Entering the orphanage for the first time I didn't know what to expect. Was there a routine to follow? How were we expected to interact with the kids? I followed the women I was with to a hot stuffy room with blankets spread out on the floor. The workers brought the children in and laid them down. Some of the kids could crawl/drag themselves over to us, but most were not mobile. The first day we picked up one child, played with her for awhile and then went on to play with the next child.
Many of the kids responded positively to the interaction and would often cry when we set them down. One little girl cried when I picked her up. I tried interacting with her the same as the other children, but she only became more upset, calming down only when she was set back on the blanket. During the rest of our time that day I watched as she reacted the same way with the other volunteers. Several visits later the orphanage workers quit brining her in altogether, so I went searching for her. She was laying in a sopping diaper and wet sheets behind the cold metal bars of her crib.
As I walked over to the crib the mere presence of someone standing there clearly made her agitated. I asked her name. Nigar. Nigar wanted only to be left alone. What made her so fearful I can only imagine, but I decided to spend time with her every day I visited. Standing over her made her nervous and even a gentle touch drew her into herself even more, so I pulled up a chair and sang. Eventually she wouldn't wince when I would come in to sing. I then started to stroke her arm lightly for short periods to see if she would tolerate it and slowly she relaxed with that as well. It was my hope that eventually she would allow herself to be held without recoiling. But the summer was over too quickly. It was time to leave. I talked with one of the other women volunteering and explained where to find her and what I was doing hoping Nigar would continue to get loved on. It was hard to leave. How I wished I could have brought her home.
The family I was traveling with had planned to stop in Turkey for a week and I was very excited about our time there. It had been my dream for as long as I could remember to return to Turkey and it was finally happening. Our plane landed and we arrived at the hotel about midnight. Sometime around 3am I woke up shaking. Wait, it was the bed that was shaking. In a 3am fog I finally realized it was an earthquake. The woman I was sharing the room with was already in the doorway and as I quickly joined her we watched as other hotel guests rushed into the parking lot in their whitey-tighties. It seemed to last forever, but finally the shaking stopped and we went back to bed. Smart? I don't know. What is a tourist supposed to do once an earthquake is over? I laid there for awhile wondering if it would start again. The next morning the news report said it had been a 9.8 earthquake centered about 30 miles from where we were in Istanbul. The casualty rate quickly climbed from the hundreds to the thousands and kept going up. Later they would downgrade it to a 9.3 or 9.4 and estimated that over 18,000 people had died. The area we were in saw little damage, but as I watched the news of all that was happening just 30 miles away I couldn't just sit there. A group of people from the hotel arranged to go out to help find survivors and I quickly signed up to go. To be honest I was quite scared of what I might see. This was not the way I envisioned a trip to Turkey turning out. As it was, most of the rescue work that could be done by individual people had been done in the first day or two after the earthquake. By the time we arrived they were brining in heavy machinery to move the concrete slabs that had once been apartments. Rescue dogs searched the rubble for survivors. The dogs eventually came and found no one alive at the apartment complex we spent much of our time working. A couple days later I was able to join a group that was delivering relief supplies to people living in tents cities set up by the Red Crescent (the Muslim version of the Red Cross). It started to rain not long after the earthquake and the ground of the tent cities was squishy with mud.
I had left for my summer full of anticipation and on a spiritual high. The months leading up to the trip were a break from the normal college routine and I had had much time to sit and be with God, to study the bible and spend time worshiping. I returned overwhelmed, angry and full of questions. I was no longer riding a spiritual high, but muddling my way through a spiritual crisis. There were so many things to wrestle through.
The college I attended had people briefly discuss their summer trips during chapel time. What would I say? I wasn't sure, but decided to talk a little about Nigar. I was able to talk with a few people afterwards about the trip and mostly they were positive conversations, but one man did not like the idea of people visiting orphanages. His objection was along the lines of the fact that these kids were not puppies that people could play with for a short time and leave behind. In his opinion it was a cruel thing to do. Over the next month I wrestled with questions that people have struggled with for ages and I came out with a stronger faith in the goodness and love of God and a stronger commitment to my relationship to Him as His child. One question, though, I've had in the back of my mind since then. It's maybe not as significant as some of the other questions, but I have still wondered about what the man said regarding the visit to orphanage. Had my good intentions done more harm than good?
This past November I attended a retreat for foster and adoptive mothers. One of the speakers was a woman named Stephanie Fast. She was abandoned in South Korea around the age of 4 and spent the next 5 or 6 years as a street child. She shared with us a small fraction of what she and many other street children endured everyday. Eventually she was brought to an orphanage and adopted at the age of 9 by an American couple who had come intending to adopt an infant. Her story was about redemption which is hard work. She shared about a time prior to entering the orphanage when she was caught by the villagers she had been stealing food from and was tied to a moving water wheel. About the time she was sure she would die a man, whom she could not see because of the effects of being drug through the water, took her off the water wheel and placed her on the ground. He washed off her face, touched her gently and told her "You must live." He did not give her food to satisfy her hunger or bring her home to give her a family, but he showed her kindness and spoke life into her. She did not see his acts as cruel, but recognized the kindness and held onto his life giving words in the years to come. Stephanie told the audience that our kindness and life giving words are not wasted. They are not wasted. I have wondered if I should have ever gone to the orphanage. It made a difference in my life. It opened my eyes to needs of orphans and people with disabilities, but what about the children I left behind? Stephanie was in a place where she experienced cruelty just as the children that lived behind the cold walls of the orphanage. She was shown kindness by a stranger and she held onto the kindness for many years to come. God uses even our feeble attempts to show His love to His children and I pray that our kindness made a positive impact on the children and helped to show the value of life to the orphanage workers.
