Day Four- November 5, 2007

We were picked up at 9:00 am Monday morning and stopped at the open-air market, where you can buy just about any type of construction supplies. It is like a huge open air Home Depot. Gil was in heaven and mentioned several times how much he loved places like that. We got to the orphanage about 10:45. Last night, Gil wrote up a scope of work for Phase 1, and today we met with four different contractors. We agreed last night that Phase 1 would be to get the building shell into sound shape. The building is in absolutely terrible shape. One major problem is that some villagers stole most of the lower sections of the downspouts, so that the downspouts end about 15 feet short of the ground. The roof area is very large, so when it rains, there is a tremendous amount of water that comes out of the downspouts. Now, the water washes down the lower sections of the exterior walls and has done significant damage to the walls and foundations. The building has 17-inch thick walls that are brick with a cement layer over the brick and then a stucco layer over the cement. There are several areas where the water has washed away all the stucco and cement and has done major damage to the brick.

The building has 86 windows, and they all need to be replaced. Almost every window is either broken or missing all together. Yesterday, when it was moderately windy, you could feel the wind blowing through all parts of the building. It was like a wind tunnel inside. The doors are also in terrible shape. Some of the rooms on the lower floor do not even have their floor structure anymore and are completely useless. The building has no showers, no hot water, and no laundry. The kids are all living on the 2nd floor. The 3rd floor is not being used and is in very bad shape. The two bathrooms on the 2nd floor are in awful shape and stink terribly. The only toilets are Turkish toilets, which are basically just holes in the floor with no traps and that is why they stink so bad. There are supposed to be water sprayers to flush the toilets, but they do not work.

The electrical system for the building shorted out recently so they rigged one 14 gauge wire for the entire building. Gil was very upset by this, and decided, “I have to fix this before I leave here!” He has spent a lot of time inspecting the entire electrical system and is trying to figure out how to fix it. I went into the attic yesterday to inspect the roof, which is relatively new corrugated metal. The old roof was corrugated asbestos. When they removed the old roof, they dumped all of it in the attic so the entire attic floor is covered in asbestos roof scraps. It is everywhere. The roof has a few holes but it can be fixed relatively easily. Someone recently installed 10 new gas radiators in some of the 2nd floor rooms. They did it by punching holes in the exterior walls to vent the radiators and it looks like they punched the holes with a hammer, so the holes are very ugly and not fixed on the outside. The radiators are being fed by cheap and thin plastic lines that are sloppily run on the outside face of the building. Sometimes thinking about trying to fix up the place is overwhelming to me.

We found out today that the building that the kids were living in last winter, when we first saw them, is being sold by the government because it is no longer being used by the orphanage. I went into it today and it is in devastating shape. I can’t imagine anything can be done but to tear it down. I also looked over the building where the kitchen and dining hall is. The roof still has the old asbestos roofing and has several missing or severely damaged areas so it must leak very badly. There are several sinks where the faucets can’t be turned off so the water just runs all the time. There is no heat at all in the entire building. The ceiling in the dining hall is coming down because of the leaking roof. They have the gas turned on now (gas was off in Feb.) but are not using the large gas stove because it does not work. They have two very small gas stoves that they use for the cooking. The building does have a very large covered front porch that would be great for the kids to eat outside in nice weather but the ceiling is in terrible shape because of the leaking roof.

The older children left because they were sent away because they were 17. The newer kids are all younger with several 5-8 year old girls. There are also some new younger boys. They boy who studied on the computer so much is still there. We have seen a few disturbing incidents of some of the boys being bullies and beating up the younger boys. Also, yesterday we saw a really cute 5 year old girl who was playing with a plastic toy phone. We could tell that she loved the toy and was beaming when she showed it to us. This morning I found the phone outside on the ground smashed to bits. Evidently, there is a kid or kids here that take toys away from the other children and purposely destroy them. The cute little boy that was found living alone at the city dump last winter is still here and that same kid who breaks the toys took a toy car away from him yesterday and broke it as well.

The staff at the orphanage does not seem to be very interactive with the children. When we arrived yesterday, it was a beautiful day, but all the kids were inside watching TV. I asked the Director about why the children were not outside playing and he explained to me that it was too cold. He said the children would get sweaty while playing and then come inside where it was cold and then they might get sick. They don’t have hot water or showers for the kids to bath themselves so I guess I could understand how that could be a problem, but it seems to me that the kids need to be more active and to have adults teaching and coaching them more often. The kids also throw all of their trash outside the windows so the grounds around the building are disgusting with trash and debris everywhere. There were no trashcans anywhere, inside or outside of the buildings. Gil and I discussed it and I suggested that I call a meeting of all the staff and children. We will tell them all what we are proposing to do to fix up the building but that it will be with some conditions. The conditions will be that the children clean up the grounds and agree to keep the place clean and that they will take care of their home if we fix it up. Tomorrow we are meeting contractors all day again. I asked if it was possible for me to meet each child one at a time and learn their name and a little bit about them and take pictures. They said yes so I will do that later this week. Gil thought it would be good to try and get sponsors for each child. I have taken about 100 pictures so far of the children and the building conditions. I will take many more before I am done.