Your Questions Answered--#4

It's time again for Ask Amy. If you missed the previous Q&As you can find the links below.

Questions Vol. One

Questions Vol. Two

Questions Vol. Three

Mimi wrote:

I'd love to know more about your orphans & how they come to you. 

 Nearly all of our children have been brought to us at our door. Families who have lost a loved one will bring the newly orphaned child to us. Our intake age limit is 2 years because children below the age of 2 are the most vulnerable. Not getting the right food or care can negatively impact their life permanently.

Setting the age at 2 years and below keeps us from being overwhelmed with all the children who are orphaned in this community. There are hundreds if not thousands of orphans in our area--1 million total in Zambia. That's 10% of the population.

We take in children who are either single or double orphans. This means they have lost either one or both of their parents. Generally, if the child still has a mother, we won't need to take in that  child because the mother can still breastfeed or look after the baby. For those who only have a father, the likelihood of that baby dying is much higher. Also, most men will remarry very quickly after their wife dies (they often already have a mistress standing by) and the new wife usually doesn't want to take on the responsibility of a little baby.

For individual stories of our children and how they came to be with us, you can click on the following link. I've arranged them in order of arrival to our home. I hope to finish this list one day with a post for each child.

Chola

Queenie

Janet

Henry

Theresa

Jennifer

Moriah

Peter

Sara

Do they get adopted out to locals, or people from other countries, or both. 

 Our vision for the children we look after is that they will grow up with us and eventually go off to college. We are investing in their future and the future of Zambia. There are so many orphans here that local adoption is not so common. If someone has a job and makes a decent living (many times even if they don't and aren't) they will be looking after several of their orphaned relatives and so would not seek out other orphans.

As far as international adoption, it is not very easy to do in Zambia and also, as I stated above, we want to raise children who will grow up and make a real difference right here in their home country.

That is not to say that if someone came to visit the orphanage and had a real connection with one of the children that had no parents at all, we wouldn't consider adoption as an option. We can't say what God's plan might be for each of these children and we are open to all possibilities.

Are most of the HIV infected?

 As of now, only one of our children is HIV positive. We recently tested all of them and were pleasantly surprised to have so many HIV negative children. From their medical histories, the parents' deaths, and the state that some of them came in, we expected much higher positive results. But, God is very very good. 

How many of them do you usually have? 

Because we don't send away any of our children the number just continues to increase. Sadly we have lost some children to illness--they are often brought to us in a really sad state and nothing we can do makes a difference. 

From the time we opened in October 2007 to today November 2010 we have grown to look after seventeen children. If we take in around 5 children per year, we will be looking after 100 children when the first are ready to head off to college. Scary thought! 

Mimi, I hope that answered your questions. 

If anyone else has questions about life in Zambia, our work here, or anything else really, don't hesitate to ask your questions here in comments or send me an email at amymorrowinafricaATgmailDOTcom (replacing the capital letters with symbols).

Exactly one year ago: Wacky Wednesday