Creche De Tanger
The first of our ‘Stars’ of VIAM are the children of the Creche De Tanger. Following the members of the VIAM choir raising funds for the Creche in May 2011.
The Creche De Tanger is situated in the heart of the old town of Tanger (Tangier) on the Northern tip of Morocco. It sits in the grounds of the town’s Kortobi Hospital, which is close to the Medina and old market. 
The Medina of Tangier is a real one, the streets are narrow and the houses in many different styles..Tangier however is not your typical tourist location, most only visit on a day trip from nearby Spain.
This is an ancient city steeped in tradition and a culture which I can only describe as having the mysterious feel of the tale of the Arabian Nights.
This is not an expensive city. A Taxi ride from your hotel to the creche, if you take one of the small ‘Petit’ taxis, will cost not much more than 50p, but don’t be surprised if the taxi stops on route to buy diesel with your 50p or picks up other passengers on route. You can of course take a larger Mercedes ‘grande’ taxi; and that may cost you £3.00, but it will still stop to pick up other passengers; and also probably stop for diesel.
So who lives at the Creche..?..generally more than 50 abandoned children, babies and infants, all are waiting to be adopted. 4 of them are autistic children, 2 are suffering from hydrocephalus and a few more have certain handicaps. Some of the children have been living at the Nursery since their birth.
In most cases the reason is that they are children of unmarried mothers which is not acceptable in Moroccan society. Just a few of the children have joined La Crèche at a later moment because of social reasons.
There are sufficient families who want to adopt a child, however there are often long delays to deal with all the legal issues. Boys generally stay for a longer time at the centre as girls are more popular for adoptions. Handicapped children usually don’t find anyone to adopt them. Most families who adopt the children are from Morocco or Spain. According to Moroccan law all adoptive parents have to be of Muslim religion, if not, they have to convert.. The producers of VIAM were the first British couple to adopt from the Creche.
Generally new-born babies are abandoned at the hospital when the mother gives birth and disappears. After a week, these babies are transferred into the care of the staff at the Creche…during our time and experience..this was happening once or twice a month!
If they are lucky enough to be adopted, they generally stay in the creche for at least a year whilst the paperwork and legalities are sorted. We were lucky enough to be granted a ‘Kafela’ which is a ‘fostering’ order, from the Moroccan courts after our son was six months old; and had been presented with his official ‘Certificate of Abandonment’, but it was still a further six months before we were able to bring him back to the UK…and by UK current adoption procedures,that process can often take 2 years!…it was a year later when we finally walked out of the Family Court in Holborn, with our son officially adopted.
The manager of the day to day affairs of the creche, is a beautiful lady named Naima. In her 20 years or more of working with abandoned children, she has found loving homes for more than 3,000 of them; and as an example of how this lady really cares, she has a polaroid photo of each one of her office wall and can name every one of them.
The creche does receive some government funding, mainly for the upkeep of the building and utilities. The rest they have to find through donations. Imagine what it costs just in nappies alone…..50 babies, using say 50 nappies a day, x 7 days…1,750 nappies a week, 7,000 a month..84,000 a year !
La Crèche de Tanger is extremely well run by Naima and nurses provided by le Ministère de la Santé.
and it is a very cheerful place that gives shelter to these abandoned babies, 54 when we last visited. Including a baby-girl that was found abandoned in the street and just a few hours old.. The babies are kept under medical supervision and immaculately looked after in the hope that they will be adopted. If not, upon reaching the age of two they are sent to orphanages. The baby girl was in fact adopted, by the policeman that found her in the street..we often watched him cradling this tiny mite in his large hands when he came to visit. What a life story he has to tell her when she is older.
The severely handicapped children in the Crèche, nobody wants, not even the state orphanages. Naima and the rest of the staff have “adopted” them and it is so heart-rending to watch them together, playing, laughing and loving.
These children don’t need toys or clothes…they need the basic essentials, nappies, cleaning materials, disinfectant, washing powder. (just as an aside..our son was frightened of toys that moved or made sounds…most toys need batteries..but in the creche none of the toys had batteries because of the cost)
During our stay there, we would, on a weekly basis visit the local shop that sold the essentials. Naima insisted we used this small market shop rather than the out of town hypermarket…why you may ask?…because the young man that ran the shop, when there weren’t any would-be benefactors paying for the goods, would load up his push-cart with everything they needed and push it up the hill to the creche…and ask for nothing in return. It may be a poor country in a financial sense (we regularly saw young girls in his shop buying just one disposable nappy for a few pence) but its abundantly wealthy with goodwill and a sense of what’s really important.
We hope that by bringing a little extra happiness to these children each week, we can create awareness. Money is not always the answer..although donations to the creche would always be welcomed and if you wish to make a donation, email us, we can put you in touch with Naima. The answer lays in bringing more families into the system, families that are willing to go though the necessary formalities and ultimately give an abandoned child a loving home and a future.