Sanyu Babies Home

                             

Last Tuesday was a bit of a rough day.  Spending our first day in the Early Stimulation Centre was disheartening.  Jen & I returned home feeling exhausted and frustrated.  So we decided that maybe snuggling with some babies would make us feel better.  We promptly set out for Sanyu Babies Home, an orphanage 5 minutes up the road where 50 children under the age of 4 live.  Turns out that hanging out here is the best cure to exhaustion - it’s hard not to be pumped while spending time with all these kids!

Our first day was so amazing.  These kids are just incredible.  It’s hard to describe, but I’ll try.  

Picture this:

You walk through a green iron gate and up a red dirt path toward an inconspicuous looking house.  As you pass to the back of the house you see that there are kids everywhere.  Everywhere.  Not sure who to go to first, you pause for a moment to look around.  As you stand there, four toddlers saunter up to you on unsteady legs with their arms outstretched, big brown eyes boring into yours - piercing your heart - as they request, “Up?”  What can you do but scoop two of them into your arms (you have two arms, afterall!) and lead the remaining two to a sandbox where you try to pour out as much love and attention on all of them as you can possibly muster.

That isn’t even half of it.  There’s a room that houses the really little babies - currently 6 of them.  I love little babies.  I’m such a sucker for their big eyes and little fingers.  On my first day, I came across baby Mary, a teeny tiny little girl of one month, who is the size of a newborn with eyes the size of a 2 year old.  She’s beautiful, and rested so quietly in my arms.  I fed her and she guzzled her bottle like a champ (or, like a child who is fed only for as long as the ‘mamas’ can spare).  I found it really hard to walk away after laying her down in bed.  While it’s no reflection on the mamas, as they have a really hard job caring for 50 kids, I struggled with not knowing whether this fragile little girl would be picked up if she cried in the middle of the night, or if someone would take the time to rock her to sleep, or to sing soft soothing songs in her ear, giving her the love that children need to thrive.

I find it so hard to wrap my mind around the idea that these kids have no one in the world beyond each other, and the revolving door of volunteers and workers who come through Sanyu.  

This is the dilemma that I keep coming across here in Uganda.  While in the midst of activities, of spending time with people, of engaging in conversations and getting to know locals, I am absolutely loving life.  This country is so wonderful and I feel surprisingly at home here considering it’s been such a short time.  But as I lay in the dark at night and reflect on these things I find that I become overwhelmed by the despair of so many of these situations.  Story after story after story that I hear here is full of struggle and hardship.  For me, this contrast of happy and sad is especially true of the kids at Sanyu.  To be with them is SO fantastic - they’re all such vibrant and enthusiastic kids.  But their situation is far from great.  I find it easy to get overwhelmed by it.  

Anyway, my hope isn’t to bring you down.  But I don’t think that I’d be doing justice to these beautiful, smiling faces without talking a bit about what their lives are like.

Bottom line: Sanyu Babies Home is a little haven full of smiling faces where a group of mamas and volunteers work hard to do their best for these itty bitty boys and girls.