Visiting the orphanage in Luang Prubang

I never did get around to posting about our visit to the orphanage in Luang Prubang. My Dad had chosen a guest house with ties to a local orphanage, and organized a trip out to see it. Richard didn't come with us (he took the time to get some writing done).

We got on the tuk tuk, and made a quick stop at the local market. There we purchased enough notebooks and pens for each of the 400 plus kids who stay at the orphanage. Then we drove on to the campus.

It would be easy to romanticize the place. It was a large space, several acres, with open buildings, green spaces, gardens, and surrounding beautiful scenery. But.

There are 400 plus kids who live there, ranging in age from about 8 to 17. It wasn't quite clear where the kids lived prior to coming to this facility. Some of them have no parents, some only one. Most come from villages, rather than from LP itself.

The campus includes boys and girls dormitories, classrooms, a dining hall, open green space, bathing places, toilets, and gardens. In the old dormitories, there are long rows of knee high platforms lining each wall. Above the platforms at about head height runs a shelf. Each kid has the width of a twin mattress (though no mattress, only a mat on top of the platform), with the corresponding space under the mat and on the shelf for personal belongings. In the new dorms, the boys have bunk beds, again with some space under the bed and some on a shelf. Most kids kept their belongings in large reusable plastic bags.

Most of the toilets are tiled concrete structures. To a Western eye, used to indoor plumbing and hyper cleanliness, they seem much like upscale outhouses. By local standards, they are quite nice. Certainly as nice or nicer than toileting facilities we saw in smaller villages. They bathe in newly constructed concrete and tile areas, with no walls and a central reservoir of clean water (there is a tap, with a small hose for bathing). I assume that they wear sarongs to bathe in, as is done in much of the rest of the country where public bathing is common. By local standards, the bathing facility is nicely done, again, certainly as nice as any public bath we saw in the villages.

The food is cooked over four wood fires in a small kitchen area. During the week, the kids are provided with bread and milk at breakfast time, and a simple lunch and dinner. While we were there, just before lunch, we saw 7 tables, each holding a bag of cooked sticky rice and a pot of watery vegetable and pork (mostly bone) stew. We asked how many kids each table would feed, and were told 13. It seemed like generous, albeit not particularly appetising portions. But then we asked whether the kids ate in shifts. No, we were told, this is all the food for all the kids. And then we realized that each pot served 30 kids. Not nearly enough. I noticed that outside the dining hall there was another place with food. It turns out that if the kids want, they can buy supplementary food there.

There is no food cooked for the kids on the weekends--the cooking staff only works during the week. They are given sticky rice to have, plus about 50 cents to cover buying some additional food. They can also cook some of the vegetables from the garden.

There are no adults at the orphanage on the weekends. The kids are left to fend for themselves. The older kids are matched up with younger ones. In an ideal world, this would work well for teaching responsibility and creating connection between the kids. I couldn't help but think of Lord of the Flies, and worry that what in fact happens is some system whereby the older kids boss and bully the younger kids.

All the kids were in class while we were there. Our guide said that the school there is much better than that in the villages, and it certainly looked like they were in a pretty decent place. The classrooms looked as nice, if not nicer, than those we taught in in another village (more about that in another post).

The guide also said that when the kids left the orphanage, they all had the option of a government job. No one else we talked to could verify this, but if it's true, these kids are definitely better off than kids in the American system. In the US, once a kid ages out of the system, he or she receives no more support and many (most?) wind up in jail with a year of their "independence".

I left thinking it was hard to know what to think. Certainly, no kid should be in an orphanage, the food was insufficient, and I can't imagine leaving 400 kids to self govern every weekend. But what is their alternative? Life in a village with relatives who don't want them, can't feed them, and can't educate them?