Day Five- November 6, 2007

On Tuesday we again spent all day at the orphanage. Gil spent the entire day working on the electrical system while I met with five different contractors. I also spent a lot of time asking questions of the orphanage Director and his wife about the kids. I took more pictures of the kids and interviewed one 9 year old girl. She is having some psychological issues, but carried on a very good conversation with us. She has two sisters and one brother here at the orphanage. Her mother is 26 years old and just gave birth to her 6th child last week and is currently staying at the infant house we visited in Feb. Evidently she and her husband had regularly beat this little girl since she was about 1 year old. Even so, the girl said that she really misses her mommy. It is so sad. The Director said that the girl tried to jump out of a 2nd floor window yesterday and also tried to hurt herself with a knife at dinner last night. She is so cute but obviously is really suffering. Her dad has left the family to take a job in Turkey. The government is trying to decide now if they are going to take the children away from the mother permanently because they know about the beatings. The Director took her to a mental hospital today to try to get help for her but they refused to help her because they had no budget for orphans. He does not know how to help her. Her two little sisters are also very cute. They are 4 and 5 years old. One of them was the little girl we saw on Sunday with the toy phone.

I found out that the kids that are destroying all the other kids’ toys are three brothers who just came to the orphanage about 5 weeks ago. The Director says that they are just awful and one of them was the boy I saw beating up several of the smaller boys. Yesterday I saw him kicking and throwing rocks at another boy. The Director says it is against the law to punish the boys or even to verbally punish them. He is going to the Ministry of Education next week to see if he can take the boys back to their mother. Several of the kids have written letters to the Director saying how much they dislike the three brothers and telling him about all the bad things the boys do. They say that they really want the boys to leave or else they do not want to be there anymore. Irma read the letters to me and the other kids are really afraid of these boys. The Director says the rest of the kids at the orphanage are good kids and can be taught but not these three boys.

We are going back to the orphanage tomorrow so Gil can continue work on the electrical system. I will spend the day helping him and interviewing the other kids. Today I hired four local men to clean up the attic. I bought large heavy-duty bags and respirators and gloves for the workers. I bought 54 bags and hired the workers for today and tomorrow. They said that they need another 120 bags to finish the job tomorrow. I will stop at the open-air market in the morning and buy the extra bags and more respirators so they can finish.