Orphanage

For the past two weeks I've been doing my volunteer work at an orphanage. The orphanage currently is home to 130-ish kids ranging in age from newborn to four years old. Like I said before, some of the kids are orphans by the conventional definition while some are social orphans.

Every day I get to the orphanage at about 9:45 and go straight to Group #4, which is home to about 10 kids aged 3-ish to 24-ish months. I hang out in the room for a bit, playing with the kids, sometimes feeding them. Usually the women who work there feed them. Then I am sent outside to walk around with one or two of the babies until noon. We just walk around the facility, and back and forth in the shade. Sometimes I take a break, sitting on the curb talking to my babies and pushing their stroller back and forth. I also sing to my babies a lot. I love the babies I work with. I really do. They are beautiful and funny and it's great to talk to them and give them hugs and kisses, knowing they don't get enough of that. I think the stroller time is good for them, that they don't have much opportunity to get fresh air during the winter months.

Maybe here is a good place to mention that Russians are very good at protecting kids from the sun. All kids, maybe up to age 10-ish, wear hats when they are in the sun. We are instructed to keep the kids as much as possible in the shade when we are walking them in their strollers. Throughout my life I've had enough blistering sunburns to make me an adamant supporter of how seriously the Russians take skin damage. Anyway, back to my daily orphanage routine.

I bring my first baby back from our walk at noon. I then hang out in the room for a bit. Again, I sometimes am allowed to feed one of the kids. Then I get two or three more kids and I walk with them. Don't worry, they have a two-seated stroller which fits three well enough. I bring those babies back at two and I'm done for the day.

The orphanage facility is a nicer environment than I expected. It's pretty clean. The food looks alright, though lacking in fruits and vegetables. The women who work at the orphanage are nice with the kids, talking and singing to them. Often they are rougher feeding or picking up the kids than I would be, but the kids seem okay with it. I'm not sure about the diaper policy at the orphanage. I obviously understand their need to conserve diapers because disposable diapers are so expensive. However, it is weird that most of my group's babies usually aren't wearing diapers. They just pee in their clothes then the workers change their clothes. I haven't witnessed it, but I imagine the same policy holds if a kid poops in his or her clothes. When I bring kids out to walk, the staff usually put a diaper on them so they don't soil the stroller. Meanwhile, another volunteer who works with another group said that her kids always wear diapers. Maybe the diaper policy varies from worker to worker. Though not using many diapers is weird, I can understand why they do it, and it seems to work out alright for them. The worst thing I've noticed at the orphanage is that the kids don't cry much. I think that because there isn't enough staff (I'd approximate a 1:6 staff to child ratio.) for the kids to always get attention when they cry. In this way, the kids eventually learn to be helpless. They usually don't cry anymore, even when they want something. This at first seems like it is a good thing, but really that learned helplessness likely sticks with them for the rest of their life. Even the nicest orphanage ever is not a good place to be raised. The psychological problems kids face because they lived in an orphanage can be pretty serious. Kids need homes. Real homes.

To end on a happy note, I've been told that 90% of the kids at my orphanage get adopted. This is because they are so young. It is harder to convince people to adopt a school-aged child. The 10% who don't get adopted eventually move to an orphanage for older kids. Every day we see future parents (usually Russian, sometimes American) at the orphanage, visiting their future children or even picking them up to take home. The baby I walk with every day, Lena, was actually just adopted today. It's a little sad that I won't see her again, but that would have been the case regardless when I leave Russia in a few weeks. It is really, really great that Lena is going to have a home.