I think I’ve mentioned once or twice the orphanage in town.  I had been hearing about the children there from Shantelle nearly since I first arrived.  It is clearly a place close to her heart.  I had met some of the older boys a couple of weeks ago at the Boone’s house, but that was all.  Although I had wanted to visit for a while now, I hadn’t had a chance until this week.  Shantelle, the Boone family, and their friends Chris and Emily, were planning on spending the afternoon with the kids and I decided to tag along.

The orphanage is run by Catholic nuns.  It is a mid-sized rectangular building set around a central concrete courtyard, with a playground out back.  The children are all pretty young.  If I had to guess, I would say they were all under the age of nine or so.  Truthfully, to our eyes, it looks pretty sparse, but it was clean and all of the children appeared to be pretty well taken care of.  As soon as we pulled up, children were at the door of the orphanage, yelling out greetings.  It was clear my friends were favorite visitors.  We greeted the nuns on our way in and paid our respects, but as soon as we crossed the threshold, we were pulled into a whirlwind of energy.  The kids gathered round, shouting out for their favorite adult, demanding hugs, eager to start games.

One of the first things we did was to gather some of the babies and toddlers from the nursery.  Given the number of children, this age group often does not get as much affection and attention as it should.  I don’t mean to be critical.  It is a large job and the nuns clearly care about their charges.  But the reality is that the older children are naturally more vocal about their needs and have each other to play with.  The babies and toddlers are often in their cribs most of the time.  So we each gathered up a little one to cuddle and feed while the older kids ate their lunch of rice and beans.  The kids would periodically come over to help with a bottle or stroke a baby’s head.  It was clear that nuns had taught them to be gentle and careful with the younger ones.

I had brought stickers with me from the States for kids that I met.  In the past when I’ve traveled, I’ve found that having a little something like stickers or coloring books can be a good way to break the ice with kids I meet when we don’t speak the same language.  I had this image in my head where I would take out the stickers and be able to tear off a couple from each sheet for each child in a calm orderly fashion that would ensure everyone got a roughly equal amount.  (Anyone who has children is probably laughing at me right now.  Actually, given the size of my extended family and all of the children I’ve spent time with over the years, I am laughing at myself).  Of course, the minute I pulled the stickers out, they were pulled from my hands  by the biggest of the kids, who rapidly started peeling them off and sticking them to anything (or anyone) standing still, including themselves.  Chris and I managed to re-establish some semblance of order to oversee the distribution, and I will say this, I was so impressed with the older kids.  Although they weren’t going to give up control of the sheets, they did make sure that all of the little ones got stickers too, sometimes going so far as to pull them off their friends and re-stick them on those who had fewer.  It was a feeding frenzy for a bit but you really can’t blame them.  Stickers are awesome and toys are definitely scarce.

The fun then moved outside to the playground, where the adults were very quickly worn out and the kids showed off all of their moves on the jungle gym with boundless energy.  The playground is the kind of bare bones metal death trap-looking structure that no American parent nowadays would let their child near…and that I and my friends had an absolute ball on when we were kids.  (I remember when my former elementary school rebuilt their playground after I had moved on to Middle School and all I could think at the time was how boring it looked).  Now, as an adult myself, I tried to focus on the joy in watching the kids, and pushed down the rising panic every time a child almost flew off the merry-go-round.

Eventually, it was time to go and hugs all around were given.  The kids saw us off to the gate, yelling goodbyes.  Just a great, great day.