Motherless Babies Home

On Thursdays, there’s a group from the Chevron camp that visit the Motherless Babies’ Home on Lekki, and I have started tagging along. (In six weeks, I’ve made it only three times, so don’t start thinking I’m a saint or anything.) The orphanage is well maintained by Lagos standards, and it appears that the children’s basic needs are met. All except one... affection.

I am not saying that the ladies that run the home don’t care for the children. I really can’t say either way. It’s probably all they can do just to keep the babies cleaned, fed and diapered. But I do know that these kids are hardly ever touched, hugged, or held. They don’t know what the word “hug” means... literally... I ask for hugs and all I get are blank stares.

The ladies from the Chevron camp bring a large tub full of toys and books for the kids to play with during our visit. We cannot donate the toys because they will disappear—smuggled out by the men and women who work at the home. It’s easy to say they are bad for doing so, but their children probably don’t have toys either, or even enough to eat, so if they can bring home a toy for their children or to sell at the local market, who can truly blame them? What wouldn’t you do to care for your family?

The school-age children are in class when we visit, so I’ve never seen them. We visit the babies, toddlers and special-needs children. The babies, of course, are sweet and innocent, and you wonder who could have let this perfect child go, and why. The story behind each child there must be heartbreaking.

Some of the special-needs children have very limited abilities. They can’t walk, speak or move their limbs. Some are blind and deaf. Confined to cribs unless taken out for walks in the strollers. But they are clean and fed and clothed and have a roof over their heads, which is more than a lot of children in Lagos have.

The toddlers are active and energetic, but it can feel a bit like Lord of the Flies at times. The children do not get the benefit of adult mediation—no one to reward positive behavior and correct bad behavior—so they steal from each other, hit, punish and kick. It’s survival of the fittest, and you wonder what kind of adults they will grow up to be. Honestly, it makes me shudder to think about it.

When I visit the home, I spend my time on the floor covered with kids. Trying to give individual attention to the children around me, trying to keep them from hitting and arguing with each other, and trying to keep them from stealing each other’s toys. Trying not to get covered with snot or worse.

She loved having her picture taken. She pointed to the picture, then to herself, and back
to the camera again, as if to say, "That's me!" She is so sweet but doesn't speak a word. 

Some children want you to help them dress their babies, some want to sing or touch your hair and look at your watch or phone or sunglasses, some want you to roll a car back and forth to them (there are a lot of toy Chevron cars as you can imagine—the characters from the TV ads). They love to get their pictures taken and see themselves in the digital display of a camera. I pat their backs and stroke their heads, so they can get the benefit of a loving touch for an hour or two.

Enjoying lunch and juice donated by Chevron. 

The beautiful part of my visits are when I see a child smiling and reveling—rolling like a cat in catnip—in your attention. They eat it up. Can’t get enough. They won’t let you go.

The ugly, grim parts of my visits are seeing the children suffer from infections, rotting teeth, wounds, diseases and parasites. Yesterday, during my visit, a toddler spit on the floor and pointed to it. There was blood in the saliva. I tried to hide my disgust. Some children have swollen bellies as they fight off parasites. There is one little girl whose front teeth are black and green and half gone. And to make matters worse, she is always crying—in pain from her teeth? Some other pain? I don’t know. But her crying annoys her caregivers so I think she gets less attention than most.

I spent an hour with this little girl (green shirt) yesterday.
She liked to sing "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" and be swung around the room.

At the end of our visit, we collect the toys and pack them up. The kids know the drill by now so they are pretty good at helping with the clean-up. The good ladies at Chevron sanitize everything back at the camp so they’ll be ready for next week. And I go home to  sanitize myself—peeling off my filthy clothes, taking a scalding hot shower and thanking God that my children do not have to live without love or comfort or security like these children do.