Longing for contact
Kiran Somani tells of his experience in a Romanian orphanage
Recently I managed to secure a place
working in an orphanage in Romania
through the International Federation
of Medical Students Association. Along with
five other medical students I was to be placed
at an orphanage in the town of Iasi, which
lies in the north east of the state of Moldavia.
The placement was for three weeks during
the summer and the only charge was $100
for accommodation.
The project is organised by the federation
and is supported by local students. This was
a great relief as we automatically had very
hospitable guides to introduce us both to the
orphanage and the town and the culture. The
students visited us daily and became good
friends who always had good suggestions
about how we could make the most of our
time.
Our duties didn't involve a huge amount of
practising medicine as we were not all clinical
students. We were placed in an orphanage
largely restricted by its lack of staff. This was a
typical problem, and meant that the children,
aged from 3 to 12 years, didn't receive sufficient attention from adults. As a result they
suffered from developmental problems. Our
role was simply to interact with the children in
several different situations, providing them
with mental stimulation. Although a simple
role, it was clearly vitally important and, as I
found, very rewarding.
In general our tasks varied quite a lot and
we were given the freedom to choose how we
wished to involve ourselves in the orphanage. The only restriction was organising our
time around the children's daily schedule. We
helped with feeding the children and played
with them both inside and outside the
orphanage. We learnt a lot from the doctors,
for instance that there were considerable language barriers. It was also possible to aid the
orphanage financially as one volunteer did
by collecting sponsorship at home and
donating it.
Some of the children we worked with had
obvious medical conditions, but others
seemed completely normal. However, after
observing them over the first few days it
became clear that almost every child seemed
unaware of all the others. The children would
often not even acknowledge each other as
they played in the orphanage's courtyard. It
was normal to see them inexplicably occupied by the most dreary and uninteresting of
objects such as stones or empty matchboxes.
Some were lucky enough to have one of the
few toys that the orphanage's restricted budget allowed. The only time I saw children
making contact with each other was when
they were fighting for one of these toys or for
our attention. I became aware of this sad fact
when I was watching a girl riding a small
pedal car. She fell over as she tried to lift the
front of the car over a curb in her path. Her
stunned silence was followed swiftly by tears.
One of the boys walked over. He picked her
up and comforted her, then proceeded to
scold the car as an adult would "tell off " a
naughty child. As I replayed it in my mind, I
realised that apart from two of the older boys
in the orphanage who played catch together,
it was the first time since I had arrived that I
had seen two children interact at all, let alone
demonstrate an understanding of another's
feelings.
We were knocked over several times on
entering the courtyard as children starved of
human contact ran straight at us, each pushing to be the next to be picked up or hugged.
Seeing for myself the severe manner in which
children deprived of that contact are affected, gave me a real insight into child development. I only fully appreciated this after
studying child psychology on my return.
It was clear that the situation in Romanian
orphanages has improved over the last
decade, since the end of Ceausescu's regime.
The orphanage I saw had about 20 members
of staff in total caring for 100 children and I
was told it had once had twice the number of
children and only half the staff. However,
there are several other problems to be dealt
with. A growing number of orphans are suffering from HIV/AIDS and it is unclear how
the country will deal with these individuals as
adults when there are so many other economic problems. This is still just the beginning
and there is clearly a long way to go yet.
Kiran Somani, third year medical student, St George's Hospital Medical School, London
Email: 97ms143@sghms.ac.uk
studentBMJ 2000;08:217-258 July ISSN 0966-6494
