Do they know it's Christmas time at all...
on Hysteria in Nigeria (Nigeria), 12/Dec/2011 11:02, 34 days ago
I know that most of my blog updates make little mention of some of the more‘real’ aspects of life here. The situations that come at you like a kick in the stomach and make you realise just how lucky you are. And it’s not that I don’t encounter these situations frequently. It’s more that I try not to dwell on them, or not on my blog anyway. But this is going to bean exception.On Friday I went to an orphanage in Abuja with a group of teachers from a school here, who have been visiting the orphanage for a couple of years now. And boy oh boy. The staff do their best - the children are clean and they don’t go hungry. There are about 30 children, most of them under the age of 3, and they all sleep in one room. And from what I could gather, they also spend pretty much all day, every day, in that room – apart from a few of the older ones who are able to open the door and go outside themselves. Butfor the younger ones, the staff can’t cope with taking them outside – one or two toddlers is enough of a handful, but 20 of them? Not easy. I even wonder how much time the smaller ones get to spend out of their beds. There were several very young babies. I picked up a baby when I got there because she was screaming, and I couldn’t put her down until I left because she just wouldn’t stop crying. I don’t think she was very well; she had a really chesty cough and seemed very hot, but unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be easily accessible medical care for the children there. And asthey also haven’t had immunisations, and all sleep together in one very hot room, my guess is they get sick pretty frequently.But if there was to be one positive, it would be that you can see how much the children love having the teachers going there each week. They were telling me that when they first started going it was really difficult to get the children to play with each other, because as soon as they were given a toy they would just want to run off with it and keep it for themselves, but now they do play with one another, and have learnt how to cooperate with each other (most of the time!). And some of the older ones were so desperate to learn, there were some foam letters, and one little girl just wanted me to teach her the alphabet the entire time I was there.You could also see how much the community tries to help out, as just in the few hours we were there, about 5 or 6 people came through the gate to bring food for the children. Unfortunately what they need more than anything (apart from medical care) are people to go in there and just spend time with the children. So I’m going to go back each week. I don’t know how much good it will do, but it will at least mean that for an extra few hours there’s someone there playing with them and talking to them and just giving them some attention, which they are all so desperately lacking.(And don’t worry mum, Squirt is proving enough of a challenge as it is. I appreciate that I can’t bring 30 children home with me)