Our host, Olebile Machete, warned us that the staff was not expecting us. We stepped through the wooden door, and the first thing that came to mind was: “What a fine mess”.
It was almost impossible to get beyond the front door of the children’s playroom without doing the high jump. We stepped over clean teddy bears and an assortment of cuddly toys scattered all over the carpeted floor. Some are perched on the cushy dark brown couches and inside the babies’ chairs looking rather friendly.
For those who remember the squalor of Dickenson’s orphanages in Oliver Twist, the scene at the Childline Orphanage in Gaborone Block Seven seems miraculous.
Ten or so plumb babies are playing on the carpeted floor. Three nannies in blue tunics are moving around preparing bowls and bibs here, cuddling a crying baby there, and changing nappies over there. As we survey the sea of cherubic faces amid the clutter, we found ourselves fixed upon by about 20 huge round eyes.
Is it my imagination or does it seem that their eyes are begging for an adult smile?
Meanwhile, a little baby, about four months, recently fed and changed, has been put in a baby chair on the floor where she is just momentarily out of the nanny’s sight; she begins to cry plaintively. After a little while, a member of staff comes to cuddle and rock her in her lap. Did she get her reassurance quickly enough? As quickly as a mother or father would have given it?
Probably not. The staff does their best, but is very limited in what they can do. With only five nannies looking after the 19 toddlers and babies during the day and another four doing the night shift, the staff is overstretched.
Childline spokesperson, Olebile Machete explains that their biggest challenge is raising funds to keep the institution running efficiently. “Most donors insist that their money should go directly to the children and not towards paying the center’s support staff. So we have to make do with the few staff members we have.”
Even the money that is budgeted for the children’s upkeep does not seem enough to cover all their needs. Staff here has to stretch the budgeted P5000 a month to cover the center’s grocery list, which includes disposable nappies and food for the 19 orphans.
As for toys and clothes, they depend mostly on hand me downs. The center does not even have enough cots and some children have to sleep on the floor.
As we make our way to the center’s kitchen, Machete stops to cuddle a young girl who calls all the helpers ‘mama’ and hung on to them all the time.
“This is not the best environment to raise children. Their cognitive development is slower when they are raised in institutions. Finding homes for these children is better than institutionalization, but the adoption process in Botswana can take years,” explains Machete.
He cites the case of a child who was brought in at three months and immediately found foster parents. The adoption process has been dragging for the past three years and the child is now three and still institutionalized.
We were hardly out of the playroom for ten minutes but when we came back, we found a clutch of toddlers huddled around a baby chair on the floor, chanting, “Nana! Nana! Nana!”
They were taken in by the helpless demeanor, lolling head and milky mouth of a three months old baby who had just been brought in by a social worker.
She was abandoned at the hospital. From there, she was reported to the social workers who handed her over to the Childline Orphanage. This is the most common procedure with abandoned children. They stay at the hospital for sometime while inquiries are made to see if their parents can be found – mostly they are not.
Sometimes, the child will have a handwritten note in a pocket, explaining why their mother felt compelled to abandon them.
Some say, “I am sorry, I am too poor to keep the child”; others say that the mother is single and HIV positive and can not raise a child.
Mostly, the babies are abandoned in places where there is little doubt they will be found – in hospitals, by the roadside and public toilets. Only occasionally are they found on rubbish dumps and drainage ditches.
Miss Botswana organizer, Bissau Gaobakwe, and the current Miss Botswana, Sumaiya Marope, believe that poverty and lack of education combine to make abandonment a major issue in Botswana. Gaobakwe, Marope and Childline have launched a campaign to launch a 24 hour toll free Childline phone line which will offer counseling and support to new mothers who find themselves saddled with unwanted babies. Machete, Gaobakwe and Marope were last week visiting media houses to help drum up support for their public education campaign.
