While planning our holiday trip through Senegal, we got the idea, partly thanks to our tour operator, of visiting the ‘Vivre Ensemble’ orphanage in Mbou. Every year, DISC Belgium asks its collaborators to suggest a ‘good cause’, 2 charities of which will be selected by mutual consent of the staff as the recipients of a donation based on part of the profits.
The orphanage had been proposed by myself and thanks to my colleagues it was selected as one of the ‘winners. This made our visit all the more important, since we now had a chance of making a financial contribution to the day-to-day expenses of the local staff. Despite all our good intentions for visiting this orphanage, we nevertheless feared that it might be an emotionally taxing experience to linger for a long time to come. In the end, these fears turned out to be unfounded since now we only have positive memories of our visit.
Carrying a sports bag full of clothing and toys and our donation check, we were transferred to the premises of the orphanage. It is a large building accommodating 200 children between the ages of 0 and 15. All of them are there because their families’ financial and personal circumstances do not allow the children to be raised at home. An important nuance for the children is that the accommodation is always meant to be temporary with the intention of returning to their actual families.
We visited the accommodation for the 0 to 2,5 years age group. What immediately stood out was the attention to hygiene: using disinfectant washing gel for washing hands and the prohibition to enter rooms wearing shoes. Inside the building, a number of child care workers were responsible for feeding and caring for the children. Each bed was labeled with the name and date of birth of the child. There was also a playing area for toddlers. Beside the permanent staff, this orphanage receives extra help from students doing volunteer work for a couple of months or from people like us, families coming to spend some time with the children.
We mainly helped with the feeding and changing of the babies and also played with the toddlers. Thanks to having contact with these kids, seeing all those smiling little faces, we left the orphanage a couple of hours later, feeling happy and with a sense of accomplishment.
Michaël Van Hove and family
