This month finds my team serving in a small town outside of Cusco, Peru at an orphanage with 17 children under the age of 11. Of these 17 children, three are infants under 6 months old, five are in diapers, two are potty training, three have special needs, nine are between the ages of 1 and 5, and there are two sets of siblings.
The past month was pretty rough at the orphanage due to sickness and hospitalizations, so staffing has been reduced to a minimum while we are here in order for the staff to find rest. My team and I work 12-hour shifts; we rotate through a schedule where two of us work with two staff members during the day, and one of us works with one staff member overnight. The “House Mom” and two other volunteers live on site, but they are not always on duty.
Peruvian law won’t allow men to change diapers or work overnight in orphanages, so those responsibilities fall on the women of our team. Up until two weeks ago, I had never changed a cloth diaper, but after three blowouts within an hour or so, I managed to get pretty good at it. We’re allowed to sleep on the night shift, and it is usually quiet; I only have to get up a couple of times to help feed the infants. The mornings are a little rough having to get everyone up, dressed, teeth brushed, and fed before the older ones head off to school. During the day shift, we love on and play with those not in school, shuffle infants between open arms for feeding and changing, help the kids focus during meal times, and help hang, fold, and sort loads upon loads of laundry, among various other things that may arise throughout the day. Once the older kids are home from school and have completed their homework, we usually play outside to expend some of their energy before dinner and bedtime.
While we’ve celebrated two adoptions this month, this week in fact, a sad truth that I’ve had to face is that some of the children in this orphanage will never be adopted into loving families because they have biological parents who refuse to give up their parental rights yet also refuse to accept their parental responsibilities. For example, some of the parents are alcoholics who want nothing to do with their child(ren), but when the question of adoption comes up, they will tell the courts that they want to do better, that they’ll get their act together, and they’ll be given countless chances to do so but never actually do it. Even if parental rights are relinquished, extended family members can block adoptions by saying they’ll care for the child(ren) whether they are capable or not. Additionally, Peru’s foreign adoption laws make it really hard for any non-Peruvian to adopt children unless they are seeking “priority adoptions,” which are adoptions of sibling sets or children with special needs. Otherwise, non-Peruvians must wait until the child is five years old in order to start the adoption process, and even then, it can be quite difficult.
It’s been a joy to watch my team step up and serve with everything they have this month, despite the long hours and the sicknesses that are plaguing us. Only one out of the seven of us has had extensive experience with a lot of young children, so this has been a month of challenges and growth for us. It’s been sweet (and unexpectedly funny at times) to watch the men on the team gently cuddle with the infants one moment and then be in “dad mode” a moment later in order to enforce rules with the older kids. It’s been a privilege to pray for the children as I’ve held them, played with them, or thought of them. While I’ve definitely spent more time with some more than others, I’ve fallen in love with every single one of them, and to each of them, I am Aunt Kristin (“Soy Tia Kristina” in Spanish.)
