Insomnia & Bethel Foster Home for Blind Children

I’ve been sick for the last couple days- one of the myriad of illnesses one can pick up in China that disappears as mysteriously as it shows up. I’ve learned, through personal experience, that I needn’t panic every time I throw up, spasm, cramp, or find lesions on my legs and stomach. Nevertheless, illness of the catch-able variety prevents me from going to work, as passing on an infection to vulnerable kid could spell disaster. So I spent the past few days sleeping and watching DVDs. As a result, at 3:30AM the day I actually need to go to work, I am completely unable to sleep. I thought I should post a previously written journal entry on the Bethel Foster Home for the Blind:

June 22, 2005

I just spent the weekend in Langfang, two hours from Beijing. Guillaume Gauvain, one of the Founders of Bethel, was nice enough to pick me up from Beijing where he attends church. He seemed friendly enough but he quizzed me intensely about my intentions and about my research. A lot of people in this business are highly suspicious of outsiders. The scandals that broke about Chinese orphanages in the 1990s were pretty horrific and although domestic changes were made in the highly visible areas of China (Beijing, for instance), I think that a lot of the orphanages were warned to be wary of foreigners. I support informing outside nations of human rights abuses so they can pressure a country and hopefully rectify the problem, but it creates problems for well-intentioned volunteers. A lot of orphanages and foster homes won’t allow foreigners on their premises. I mean, what else can I do to reassure ayis and foreigners that I am NOT looking to create the next Big Scandal? Finally I snapped back at Guillaume which shut him up, thankfully, and he was perfectly fine after that.

If he was worried about something, it shouldn’t be that the children aren’t well taken care of: his facility was one of the best I’ve seen. There’s a low child:ayi ratio, the children learn Braille and other subjects, including English, from a blind teacher and a seeing teacher. The ayis seem to be well-qualified and one of the requirements they need to pass, according to Guillaume, is a hygiene standard. I almost wanted to kiss his feet after this- ayis that brushed their teeth! Woohoo!

The children were adorable. There’s no sense of personal space among blind children and so the minute they sense there’s a new person around them, they’ll crowd around and touch your clothing and face to determine what you “look” like. One of the children smells other people; others can tell when Guillaume is in the room by the way he walks. I’ve gained new respect for the abilities of a blind person. I most definitely will never underestimate one. They probably pick up a lot more than I do. I’ve been wondering how a blind lacrosse or soccer player would do. Probably not so great. Maybe swimming would be more their thing. They’d be like dolphins.

Anyway, unlike the children at Shunyi, the children at Bethel are adoptable. There are one, maybe two, that have prospective families, which is wonderful. Still, in some respects, the education that they receive at Bethel is probably better than any education that they’d get at a regular elementary school. And they wouldn’t have to deal with the stigma of being blind.

You guys can check the Home out at www.chinaimpact.org
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