Rangala Baby Home

As well as working at the primary school, I am also voluneering at a baby home
about half an hour from home. I'm actaully spending more time with the babies than at school
because in Kenya they like to can school on sport days and any other PD day that arrises.

Rangala Baby Home is a home for abandoned and orphaned children, from 1 day 4 years old.
They have a capacity for about 40 kids, but at the moment I think they have somewhere around
 50 kids living there. The children are divided into four rooms..the first being admission,
 there are 10 babies in here all unedr the age of 1. In the 2nd room there are another 10
and they are betwwen 1 and 2. When they reach 2.5 to 4 years of age they move up to the
final two rooms, but I've been working mostly with the tiny babies in admission. Each of
the babies have a different story..some of them very sad. Some of the kids ahve been
found dumped by their parents, very sad, one little baby was found in a toilet..another
was found in the garbage. It really angers me because ALL the loacls know about the baby
home and they know that they can just give their baby up there and it will be cared for,
but the choose to dump it somewheer and leave it for dead. Depressing yes, but the
communities are pretty good at reporting babies and the sisters go out and collect them
and bring them home, which is good. I suppose alot of the mums who dump their newborn kids
they ahve no other option..most are from things like rape or from mums that arean't ready
to be mums..they're just kids themselves (like 12 year old girls). Alot of kids are also
orphans..the mum unfortunatley passes away during chid birth or has HIV and is too ill
to look after the kid. Anywho, they all have a story.

I will tell you the story about our newest arrival - Elsie Nicole. Elsie arrived at the baby
home a week and a half ago as a two week old baby. Her mum is HIV positive and has
TB, she is bedridden and very very ill, poor thing. For the first two weeks of her life,
little Elsie was taken care of by her 8o year old grandmother. Her father was MIA. As the
story goes, her granmother was unable to look after her and she was brought to the RBH.
She is the smallest little thing in the world..when I first picked her up I thourght I was
going to cry..which is unusaual as not many things actualy get to me over here..this tiny
little precious bundle of life in my hands. Her legs are slightly bigger then my thumbs,
with her calves being the same size as them. She is super skinny and has a swolen tummy
because of malnutrition (don't think she got a whole lot to eat in her first two weeks).
Anyway, she's doing fine now. We took her for an HIV test the other day and a weigh in, she's
put on weight..she now weighs 1.9kg. To put this in persective..the average aussie baby comes
out at 3.5kg..at 1.9kg, she should be back in the hospital in a warm little bunk putting
on weight..but that is not the reality here. Her ersults wont come back for about a month, but
it's so frustrating because there is no need for her to even have a possibility of contracting
HIV. If the mum had taken the correct drugs during pregnancy and childbirth, she would
be fine. But once again, that is not the reality in Kenya...so many people can't afford
drugs or even if they are free afford to travel to the appropriate location where the drugs
are..sad. Elsie is so gorgeous..when she suckles she looks up at you with these huge gorgeous
eyes..so beautiful. I hope that she will put on some weight soon :). There are lots of
photos of little Elsie on my facebook if you want to see what she looks like!

I mostly work in admission with the babies. There are 11 babies there at the moment. They
each have a metal cot they sleep in, and spend the majority of their time in. Apparently babies are
supposed to sleep for 20 hours a day and should not be overly cuddled..I disagree and take
them outside to play more :) There are 3 tiny babies..Elsie is the smallest..with 2 others
that were both born in Nov/Dec - Martin and Lillian. Lillian worries me because she doesn't
feed ver well and with 10 brothers and sisters competing for feed time, she needs to start
drinking and putting on weight. The other babies - Derrick, Nicholas, Eric, John, JJ
(Joh joseph), Lewis, Joseph and John - are all aged up to a year old. Above their cots
they have DOB/DOA (DOA = date of admission). Some of the abies were admitted at 2 days old,
so sad. Better then not surving though, which is the aternate to the baby home! Each morning
we bath and change the kids, then we feed them, play with them, hange them, put them to bed,
feed them, change, play, feed, sleep, chenge, etc..it's quite repetitive..but good for the
kids. The babies are well looked after and are happy, especialy when they get cuddles.

The home is run my nuns and sisters..I've always wanted to work with sisters..like in the
sound of music..ha that sounds really lame.but it's cool. The sister in charge..Sister
Ester and the second in charge..Sister Bridgette, both wear veils on their heads and
the full outfit. The love the kids. The other sisters wear long work clothes. Most of the sisters are lovely. I have found that when there are white volunteers there (aka myself and another
volunteer I work with) particular sisters seem to go missing for a few hours and leave
everything - meaning the care of 10 babies - up to me..another slightly concering
feature of the baby home.

I get two breaks per day..which usually wittles its way down to one shortened break..but I
don't realy mind, I love the babies, get more cuddles and it's wayyy to hot to drink hot
tea when its 33 degrees and like 85% humidity and worse inside!! All the kids sleep
between 1 and 3pm, which is nice, because all of a sudden the non-stop screaming ceases
and it's really silent. This is until about 2:30 when the kids begin to wake up, scream
and begin to wake everyone else up! The kids in the second room (1-2 year olds) have taught
themselves to rock their beds back and forth, which makes thi horrendous noice of metal
screeching across the floor..which proceeds with the entire 10 kids being woken up and
joining in on the procession of rockers. Funny if your watchignt hem through the glass which
I nrmally do from my baby room, not so funny when you have to deal with the noise haha.My kids
are so gorgeous when they wake up, they're all quiet, smiley and just want to feed and play.

I get TOTALLY filthy when I work there..as you can imagine. I wear an apron, which somewhat
protects me from the vomit, poo, wee, food, bannana, etc haha. The other day I was
feeding little Eric and he was sucking away rapidly..a little too rapidly because when
I was giving him a pat on the back he began projectile vomitting not only what he had
just drunk, but the remains of his lunch (more milk and some smashed avocado)..awesome!
I continously smell like baby!! I sit down for dinner back at home completley exhausted,
afetr bathing and this waft of baby drifts scross you..all you can do is laugh!

So I'm mostly with the littlies, but I'm going to do something for the oler kids because their
day time is pretty miserable. When they have been fed, they spend their day on this outside
concrete area which is caged in, litterally It's uite big but there is not alot to do
their. They have broken most of their toys and the ones they ahve left they literally
pick and up toss around..usually hitting another kid. Lots of them fall over and there are
always a few kids with scratches :( SO..with a bit of money I'm going to re-paint all the
walls, paint some games and pictures on the ground and buy them some balls (as it's hard
to destroy balls!). On the ground I'm going to paint things like hopscotch, ladders,
snakes, rainbows, etc..hit me up with any ideas!! I'm going to paint their gross walls
with lots of different colours and pictures..at least then they will have something to look
at and amuse them for awhile instead of plain, wee infested concrete. Depressing!

Today is easter sunday..which doesn't really seem to be a massive thing here..I thourght
because the people are so religious they would all be home from work and with their families..
nope..buisnesses are fully operational! Funny..anywho me and the other volunteer here are
going to throw the kids some fun for Easter. We are going to have a disco for the kids,
bring speakers and make things like fairy bread and cookies, with cordial..don't think
they would have head any of them before so they will be on one massssive sugar high!!
We are doing this tomorrow..easter mondey, so that should be fun!

Anywho, I have once again tottled on for way too long. Thanks for reading if you're still
here with me. Hope you all have a lovely easter break and enjoy holidays! Miss you all,
lots of love, Lucy xxx.