I shared that two days of my trip to Ethiopia was traveling out to Nakemte where my daughters’ family lives.
I won’t share any details of my trip, since we keep that information to ourselves, but I can share my feelings and ideas as an adoptive parent. Hopefully these shared experiences will help other adoptive and pre-adoptive families.
When we first signed up for adoption from Ethiopia , one of the attractions to the program was that we would be adopting orphans from across the world and wouldnt have to deal with birth family at all. I’m crudely paraphrasing, of course.
Ha! The naivety.
Firstly, having birth family contact and information is the best thing for our children. We were pretty “uninformed” to think otherwise. Of course, now we know that many of Ethiopia’s adoptive children have alive and kickin’ birth family… Just like in Canada, families are unable to care for children for many reasons, Poverty being the most common, then the death of parents, and other practical reasons such as young mothers, lack of extended family support, mental illnesses, physical illness.. Just to name a few. Wanting to adopt “an orphan” is, in my opinion, a short-sighted misplaced moral conviction. There are many many more children that need families that have “messier” backgrounds but the exact same needs.
Anyway… We have alive and kicking Ethiopia family. A whole messy bunch of it. In a few days, I’ve been privy to family feuds, arguments, love and attachment, and all the regular family stuff. Maybe worrying about us being accepted into their family wasn’t such an important issue… Because its not like they all accept each other anyway! Lol
It’s hard to know all your kids’ background and to deal with it in person… But from my second hand experience of other peoples’ families, it is much harder not to know.
We brought gifts that were well received… And some gifts that were rejected. We were asked for money- this always happens. Wouldn’t you do the same in the same situation? And luckily when we explained we can’t financially support anyone, they understood why. This I find actually difficult in some ways, because if we were blood-only family, we would be shipping money back every month to bring the family out of poverty. But since we ARE family by adoption, we can’t financially support them (lest we increase the child trafficking trade.) Honestly, too, financial support is a slippery slippery slope that just avalanches. I recommend to other families you don’t even go there…
It is hard to see your child’s family suffering though. Really, really hard. I haven’t had a cry about it yet, but I have a feeling that will come when I share with my husband. The poorest people I have ever seen in Ethiopia, bar none, were some of our family members. People can’t believe how tall and healthy our kids are, because children so much older than them are smaller, shorter, cognitively behind, skinnier… I know it affected my mom greatly too. It just makes you want to hold onto your kids all the tighter, and be SO GRATEFUL that they are in Canada and able to reach their full potential.
Practically speaking, We have always had direct communication with our Ethiopian family… And now we have a mailbox to send things back and forth. I don’t know how much we actually will GET, but it’s there. I’m not offering to do this for anyone else… You need to find your own solutions and their are companies out there willing to do it for you. Some agencies, depending on their philosophy, will do this for you as well.
If you are wondering why we have a direct connection, there are three reasons. First, our family (in canada and ethiopia) was willing. That’s a big one. Second, I write EVERYTHING down, from cell numbers to locations. Thirdly, when we picked up the girls, our adoption agency was going through bankruptcy and all bets were off as far as relying on them for follow up.
There were some amazing surprises this trip… Connections that we never knew we had, photos of other kids who look like my girls, background history and ongoing family information that is so valuable. And over time, we will learn more as it comes up…
I guess my real point here is that knowing your child’s family means you don’t just know their historical background… You know their family today, yesterday AND tomorrow. Their birth family is an evolving part of who they are, and who we are as a complete big huge multi-cultural complicated family.
I hope as they get older, my girls will realize how much effort we have put into maintaining that connection for them… So they know how much we value their heritage and family, and how much we love them. My mom says this will happen when they are in their 20s! Lol. But it think it might happen the first time we take them out to Nakemte. Which, hopefully, will be in a few years. That’s what I told their family, anyway.
