2009 Day9

Today was a very tiring day! We had the most fantastic morning at the baby orphanage which is about an hour away from the orphanage here in Hincest. We all piled on to the bus this morning and were so excited to arrive. The children were beautiful and we loved every minute with them.

Four beauties who did not want to go back into their cot!

Another beauty who smiled for every second apart from when I took the picture!

The baby orphanage houses orphaned or abandoned children under the age of 6. Boys and girls both with and without disabilities stay here and when they reach the age of 6 they move on to other institutions. The girls and boys who do not have any disabilities move on to separate orphanages. The boys with disabilities are moved to an orphanage in another part of Moldova and the girls are moved to the orphanage here.

This little boy came running with open arms as soon as he saw us

Loving the slide, just like kids at home

There are over 100 children in this orphanage but we only got to meet a handful. It seems to be pretty well run and all of the children that we met seemed really well behaved and healthy. It was lovely. The only thing which they all seemed to be lacking was love that a family could provide.

The kids were so excited to see us and came running with open arms. It was heart breaking putting them back down when we had to leave. I felt terrible for the nannies too as we left them with a load of screaming kids…

One of the babies in isolation

This baby wouldn’t stop smiling when he woke up. 🙂 He was fabulous. He is 4months old and has been in the orphanage for 2 of those. I’d love to know more about his background but there wasn’t anyone with us at the time to translate.

Part of our job when we were there was to clean up the yard. And what a task that was! I didn’t take any pictures but it would have been fantastic to see before and after shots. We moved what felt like tons and tons of half cut up trees – enough to fill three trucks.

Lifting girls in and out of the bath is nothing compared to all of the lifting we did today. It was very satisfying work but I won’t be rushing to do it again. Give me a desk and computer any day!

We watched a docunemtary this evening called “Convoy to the dying rooms” which is of how the orphanage used to look. A team from Northern Ireland filmed their trip to install a heating system. The orphanage director was all smiles but made it as difficult as possible for them to make any improvements. All the aid which they brought was locked away upon arrival and the volunteers were told that it had to be counted by government officials.

The volunteers found that children who couldn’t walk were lying in dirty cots filled with their own urine and feces. There was only one washing machine for whole place and they had no washing powder. The documentary was filmed in 1999 and at the time over half a million pounds had been donated to the orphanage over the past year. No evidence of this was seen by the volunteers. After a couple of very frustrated days, the volunteers just broke the rules, took matters into their own hands and broke into the stores. They cooked meals for the children, distributed new clothes, burned the old ones (so that the staff couldn’t take the new clothes and put the old ones back on them), threw out the old mattresses and replaced them with new ones, installed the new heating system and prepared a new play room complete with new toys.

It was a very upsetting documentary to watch. I don’t think I’ll be sleeping too much tonight.