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?