wear.  Boys were in girls shirts and boys shorts.  Everyone had closely shaved hair.  There were babies with skin problems, poor eyes, babies that looked emaciated, some that were chubby.  Some had signs of parasite infestation, others looked perfectly healthy.  All of them had a distinct odor of urine, feces, puke, old food, and general mustiness of poorly dried clothing, and every one of them smiled back at you when you made eye contact with them.

The party began when the giant drums were brought out.  I’ve seen them in gift shops, but never seen them used.  The drums are just what you’d picture, large enough to reach the seat of a chair when set on the floor, covered in cowhide, and incredibly loud.  A couple of women sat down and drums and began playing.  The beat felt immediately familiar to me, and set little toddlers’ hips into swinging motion.  Then the words began and I felt a chill spread over my body, beginning at the bottom of my spine and tingling to the tips of my fingers.  It was the same song I’d sung over and over again at church camp when I was young.  Everyone know it and began clapping and swaying along, and the older babies tried to sing along.  The scene felt so oddly familiar yet shockingly African all at once.  All of these tattered bruised babies swaying to the same song that I did as a child, clapping and smiling all the while as I always did.

The party was scheduled in honor of one little girl’s adoption, but was also being celebrated for a four-month old infant that looked as if she was a premature baby born yesterday.  She’d just come home from the hospital the day before, and they were rejoicing at her improving condition and increased weight.  Increased!  This girl looked so frail and thin to me that she seemed not even alive, not even human.  Yet she was a girl, a living, breathing, feeling girl that had been abandoned and left to starve in the cold night.  Looking at her then, I could not believe she’d survived, or that she’d been worse when she first arrived.  In three days she was scheduled to return to the hospital for surgery, what for no one mentioned.  I could not help but wonder what a fight a child of this size must have when entering surgery.

You might think an orphanage is a fun place to be, an uplifting experience, but I am not going to lie and say that it was any of these things for me.  It was eye opening.  Uncomfortably, hauntingly, disturbingly eye opening.  Over the next several hours I tried to help, but I felt like I was wondering around looking dumfounded, lost, and silly.  Children were constantly crying.  Crying, fighting, falling, escaping, peeing, pooping.  There were so many babies (49 to be exact) and so few adults that it seemed a child stood no chance of ever really being noticed each day, and it was clear that being noticed was the only thing that any one of them desired in this world.  When one of my nephews wants to hug or cuddle the moment always seems fleeting.  They reach out for brief affection before running off to play and test their own independence.  Not these children.  They crave adult connection, interaction, and affection like nothing I have ever witnessed before.  If a child’s little robot fingers latch on to any part of my body or clothes, there is no prying those little hands open, no separating yourself from the child.  Everywhere I stepped there were little hands reaching up to me, begging to be lifted or hugged.  It was overwhelming, and that seems like such an inadequate way to even describe the feeling.

I’d been sitting at the party with little diaper-less Sylvester in my lap for thirty or so minutes when a sudden warm shock spread over my leg then dribbled down my ankle.  Yep, I got peed on.  I picked him up and held him out in front of me, looking around for any giggles or guidance as to what I should do, but no one seemed the slightest bit shocked or concerned by the moment.  I quickly rose in my pee-soaked skirt and rushed Sylvester into the nearest building, searching for a changing room.  Eventually I managed to find someone who showed me how to use a towel to form a makeshift diaper around him before I rinsed my own leg and returned to the party.  These children sure do know how to initiate someone.

After several hours of playtime it was dinnertime.  Women started grabbing babies and carrying them in by the handful.  I was ordered to grab a baby and move to the back of the orphanage in a dark room with tiny tray-chairs everywhere.  There were benches, individual tray chairs, and one long bench with a tray in front.  Not a single seat was left empty.  Babies were filed in and plopped down in their proper spot as a large mama in the center of the room filled bowls with rice, chicken stew, and avocadoes.  She shoved a bowl of food and a spoon in my hand and pointed to a row of babies, then kept shoveling.  The food was piping hot, and I was afraid to put it in a baby’s mouth, but most of them were all screaming for food at once.  Speaking of screaming, you have never heard the sound of chaos until you have been in a single room with 49 babies waiting to be fed all at once.  It is a deafening, disturbing sound that I cannot even describe here, and I hate when words fail me like that.  The crying was so intense that I could not sleep that night.  Every time I tried to shut my eyes I swore I heard the sound of more babies crying.  I stood there, amidst this deafening sound that was just a part of each day for everyone else there, and tried to shovel food into babies mouths, moving up and down the row as I gave each baby a spoonful.  I watched as rice ran down mouths and into laps, trying to monitor as closely as I could which babies were getting enough to eat.  It seemed an impossible task though.  Soon enough a nurse was grabbing the bowl of food from my hand and shoving a hot bottle of what smelled like a flour-water mixture into each of my hands.  I held bottles to mouths as best I could, trying to minimize choking and liquid running down chins and faces, but they were all just a mess by the time everyone started grabbing babies and heading into the changing room.

Once again, I tried to keep up, grabbing a soaking wet, porridge covered, screaming little baby from its seat.  I carried him into the next room, where there were piles of clothes in the middle of the floor, all sizes and types mixed together.  Two changing tables to the right were being loaded up with rows of three screaming babies to each.  The toddlers were in the attached room, all lined up on plastic training potties, faces still covered in dried rice stew and dark little feet caked in red mud from the day’s play session.  Women were scrambling back and forth, stripping toddlers, wiping down babies, grabbing for random articles of clothing.  A large-hipped, shaved head woman with a commanding presence pointed to me and then to the changing table full of babies.  I tried to gather my thoughts as best as I could, jumped in next to a few others, and started changing diapers as best I could, throwing random clothes onto random babies.  I wiped all of the caked-on grime from their little mouths and chins.  All the while, I was feeling more and more dizzy, almost ill even.  I knew I wasn’t sick.  My mind was just running out of space to deal with all of the noises, and smells, and heart wrenching realities being thrown at me at once.

As I finished with each baby, I tried to find his or her bed.  Nurses would point to one of the three rooms full of cribs and say something like “Briana” or “Norman.”  I wandered around until I thought I’d found the right crib, then placed this tiny, tired mass into it and gentled lowered their cocoon of a mosquito net over the bed.  No good night story, no coddling or cradling or whispers of “I love you,” like so many babies in this world get every night.  Just feed, wipe, change, plop in bed, and they all went to sleep immediately.  They expected no more from an adult than this.

The next day was a similar scenario.  Crying, screaming drama.  I arrived early enough to help with all of the waking routines.  Women were handing me wet, freshly bathed babies and sending me into the next room to rub their African skin with cream then dress them.  This was the first time I realized just how frail some of their little bodies were.  A little girl was shoved into my arms and the weightlessness instantly shocked me.  She felt like nothing, yet the intense focus of her chestnut eyes told me the child was much older than she felt.  As I rubbed the cream down over her smiling face, under her bony chin, and down to her arm, there it was, a strip of gauze wound around a plastic catheter insert.  The catheter barely fit into her wiry arm that was nothing but infant bones and a paper thin layer of dark skin.  The image shocked me.  I paused from my robot-like routine and removed my hands from her, suddenly acutely aware of my own strength and worried I might break her.  Sunken chestnut eyes stared back up at me, begging for more touch and interaction.  It took me nearly 15 minutes to pull a sleeve over her poor fragile arm, and I fought back the lump that rose in my throat.  I did not even want to wonder what this girl’s story is.

That’s just the thing.  You try not to wonder what each child’s story is, but you know there is a powerful one behind each set of eyes.  You know that each of these babies have endured things that most adults are not strong enough to consider.  Yet they forgive the world for this pain.  They accept it.  They know nothing else but to cling to the hope that someone will pay attention to them, show them affection, give them a few basic daily needs.  What else could a baby do or know?

Later that day I was holding a baby that I realized was in desperate need of a change.  This seems the most basic daily need for a baby.  I carried him back to the changing room, only to realize there were no diapers around.  No pampers, and no cloth nappies or towels.  I went into the nearest administrator’s office and asked where the supply was.  She gave me an annoyed glance, then stared back down at her desk and replied, “I gave you the last one an hour ago.”  I wasn’t sure what she wanted me to do then, so I kept pushing, “so should I just wait?  Or should I go somewhere to get more?”  “There are no more,” was all she kept replying, then finally gave me a look that read, you can leave my office now.  I went back to the changing room and stood over this baby in a dirtied diaper, face covered in dried food, eyes seeping tears, and felt completely helpless.  Completely and utterly helpless, that’s what this feeling for the last 24 hours has been, I thought.  I did not know what to do.  I did not know what to do about this baby with no clean diapers.  What to do about this place that needed so much.  What to do with the realization that this was one of thousands of such places, and that thousands more babies existed on the streets in far worse conditions.  What to do?

I honestly have no idea.  I left that day with a heavy heart, feeling completely drained, dismayed, and yet grateful that I’d forced myself to confront this side of my beloved East Africa.  I’ve decided sometimes that’s all we can do.  We can confront an issue.  Confront it, acknowledge the complicated manner, and hope that when the chance arises you will have fostered the compassion needed to do something.  It may sound like a cop-out or a way for me to cope with the troubling issues that I encountered, but the human mind is usually compelled to resolve such conflicts somehow.  This is my temporary resolution.  Head-on confrontation.  I know some of those haunting moments will never leave me, and I am thankful for that.  Haunting moments are what motivate action.