Babies!

OK, so I’ve only been in the country for about a week, but when the opportunity to help out at a local orphanage for babies with cleft palates came up, I just had to take a chance!

                I’d been reading a lot of ex-pat blogs for western people in China over my first few days in the country, initially trying to find a blog platform that was functioning in this country without the use of dubious proxy sites, but then I found myself really getting into them and learning some valuable things about my new country that I’ll call home for the next three months. I learned about simple things such as how hard it was to get good priced cheese to more serious things such as how the recycling in China is kept up by the poor pensioners in this country (more on that later).

 

                But in particular, when I came across a post on this blog “From Donuts to Dumplings” that mentioned a local organization called BEAN, I decided to check it out. It seems like BEAN originally started in America, but branches have been set up all over the world. I saw that they had a couple of things lined up during the next few weeks, and one of the things that immediately stuck out as sounding interesting was the “Care for Orphans with Cleft Palates” event, at the Shanghai Healing home. I saw that the next one coming up was this Sunday, exactly one week since I arrived. I hadn’t quite got my way around Shanghai yet, but I thought, what better way to explore the city, meet some other ex pats and learn about Chinese culture at the same time. So I was delighted when they wrote back to say they had one space left, and I set off late Sunday morning to get to my destination.

                At first my journey started off with a slight hiccup, since I took the wrong route on the subway. In my defence, the map at the subway station didn’t give any hint that some lines were not in use, so when I saw some extra lines in there compared to my guidebook, I just assumed that my map was old (Shanghai is growing so fast and as it is a constant building site, buildings pop up really quickly, so I’m not surprised when the other locals make fun of my maps and say that they are out of date). So I turned up to Tiantong Road expecting to change to line 12, only to find that when I got there, all signs for line 12 were blocked out, like they do sometimes in the British Underground, if a station is closed for refurbishment or something. However, a quick internet search had revealed that the whole line 12 was still under construction! In fact, when I got to my final destination, the station hadn’t even been built yet, and workers were busy putting together the skeleton for the adjoining building and connecting escalators for the line.  Of course, I can’t read any Chinese, so there was probably something written on the maps that the line was expected to open towards the end of 2013, but it wasn’t obvious from the diagram at all! Luckily, I’d left just enough time to be able to backtrack on my journey a little and find another route to the correct metro station.

                I quickly found the group, which was a mix of some nice ex pat girls, one German, one American, a few other Chinese people, and an expat American/Chinese girl who was leading the group. We hopped into two taxis to get to the orphanage. It seemed to be in a very nice leafy area, and there were some impressive looking large cheques adorning the walls from various large businesses – Hilton, PayPal and many others - proclaiming their generous donations, some running into hundreds of thousands of yuan.

I’m not sure exactly what I expected when I went in, but one of the first things I noticed was that it seemed very calm and quiet. Since they were looking after so many young babies, I expected a wave of several toddlers crying relentlessly, but actually they were mostly very well behaved. It was coming up to their feeding time, and our role was to clean up all the toys and the play area while they ate. We had to wash our hands thoroughly of course, and were given special slippers with which to enter the play area, and then we got some large bowls of some water with some disinfectant mixed in, and a wiping cloth each. There were about four boxes of toys and some slides. Many hands make light work, so between the seven of us, we were done pretty quickly. During this time, we chatted and the leader of the group was telling us that they looked after babies with cleft palates that are in most cases quite straightforward to correct with surgery. Often, they tried to get the doctors to do it for free, as charity work. You can also see from the photos here that either some of the surgeons were genuines, or maybe that some of the cases were not so severe, and easy to fix. After they recovered from the surgery, then the children could be put up for adoption, and they seemed to have quite a good success rate. There was a noticeboard full of photos from families who had adopted a baby from the home and were sending photos back to show how the kids they looked after were getting on. She also said that they get no money from the government and that they are entirely dependent on donations.

After we finished the cleaning and the babies finished eating, we got the opportunity to play with them. I was a bit apprehensive to how the babies would respond to me, especially since I’m a rather large foreigner, with a strange new appearance compared to what they’re normally used to. However, I need not have worried, as the babies were very innocent and curious, and some even took steps to break the ice by simply throwing themselves at me! (this was the first of many ways in which I got loads of baby drool on my T-shirt, and I think probably also the remainder of some of their lunches). They were all very friendly and within a short time it was easy to see why they had such a high success rate in adoptions! For the most part, they seemed relatively uninterested in their newly cleaned toys, but more interested in us. One of the most riveting things about me, was apparently my glasses. This cute little girl was the first of many who (rather alarmingly) grabbed my glasses and decided to try them on herself to see what all the fuss was about. Adorably, she didn’t realise that in taking them off me, she was now putting them on herself up side down!

She seemed very pleased with herself, and at one point, walked off with my glasses to show all the other carers her new accessory. Later, one of the other younger boys also became interested in what the fuss was about, and wanted to try them on himself. He had a little less success getting the big glasses on and securing them on his ears, so we had to help him.

Never has a baby looked so wise and confused at the same time!

 

            They were each adorable in their own way, and I think by the end of the afternoon, each one of us had our favorites that we probably would have taken home if we had the chance. There were no unreasonable outbursts of crying, unlike my stereotypes of babies were prior to this trip – there were only a little bit of sniffles from some who don’t like to be left alone, and some loud wailing from a little girl, but she had fallen over and it sounded like she hit her head very hard. There was just one little boy who got a little bit violent, and didn’t want to let go of my hair at one point, but he responded to the admonishment from the carers, and hey, what girl doesn’t have a story from her childhood of some boy pulling her hair?

           We got a taxi back to the station feeling very tired (who knew that babies could be so exhausting?) but very happy. The general feeling from the group was that we could have done a lot more, since cleaning the toys didn’t feel like that much of a job, but we guessed that there must be some restrictions on any further involvement for volunteers without proper care qualifications. Overall though, despite the fact that I needed to change my T-shirt, and another guy, his trousers (after a little accident with an older girl who wasn’t wearing any diapers), I had a great experience and would definitely like to go again.

The end of this story is a somewhat tumultuous ride home, in which I was so busy being on a baby high and swapping numbers with the other girls, that I accidentally left my phone in the taxi! If it hadn’t have been for Phoebe, a Chinese lady from Beijing who spoke excellent English and had kept the taxi receipt, I doubt I would have ever seen my phone again. I got very lucky that I realized after a couple of stops on the metro that my phone really was missing before I parted ways with the girls, and she was able to ring them and confirm that they had my phone, and let them know that we would be coming back to pick it up. Yes, such was the extent of her adherence of the Chinese hospitality tradition that she even turned back with me and waited for the taxi driver to come and give me my phone! This was on account that she had now known that I speak about as much Mandarin as the taxi drivers speak English. I was very much amazed at being able to get my phone back, and every time I used it over the next few days, I thought of Phoebe, and I’m so thankful for her help and the kind taxi driver who gave it back. Although, it might have had something to do with the fact that it’s a Samsung Galaxy Y, probably one of the least valuable smartphones on the market at the moment......but whatever, I’m just so glad to have it back!

Chinese hospitality rules!