Interview of Fr. Martin Trieb O.S.B. with Mrs. Clare A. Kalkwarf D.M.
These children in our children’s home have various social problems. Some of them are social orphans. Some of them are AIDS orphans and some of them are HIV-positive themselves. We have several children who have been abandoned by their parents and they have been removed by the government social workers and placed in our care.
We have for instance one child who was abandoned at three months old in hospital. His mother took him there because he was sick. She never came back to fetch him and he grew up in the children’s home of a bush hospital for four years until the social workers heard about Blessed Gérard’s Children’s Home and then contacted us and asked us if we would look after him until they could find either an adoptive family or permanent foster care for him.
We have another child whose mother died in the Care Centre a week ago from AIDS and we have promised her that we are going to care for him. He himself is in full blown AIDS and so we are looking after him for the rest of his life.
There is another child who has a very sad story. He was abandoned three times, first of all by his mother to his father and secondly by his father to the mother of his estranged wife, who was obviously not a blood relative of his. This lady then abused the child. She neglected him and eventually abandoned him to us. We took him over. The poor little child was far behind in his development. He was malnourished and he had wounds all over his body. He is now well adjusted. He is going to the local pre-primary school and mentally he is coping very well at school. His physical development has improved a lot and he is fitting into society as a well adjusted child.
We have another couple of children who have been abused by their parents, of alcoholic parents. The social workers have placed him into our care for safekeeping until such time as they can find a permanent solution for their problem, more than likely a foster home.
It is because of all these social problems, many of them resulting from AIDS, that the parents are dying from AIDS that the children are being abandoned for financial reasons because the mother or the father has died of AIDS and left with the granny. The granny dies and the children are being brought up by maybe eleven or twelve year old brothers and sisters. These children need a home. These children have been placed in our care, not only by the social workers, but also by parents, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, people who don’t know any more which way to turn. They themselves can’t cope financially with their own families and now they are being asked to take on the responsibility for other people’s children. We feel that as Christians we have a responsibility to the society, to the community that we take these children into our home that we try to give them as good a start as possible in life and I think that through this film maybe we can raise the funds to do just that. I think we can see what the children are like. We can see that they are being looked after well. We work mostly with volunteers who come here of their own free will and help us to look after the children. We have in the meantime employed two caregivers permanently so the children have some continuity. They have people that they can relate to on an ongoing basis as a normal family would be. So they have two mother figures, perhaps a mother and a father figure, in the caregivers that we have employed. They have the security. They have the continuity. They have the discipline that they want. They have the love that they want from these two people including and over and above the two caregivers.
This page is part of "An everlasting brotherhood" - Preparations for a video film about the Brotherhood of Blessed Gérard
Blessed Gérard's Children's Home
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This page was last updated on Tuesday, 22 April 2008 01:03:05