Despair and hope for babies in Morocco

Field Report by Andrew Cates, CEO of SOS Children UK

My own young family, my history of Deep Vein Thrombosis and my dislike of any avoidable cost means I do not often travel, but yesterday I returned home after a few days in Morocco. During my time there, the lives of two newborn baby boys, both born the previous Wednesday, crossed with my own life.

The first baby was the first grandson of a proud Grandmother, who was about to retire from a residential job. I asked where she would go, but she smiled. She explained she had many children, and all had turned out well. Her eldest son, and the father of her grandson was settled in a good job and happily married. She would visit but would live with two of her daughters who shared a house; the other children were jealous, and wanted her too! The baby boy was starting life in the best of circumstances, in the midst of a large supporting family with loving parents. The grandmother was also very fortunate: I had visited an old people's home for the few Morrocan elderly with no relatives to care for them. This was not a world to be a barren spinster.

The second little curly haired boy, born the same day and just a few days old grabbed my attention as I walked in the room. He was lying in his blue cot, wriggling his fingers looking around in the slightly skew way that new babies gaze. It is hard not to feel happy and smile at a newborn baby, but as my field of awareness widened I saw another tiny baby in a red cot right next to him. And another blue cot next to that. Twenty six tiny babies in a room. Eighty two little children in three rooms, seventy nine boys and three girls. The first baby boy had been brought in by the police yesterday, I was told. All these children in an abandoned baby centre were looked after by just a handful of carers. I could see the carers really cared but only a handful for that many babies all the same? Where would the eye contact and the cuddles needed at the start of life come from? I left the room with a lump in my throat.

Outside I chatted to the chairlady of the centre. She explained that baby girls got adopted quickly unless they had something "wrong" with them (deaf, squint, too dark skin) but it was hard to find anywhere for the boys to go. What chance in life does an abandoned child have? Ten babies a year, whom no one else would take, ended up in an SOS Children's Village. As you probably know, ten mixed children live together as a family with each SOS mother, and they stay together to independence. Almost all of the boys SOS Children took came from there; girls typically arrived a little later via the courts after whatever form of abuse I do not wish to know.

Back in the new SOS Village in Agadir I wanted to learn more of the culture, context and challenges. I asked whether the local community were supportive. They were, but there had been problems at the nearby school. A delegation of parents had complained to the headmaster about him agreeing to admitting such worthless orphans (paraphrase via Arabic and French) who were sure to disrupt the school. A couple of months later a group of parents came to the Village gates and were met with trepidation. "We have been talking" they said "We want to understand how you bring up your children. Your children are so well behaved, and so lovely and such model students we wish we could achieve the same with ours". Prejudice took patience, that's all.

My first thought was that two years professional training in motherhood was an advantage which SOS Mothers had over the rest of us. Perhaps that compensated for the rocky start the children had in life. But looking around the Villages, seeing the smiling children at school, running home after school and hugging their new siblings at the door, happy and carefree with their proud SOS mothers there is something more than that. In 25 years SOS Morocco have not had one mother resign. Love, not just professional training, is perhaps the key we in the UK miss in our own approach to children in "care".

Back to the first baby! You may have guessed by now that the grandmother retiring from her residential job was an SOS Mother retiring after twenty five years. She came into SOS in her thirties without any natural children. We talked about happier times but it would not have surprised me if she had originally been divorced for being barren or similar. Now she had twenty children, fifteen grown up, all wanting her to stay! She was half way through a hand-over year of living in the house with her replacement and the other five younger children. And when you ask what hope for the little abandoned boy, look first at a little abandoned boy of twenty five years ago, now the proud father.

I was left a little proud too, and somewhat reassured that there is always hope wherever there are people who care. People talk of the cycle of poverty and the pointlessness of small interventions whose effects quickly disappear. The two baby boys seemed to me to be in a rather different circle: one which rather nicely brought itself to resolution. I do not know if the children in the red and blue cots yet have much hope or much future, but I do now know it is within our collective power to give them one.