A baby is born

A baby girl is born. So what’s so amazing about that? We’ll call the girl Rahel which isn’t her real name. Her birth mother had just been left by her husband, and none of her family wanted her. She was an epileptic, and fell into a fire and was very seriously burned. She lost her left breast and had serious full thickness burns on her left side and down her left arm. She was pregnant and at term. She delivered Rahel the day after she was admitted to the hospital. The mother would have nothing to do with her, I think understandably in the circumstances. The mother was dreadfully ill and sadly weeks later died, after lots of treatment. There were no relatives around.

But the story is about Rahel. She was taken to the special care baby unit, where after a few days they rebelled and said she wasn’t a sick baby so she couldn’t stay there. So she was brought into her mother’s ward, my wife bought infant formula for her, but they rebelled for the same reasons. So we brought her to our house while we tried to work out a solution. We were in the middle of adopting our second Ethiopian son who was about 10 at the time. We all loved her but didn’t feel as if we could or would be allowed to adopt her. Our next door neighbours were Europeans, supervising the care of street kids whom they placed in willing local homes and financially supported the families to cover the cost of an extra child. Our neighbours knew English but their prime languages were different. Thus their household spoke four languages – their two home country languages (very different), English and Amharic, the common language of the local populous. They already had three boys of their own but after some consideration decided they would like to adopt her.

My wife, although she loved her very much felt that we should not even try to adopt her. I agreed. So when they decided to take her we were sad/glad to let them have her to see how the boys accepted her. They loved her dearly.

Then one after the other the three boys came down in series with chickenpox. So for the baby’s sake she came back to live with us until the risk of her getting the disease was over. Many times a day the non-infected boys would come to our door, accusing us of stealing her. They wanted her back.

During this time we went to a town a couple of hundred kilometres away to visit our first adopted Ethiopian, who was back in the country courting a young lady who is now his wife and the mother of their two children. We were sitting in a little restaurant with our two boys and little Rahel. At a nearby table were sitting two well dressed men. They were talking in the tribal language of our son who overheard and understood their conversation. Apparently there had recently been several cases of foreigners stealing babies to sell on the black market. They were policemen. They were deciding as to whether or not they should arrest us. Our son went over and spoke with them, explaining our situation. Then we joined them and it was all sorted out.

Chickenpox doesn’t last for ever and the family joyfully took Rahel back. The boys forgave us for stealing her! But then the birth mother’s relatives, who hadn’t come to the hospital, as soon as a legal adoption process began, came forward. They didn’t want her, but surely she was worth something. All I know is that after a bit of trouble they were able to adopt her.

The last time I saw her one of our Australian sons was with us. He knew one of the parent’s language. She sat on his knee and spoke with him in that language for about half an hour. She spoke with us fluently in English. She also knew her other parent’s language and apparently knows Amharic well. At six she was fluent in four languages. Truly the little girl is well and truly born! The parents have since had another child of their own. A little girl.