The Perils of Poo

Warning: Unless you’re a parent, this blog is probably going to groooossss you out!

Begin with the image at right. Yes, that is an orphan dropping.

Poo has taken those of us at Green Eyes on quite the journey. We’ve gagged, we’ve cringed, and become more wise. (?)

All right, so I’m writing this blog to recognize the tremendous patience and courage our volunteers Joe, Natalie, our African volunteers, and myself have demonstrated in the face of the most disgusting aspects of working with Green Eyes in Africa.

I’ve been doing this for six years, so I don’t even know what our work must seem like from an outsider’s perspective. Looking back, I imagined working with orphans as an epic, meaningful, touching, and always life-changing experience. The reality is far from that. Sometimes it gets so frustrating, so gross, so irritating, that we resent the very little stinkers we’re supposed to adore!

We’ll start with Aloha (nicknamed this because his real name is that of a little boy who recently died; not emotionally a good idea to have that name floating around at this time). Aloha,4, is a wide-eyed little cupie doll who couldn’t be cuter—physically. He’s completely melted the hearts of Joe and Natalie who have been his primary caregivers over the past four months. The fact that they still love him shows that they must be related to Mother Theresa.

You see, Aloha came to us with some, eh-hem, issues. The day he arrived, Natalie and I got him dressed and made him a nice glass of warm milk. We were ooing and aahing over his adorableness, excited to work with our newest little elf. He couldn’t speak coherently when he arrived, but we understood “chier” which means “shi*.” In French, this word is an offensive expletive, but in Cameroon, they’ve adopted it as the norm for referring to “number two.”

We told him to say “ca ca” instead, but “chier” was what he was used to. For the first time, he said, “chier” with a sense of urgency.

We went into the bathroom to place him on the toilet (the first one he’d ever used in his life). To him, it probably looked like a large monster’s mouth that was going to swallow him up and chomp him into oblivion. But he didn’t end up having to face the monster. Just as his pants came down, a projectile stream of yellow liquid squirted horizontally onto my pants and shoes. I began to gag, stuffed toilet paper in my nose, and watched as poor Natalie covered her face and said, “I’m sorry!” and excused herself (in order to avoid vomiting, no doubt).

I placed Aloha in the tub, washed him off, and reassured myself that this was a one-time adventure that was now in the past. Natalie and I found a second pair of clean clothes and resumed our goo-goo talking with Aloha, smiling and anticipating all of the fun things Aloha was to experience with Green Eyes in Africa.

“Chier!”

We ran to the bathroom, this time moving faster than the speed of light to get him on the toilet. Pants down! Lift him and turn him onto the toilet! So close, so very close we came. And yet, once again, a masterful mustard-yellow work of art was covering my pants, shoes, and the bathroom floor.

Natalie and I, being of sound mind and great intellect, decided it was time to place multiple rags in his underwear and not risk another firework display.

A few days later, we took Aloha to the doctor (he has Epilepsy). The poor little guy not only has Epilepsy, but he was severely malnourished and underweight (he looked two years old), had pneumonia, and intestinal parasites. We were given a long list of prescriptions and blood tests to complete, and were almost on our way, when…

“Chier!”

I rushed Aloha into the bathroom of the French medical clinic. This clinic is clean, modern, and efficient. The last thing we wanted to do was embarrass ourselves in front of a crowd used to eating escargot and sipping champagne with fromage.

We made it into the bathroom, I unbuttoned his little jeans, and now, ahh! Why did we tape his cloth diaper so tightly? The explosion was once again horizontal, only this time it came out from the left side of Aloha’s diaper. With toilet paper shoved in my nostrils, holding back gags, I began cleaning. But I had forgotten to lock the door of the tiny bathroom. “Aaaahhhhh!” a woman screamed as she tried to enter. I can only imagine what I looked like with toilet paper in my nose and a little African child in a taped-up diaper, surrounded by ****.

It took a bit of time, and many baby wipes to clean up the mess while Joe and Natalie attempted to make polite conversation with the Belgian doctor in his office.

Fortunately, all of this craziness has a happy ending. Well, no, it doesn’t, actually. Aloha still torments us with almost daily episodes of peeing or pooping in his pants. The trouble is, we all know that he is capable of using the toilet (with help) at this point, but seems to be using his excretory powers to control and manipulate the orphanage staff.

Little orphans like Aloha come with issues that are unfathomable. We have no idea what he’s witnessed or been subjected to before arriving here. We know it’s a control issue, we know that sometimes children seek negative attention just as much as positive attention, but when is the poo saga going to end?

The good news is that Aloha has recently been going full days without dropping surprises.

Perhaps we should create a volunteer brochure with the following statement:

WARNING: You will deal with poo. Poo is going to be part of your life. Together, who? Poo and you.