Jailbreak

31st December, 2008

This is the last day of the year and I know there should be reflective thoughts on the year that was and the planning of future resolutions that will not last the week, however, all I can think of is that lovely squat toilet scarcely 10m from my door. So near, yet so far. It's 6:30am and I've "opened" up the clinic. By opened, I mean unbolting the door from the inside. Of course, it is still firmly shut from the night before when some idiot jailed me in from the outside. There is a hole in the glass in the window. I work out the logistics of a partial jailbreak: standing on a chair, and directing a steady stream of urine across the 10m gap to the wall of the toilets. Near enough is good enough. However, given the mishap I've already had once with this door I don't really want to chance my luck. I've already been circumcised so that doesn't leave a lot of "margin for error" when placing one's dearest member in close proximity to a jagged piece of broken glass.

Back to bed to think of anything else. At 7:13am there is a knock on my window from the nurse. "Jordan, open the door". I say, "You open the door!". Knowing this won't get through, I get up and painfully walk towards the door. She's there pointing at the lock at the door. I mirror her movements pointing to the bolt on the outside. In Kenya, I've noticed that all the bolts are recessed behind curved bits of metal or within holes in the door. I can see no logical reason for this. It makes it a lot more difficult to open, is actually more difficult to manufacture, and you can't tell whether the door is locked or not. The charades game is not working, so I decide to go through the motions on my side of unbolting the door. I move the bolt back and forth and the nurse tries the door. It won't budge. No shit Sherlock. She eventually tries the bolt on her side and realises it is locked. She frees the bolt and door bursts open. I nearly knock over the mother with her sick baby trying to get in as I set a land speed record for the 10m dash in thongs from my jail to the squat toilets. Relief ensues.

The day is productive although I spend most of it inside. I'm leaving on Saturday and once I go there will be no opportunity to get to the records of the children. It's a task that I've been partially putting off. I have no problems entering all the factual information such as name, gender, guardian, etc. The thing I've been avoiding is writing the small background piece on each child. Most of the notes are in the files and after the exposure I had to Mercy's history the other day It's really not something I've been looking forward to. However, with my time here coming to a close this is really one of the important things that I have to do. If people knew what these children have been through and how little it costs to provide them with a less bleak future, we would be inundated with offers. My job is to tell their stories.

Unfortunately, my time here is so short and it is right in the middle of the holiday season. Ideally, I would have liked to have made contact with the guardians and got the whole story but I will have to suffice with the few notes attached to some of the files and piece it together.

I put the files on one side and slowly start going through them. I'm off to a good start. Edward. His mother at 23 years of age hangs herself leaving her ailing grandmother to look after the three kids. Unlucky start. John. His mother dies of AIDS when he was 3 leaving him with his grandmother. Shortly afterwards the grandmother dies and he is passed on to her disabled sister. The sister can barely look after herself. The local villagers donate food scraps to them, and the kids at school give him their old uniforms. This is all he has to wear and is caught washing the clothes himself at school standing naked next to them waiting for them to dry. He is severely malnourished and quite sick when he gets to the orphanage. Third time lucky. Another John. His father dies of AIDS when he is 9 days old. His mother dies of AIDS, 3 months later. He is handed off to his elderly grandmother who is unemployed and has to rely on the charity of others for food. This is going to be an emotional day. There are no happy stories here. If there were it wouldn't be an orphanage.

I spent the majority of the day reading files, piecing together stories and summarising it into a brief snapshot for the website. Every couple of hours I wander outside and play with the kids. I need the emotional break and it's uplifting to see the resilience of children. Not just from the physical injuries that they get when they roughly play with each other, but the deep emotional wounds that each of them have suffered. It's hard to imagine they could ever smile again but here they are laughing and playing. Edward is loud and boisterous. John is strong, healthy and compared to the others, surprisingly well groomed. The other John is healthy and loving. It's hard to imagine looking at them that these are the same children in the files. What's worse, is that there are hundreds of children here who don't have files yet. The orphanage can hold 150 kids but there are only 50 today because that is all they can afford.

In the afternoon I finish all the records. I'm emotionally drained. The coloured folders of the cruelty of life lay stacked up on the desk beside me. The children's stories are captured on the website. They've been toned down a fair bit but the messages are still there. I need to get out of my room in the clinic and spend some time with the kids. Mercy comes up to me with a small bracelet she has made me by stringing some beads taken off one of her dresses onto a piece of fishing line. I'm so touched when she puts it around my hand. It's a little big but I'll wear it as long as I can.

I play with them for a couple of hours. During that time I'm constantly peppered with questions about the trip tomorrow. It is so rare that they get out. "Will we be going on one big bus or two small ones?", "If it is a big bus, will it have stairs?", "Will we see a lion, a monkey, a snake, a crocodile?", "Will we take rice from here or will we have bought food?". The questions are endless.

At around 6:30pm, they have their dinner and I go back to my room and have mine. When they bring the plates over I follow them back to make sure they don't bolt me in again. I don't need a repeat of last nights episode.

I do some writing, tinker around with the website and for probably the first time in the last 30 years, am in bed before midnight on New Years Eve. I've got a lot done today and the ongoing effects of it will be very beneficial to the children. However, it's taken it's toll and I need to sleep and forget.

This was a good day.