Brasilia, Brazil
A little girl with an adorably dimpled face follows me, as I walk around the children’s home for the first time. She finds a jumprope, and tries her hand at jumping rope, which for her mere four or five years old is more like walking rope. Raquel is a fairly skinny little girl, wearing a heavy winter hat, even though the sun is blazing and the temperature must be reaching 80°F. I tickle her and pick her up, as she squirms and laughs at being tickled.
We look at the buildings of Orfanato Cristo Vivo, briefly being told what each one is- the girls’ house, the house I will stay in, the office, the “library”, the house they have been re-constructing for three years, the soon-to-be functional computer room full of resurrected computers. Already some work has been done to clean up the worst part of this children’s home which has not seen any maintenance in, it seems, years, but there is much work to be done.
There is an orchard area that has been cleared, and a friend is trying to enlist help from her friends in the agricultural program at the university to teach the kids how to take care of plants. There are a bunch of fruit trees, with fallen fruit rotting on the ground beneath them. A few weeks ago Paulo and some others cleaned up the broken glass and rusted metal pieces that were all over the ground beneath the trees. The grass grows wild and uncut everywhere.
Then Raquel, Paulo, and I walk to a small house in the back of the property. In front of the house, Raquel walks on top of broken TVs and steps inside the house, on top of a mass of wet, dirty, molding clothes and broken toys. This is the donation pile. Raquel finds a pink barbie-type car in the pile, and she checks out its wheels- they all work. It must be one of the few working toys in this mess. She cheerfully plays with it.
The “donation” room is more like a dump. There is a pile of old, broken TVs outside the room. The eco-conscious side of me cringes at the toxic pile of old TVs. In addition to being dangerous to walk on, all of the junk must be leaching chemicals into the ground, making for an unhealthy environment for these kids. In addition to the junk room, there are multiple piles of trash and dirt in various places on the orphanage compound.
Raquel and the other kids don’t even seem to realize the piles of trash. They don’t realize when the babies are wet and need changing. The kids play with the trash and are asked to change the babies’ diapers. Parts of the compound smell like feces, as some of the kids have behavioral issues stemming from abuse, and defecate on the ground or the porches of the buildings.
There are huge needs in this orphanage. Our first project is cleaning the place up. We’ve enlisted help from friends here, and already have about a dozen people who are coming to do a “Clean-up Revolution”on February 6 and 7. We plan on getting some garbage cans for trash to go in, so the kids won’t litter. We’re also planning on teaching them how to recycle things and have a compost bin. This doesn’t sound like super-spiritual work, but you cannot tell these kids that God loves them without showing them that because God loves them, we want to help take care of them and the place they live in and show them their worth. They are God’s treasures!
-Emily Bair
contact@thejourneyproject.org
We’re still trying to raise money to get paint and some other supplies for our clean up days. Our goal is to raise $300 USD, and we are almost halfway there, thanks to your donations! If you would like to contribute to this work, please visit http://thejourneyproject.org/1/donate.html to give.
