What's the Alternative?

As far as orphanages go, Noah’s Ark is about as good as they come. The children get different suppers every night of the week, they have a trampoline, and there are lots of aunties to take care of the kids and teach them basic hygiene, social skills, discipline, and other things children would normally learn from their parents. They can go to school right on the compound from the time they are three years old until they finish secondary school. They are formally ministered to several days a week at Sunday school, church, school assemblies, Teen Club, and other things.

Even with all that, Peter and Pita never claim that this is the best option for the children. They describe Noah’s Ark as God’s second plan for these kids. His first plan was for them to grow up in the family into which they were born, but when that didn’t work out (usually because the kids are abandoned—there are very few actual orphans here), Noah’s Ark is able to fill that role.

I recently had a conversation about this with another volunteer, Sara. We agreed that in many ways, Noah’s Ark is certainly not the best option for any child. Like I mentioned a few weeks back, each of these kids should have two adults caring for them, but here the aunties are stretched thin, making sure the 120 kids in the home get their teeth brushed and don’t fight with each other and have on the shoes with their own name every morning. I have started bringing books each evening for a group of eight girls so they have a chance to sit and read quietly, practicing after the other children go to bed so no one takes their books away from them.

Sara asked some girls one night if they had any brothers or sisters, and they all said yes. Many kids come with siblings, sometimes as twins or triplets. When Sara followed up by asking whom they were related to, the girls swept their arms across the crowded dining room and said “All of them!” On one hand, what a blessing to be a part of such a big, amazing family! On the other hand, they will never grow up having the same close-knit family experience that most children are privileged to get. 

As Sara and I discussed the negative aspects of growing up in a children’s home, we always circled back to the same question: What’s the alternative?

Some people are very anti-orphanage. There are some Africans (probably many of them) who feel like westerners swooped in and institutionalized something that should be the responsibility of families. In this culture, where extended families live together and care for one another their whole lives (they do not institutionalize the elderly, either—in fact, I’m sure the idea seems ludicrous to them), family members are the first responders to tragedy and childcare. If a child’s parents die, that child would go to an aunt or uncle or grandparent, not sent away to another family or orphanage. Blood relations actually mean something here.

So why is a place like Noah’s Ark needed? Because not all families honor that responsibility. Noah’s Ark has its own social worker and works closely with the police on a regular basis. When a new child comes in, they do their best to find any living relatives who can care for him or her. Peter and Pita and the authorities know that the best option for any child is to live with family. But when a baby is found in the bushes on the side of the road, where do you start? Even if we found the parents, why would we give them another chance to throw the child away?

An orphanage is certainly not an ideal environment for a kid to learn and grow, but what’s the alternative? Abusive parents? Death in a pit latrine a few hours after birth?

Or take adoption, for example. I have wanted to adopt for as long as I can remember. If there are so many kids around the world without a loving family, why not give a few of them a chance to have one?

Peter and Pita, however, are against international adoptions. They point out that with racism in so many predominantly white societies, however subtle it may be, raising a Ugandan child there would only be inviting him into a life of hardship. He would face a different kind of struggle, but he would not be free from the major struggles from which we would love to protect him. Peter said he is here to raise up good Ugandan children who can give back to their country and help make a better future not just for themselves and their families, but for Uganda.

I hear them. I understand what they are saying. And considering my absolute support of adoption of any kind, I have given their words a lot of thought. Sara says she has friends who adopted two African children and now live in a small town in Canada. Those kids are the only blacks in the whole community. Is that the best situation for them? No. But what’s the alternative? Never having their own mother and father?

Even here, where Peter and Pita are called Papa and Mama by children, staff, and community members, it only slightly resembles a family structure. Some of the kids go days without seeing Papa, not to mention learning valuable life lessons from him or having some father-son time. Despite the challenges of racism and growing up in a culture different from the one in which they were born into, I have a hard time believing this really is better for them.

Or another example: Noah’s Ark has a rule that they only accept children two years old and younger. Otherwise the place would grow faster than its capacity to care for children and no one would get adequate care. Once, however, they took in a ten-year-old girl. From what I understand, Peter was hesitant at first. If she joined the children’s home, which usually houses children until they are twelve years old, it would be a total shock from what she was accustomed to. Think about going from living in a small home with a small family and all of a sudden moving to school… for good. It might be fun at first, with all your classmates and new friends around all the time, but it would be hard to make the mental transition to knowing that that is now your “normal.” If she joined a family unit, which is a group of twelve older children who live in a house with an auntie, it might be hard for her to fit in with the girls already living there and would most certainly be a difficult transition.

But what’s the alternative? For this girl, the only other option was for Noah’s Ark to give her back to the witch doctor from whom she was taken. Witch doctors are still very common in this culture. Every day, babies are killed as sacrifices for who-knows-what. It is atrocious and scary and real life for these people. If she were to be given back, she would almost assuredly be raped, her body used for I-don’t-even-know-what-they-do, and possibly sacrificed. Sure, transitioning to Noah’s Ark as a ten-year-old was difficult, but no one can argue it beat the alternative.

One of the many things I learned from Dietrich Bonhoeffer when I did my religion capstone is that there are instances in which there is simply no best choice. There is no right answer. There is no good decision. At that point, all we can do is pick the least bad option and trust that that is the best we have to offer.

The world would be a better place if everyone who had a child cared for that child. That is God’s first plan for everyone. But when mothers abandon their babies and fathers die of AIDS and witch doctors are looking for sacrifices, sometimes the best we can do is look for the solution that will bring the least harm… to look for the best alternative we can find.