Metropolitan Police Child Care Centre - MPCCC.

Weight of the world upon these poor little shoulders.

Metropolitan Police Child Care Centre - MPCCC.

This is another tough one, no probably the toughest project we have anything to do with as these children don’t have a home or anyone to care for them, in the short term anyway.

Lined up to receive cookies that some of the lovely ladies had bought. Ages 16 years to 2yrs 8months.

I have been visiting the MPCCC for nearly two years now and there is not a time I have come away not feeling very helpless and inadequate. These children really have it tough as it gets they are either living on the streets and in winter that means underground and/or have been abused by adults that are meant to be looking after them. Many have run away from home after continuous abuse – physical, verbal and sexual and they have nowhere else to go.

 

Love the face, he was just having such a lovely time.

IWAM started going as a group just to play with the children for a few hours and to give them something to do and a bit of stimulus, as normally they just sit in front of the TV all day unless they are doing chores.

I wasn't very good at this but the boys love it.

Of the 5 girls that were there all of them had sexually transmitted diseases and heavens knows how many of the boys did as well. There were burns on the face and neck which had obviously been caused by another person, there were bad skin rashes, there were many with bad coughs and running temperatures and many have nits and or scabies.

 

How do you get a burn there? 

 

Another burn?

 

A rash all over his body, I gave him my tube of paw paw ointment and hope it helps a little.

The MPCCC receive approx $300 per year to buy medicines for these children every year. I just can't believe they are so generous!! Every child that comes to the centre is in some need of some medical attention as I have said but they are in desperate need of antibiotics, anti emetics, pain relief, creams for various skin diseases - cortisone and soothing creams such as paw paw ointment. Anything really for childhood complaints would go a long way to helping these little ones. 

There is a doctor that works full time at the centre and she is wonderful but you can only do so much with nothing.

 

This one could have been a fall but he had other bruises!

 

 The older girl had a temperature and a terrible cough, the little one was enjoying all the attention.

The little one above is 2 years and 8 months old and had been dropped off by her grandfather the day before as he couldn't look after her. We had two different versions of where her parents were, the first being that her mother was in prison after having killed her father and the other version was that her Mum was in hospital with a very sick 2 month old baby and the father was an alcoholic. Either story doesn't bode well for this little girl. Apparently Save the Children are going to take her which makes me think that Mum is in prison.

The little one is also wearing a little wool top knitted by people from Walcha (my home town in Australia) which had been sent across to me with 30 plus others and dozens of gorgeous baby blankets. Such an incredible gift and so much appreciated by all we have handed them out to.

 The Centre do the best with what the government provides but it is very little as all the toys and games have been donated by groups who visit the centre.

 

All the older ones look after the little ones. Not sure what she was drinking but probably black weak tea.

 They love the drawing and colouring in which sadly all seem to be put away until we or another expat group return.

 They were much better at the hoola hoop than any of us were... too long ago for me.

 Beading is particularly popular with both boys and girls as they then have something to call their own.

The children are amazingly resilient to all that is thrown at them and can at least smile but even when we were there, there were many tears so heavens knows how many there are when we are not.

I wish I could take them all home but life isn't like that plus the Mongols are very against having children adopted out to foreigners and Mongols aren't into adoption themselves unless they know the genetics and history of the child. 

Hence the need for 46 orphanages in Ulaanbaatar 4 government ones and 42 privately run ones.

Take care and enjoy the moment.

Cheers

Robyn

Orphanage - Notre Dame - a happier story

 Sr Marie Francoise's special little man, although serious had been bright & bubbly moments before.

  

Notre Dame Orphanage - a happier story.

Last week I wrote about Sister Marie Francoise leaving Mongolia after seven years and the combined threat of the government actually closing down the orphanage.

I went to the Orphanage the following Tuesday after having spoken to many people over the weekend, with wonderful offers of help, as have some of you who read this in faraway places have also been wonderfully generous .... a huge thank you.

Ole, Mike and Iva (all from OT - Oyu Tolgoi – Rio Tinto mine ) had, after much questioning of Sister Marie Francoise before she let the country, discovered that a Mongolian nanny, employed for a 12 month contract but then not re contracted although she continued to work for the orphanage for another 9 months before Sister finally dismissed her for not turning up to work and various other issues they had had with her the whole time she had been employed. She left using the same terminology that the government employer used when he turned up a few days later, indicating that the nanny had gone straight round to the government office complaining about her treatment.

The girl turned up drunk a few days ago demanding more money and I gather she had been drunk turning up for work as well but hopefully now things are sorted and she will not be bothering them again.

 

I need a volunteer to show these little girls how to knit - I am hopeless as I can never remember where to put my fingers let alone show someone else. Noel is in the background.

The gang from OT have been working hard with a Mongolian lawyer to make sure all the paper work is up to date and they have all the necessary forms stamped, dated and cross referenced so that they can’t be closed down without a very big fight

 

The little ones from the orphanage and ger district about to go down for their nap.

Sister Isabel and Sister Mary the two new nuns are delightful women and care very much for the children and it was delightful for me to see the children coming up to give them both big hugs, especially the little one who is only three and had been very much Sister Marie Francoise’s baby boy.

Sister Isabel and Sister Mary with three of the boys who were helping clean up the yard.

Sister Isabel was covered in dirt where she had been helping the boys clean up some of the yard and the boys were very happy little men to be doing something helpful. There is an awful lot that needs to be done to help get the place shipshape such as....

1. ·         Water pipes buried more than a few centimetres so they don’t freeze immediately it gets cold.
2. ·         Pipes fixed to bring hot water into the kitchen from the roof.
3. ·         Cars repaired so they are able to take the bigger children to school and shop etc..
4. ·         Wardrobes built for coats and clothes – which a very generous benefactor has already given us the money to do – thank you so much. We have 'Dave’s Cave' making them as we write.
5. ·         Repainting of all the buildings inside and out.
6. ·         New curtains for the bedrooms
7. ·         Repairing bathrooms which have a huge amount of wear and tear especially from young rambunctious young boys who like to test materials!!
8. ·         Just general repairs all over the place actually as Sister Marie was on her own it was so hard keeping up with basic repairs when you are looking after 23 children and the associated problems.

The list goes on.

  

One of the little boys with one of the dogs that lives on the compound.

I just wanted to share with you though that the orphanage should not be closed down and the children seem happy, which was the best news.

 

 Another little one that Sister Marie had been Ma'ma to, happy with his thumb.

I returned to the orphanage again last Friday with another friend Noel (an angel who cares) who has worked so hard to help the orphanage with fund raising and donating food whenever she visits plus many other things and had been distraught to hear about Sister Marie leaving. She had dosed herself on Rescue remedy before arriving at the orphanage as she really wasn’t sure what to expect. She was greatly relieved that all the children seemed happy and cheerful.

 

Good night.

Thank you all so much for your support, it is appreciated.

Take care and enjoy every moment of life.

Robyn

I travelled with worms in my boot......

 

 The beautiful mint that grows on the window-sill, thanks to the worm juice applied regularly.

I travelled with worms in my boot.

I thought this a great title for my book when I eventually put it all together.

Now if you are in any way squeamish you may not want to read any further.

In October 2009 I was staying with wonderful friends Mike & Judy in Sydney before returning to Mongolia, trying to cram over 30kgs into a bag probably made to carry less than 15kgs and I am only allowed 20kg anyway. Judy said ‘I will get some compost worms for you to take back to back to Mongolia’. As you can imagine I looked at her as if she was off her rocker. Not only is it probably illegal but did she realise that the temperatures in Mongolia drop to -40C below and that I didn’t have a lot of room in my suitcase.

Where was I going to keep these worms when I did get back to Mongolia?

To please Judy I wrapped maybe 20 worms in wet newspaper, placed them in a plastic bag and put them inside my boot, placed a pair of socks in the boot as well so the worms didn’t get 'squished' and placed them in my suitcase, promptly forgetting about them until I unpacked my suitcase in Mongolia. Fortunately they all arrived safely and appeared to be happy and cheerful as they wriggled and squirmed and I wondered what on earth I was going to do with them.

 

Just a few of the thousands of worms.

Being a farmer’s daughter it didn’t take me long to find an empty large pot plant holder, place some shredded newspaper in the bottom then throw in some vegetable scraps and I had Nigel get a little sand & dirt from downstairs, placed the worms on top, sat the pot plant holder in a bucket popped the lid on and I was now doing my bit for global warming in Mongolia!

 

The worm farm in our lounge.

We now have millions of worms and I have shared them with many throughout the country - schools, agriculture programs and friends, I have wonderful pot plants and very little rubbish

They live in our lounge room and we have never had any smell at all although we did have a mass suicide when hundreds of them crawled out of the bucket overnight as I had let it get too wet and hot. You know what happens when it rains a lot, all the worms come to the surface and many die.

We saved as many as we could but I felt really bad that I had caused this problem in the first place. I am now very careful about not letting it get too wet or too hot.... fancy that, as Mongolia is one of the driest and coldest places on earth!!

 

Just one of the pot plants that I feel is taking over the lounge.

It is amazing just how much vegetable scraps, tea bags, coffee grounds, cardboard etc they consume and how quickly and if I haven’t got enough food products I just throw in shredded paper to keep them going. I can even leave them for weeks at a time and not worry too much about them - not like a cat, dog, bird, fish - these are great pets.

 

Spring onions and parsely that has been producing all winter.

My dream is to enable every town in Mongolia to have a hot house so that through the Mongolian Women’s Council all women in every town can grow vegetables and improve the health of their children. I only need a million or so dollars to get this dream off the ground but IWAM has already started doing this in 2002 when they provided money, with the Khan Bank, to train 10 women to grow vegetables, the project has grown to over 400 women in 2010 which I think is brilliant and they are growing some amazing vegetables.

Now I can give worms to them all so that they can have even better vegetables. What a joy.

Thank you Judy you have no idea what that one little gesture has meant to so many and hopefully will too many more.

If you too would like some worms, please let me know.

Enjoy, have fun.

Cheers

Robyn

Thrills, chills and spill.s

Great slope for tobagganing - the thrills.

Thrills, Spills and Chills.

As most of you know Mongolia gets severely cold in winter and although it doesn’t stops us doing pretty well everything that we want, you have to be very careful where you place your feet coming out of buildings, getting out of cars or just being out and about. This becomes even more crucial in spring when the thaw starts during the day and the evenings are still dropping down to below -26°C with a wind chill of - 31°C. As you can imagine the snow and slush hardens early evening to become a lethal trap for the unwary or the stupid... and I have to say I am the latter, as I should know better.

I had a fall in December which was unfortunate as I didn’t see the huge hole in the road as I struggled out of a car holding my coat in my arms (instead of having it on) in -22°C and landed very heavily on my right knee. This was the day before we flew to Australia which was a bit unfortunate but besides a still numb knee and a little pain I haven’t been inconvenienced too much.

The second fall was Valentine’s Day, we had been out to dinner and I will admit I may have had a teensy glass of wine but I was by no stretch of the imagination intoxicated. Walking between two men, one also admitting he nearly went A over T as well and one being my darling husband, I was flat on my back before I could even manage to grab at least one of them. I had slipped down a slight incline which was like glass and ‘bang’ down I went. I didn’t think I had done too much damage but the next day my left side was very painful and it proceeded to get worse each day until a week later it was hurting for me to breath and being the sensible person I am, I spent a day in bed and I was much improved.

 

Spring thaw although river is still frozen.

I have recovered from that little incident when this week I went down again. This time; no ice, no slipperiness, no holes, no bumps, no excuse really except being in too much of a hurry and not lifting my feet. This time I had my hands inside my big winter green cape and had no protection at all, hitting the pavement with my head, looking like a spastic person with no arms I clambered to my feet more concerned that I wouldn’t find the button that had popped off my cape than anything else.

I was hurrying to meet a friend for lunch and it wasn’t till she asked what had happened that I realised I had a huge egg on my temple, just above my right eye that I then started to feel the other injuries. Right knee and wrist had also taken a bit of a pounding so there was nothing for it but to call Nigel asking if he could bring some homeopathy - hypericum and arnica -, to me as quickly as possible, which he did and bless him, he also bought some rescue remedy which many of you may also use – great stuff for incidents like this. I now have some gorgeous eye makeup but no other permanent damage, I hope, although the knee is still sore.

 

My lovely eye makeup - didn't realise I had quite so many freckles!

I had always realised my cape created an interest, especially among the Mongolians but hadn’t quite realised the significance of their interest until the other day I was hurrying along all tucked inside my cape when a lovely Mongolian lady came up flapping her arms at me and showing great concern. It took me a few moments to realise she thought I had no arms and was greatly relieved when I popped then through the splits on the side of the cape. I still giggle when I think many Mongolians think there is this poor armless woman living here in Mongolian and I am now much more aware of pooping my arms out if anyone shows too much concern.

 My lovely cape and that is the monopod for my camera - not a walking stick although I probably should use it as such.

I promise I will try to take more care walking from now on and with summer approaching rapidly I should be able to manage that.

Winter is cold but dressing appropriately makes it relatively easy to handle the minus forty plus degrees but that is harder to do in spring, especially with such biting winds that only seem to be around in spring and that are incredibly lazy, go straight through you rather than round you.

The sun is shining, snow is melting and it won’t be long before the dreary drab brown of spring is replaced with the verdant green of summer and we then head to 40C plus for a short time and we can once again gallop across the Steppe on those shaggy little Mongolian horses.

Realise this was mostly chills and spills, so the thrills will have to wait till next time.

Take care.

Robyn

Orphanage - Notre Dame

Sister Marie Francois doesn't only take in children.

Orphanage - Notre Dame.

One can’t help but become emotionally involved with people here when you see them regularly and your helping them to make a better life for themselves or others and just because you care.

I say here now that these are my opinions and people may disagree with me but it is how I see the situation and you have every right to disagree with me.

I had a meeting yesterday morning at Millies Cafe (I seem to have most of my meetings here), which had been made earlier in the week, to meet with Sister Marie Francois and meet some other nuns who had come out from the order in Chicago. Sr. Marie Francois has been running the Notre Dame Orphanage here for seven years without a break and the oldest child is only nine. Some of you may remember I have mentioned her before as we have had the children sing and dance at Christmas time at IWAM meetings plus we have donated hundreds of dollars worth of goods to the orphanage over the last few years.

Sr. Marie Francois with some of her boys, Tricia Noel and Lynne after a donation.

I knew things were not right as soon as I saw Sister Marie’s face but was shocked to learn she was leaving the country the following day with very little possibility that she would be returning. She had only been told this news the day before and was in shock, as was I. Tears flowed freely from both Sr. Marie and I as we tried to comprehend this news.

She has had 23 children in her care for the last seven years without a break, plus she has set up a kindergarten for 20 local ger children and had a school built for 60 children in another ger district area. As I said the eldest in the orphanage is only 9 years old and the youngest 3 - with the 3 year old having arrived when he was only 5 days old - Sr. Maris is the only mother most of these children have known or remember.

These little bundles are all children from the ger district who come in every day for the kindergarten, sleep and food.

I could understand it more if the other two nuns, who were taking over from Sr. Marie, had been there a month or more and the children had got to know them, but a week!! Just not fair.

Sr. Marie has not been well over the winter with bronchitis and she certainly needed to have a break after seven years without one but why make her leave with 48 hours notice. Sr. Marie will no doubt cope with the loss of her children but I wonder what scars it will leave on those children in the long term.

 

Moira and Emily with Sr. Marie and two of her children after another lot of donations.

The nuns then inform me that the orphanage has also been seriously threatened with closure and that could take place within the week. I was finding this so hard to comprehend and after a very sad farewell to Sr. Marie I put wheels in motion to see if something couldn’t be done about the threatened closure. 

Fortunately wonderful friends Ole, Mike and Iva stepped to the fore and headed up to the orphanage to see what they could do. As Iva is a lawyer and Mike and Ole work for Oyu Tolgoi as does Iva I think we had the right people. After two hours of discussion I think they got to the bottom of things and hopefully they will make sure all the paper work is in order and this pipsqueak from the government threatening closure will not be able to close the orphanage down. 

I couldn’t begin to imagine how the children would be if they lost their Ma’ma and their home within a week. Doesn’t bare thinking about.

I could go on about the unfairness of taking Sr. Marie away from Mongolia in such a hurry and as the nuns explained, they know when they go to a place they generally only have 3 years there but these little children don’t know that & will find it very hard to understand. I am sure they will see a rise in behaviour problems now. There will be two nuns there to look after them now but there should have been another nun helping Sr. Marie all the time.

Very sad and makes me so cross for all involved.

Take care

Robyn & Nigel