How to fix orphanages

Kigali, Rwanda
Madame B has dressed up for our visit. She’s sitting on a bench with her back to the orphanage wall, talking about just how much she loves each child, but it’s her get-up that’s most impressive: black silk dress, hair done, make-up just so; finger and toenails painted hot pink, each with an elegant white scalloped edge.

Everything else here, at the Mpore Pefa home for children, is muted: grey walls, grey kids, blurred by dirt. Those toes are an anomaly. ‘My husband and I started this home after the war,’ Madame B is saying. ‘Since he died, it is so difficult.’ Her eyes slide from left to right, checking our reaction. ‘The children all want to suckle my breasts,’ she says, gesturing to her chest, full of long-­suffering self-pity. ‘They all want to embrace me.’ Here she pulls a ringwormy tot to her side, smothering it into the silk.

It’s true, the children at Pefa are keen huggers. When we first pushed open the steel doors of their compound, they leapt up on us like puppies. One girl — let’s call her Amy — has been wrapped around my waist since I arrived, her knees digging frog-wise into my sides. She clings on as Madame B talks, and stays clinging as I nose around the corridors of the children’s home, poking my head into the cell-like bedrooms, seeing toddlers everywhere, lying doggo though it’s midday.

Amy’s not OK. That’s quite clear. Her need to be hugged is too desperate to be healthy. Saddest of all is Kay. Kay’s not a clinger. She sits on the concrete floor, staring into the middle distance as if she’s 93, not three.

We stroke her arms, try to catch her eye, but she’s absent, unreachable, somewhere far away inside her skull. Kay’s nappy is soaked cold, but she doesn’t squeak.