Visiting an Orphinage, what can you do....

Last Saturday, Mia, a Belgian lady friend of ours, took us to an orphanage in the south of Harare. They had about 70 children there, age ranging from 0 to 18. She'd asked me to prepare a couple of games, and I'd planned to test out role play as a therapeutic instrument, in which you ask one of the children to tell a story or memory related to a topic (trust, hurt, violence, whatever). That kid then becomes the director and picks somebody to play their role, and other kids to play the other characters. Anyway, the minute we got there, I could tell the kids were way too young, oldest being 10 or something like that. All the older kids had gone to church. But they seemed to have very definite ideas of which games to play, so let's say I just participated.
Every time there was something different to notice, suddenly a girl that turned out to be half blind, or a little kid that wanted to sit on my shoulders, the affection they were craving, and the physical touching. Just holding my pants or a finger. It breaks your heart.
So, it got me thinking. I mean, maybe sometime in the future, we had been thinking about adopting. Zimbabwe seems to have very strict rules about that and anyway, think it is still a bit too soon for me and Thomas, but maybe something in between. A sort of foster formula, maybe having a kid over during the weekends or go on a holiday together, I don't know. It would just be nice to do something, make a small contribution, and it would also make us realize the change it is to have a child even part time. So who knows, it still needs a lot of thinking and discussing, also with the orphanage but just wanted to share a bit of those thoughts with you....