Visiting a Rwandese orphanage, part two

Continued from here

Gisenyi is close to straight across the country from Kigali, but we went up and west, then down and west to get to it. The orphanage we were headed for is about 15 minutes outside of Gisenyi proper. It’s has a big sign on the side of the road that was very obvious – Orphenalinat Noel Nyundo. We were meeting someone there, but got there early, so we waited outside for a while and my friend M entertained a number of local children with her 10-month old baby, J. Everyone was fascinated with the muzungu baby . . . We finally decided to go in anyway and met the orphanage director (who spoke French, as did almost everyone we met) and a young man named Joseph. Joseph told us he had been raised in that orphanage, had been sponsored in his education through the university level and was now back working there, to give back to them. He spoke English relatively well and was our guide and translator while we were there. The director welcomed us and we were able to share our two-fold purpose – to find an orphanage that needed the kind of help we could offer, and to find an orphanage where we could adopt from. She was happy about both things. They told us they have not done an adoption there since before the genocide (and yes, they actually said “genocide”!), but that they had gotten a letter from the Ministry and knew that adoptions were beginning to happen in the country again and were happy to work with us. From what we knew of the adoption process, once we get that little piece of paper from the Ministry that approves us as adoptive parents (and sadly, that’s where all adoptions are currently stymied), we could then work with an orphanage and the local government (including the courts) for the area where the orphanage is located. We were invited to visit the children, so of course we did.

The first room we went to was actually the “clinic” room for the babies (which seems to be defined as kids 4 and under). We met two nurses there and I said I was also a nurse. I also told them I was a midwife and one of them smiled and nodded and said she was too! Wonderful. It’s always nice to meet other midwives. We then went to the infant room, where they have babies from birth to age one. I was impressed that they seem to have a much better idea of children’s ages (and have actual birthdates for them) than we experienced in Ethiopia. There was a blackboard on the wall that listed their names and birthdates – good idea! Anyway, we went into a relatively small room with wall-to-wall baby cribs. There were what we would consider bassinette-sized beds – no need for a “full-size” crib! There were at least 5 workers in that room, for 19 babies. Every one of them had a baby in her arms. We got to see and touch and hold those babies – there was no hesitation on their part (unlike the first orphanage we visited). I held a beautiful doll-baby of a girl named Mohoro, or “Peace”. They told me she was two weeks old and they found her abandoned in a pit latrine. She had scabs on her face and hands that made me wonder if they were from injuries before they found her. Life is pretty darn fragile for Rwandese babies. . . Truly, all of those babies are ones who need families and every one of them is just cute as can be. There was another baby girl who had the cutest, most kissable little baby lips you ever did see! There were also a couple of tiny babies I learned later were twins that were only two days old. They looked very tiny and underweight – skinny, skinny arms, skinny little faces . . . I hope the nannies there in the orphanage are able to plump them up and get them healthy. I am still SOOO sad that one government worker is able to prevent the adoptions of any of these kiddos. Hopefully that can change in the future.

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