Saturday morning baby trip

Stephanie rounded up people this morning to visit the orphanage again in Go Vap. This time I spent some time in the "Older Toddler Room," with the kids who truly are the unwantables. I'm not sure why some kids make it out of the orphanage and some don't -- like the healthy, bright boy above who latched onto my legs and wouldn't let go (until I took him to the hallway swing with two others).

These three kids could have kept swinging for hours. They sat here subdued and quiet as I pushed the chair back and forth.


Children with deformities or disease, it's more obvious why they never made it home with someone. The boy on the right couldn't walk unless he was holding onto your hand. His knees are dirty and bruised from crawling around on the floor. He was, though, very affectionate with the other children, who would let him hold onto them as he tried to stand up and move around.

Walking into these rooms is hard. The children -- the ones who are alert that is -- jump to attention, make eye contact, smile hugely and lift up their arms, some of them with a look of panic that you're not going to notice them.


But then there are the kids who assume people won't notice them.


When I first arrived the boy below was tied up in his crib, with a piece of rope around his ankle. I have no idea why. The nurse undid the knot when I said I wanted to pick him up. He's tiny, the size of an infant almost, although his face looks much older.




This boy could not speak -- I don't think anyone has taught him language -- but he tried to communicate with me anyway. He kept saying, "cuckoocuckoocuckoo," and every time I repeated this back to him he started squirming with laughter. He also made another noise, "tchitchitchitchi." I'm not sure what the difference in meaning was because when I said "tchitchitchitchi" back to him, I got the same giggly response. I taught him another sound, "rah," which he repeated back to me but seemed somewhat doubtful of.






Some kids from the last visit were gone, like this baby above (who a fairly paternal and nurturing reader of this blog decided should be named Roland). Stephanie says he either was at the doctor's, had been adopted or had died. I assume he didn't die since he was one of the more robust babies in the room. I actually think it's likely someone snatched him up because he's so cute.

Today at the orphanage a loud, rude American lady was baby shopping, bound I think to make any small child's life more miserable than had he or she been left at Go Vap! (But I was glad to see an American there after reading the NYTimes article about the difficulties Americans face adopting Vietnamese babies.)