I just returned from Bulgaria yesterday. I felt I needed to go and check out the place and check out the program we intend to support through the proceeds of the Tabitha.  I wanted to be sure that we are doing the right thing and working toward the right goal.   Below are the words that I was inspired to write after spending 5 hours in the Pleven institution for babies, "home" to 250 children...

After weeks of dreading what I would witness at Pleven, I am actually holding myself together.  An hour into my visit I am resigned to the fact that this is a horrible, grim, sad place full of pain and plenty of suffering.  It is floor after floor, wing after wing, room after room and cot after cot of very small children and babies.  It is mostly silent save for the occasional moan, bang of a head being hit repeatedly against the bars of a cot, or creak of a mattress as a child rocks himself back and forth, back and forth in an effort to relieve the monotony of nothing.  The silence is occasionally shattered by the sporadic desperate screech of a newborn- the only occupants of Pleven who have not been here long enough to realize that there is no point.  "I am wet, I am hungry, I am frightened, I want my mother!" they shriek.  But they will learn soon enough, within a day or two, that nobody cares and nobody will come.  I know it already and I have only been here an hour.

This sea of mostly silent and still babies have never had even their most basic needs met.  They lie in dirty cots, with filthy wet nappies and clothes, starving, and completely deprived of anything even remotely resembling kindness.  They have absolutely no stimulation of any kind.  Most of them no longer seem to seek out human touch, but rather flinch, clench and grind their rotted rows of double teeth, going rigid as I lift their emaciated bodies from their cots and hold them in my arms.  One or two of them do, after a few minutes in my arms, relax, sink into my embrace or actually hold on.  My heart is begining to crack.

With clothes stained by the seepage of overflowing nappies, grimy and sweaty from the stifling heat, and breathing only through my mouth to avoid the stench, I am doing ok.  I am holding it together.  That is until I lean down to read the information card on the cot of the child in my arms.  I can't tell if the child is a boy or a girl because like all the others the head is shaved and the clothes are neutral and ragged.  This child is tiny.  Not more than 10 pounds I imagine.  This child is terribly small for the the 2 or 3 year old I imagine it to be...

And suddenly I am anything but ok because according to the tag on her cot, she is almost 10 years old!  As that fact registers I am falling apart.  I can't breath at all as I process the horror that is this child's existence and I am suddenly overcome by the feeling that there is absolutely no hope.  None at all.  I am unbearably sad- overcome by all the emotions I was fearing all along.  I am clinging to the child and crying very hard into the silence.  I know there is no hope for any of them.  No hope at all.

I hear something from the corridor...voices, laughter, chatter.   They are buzzing and shuffling and smiling as they enter the room, smiling as they filter in and fan out toward the children.  I watch the children relax, react, breath as they feel the familiar touch, hear the familiar voice of their Baba.  The Babas speak their names, reach for them smile at them, lift them from their cots.  They undress them, wash them, redress them and one by one carry them proudly from the ward.  I am stunned, confused, elated.

In this ward there is a Baba for each child including the one I am still clutching.  She is patiently watching me, stocky, grey haired, smiling.  She reaches for the child in my arms.   I watch her fuss over this wasted, emaciated contorted little being and finally carry her from the room where this child spends every single other hour of every single day of her unimaginably horrible life.  Suddenly something else clicks.

Two hours a day five days a week is not alot of time.  For many of these children it will not be enough to improve their chances of a normal life or in some cases even save their lives.  It will, however, relieve their agony if only for 10 hours per week because for those 10 hours they will be someone, they will be recognized and touched with kindness and spoken to and for those 10 hours a week they will matter.

A bit of extra food, a small gift brought from home, an extra nappy a day and a meal fed by a caring hand...for some of these children this actually will make a significant difference.  For some this actually is a chance.

Until we can raise enough money and awareness to close these institutions and change the system that allows them to exist, the Baba program is the best possible thing we can do for these tortured and forgotten little souls and of that I am now completely certain.  Because for 10 hours a week they will all have something they have never had in their sad little lives- a bit of dignity.  And for these suffering little angels I believe for now there is no better gift.    May 2009

You will be carrying love in the Tabitha Bag - each Tabitha bag sold will fund a Baba for 6 weeks.