Orphans' winding road to care

Orphans' winding road to care

By K. Basrie and Christiani SA Tumelap

JAKARTA (JP): Children are perhaps the third most precious
gift from God after our life and the earth on which we live.

In spite of this many women still have the heart to dump their
newborn babies.

Volunteers at orphanages here say that their babies are
collected from various sources: hospitals, police patrols,
clinics, cleaning services, poor couples and disappointed wealthy
families.

"For us, all babies -- disabled or not -- are the same. They
have the same right to live," explained R. Tjiptowinoto, who has
spent most of the past 16 years volunteering at the Sayap Ibu
Foundation orphanage in South Jakarta.

Hospital staff, for example, often witness newborn babies
crying alone in the wards after their mothers have left without
notice.

In each case the only documents left behind are the mother's
fake identification cards.

Police officers also often drive their patrol cars to
orphanages with pale babies in the back. Some are still covered
in fetal fluids. In many cases, the abandoned babies are
discovered at spots like river banks, lonely parks, garbage dumps
and ditches.

Some well-to-dos even dare hand over babies in their families
to the orphanages if they have learned that the child was the
result of an unacceptable union.

That's why they label the babies as "unwanted members" in
their family and pass him or her on to an orphanage.

Insane mothers

According to Suparsih, head of the city-owned Tunas Bangsa
orphanage in Cipayung, East Jakarta, babies of mentally ill
mothers usually experience the worst conditions.

Most of the insane women, who tend to become pregnant after
being raped by unidentified people on the streets, intend to kill
their newborn babies, she said.

"One of our children here was badly tortured by his mentally
ill mother, who smashed his head against a wall in panic, and
another was strangled," Suparsih explained.

There was also a baby boy who would have died if people had
not stopped his mother from throwing him out of the window of the
second floor of the mental rehabilitation center where the woman
was being treated, she said.

She said all the mentally ill mothers were homeless but
already pregnant when the city social service office officials
picked them up on the street.

One of the saddest moments in the volunteers' life is when
they are asked by the neglected children about their real
parents.

"For their own good, we prefer not to tell the truth if they
were children of psychotic mothers or born of a maid who was made
pregnant by her irresponsible employer," Suparsih said.

The happiest, but often very tearful moment, for the social
workers is when their children leave the orphanage to join a new
family who has decided to adopt them.

Of the 42 kids at Tunas Bangsa, for instance, 11-month-old
Sisca is one of the lucky one who will soon leave the orphanage
for her new family.

Earlier this month a couple chose the cute little girl with
curly hair, beautiful eyes and chubby cheek as their adopted
daughter.

Sisca was only six months old when her parents deserted her at
the state-owned Fatmawati hospital in South Jakarta while she was
still under treatment after a surgery for a lung problem.

The world, however, might be considered extremely cruel in the
eyes of a child like Bambang. Almost six years old, getting
foster parents seems like an impossible dream because he is so
mentally retarded none of the couples who have come to the
orphanage since he was a baby want to take him as their son.

Suparsih said Bambang might have inherited his mental problems
from his mother, a psychotic homeless woman who is being treated
at the city-owned mental rehabilitation center adjacent to the
orphanage.

Greedy physician

The sad journey of the babies is sometimes unable to open the
fondness of some heartless human beings, including greedy
physicians.

An orthopedist here, for instance, charged the Sayap Ibu
Foundation the regular medical fee when the latter brought one of
their disabled babies for treatment.

The baby girl, named Santi, who is now almost three months
old, has a problem with her legs, Tjiptowinoto said.

"The physician refused to lower the price as if we're the same
as his other patients. He just charged us Rp 400,000 (US$30) per
visit," she said.

The orthopedist promised that Santi would be able to properly
use her legs again after the seventh visit.

"Although our budget is limited at the moment, we have no
choice but to do the best we can to cure the girl's legs before
she grows up as it would then be difficult to treat her disabled
legs," Tjiptowinoto said.

Such a strong humanitarian effort conducted by the Sayap Ibu's
social workers to help the neglected babies cannot be replaced by
anything whatsoever in this planet except the babies' smiles.

Except the low-paid nurses, none of the 10 Sayap Ibu
administration staff, including Tjiptowinoto, receive money for
their efforts.

"We never have and will never ever want to misuse money or
anything, like food and toys given for the kids, for our own
interests even in this time of economic crisis.

"All we get is purely for the children here," Tjiptowinoto
said.

"We're 100 percent volunteers. We are not paid here and use
our own money for our meals, our transportation.

"But we all happily enjoy this work," she said.

But why are there still so many women out there who have the
heart of the devil to dump their own babies?