Emmanuel Orphanage

In the afternoon we made a visit to the Emmanuel Children's Orphanage, and I feel that this was easily the most rewarding thing we have experienced so far. There are 22 children of a range of ages living under one roof in two rooms with a surrogate family. Though the conditions are basic, the children seem happy and it is clear that there is a large amount of love for all the children from the parents. The twenty girls that live there share one room over four beds - incredibly small space for so many people, the boys have it better with two sharing a similar sized room. They seemed excited and happy to see us - the ice was broken with a nervous but tuneful round of hymn singing from them, which we attempted to return with a lot less competence.

We played for a while, kicking balls about and throwing frisbees - the children have so many different personalities, some are quite shy but respond so well to the attention given to them, others are disarmingly confident - it was so heartwarming to see young people who in most cases have not had happy starts to their lives enjoying themselves. The most significant thing that happened for me was meeting Robin, a young man who teaches the children music. I had already seen a disused guitar in the house and attempted to fix it (it was unfortunately beyond repair), and I asked if there were instrument shops in the area. He said yes, and we went for a walk amongst the dusty village tracks and rusting bus yards - unfortunately when we got to the shop, the quality of the instruments was atrocious, only negligibly better than the guitar in the house. We purchased a tambourine (which was played with some skill by a few of the girls), and resolved to send a package of instruments to them in the near future. Dan and I were both moved by the hopefulness and energy of the children, and the seeds of a longer term project are beginning to take form.