Chenzhou Orphanage was by far the most touching and life changing for our family. I believe because we were able to spend several days with the children, nannies and meet with the director a few times.
When we first arrived we were directed to a conference room to meet the director and learn a bit about the orphanage through our guide/translator, whom we call Fawn. We would leave our hotel around 8 am & walk to the orphanage (about 15 minutes), spend until 11 am with the babies, go back to our hotel for lunch, meet again around 2:30, walk back and spend the afternoon with the older children.
The room where we spent time with the older children was very small when occupied with our group, the nannies, and the children & with the amount of activities we had scheduled with them, some of us spent time with the babies in the afternoon also, going down with the older children to participate in certain activities while going outside, the cake, face painting, dress-up, etc.
When we first arrived in the baby playroom (it's for children under 4 I believe) there were about 4 nannies sitting with the kids. The nannies seemed very leery of us, of course who wouldn't if 13 strange westerners came, toting cameras of all sizes and reaching for children! Our guide, Fawn, was wonderful at expressing our sincerity in wanting to help, play with, and help take care of the children. The little ones stared at us, cried, some hid, and others just didn't mind us being there. It seemed the general thing to alleviate crying was to pick them up and walk with them. I got the idea that many of them aren't held a lot due to there being so many of them, so when they were up in our arms on our level it was a whole new world.
With so many children there were very different personalities, some shy, some outgoing, one little girl was "crabby old woman" LOL, one little boy Tim called "cowboy Bob" because he loved to rock back & forth on a rocking horse, Carmen's little girl loved to just be held and rocked, she loved textured things. Most of the little ones in this room had one special need or another, whether they had cerebral palsy (CP), spinal issues, heart, club feet, cleft palate or lip, brain injury, fingers missing, blindness, and many more. The one thing they all shared was their need for touch, stimulation and play. You would hear belly laughter at any given time from one child or many, we would be snuggling and cuddling, playing peek-a-boo, etc.
Usually during our last half-hour it would be feeding time, the nannies would come get some in order to line them up in their bamboo chairs like a small assembly line. A large cooking pot of rice with what smelled like chicken broth along with some small diced vegetables (I could see carrot & onion for sure) was the staple meals. The children would eat very large bowls with heaping teaspoons. We were allowed to feed them and were very surprised how rhythmic it was for them because it was their way of life determined by the routine needed to bring functionality to their day.
In another 2 rooms were the really small babies ranging in age from 3 weeks to several months, this is where my heart came into play. They had brought in little chunky monkey with a big smile and handed her to me and I melted. I got to spend a few hours with her and then feed her a bottle which she just nursed slowly while I stared at her. I couldn't find a blemish on her anywhere whereas most of the children either had noticeable scars from surgery, or outward differences noting their special needs. The next morning as we were walking past the infant room we saw 2 babies in bouncy seats with their little arms hooked to ivs, when Tim & I walked in one of the little ones just looked at him with the biggest smile. Fawn was beside me to translate that she was my chunky monkey's twin! Apparently they were dropped off on the orphanage steps with the little one only weighing a bit over a pound. I was confused how this could happen until the nurse in our group, Shawn, explained what is referred to as twin-to-twin transfer, where one twin receives most of the nourishment and the other doesn't get enough usually causing premature birth and very low birth weight. We learned that their Chinese names (which we are not allowed to use) the one for the little one means Clever & for the bigger, her name means Strong. So from there on out we will call them Cassidy (for Clever) and Aila (Strong). The nannies were so wonderful when I noticed that Aila was not responding to sound from one of her ears, she had a very bad infection in it. They took her to the hospital (clinic) for testing the day we left the orphanage, but were unable to find out anything since she would need to be asleep for the proper hearing test to determine hearing loss. They were taking her the next day during the afternoon, I wonder how her results turned out????? : (
rebond with their kids from last year. About half the smaller little ones were either ready or promised to their forever families and some didn't even have papers started. When we asked about how it's determined who gets paperwork started and who doesn't, no one seemed to know the answer.
The older kids loved anything and everything that the group brought out, they loved painting others faces as much as having theirs painted. These kids are very sheltered from what goes on outside their walls due to where they have to live, but with all the help from our friends who donated time, money and their heart to supply craft items, dress-up clothes and so much more, these kids were able to experience so many different forms of entertainment and we were able to leave the items there for them to enjoy for as long as possible.
I think the hit of the days were the cake celebration, not only did they love the candle, which was awesome in itself, but they dug into it with full force of licking fingers, plates and anything with a crumb left. There was cake brought upstairs to the toddlers and they couldn't wait for the next bite, they were climbing on the nannies to get their sugar fix! I'm so sure the nannies were happy to get back to their routines when we left.
Saying goodbye was extremely hard, I really didn't want to leave. Even the nannies had tears when we left, I believe they were tears of sadness, not of joy : ) These are just a few pictures of the kids, please visit Flickr to see the rest, do a search for bralcars and we will have all the pictures loaded by tomorrow.
I have posted on almost everyone else's blog. Thank your for sharing your experiences. My daughter spent her first 16 mnths in Chenzhou before coming home in July 2009. We were unable to visit the orphanage due to H1N1, so your insights are giving me more information than I ever had about her living environment. Much of it is what I expected and confirms so much. Thank you again, and I everyone's detailed information on their experiences is so appreciated! Also, thank you for your work. I can't tell you what it would have meant to know Sidney had someone spending extra time with her prior to coming home!
ReplyDeleteI am taking my daughter to visit this orphanage next summer
ReplyDeleteCan you tell me how you found a translator, what hotel
you stayed in and how you contacted the orphanage
for approval to visit. Thank you. Rachel.
You can email me details at rmetheny@broadwayumc.org