A woman making what is almost certainly the hardest decision of her life – handing over her child to the The Door of Hope sanctuary for abandoned babies.
“The baby bin, what happens is, a mum will obviously hear of Door of Hope, know that she can come and bring the child. And if she decides that she would like to stay anonymous, she would come to us, the bin faces the street on the outside, so we typically don’t know obviously who those mums are, because we want to respect their desire to remain anonymous,” says Richard Allen, CEO of Door of Hope.
When a baby is placed in the hatch and the door is closed, a high-pitched alarm rings out.
Everyone in the old house in the suburb of Berea near the Johannesburg city center stops and looks up.
They all know what the alarm means but they are still startled by it – after working here a while you get used to the sound, the carers say.
“There is a sensor in the camera so whenever there is a baby then the sensor will ring; that is the alert in the house. So we have the camera screen and it alerts us that there is a baby in the bin,” says Francinah Phago, home manager of the house in Berea.
The “baby bin” was started 17 years ago by South African Baptist pastor Cheryl Allen, who wanted to give mothers with unwanted babies an alternative to dumping them in unsafe places like in the rubbish or drains. Since then Door of Hope has taken in over 1500 abandoned infants.
Some of them will be adopted, mostly by foreign families; others will be left to grow up in South Africa’s heavily burdened public welfare system.
Allen is not only the chief executive of Door of Hope, he’s also the son of the sanctuary’s founder. He says most of the mothers choose to remain anonymous, but many babies are brought in by the police.
“A lot of what we are finding now is actually children that are coming to us via the police, so when passersby find the child abandoned they would bring them to the police and the police would then bring them to us. And also probably the most amount of kids are actually coming through hospitals, so after a mum has given birth to the child she then abandons the child in the hospital and the hospital contacts us.”
Adoptions in the country have decreased at an alarming rate. According to the Department of Social Development only 1165 adoptions occurred in 2015, which is a 30 percent decrease from the previous year.
The National Adoption Coalition of South Africa (NACSA) cites various reasons for this decline which include poverty, mass urbanisation, widespread gender-based violence and high levels of HIV infection.
It is estimated that in 2010 roughly 3500 babies were abandoned. This figure has not been updated, but NACSA believes that abandonment of children in South Africa increases annually.
Priscilla Ratsela, a 33-year-old carer at the sanctuary, says she sobbed the first time she saw a baby coming through the “baby bin”.
“When I first came here I think a week later then the child came through a bin and I cried – I just broke into tears that really, can somebody just put a child in a bin just like that. But the child even had a note that said ‘I love you my child’. It was touching, it was something that is unusual to me as a human being that somebody can do something like that to a child.”
Now Priscilla finds joy in helping the babies.
“When I get here I just, my heart just…my spirit just flows. I am just fine. Seeing these babies makes me happy, so it is a reward for me at the end of the day,” she says.
The center attracts many volunteers, including Hannah Thompson from the United States.
Nineteen-year-old Georgina Smith was the first baby left at Door of Hope. She was one of lucky few to be adopted by a family from the United States.
Georgina returned to Door of Hope in 2016 and served as a volunteer.
“I didn’t really know what to expect. I thought I would feel more connected to Africa and more connected to my roots and to be able to see my second family again and I think that really what I was expecting was to fall in love with Africa and learn more about where I came from,” she says.
Georgina is studying music at East Carolina University and has performed at the Royal Albert Hall in London. She says working at Door of Hope and seeing the care and love given to each baby made her emotional.
“I was definitely full of questions, just regarding my mother and South Africa and what the Door of Hope actually means to me, because it has been such a big part of my life – now for my entire life..but really understanding the way that it works, so now I feel like I can let go.”
It is nap time for the toddlers, and while Priscilla busies herself with putting them to bed, Francinah sees to it that the new arrival is washed, fed and her documents processed.
(AP)
