orphanage visit (6-29)

Today, we went to visit an orphanage in a township called Finetown. For those unfamiliar with what a township is, the more appropriate word would be shantytown. People are living in shacks made of wood, scrap metal, used bricks – anything they can find. In these townships, people don’t have much access to electricity, food, water, or jobs.
This orphanage in Finetown is home to twenty-four children and many more children come to eat and play during the day. Most of these kids are orphans and today there were probably around 200 kids (I’m bad at guessing numbers of people, so this may be off…). This is the second time I have visited this orphanage, and there have been some drastic changes. They are working to become certified by the government, so in the last year, they fixed up the house and built a wall around the entire property. They installed locker-room type showers and are working on clearing space for a garden.
When we arrived, I helped to loosen up the soil with a pickaxe and threw away the remnants of an old cement wall that was only six inches below the surface. After working there for a bit, I went to play with some kids. Most of the children living at or visiting this orphanage were orphaned by AIDS and I was told last time I visited that as many as 75% of the children there were probably HIV positive. This information alone just never ceases to tear me up emotionally. I cannot and will not ever understand how something like this can happen to innocent children, but today was not about philosophizing about what had gone wrong, today was about loving these kids no matter what.
So, I played football (soccer) poorly and I let kids hang all over me. For about 45 minutes, there were two little boys who spoke no English that absolutely refused to let go of my hands and followed me everywhere I went. Then I got my hair combed by a little girl wielding a toothbrush. These children just wanted a chance to be kids and to be loved and that’s what we provided for them today. Going into this setting, I stopped and realized just how much what we were going to do was like what Jesus would have done. The kids needed love and we spent some serious time loving them. Sure it was exhausting, but it was an incredible time.