Baby Orphanage

Where do I start?  How do I even begin to express all that I am feeling after being here in Mozambique for just a few days?  It would be easy to tell you how my team and I went to the baby orphanage yesterday.  It has an official Mozambican name but we call it the baby orphanage.  Why?  Because there are 75 children there under the age of 5.  Room after room of cribs and one big room full of high chairs and little dinning tables.  When we arrived the children squealed with delight and ran to us with arms outstretched.  I picked up one little girl and sang with her although I didn't understand her Portuguese song.  It was something about dancing as the other children were dancing up a storm.  I went to set her down to see if she would like to dance and she grabbed my hair, my glasses, my clothes and clung on and did not want to leave the comfort of my grasp.  As I watched the children dance I recognized a couple of the twins I had cared for in 2009 toddling around with their misshaped heads.  That's what laying in a crib the first year and a half of your life will do to the shape of your head.  They are the cutest little guys and I wanted to pick them up and snuggle with them but my little Rebecca would not budge from my arms.  Once the time had come for us to leave none of the volunteers wanted to go.  I had to remind them we would be back each morning to care for and love these little ones.  So the telling of experiences is easy.  The sharing of feelings is the hard part.  Hard to put into words all the emotions, the love and  the sadness.  One of my volunteers from 2009 wrote down her feelings.  Maybe this can give you some idea of how all this makes us feel.
 Orphan
You run toward me extending your arms to wrap around my body twice, with a smile that reaches me instantly.  You run toward me as though the harder we collide, the less likely we are to part.  You run toward me although someone has run from you.  You run toward me, and I fold my body over you as though I could press all the love that you've missed back into your life with one genuine embrace.  I fold my body around you like a mother who carefully wraps a wounded child.  I fold my body over you and for a moment I am all the shelter you need.  I fold my body over you, and you fold your body into mine.  ~Kellee English