30 Days of Africa - #10

Very excited to finally get to the baby crèche after work today!!! One of the Mercy Ministries that I've wanted to join since arriving in Congo 2 months ago was visiting the baby crèche or government home for abandoned young children. However, the times for that ministry were always during the dental clinic work hours until today when our amazing dental team finished all the Friday patients early. So I went with 8 other Mercy Ship ladies to basically just hold and love babies this small orphanage like facility simply called the baby crèche. There were about 12-15 babies from a newborn to toddlers ranging from chubby happy babies to those who were tiny, thin, and looked much younger than their age due to malnutrition and other health problems. The facility provides food, medicine and basic care to the children but not a lot of personal interaction because there are only a few caregivers to the number of babies. The fun part is giving the babies the all the attention we can during our short time there by holding, hugging, playing, loving, and finally feeding the older one cookies as a distraction to sneak away without many tears. The hard part is actually leaving the babies at the baby crèche because we all wanted to take one or two with us when it was time to return to the ship :)