Nicolas No Nickname

Zariah is known as Zari, Baboucarr Babu, Abubacarr Abu, Aisha is called Aisha Banana, Musa... well, Musa doesn't really have a nickname, but his name is short for Musafa. Nicolas, on the other hand, does not have a nickname. Everyone just calls him Niiiiiiicolaaas. That's a bit ironic, isn't it? It's called a nickname after all.

Nicolas is a six-month-old baby that I had the pleasure of spending some time with while volunteering in The Gambia this summer. He's one of the babies being raised by carers in a kind of social work centre that's divided into several sections: an orphanage (we don't have orphanages in Slovenia, so I hope that's still a correct term) for babies and one for older children, a kind of residential home for elderly people who have no one to look after them, and an asylum home. The conditions there are - by Gambian standards - not bad at all. The children are well fed and mostly clean. The problem is the staff shortage: about two to three carers per shift have to take care of twenty babies. And by "taking care" I mean changing the diapers, feeding them, making them corn porridge, etc. This means that, try as they might, they don't have enough time to play with the babies, let them out of their beds (some of which look like cages), encourage them to walk or even give them a chance to attach themselves to someone in a healthy way. Some babies are completely apathetic, others scream all day long, not to mention the almost two-year-olds who can't walk yet.

But Nicolas is what (my professors would probably have a heart attack if they caught me using this term) you'd call unporblematic. He just is. The only thing that might get him a little more attention is the fact that he takes his sweet time eating. While other babies inhale their food in minutes, Niiiiicolaaas eats. And then looks around. And looks around some more. And smiles. And eats a bit more. And then he stractches my lip (the wound has finally healed after two weeks). And looks around. And then, if you're lucky, eats some more. For almost half an hour.

As a social work student and a volunteer, I am usually sorounded by a whole bunch of compassionate and empatic people but I can keep professional distance from those problems. I don't cry when I see children who are struggling. I don't dream about an elderly lady that had breast cancer, who I worked with while doing my internship in residental-care home in Ljubljana. And when I got home from The Gambia, I simply said to myself: "Look, you've helped as many children as you could, there's not much more you can do now". This sometimes makes me feel dead inside. Why don't I feel that my life has changed since I came back from Africa? Yet somehow I have managed to become a little attached to Nicolas and his relaxed, dreamy and yet so grown-up smile when I lift him up in the air and ask him in a baby voice (yes, I am aware that this is not good for learning to speak, but English or Slovenian are not really going to be useful at this point, are they? Let the child learn Wolof or Mandinka first): "who's a flying baby?!". Sorry, I should write in the past tense. Or when I put him on my knees, his head hanging down and his eyes twinkling as he looked curiously at the world upside down, I told him: "You're a bat baby, Nicolas. A bat baby!".

I think about Niiiicolaaaas a lot and hope with all my heart that he will find a good and caring adoptive family.