Forgotten orphanage
In January 2010 our team came across a remote orphanage that had been pretty much forgotten about. The team were totally shocked by the conditions that the children were living in. The rooms were incredibly hot and dirty, the mattresses were covered in feces, urine and bed bugs, the kitchen area served as the night time toilet, the children had very few cloths, and no toys or sanitary items. The rooms were incredibly dark, stuffy and painfully humid, sweat dripped down us after moments of being inside the building. The children looked like they were suffering from malnutrician, and there was a deep sadness and desperation in their eyes. However much we smiled at them, they would not smile back.
So in May 2010, thanks to a fundraiser organised by Sean Morgan from the UK, the team got to work renovating the building and putting in new mattresses, toys, kitchen equipment, rewiring the electrics, fixing the roof and more.
Amy, a volunteer from the UK now living in Perth, rolled up her sleeves with us and we painted and cleaned until we were close to fainting from the unbearable heat. Whilst the men got on with the building work, Amy and Natalia ran around the city of Makassar buying toys, cleaning products, kitchen equipment and mattresses. It was like the T.V. programs where people rush around trying to renovate a house against the clock. We completely turned the building around within 5 days! Exhausted and smelly, we all boarded the plane to take us on the one hour flight back to Bali, but we knew we would be returning soon to check that the newly renovated building was being maintained well and that the children were OK.
Since then the team have visited regularly. On our recent trip however the children still looked unhappy and we asked the children what they most wished for. They told us that they are desperate to see their families because these children, like many children living in orphanages in Indonesia, were given away by their families because they were simply too poor to feed them.
It turns out that the children haven't seen their families for many years because it is a long and costly journey to visit them and something which the orphanage simply doesn't have the funds for.
So in 2012 we would like to take the children on a journey to be reunited with their families. It involves a 15 hour bus journey to Western Sulawesi, then an overnight stay in a village, and then a full one day trek up the side of a volcano to reach the children's families who live in a remote village with no road access.
The parents will come down the mountainside to meet us with their small horses to load up supplies and equipment, and the smallest of the children. Once we arrive in the village we will stay for three days and there will be plenty of festivities! Whilst the children are spending valuable time with their families our team will find out more about this remote region and meet some of the tribal groups who live there.
After three days we will begin the long journey back to the orphanage and the children will go back to school and continue with their studies. We hope to repeat this trip once a year so that the children can maintain contact with their families and return there in the future if they wish to.
