Hello hivers, i am back again, and i want to tell you about my visit to an orphanage that i experienced last month with my church.
I have an Aunty who has a good heart, and is really into charity, so she’s thinking of starting a charity foundation, and most times i am the one who helps out with her video editing, and capturing, so this made me familiarize myself a lot with charity related stuff, and when I heard my church was going to pay a visit to Modupe Cole Memorials Orphanage, I was in full support.
It was like a trip for the teenage section of the church, and we are about 25, so we were asked to contribute items such as food stuffs, clothes, etc, which would be donated to the Orphanage, which i did, as well as everyone else and this then lead to us having lots of things to give and to donate.
I went to church that Sunday with my family, and i went to meet up with my teachers in church, where i saw everyone organizing items for donation, and I joined them so that we could get moving faster.
I saw two buses were ready to take us, and so when we were done with the packing, we began to load everything into the buses. The buses were full to the point that we were even uncomfortable inside the bus, because we had to make use of every possible space for the transportation of the goods.
I sat with some of my friends at the back of the bus, and this made the trip even more fun. We talked a lot about different things, and we even had one of our friends who had visited that particular orphanage before, and so he was just giving us a breakdown of how the place is, and how his experience was, when he went with his school, which is not too far from the orphanage.
He told us that when he visited the place, it was very emotional for him, and for most of his classmates. He said that most of the girls even shed tears when they saw the amount of people that were in such state of poverty, because the place is not only an orphanage, but it’s a place for disabled people as well.
When we drove into the place, it was a small and decent place. We saw some of the children who reside there, and so we went to park.
We began to offload all the donations that we had brought from church, and the caretakers were very, very excited and grateful. We took pictures with the goods, the caretakers, and some of the children. They were all really grateful.
Some of the children were even socializing with us, and we tried as much as possible to try to communicate back.
The main caretaker then bought us together to tell us a little bit about the history of the place, and some of the things we heard were shocking, such as the fact that there was a woman there who had been there for over 50 years because her son put her there, and never went back to see her for years, due to how she was formed and her disabilities.
She then began to learn some handwork, such as making beads, which are now for sale to whoever visits the orphanage.
Another touching story was that of a man, who was blind, deaf, and disabled.
He has been there his whole life and he can only stay in one position for 24 hours every day.
These were sad moments for all of us, and we all began to be thankful for what we have.
We had a little bit of a tour around the place, and there were different sections which had different specifications.
There was a particular section which was for disabled people, who needed 24 hours attention, while there was another section for people who were a bit more active and were doing chores such as sweeping, cleaning etc, these were mainly the one put there by their parents, due to inability to take care of them financially, or loss of parents or family members.
It was very emotional, and it’s a trip that I will forever remember.
There was a little bit of silence for the first few minutes of our trip back, due to reflections and gratitude, but I believe there are always lessons to take from experiences like this.
I hope to visit another orphanage soon, and try as much as possible to help with donations in every possible way.
Thank you and see you soon!