What a good day. I left the hospital a bit early today to go to Open Arms, an "orphanage" in Blantyre. It really is a fantastic organization. The children are orphaned for numerous reasons, but many lost their parents to AIDs. They don't like the term orphanage and prefer the term transition home instead. They take children from birth on and provide them with a safe environment, with loving/stable "moms," good food, and medical treatment. The kids transition from nursery to a preschool setting. At age five, they move into a house where there are a couple other kids and a house mom. This way they can be raised my a Malawian woman in the Malawian culture. This is all on the condition that there is no extended family that can take the child. Open Arms keeps in touch with all of the families of the children and when they reach an age that the family can take them in, they transition them home. Amazing really.
From the moment that Kim and I entered, we were embraced by small children. They walked up to us "strangers" and reached up to us, asking to be held. There is a good number of staff there and the children all seem well loved, but they were anxious to get love from the new people. One child that was less than 2 hugged me for a full minute and wouldn't let go. It was amazing! The kids were unbelievable...all with stories of overcoming terrible circumstances and bad illnesses. I'm in love with all of them.
Read more about it at http://www.openarmsmalawi.org/
One of the precious children
Kim with some of the kids
Blowing bubbles with the toddlers
I'll leave you with a poem that brought tears to my eyes that was posted in the main office.
What AIDS Can't Do
AIDS is so limited
It cannot cripple
Love
It cannot shatter
Hope
It cannot corrode
Faith
It cannot take away
Peace
It cannot destroy
Confidence
It cannot kill
Friendship
It cannot shut out
Memories
It cannot silence
Courage
It cannot invade
The Soul
It cannot reduce
Eternal Life
It cannot quech
The Spirit
Our greatest enemy is not disease
But despair
Thats a beautiful poem. Im glad you got to enjoy your last few days there experiencing malawi outside the "real world-med school" house, hospital and tourist sites. You even got to go to mozambique! Did you learn any portugese there? Enjoy krueger!-ankoor
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