Sisters of Charity

This morning I went with a group off the ship, once again braving the Cotonou traffic, to visit an orphanage run by the Sisters of Charity (if I remember the name correctly). There were about 20 toddlers and 2 four week old babies here. Many of the children are abandoned children and also a few handicapped children that the parents were no longer able to care for. On the positive side about 60% of these children are adopted by people within Benin! When we arrived a lot of the kids come running up with their arms in the air waiting to be picked up. The challenge is they don't want to put down again. Some of these children are HIV+. I think I found that the hardest part of this visit. I have cared for HIV+ adults before but there is something so sad about seeing a tiny child bearing the same burden. We spent a few hours playing with the kids and helping to feed them lunch before, dripping with sweat from the lovely temperatures here, we called it a day and returned to the ship. It is supposed to be the rainy season here now, but so far we have not had much rain at all. The air conditioning on the ship wasn't working for part of the day yesterday, and boy am I ever glad we have air conditioning, as it is stifling on the ship without it! Ship life definitely is a unique way of life, but I love just sitting by a window relaxing and watching the ships all around. There is always a group of ships on the horizon. Apparently these are ships waiting to dock in Nigeria, but as Nigerian waters are not as safe and do have some incidents of piracy, these ships prefer to wait in the waters off of Benin!