In the U.K. for my book tour, I am invited into the London BBC studio. I am interviewed for the World Service Outlook Programme. A BBC reporter in Ethiopia has visited Mrs. Haregewoin Teferra already; that interview will be spliced into mine, for a 30-minute program.
The producer, Krisztina Glausius, asks if I'd like to hear the Ethiopia tape that will be included in my story.
I sit transfixed as I hear Haregewoin's voice and the voices of children in the background. "Here are the very very small ones," says Haregewoin in a whisper, and I can picture them, the sleeping babies in their rows of cribs.
"And how do you feel about foreign adoption?" she is asked as they step back outside, for Madonna and her adoption of a Malawi toddler are in the news.
"Very sad, I feel very sad for them to leave," Haregewoin murmurs. It amuses me that no one has given her talking points; she will say, as always, precisely what she thinks.
"And will the children still be Ethiopian if they grow up in foreign countries?"
"No, they will not," she says firmly. "They will be like the people of that country."
(This I know first-hand, for she has criticized my own darling child, Helen, by saying, "You have ruined her. She is no longer Ethiopian.")
"Would it be better for the children to stay here?" the reporter is asking Mrs. Haregewoin.
"No, look around. What can I give them here? No, they are too many. They must go. No one person in Ethiopia will adopt them. We are a poor country and we have too too many orphaned children. Look at them. They need parents."
All these children — 60 of them now, in two houses, half of them infected with HIV — have come to Mrs. Haregewoin unofficially. She gets no government support. She is just a neighborhood lady, a kind person who — through the tragedies of her own life — happened to open her door to orphans of AIDS. Soon the police, social workers from other cities, destitute grandparents and concerned neighbors headed for her modest tin-walled compound and small brick house, delivering orphaned children to her. Often she opens the door of her compound in the morning and finds a neatly-swaddled baby waiting on the ground nearby.
Now the BBC reporter and Mrs. Haregewoin have moved to a different scene. They stand on the sidelines of a soccer game. I have been to this soccer field. This team was organized by my son Lee Samuel, during his four months in Addis with Mrs. Haregewoin this past spring and summer. He formed Haregewoin's children into a boys team and a girls team, and organized children in two other orphanages to play against them.
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| soccer game: Atetegeb vs. AHOPE |
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| Yosef as keeper |
Two boys are being waved off the field. They jog over, panting, to be introduced to the reporter.
It is Daniel and Yosef.
(The first thing Lee [who speaks Amharic now] ever told us about the boys was from the soccer field: "Yosef is an amazing athlete. Daniel is good, but Yosef is incredible. But Yosef gets upset if he loses. Today, Yosef missed a goal and stormed off. Daniel followed him and I heard Daniel say, "Yosef, remember our history. Don't get upset about this. This is not what to get upset about.")
Now they are being interviewed for BBC: "Do you feel happy about going to America?" asks the reporter. A bystander translates the question for them and I hear the boys reply, "Ow, ow. [Yes, yes.]"
Why do you feel happy?
The question is translated; Daniel, the older, replies; and the bystander relays the translation:
"Now we live in an orphanage. That is rather a sad thing for us. In America we will have a family."
Everyone in the BBC studio in London looks at me.
The entire world suddenly feels no larger than about two city blocks. Down the street we have my house and family in Atlanta; here is the BBC London studio; and just over there — just around the corner — are these two handsome boys, panting and sweaty, eager to jog back into their game, who will be our sons.
(This post first appeared at www.PowellsBooks.blog during my stint as guest blogger)
