Moma Lidia From The Orphanage

A very tiney woman has been to visit us several times. She comes dressed in a traditional konga wrapped skirt, large draping scarf cascading from her shoulders. and a turbin head covering. All fabrics are in many bright wonderfull colors and patterns making her look even tinier.

Lidia works at the baby orphanage helping to take care of the babies. The baby orphanage is about a half miles down the dirt road heading back to Bakoba. At the present time there are around twenty-five babies there. Babies are brought to the orphanage when the mother has died and the father, extended family, or village can not take care of them. A lot of times it is because the mother has Aids and no medical care and has passed away from that. This mesns tht the babies could very well be HIV possitive when they arrive.

It is hard work taking care of these babies and the staff is quite small. Maybe four or five at the most to cover a twenty-four hour period of time. Hard to hold all the babies when they need to be held with so few arms.

Lidia works all night every night to care for the babies. She has been working at the orphanage since 1975. She makes 1800 tish per month. That is $1.08 in american money per month.

Lidia is getting old and knows she will not be able to work for many more years. She wants to build a house for herself back in her home village. She would then have a place to go where her family will be around her.

The house Lidia wants to build is nothing like what we know as a house. She want three rooms in it. The whole house would probably fit inside of a space smaller then 20x20 feet. There would be no running water. No toilets, no electricity. She wants doors and windows that she can close in her house also.

In american dollars it will cost $5000 to build her house. Lidia has been saving half of her monthly wage to build her house for quite some time. That is she is saving 900 tish a month, which is 54 cents. You do he math. At 54 cents a month how long will it take her to save up the $5000. By the way that is 3,800,000 tish.

This is the norm not the exception here.