I watched a show a while back about a child who was born with a medical condition (parasitic twin) that required a precision surgical procedure to correct. The child and his family lived in Nepal. They lived in a small one room hut without running water, an indoor bathroom or electricity. They lived miles from civilization and getting to civilization took hours, because they had no transportation and had to walk.
They owned a farm and lived within a means that is typical of other Nepalese families. They were ordinary – with their hammock beds, thatched roofs and tiny shack.
Word of their plight spread and within a few months, Western Dr.’s visited their tiny village and offered help. It was clear that the child needed surgery to survive, so the family opted to accept the help offered and boarded a plane for the first time in their lives for the trip to LA.
Over the course of their stay, the cameras for Discovery Health followed them around and documented their experience.
The baths in the spigot outside the house in LA.
The comments about being homesick.
Missing family, friends, foods, tastes and smells of their homeland.
I remember wondering, before they actually commented about their stay, what they thought of the US. Would the transition back to what they’d come to know as ‘normal’ be hard, after having access to all the things by which we measure success?
Then the mother said something along the lines of: I’m ready to go home. It’s ok here, but it’s not home. I miss the food, my family, my life and my home. She missed her one room, thatched roof home.
The show stuck with me since watching it earlier this year. It stuck with me because it seems, we as Americans seem to measure the ‘fitness’ of a country/community/persons ability to provide for their children by American gluttonous standards.
The ability to afford luxury things like computers, gaming systems and spacious bedrooms with designer furniture has become the stick in which we measure a child’s need to be adopted.
A good example is the child who was airlifted out of Haiti and flown to Miami because of a medical issue after the earthquake. Her parents loved her and wanted her back. What happened was months and months of legal fighting all the while, the arguments were being made about the ‘quality of life’ this child could expect growing up in Haiti. She had a family who loved her and no doubt, her foster family loved her as well – but this child was wanted by her ‘loving family’ back in Haiti and we here in America were busy fighting them based on everything America had that Haiti didn’t.
Obscene.
I read a story about the 12 children from Haiti who were airlifted after the earthquake and sent to Pennsylvania. Already, the politicians are making their elitists statements about life in Haiti and how much better their quality of life will be if they stay here.
Quality of life as measured by who I ask? The mother from Nepal sure didn’t feel like the quality of life we offered here in the US was better than her life back in Nepal.
We sure do think a lot of ourselves – don’t we?
Don’t even get me started on the ‘quality of life’ concerns we American’s have as they relate to tiny children. Apparently, quality of life isn’t an issue for anyone over the age of 18.
This smells a lot like finding children for homes in need…vs. what adoption is really about.
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I am standing up and clapping in my head.
This post reminds me of hearing about the way Nepal’s neighbor Bhutan measures its success in terms of Gross National Happiness rather than purely financial terms.
I was so upset by that airlift when it happened, and I fear that the more delay there is, the harder things will be on those children regardless of where they end up permanently. I wish the people who want to pluck children out of poverty would work harder on ending poverty, which would benefit everyone. Grr.