Today was great! We went to the Home at 9 and divided into 3 groups, the toddlers, crawlers, and babies. I was with the toddlers again, and knowing each of their names and a little of their personalities it was fun to play. They particularly enjoyed the slide this morning!
We fed them "momo" (snack) today of bananas and mangos. And then washed them and put them down for a nap. Their nap time is our lunch time.
After we came back and had a meeting with Rhoda, who is the New Life Home's Social Worker. She went through the adoption process again and filled in the blanks from orientation weekend. Basically the same info but more practicality now that we know the Home and kids. There are local adoptions and international adoptions. The locals are able to come and volunteer and pick out a kid. The Internationals come knowing which one they will take home. The international parents fill out an application and request a gender and age group. New Life then sends them adoption files of all the kids fitting these ranges. This is a fairly new law, less than a year old, so there are still a lot of thinks still to be worked out. And our work will also help with this process. The work we do will also help the babies get adopted faster.
Each baby has to be brought to court with his or her adoption files and argued that they are ready for adoption. The Kenyan Adoption Board decides yes or no, if no they say what else needs to be done. This process can take a week, a month, or a year. There's a lady who visits her soon to be son every day, but she has been in the process for the past 2 years. Effciency is crucial since New Life is almost always at bed capacity. The faster the turn over the more kids can come. When New Life has to turn away kids, they're sent to other orphanages. But New Life (I hope I don't offend anyone here who has worked with other Kenya Homes) but New Life is seen as the standard in the eyes of the government and very well respected among the people. They do things right, everything from medical care to good schooling and lots of love. But other orphanages have had problems and sketchy situations where they will secretly sell babies for not good reasons. So we want our records straight, clean, clear, and accessible so no bad accusations can be made against New Life.
Tonight and this weekend we will be talking about how to exactly right up these adoption files. Drew Rothenberg will be talking about how we should be filling out the Psyco-Social Reports and I'll be talking about the basic techniques for photographs such as the rule of thirds and when and when not to use a flash.
After the meeting with Rhoda we talked a little about what we'd be doing in the future. Each home will have a scanner and we'll scan the hard copies of police reports and medical reports and so on. On top of these scans, the psycho-social reports, and our photographs, we will be putting each child's report on an online password protected data base that can be accessed from any of the Kenya New Life homes and Amani in the US.
So basically the people here are amazing. I don't know how they get everything done without all the volunteers they have! Cooking, cleaning, laundry, yard-work, bathing, and playing with the kids is a ton of work! But here in Nairobi there are several volunteers from the University who have to meet service hour requirements. We talked to a few regular and local volunteers who have graduated but can't find jobs. They continued to explain, that of course when a Kenyan can't find work they give back to their community. Dang, like just imagine what the world would be like if everyone had that perspective on life.
My team is fantastic. A few of us make dinners together. Last night we made rice, curry spinach with walnuts. And tonight we made rice (for me) and pasta with tomato sauce eggs and broccoli. Since we haven't started the reports yet, we spend our free time playing cards, watching world cup, reading, napping, and talking about everything :) this is the way to live; in community, sharing everything, giving, and learning and growing together <3
I already want to stay for a few more weeks… hehe
Film wise I got interviews set up and basic questions written out. We'll be able to start shooting and photographing on Tuesday!
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