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Wilson Kayongo has lived at Sanyu Babies Home in Namirembe since June of 2001. He was seven months old when he was found crawling around the home’s gate on Sir Albert Cook Road.
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| ABANDONED: l-R; Douglas, Innocent and Gerald play, while (in-set) three-day old Ivan enjoys his nap (Photos by Eddie Chicco) | “The lady who picked him up thought he was one of us and brought him here,” Ms Joyce Lulindya, the administrator says. Nobody has claimed him ever since.
On September 3, three-day-old Ivan slept in his crib oblivious of what was going on around him.
He was picked on September 1 from a KCC trash can in Bugolobi, freshly delivered. Ivan was found packed in a black plastic bag with an uncut umbilical cord.
The Good Samaritan who rescued him took him to Bugolobi Nursing Home and after receiving treatment there, he was taken to Jinja Road Police Station.
It was the officer-in-charge at the Police’s Family Protection Unit who handed him over to Sanyu Babies’ Home.
He has been named Ivan Atuhaire, probably because he looks like one from western Uganda, but his name means “God has given us”
But as Lulindya explained on September 4 there is no criterion used in naming the children though they are all given Christian names in addition to Ugandan surnames. They also get baptised.
Looking at these sweet little things playing in the compound with all kinds of toys and filled with warmth and joy is heartrending.
“Dear mpa sweet,” one begins, then they all go “Dear nange, nange Dear, Dear nange”.
‘Dear’ is how the children who lived in the home some years back called the administrator. This is because she always addressed them as ‘dear’, so they thought it was her name.
Now she is ‘Dear’ to everyone including the newcomers.
When you see these nice looking, innocent infants, the first question that comes to mind is why would anybody dump a child?
There are no obvious answers. Lulindya suspects poverty could be the major reason.
“I think that the young helpless mothers after being disappointed by men decide to dump the children and battle life without the extra responsibility,” Lulindya said as she handed out sweets.
“We have had to go through Mwana Mugimu [a nutrition clinic] for some children whom we find so badly malnourished,” she said.
After they are rejuvenated they are as intelligent and lovely as any other child.
But there are other reasons why children are found on garbage skips.
Lulindya says, “Many of these children are the result of unwanted pregnancies. Maybe the mothers are students who want to continue with their education uninterrupted.”
All these reasons she gives are mere guesses at why a woman would go through nine months of pregnancy and gruelling labour only to dump her newborn in a pit latrine.
A look at those smiling faces with not a care in the world sets you wondering about life’s cruel ironies. At the gynaecologist’s some women are queuing to find out why they cannot have their own babies.
Elsewhere someone is delivering for the rubbish heap.
The children are abandoned in many different places. While some are found at garbage skips others are retrieved from pit latrines by the Police’s Fire Brigade.
Lulindya said some children are abandoned in taxi parks. A woman enters a parked taxi and places the baby on a seat then pretends to be stepping out for something. She hopes out and never returns.
Some mothers abandon the children in hospitals.
“We have found many in critical condition, abandoned on hospital beds. We take over from there and when the child recovers we transfer it to the home,” Lulindya said.
The Aids scourge could also be a contributory factor. Probably some parents die and the person they leave their child with finds it a burden and decides to get rid of it.
Some parents, especially the single mothers, after learning that they have Aids may decide to do away with the child since life becomes tougher when one is terminally ill.
But Lulindya said the children brought into the home are cared for like any other child and are only checked for HIV if they are persistently ill. However people who want to adopt them are free to carry out an HIV test.
Lulindya believes that community policing would reduce on the rate at which children are abandoned. If the LCs and the people in the communities were more alert, women would fear to dump their children, as they would be quizzed over the whereabouts of the baby or the pregnancy.
Yet the few in homes such as Sanyu and Dwelling Places are the lucky few that make it to a home where they are given proper care and love. Some die and others are taken over by people who may not be so kind to them but found them first, say in gardens or trenches and did not report or hand them over to police.
Sanyu Babies Home, Dwelling Places and Open Door and the many upcountry ones like Gangama in Mbale and Sanyu in Jinja deserve a thumbs-up for creating a difference.
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