Fall in love with 9-year-old Marie Ange, like I have. She lives at the Orphanage Notre Dame, and is so lovely and reaches out so much, in spite of the fact that she is deaf. The Orphanage Notre Dame isn’t so much an orphanage as it is a home for unwanted children. Most of the kids are not available for adoption, they have been taken in by a priest and a nun named Sister Brigette and will live there until they are grown.
Go through the big gate and you’ll find a house with bunk beds–a donation from the American Women’s Club–stuffed animals scattered around, newborn Naomi sleeping in a basinette, a big sunny kitchen with some workers spreading peanut butter on baguettes and twenty-seven kids who all want to be picked up and carried around.
There are three three-year-old boys who want to be pushed in the swings. One of them is Ousani who has no shoes that fit, he wears his loafers with the backs folded down. When the Orphanage can afford it, the bigger girls take english classes at the American school on the weekend, it’s Mary Fatima’s favorite activity. The eighteen-month old twins have something wrong with their legs and don’t walk. Anna’s mother is a crazy woman who lives down the street. The kids smell like soap, and they all need lotion on their skinny little arms and legs. They have a pet, a dog named Bambi.
The dolls based on the kids below are made and are almost ready for homes–all the profits will go to the American Women’s Club, which supports Orphanage Notre Dame as well as other grass roots organizations like this in Niger. I’ll be posting a website with pictures of the dolls soon. Meet Yasmine, Ibraham, Zara and Ousani.
twenty-something years of "what have you been up to?" 
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