Our hard drive died two days ago.
We knew it was dying, so everything's backed up, but we're not sure how to access the backup. My Dad will take care of that when he comes up next week. ;) But all my passwords are in there, and I just today figured out how to get back into blogger so I could post!
I haven't spent much time talking about the conditions in Krassi's orphanage. I know I've mentioned briefly that conditions were not good there, particularly for children with disabilities, for many many years. And even though I haven't spent a lot of time here talking about it, I think it's pretty obvious that no nine year old child should weigh 28 pounds. (For reference, Reuben at just past age four weighed in at 35 pounds a few days ago, putting him in the 40th percentile for his age range.) And what really drives it home for me is that Krassi is one of the sturdier kids that I've seen there (both in person and via blogs of other parents who have adopted from his orphanage.) The other little boy who was Krassi's age whose parents were visiting (and he's now home!) the same week we were weighed less than 20 pounds. At nine years old. There are teenagers in this place who weigh less than 20 pounds. Yes, these are children with a wide variety of special needs, but anyone who knows someone with cerebral palsy, or down syndrome knows that these disabilities do not cause one to fail to grow.
These children were systematically starved, not only of food, but of the human attention and interaction that all people are designed to need.
After the old director (who had held her position for *23* years) was removed from her position (because of charges of neglect) about a year and a half ago, conditions have improved significantly for the children still living there. I take Krassi himself as a good example. At age 8 he weighed 22 pounds, and six month later had gained 5 more! He is lucky - because he was sturdier to start with, he was able to ease into a more "normal" varied diet rather smoothly. (He still needs his foods cooked very soft and needs to be spoon fed, but he can eat real food!)
Many of the other children there have been so deprived for so long that their bodies are not able to handle real food. The new director has been using the resources she has to purchase a specially designed formula that provides a more adequate level of nutrition than these children had previously been receiving and in a form that they are more capable of digesting.
But this is expensive!
Back in July I asked our adoption facilitator (Toni) in BG if she could contact the orphanage director for me and ask her if there were any things I could collect and bring to donate to the orphanage to help the children who are still living there - clothes, diapers, toys, blankets...Her response was singular - she said the one most helpful thing they could receive would be money to put toward purchasing the formula that many of these children need.
It's taken me a really long time to actually sit down to write about this (there's nothing like not being able to get to your account for a few days that gets you thinking, though!!) but I've wanted to put this out there in case anyone who's reading this would like the opportunity to help out the children who are NOT getting a family. I would love to pool together any money that any of you would like to put towards this and in 17 days when I walk into that orphanage to bring my boy home to be able to (with help from Toni to make sure it's done properly!) give the director whose done so much for my boy and the other children there a gift to help her in her future work.
I realize this doesn't leave a lot of time, but I figure if this is something that resonates with you, it should be sufficient time. ;)
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