Nothing more than a small dirt compound with a few tiny bunk rooms, an outdoor kitchen, and a small, empty school room, Tuleeni Orphange certainly looks like it has more have-nots than haves, if you catch my drift. When I started volunteering there with Randi and Karen (two other CCS volunteers) the Monday following Christmas, the clean, crisp purple and blue outfits from Christmas were long gone, replaced instead by tattered, dirty, and ill-fitting rags that might have been, at one point, actual shirts, shorts, and dresses. Nothing, however, shined more brightly than the smiles of those kids (ages one to fifteen) upon our arrival.
Still, I spent much of the next two weeks cringing, crying, and holding back aggressive frustration and indignation over the many plights of Tuleeni. Incredible amounts of filth, danger, and destitution hang around this haven (I hesitate the use the word) like a persistent plague... so much so, I can barely begin to describe it. But a "haven" it is, in that it provides a place for the kids of Rau to find one another and become an instant family. Children as young as five and six carry around their younger "brothers" and "sisters" on their hips as if they are their own. The teenage girls of the compound take turns cooking each meal for the dozens of others and run into town to buy each other school supplies and pay the building's bills. Boys years before puberty haul the orphanage ax out front to chop bits of wood, and tiny Queeni, probably no more than age five, suds up a rag herself and wipes down the bright blue front gate. Everyone has a job, everyone takes care of everyone. It's both beautiful and horrible.
So, I don't know... picture the worst possible habitat for a group of children to live on their own that you can imagine -- and you're nearly there. I routinely plucked rusty nails out of kids' mouths because they were just laying around everywhere. Regardless, the kids were everything I knew they'd be -- adorable, ambitious, and more often than not, incredibly bright and eager to learn. Bahati had a smile that could melt my heart, and Joyce (in her second year of secondary school) is so smart and hopeful, she is number 6 in her class of 104 and dreams of going to university, moving to France, and becoming a doctor/lab researcher who cures diseases. Enter volunteers! For two weeks, Randi, Karen, and I tag-team taught everything we could (which was a decent amount, considering the kids were all on break from school and had more ants in their pants than we had pencils and paper). Integrating alphabet lessons with stretching exercises, sign language with Swahili, and casual conversations with impromptu map explorations, we exhausted every bit of the minimal resources we had to make learning in the sweltering heat and cave-like classroom as fun and far-reaching as possible.
In general, my favorite experiences were getting to plunge out of my comfort zone by working with the teenage girls (in addition to dozens of other instances wildly outside my snug box of solace), dancing around with baby Jonathon on my hip, reading a book to the children every chance I got, and schooling some kids with my mean soccer keep-away skills (haha). In addition to teaching and playing with the kids every morning, we also organized an opportunity to return one afternoon with Nurse Annie from Australia (another CCS volunteer) so that she could hold an educational discussion with the older children (particularly the teenage girls) about HIV and AIDS -- an eye-opening afternoon for all. We were impressed by the number and quality of questions asked, and yet had barely even begun to imagine the depth of ignorance and malignant rumors that have been spread to and pushed upon these young women about disease, as well as rape and sex. Truly terrifying.All of these children are so vulnerable... not just to poverty, malnutrition, and disease, but to exploitation, violence, and, heck, their own memories, conscious and subconscious. Some were abandoned, others abused... all of them harbor so much. I grieve and ache for them. Even so... I don't regret a second of being there. Tuleeni Orphanage: an invaluable experience within my own personal education, as a teacher and as a human... in perspective, patience, succor, and compassion, no matter what. It's a weighty lesson, sinking and settling into my suddenly heavy bones.
Big Love to Randi for letting me join her there for as long as she did, and for all those who give their hearts and energy to the children of Tuleeni. Upendo na Amani. (Love and Peace)
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