Fondation Regard D'Amour

I love children. I have worked in a nursery, playing with hyper toddlers, calming screaming infants, and changing countless stinky diapers. I have taught swim lessons, dealing with obstinate three year olds. I have spent countless hours babysitting my own young brother and sister, helping out with the not-so-fun jobs such as potty training. While at times little kids can be exhausting, I have always found that the joy they bring far outweighs the frustration they cause. I love cuddling on the couch with my 5-year-old brother. I love holding babies in the church nursery. I love walking down the streets and waving at the children tied to their mother’s back with colorful strips of fabric as they smile and wave, yelling “Yovo! Yovo!” The joy on a child’s face always seems to radiate, leaving its mark on everyone around. Never did I think I would be at a place where the filth and frustration was so overwhelming that I could not even bring myself to hold a crying baby.

This afternoon, I had the opportunity to go to Fondation Regard D’Amour, a local orphanage. I told that we would simply be going in to play with the children while the workers had the opportunity to take a computer class. “How simple,” I thought, “this is just like my job back home. We will just sit around and play with the babies.” I was given the afternoon off of my work on the ship so that I could go with the small group to help out. On the drive there I was so excited, ready to play with little children. However, I soon realized that the situation was so much different than I had expected.

The children did not wear diapers, there were not enough available. All of them, even the infants, simply wore underwear and a t-shirt. Of course none of them were potty trained, so they would just wet their underpants whenever they needed to go. For this reason, they just did not wear any other pants. Even worse, after wetting themselves, nothing was done about the mess. There were a few wet towels scattered around the ground that we could use to soak up the puddle, but the underpants were not changed and nothing was disinfected. Their hands and toys would get in the mess, then they would put their hands and their toys in their mouths. The ground and the children all reaked of urine. It was so hot and humid in the room that the stench was magnified even more. They would wet their cribs, but the sheets were not changed. The few times the puddles were mopped up with a towel, nothing was done with the towel, it was simply left in the middle of the floor.

I stood in the center of the room in complete shock over the situation. I didn’t want to sit to play with the children, because that required sitting in the filth. But to pick up a baby would mean that I would be covered in their pee. It was so hard knowing that we could not come in and fix the situation. We could not come in with our Soft Scrub and sponges, diapers and wipes, and clean up all of the mess. Instead, we were expected to just come in and take care of the children in spite of the mess. But because of the mess, it was almost impossible to play with the kids.

On top of all of the mess, there were hardly any toys for the babies to play with, only a few stuffed animals and a broken Little Tykes car. They just crawled around on their own and entertained themselves. A few times I caught a few of the babies, all less than a year old, playing by themselves out on the deck, not a single person watching them. When a baby cried in his crib, no one went to his aid. After coming back to the ship, my roommate asked me if the children seemed happy. Sadly, as I thought about, I realized that not one of them really smiled or laughed throughout my time there. If you tickled them, they would giggle, but not with the joy of an innocent baby, rather with the strained laugh of a child who is experiencing a rare moment of happiness. The lack of joy in the building just darkened the already straining mood.

After two hours in the orphanage, I was so mentally drained that I could not bear to be there a moment longer. During the whole drive back to the ship, I just thought about the experience. I was in such shock that I could hardly even speak.

While we were discussing the orphanage, one of the other girls who went made an incredible observation. While we were in the orphanage, we could hardly stand to love on a child covered in such filth. But Jesus not only came down and loved on us in all our filth; He came onto our level and lived IN our filth to show us how much He loved us. I know that there is absolutely no way I could have such love for those infants to live in that filth with them, I could hardly even pick one of them up. To see such a tangible example of Christ’s love for us, and how much I fall short of possessing that sort of love, I am left in total awe. In some ways, I want to go back to the orphanage because I want to help those children, but I don’t know if I can bring myself to face the reality of the situation again in the near future.