jeb's essay

Jeb wrote the following essay for school.  He is in seventh grade.

Jeb Silburn

Feb. 28^th, 2011

7-8 B

Orphans

Have you ever been somewhere and you know that love or caring was a rare thing to see there?  This is how I felt when I saw where my sister had lived for the first five years of her life, and this is what happened. 

            We were driving to the city of Jinjiang, in the province of Fujian china.  We were going to see my newly adopted sisters orphanage.  We had been questioning how my sister, Emma, would feel about this trip. She had just found a new home, and was about to revisit an old one.  Hopefully she understood that we weren’t returning her (which isn’t unheard of in china).  The road to Jinjiang was immense, and looked as if God had attacked it with a hammer. The city matched the road, it looked like the kind of place you’d be scared to walk alone in.

            As we approached the orphanage I thought it looked like a friendly place.  It was painted valentine heart pink, and sky blue.  But the inside crushed my optimism. It was dirty and looked like it hadn’t been cleaned in a while. My sister guided us through the orphanage, and along the way we met some of the other orphans.  There were two little boys who, according to their profiles, couldn’t walk. But unless my eyes were deceiving me these kids were able to walk just as well as me.  There was a little girl with bright red, puffy eyes and tears streaming down her face. A woman that looked irritated by the whole thing was clutching her.

            After a couple of minutes, we noticed that Emma had started to drift away.  We followed her through a couple of halls and rooms, and eventually ended up standing in front of a closed door.  Emma turned the knob and pulled it open. As I followed her in, I noticed that cribs surrounded the room, and in each crib was a single baby.  As we got closer, I noticed that most of the babies were patting their heads.  I asked my mom, “why are they patting their heads like that?” and she replied

“Since nobody ever held them, or showed them any sort of love, the children are trying to sooth themselves to sleep by patting their heads to try to simulate what it would be like to have someone comfort them.” After saying this she knelt down by one of the beds to try and comfort the child inside.  As I walked around the room, I noticed that almost all the babies had a disability.  Some kids had cleft lips and pallets others had mental disabilities.  Because of those disabilities, all of these kids were left to live like this.

            As we left the orphanage that day, I was thinking about how lucky I am. Just because of where I was born I am able to have enough food every day, I can go to school, I can choose what I will be when I grow up.  Some of those kids might not even live long enough to decide any of those things.  I almost feel guilty. We can live so well, and yet people who only live a couple hours flight from us have to live in such an appalling way. It’s really unfair. Especially for that little orphaned boys and girls, who live every day hoping for such a simple thing. All they want is love.