I went shopping today. I bought a lot of things, but very little of it was for me. I did buy myself a small sun hat, a pair of cheap sunglasses, and three cheap t-shirts for the trip. (I haven’t gotten new shirts in a long time… since high school, I think… and I didn’t have many that would match things easily.) The bulk of my purchase, however, was cloth diapers and their accessories.
AWOP is an absolutely wonderful ministry. They take a holistic approach to helping the widows and orphans of Africa, offering hospice service to sick and dying parents, microloans and job training for women who want to keep their children, and adoption for orphans and children of destitute parents. Since the ministry is still young, they’re still setting up a lot of their facilities and programs, but they already have hundreds of children who have come into their orphanages needing to be adopted.
I knew when I went to Ethiopia with Michelle, the head of AWOP, I would be processing children for adoption (helping with pictures and interviews, for example) as well as taking some updated pictures and measurements for parents who were already in process to adopt some of the kids, but I didn’t want to waste the opportunity to deliver some supplies, too. There are many things that we have over here in the States that they don’t have access to over there, or at the very best they have cheap versions that don’t last. Other things they can get just fine on their end, so for those it’s best to just provide funding. (This applies to things like beds and vehicles.) Among the former type of items are diapers, shoes, some types of clothing, and some medicines. So I asked Michelle what was at the top of AWOP’s needs list right now. The items she told me? Cloth diapers, children’s vitamins, infant vitamins, sturdy clipboards for use by the staff, and both milk and soy based formula for the babies. I let her know that I would bring along everything but the formula if she could bring it. So I sent out an email to some friends and family inviting them to help supply some of these things to the orphanages by sending money which I would then use to purchase the needed items.
When I was in Ethiopia, we visited some of the orphanages over there. Some were certainly better off than others. Our agency’s “care center” (also called their “foster home”) was in good shape because many of the parents who came to pick up their children also brought supplies for the center. Others, however, were not so fortunate. When we visited AHOPE, for instance, the children were wearing rags and there were little to no supplies for them. In another orphanage, the babies were wrapped in rags for diapers with plastic bags tied over them. In a situation where intestinal parasites are rampant, the affect of this make-shift diaper on the babies’ bottoms was none too gentle, and the infected stool would often leak out to potentially infect others. Those babies with their bottoms wrapped in plastic bags haunted me.
So I found myself in WalMart. No one has yet sent me any funds to help with the supplies, but as I stood in front of the cloth diapers those babies came into my mind. I picked up two or three packs and put them in my cart, got some plastic pants to go with them and diaper pins, and then started to turn away. But I could see those babies. They looked so sick and the plastic bag diapers looked so ugly and wrong. I slowly turned back to the cloth diapers and began to pick up more packs. As I did, those babies in my head cried, and my heart was breaking. And so I got more.
And when I left the store today, WalMart was all out of cloth diapers and diaper pins, and all of their smaller plastic pants had been purchased. Perhaps others haven’t been called to help these particular children, but I cannot ignore their cries. I cannot go and see them in that state again without offering some comfort for the future. And if it means that we can’t order pizza for several months, then so be it. I’m tired of bemoaning the state of our finances when I can afford good disposable diapers for two children who, by the way, also eat well-balanced meals regularly instead of the two or even one meal a day that many of the children in Ethiopia get. I just wish that other people could see how much of a blessing simple gifts like these are to the little ones. And every time I’m able to help, I feel greatly blessed in return. So many people just don’t seem to understand that.
But I do. And maybe this time I’ll come back with memories of smiling babies in clean cloth diapers and bright new plastic pants instead of rags and bags.