Picture of a sign outside the orphanage forbidding pictures...They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but sometimes we can only commit to memory certain indelible images... images that later flash through our minds with more clarity and definition than we would ever want to see...
This was the case on our mission trip to Ethiopia last week, when we visited a government run orphanage prohibiting pictures. Our FormulaOneLife team painfully committed to memory nearly 140 infants and children institutionalized on the outskirts of Addis Ababa... where infant orphans have been suffering serious malnutrition for lack of unaffordable formula and vital aid. Just yesterday we learned of another infant death at this orphanage, and the word among neighboring homes is that infant mortalities are happening almost daily in overcrowded, underfunded orphanages like this one.
One of the first rooms we visited was a dark and damp room lined with cribs filled with toddlers. Some were faintly crying as if too weak or desensitized to cry louder... There was not a single nanny or staff member in this room or anywhere nearby. One of the toddlers was sitting up in her crib crying softly. As we wiped away her tears, caressed her cheeks and rubbed her cold bare feet, she soon fell asleep from the comfort, still sitting straight up in her crib...
Another toddler was standing in her bed, her little hands gripping the cold, iron bars of her crib. Her hands seemed almost frozen to the bars as I struggled to pull them away to warm them...
The older children were napping in equally cold, dark rooms lined with bunkbeds and no supervision anywhere to be seen. Our guide told us the tragic stories of the children, one by one, and we were asked to pray for them...
Upstairs was the nursery- comprised of two rooms for the infants. The first room was smaller with about 15 infants. Each had a note card above his or her crib and nearly all the cards read the same in Amharic (translated by our interpreter): “Found on road by police on (date).”
The second room was overwhelming... Nearly 50 infants in 26 cribs (two abandonment cards per crib) and most of them crying... crying because they were wet, with only two diapers allotted per infant per day... crying because they were cold- with the coldest baby hands I have ever felt- and crying because they were hungry... With 60+ infants to feed, bottle rationing and formula stretching is likely common. But even more than hungering for their bottles, these babies were starving for love... for as soon as we picked them up, they stopped crying... even though they were still cold, wet and hungry... our loving arms wrapped around them was enough to stop their tears and comfort them if only for a few, precious moments...
The visiting pediatrician pointed out the infants he feared would not make it, and we were told of one who went to the hospital earlier that day...
FOL was blessed to give over $9000 of formula, diapers, milk for the older children and 4,500 servings of vital Plumpy Nut (for malnutrition) to this orphanage and four others in Ethiopia on this trip...
As we do our best to identify ways to continue our support to overwhelmed orphanages like this one, may we all make one truly worthy commitment... committing to memory these forbidden pictures... of the orphaned infants and children who so desperately need us to remember them...
