This is the blog's address
Oh yes this is the kind of family that gets international adoptees a bad name, the child they were going to adopt has family and they have changed their mind like all families have the right to do. So instead of taking a step back, reassessing the situation and thinking again they dive head on into the slums. The slums in Uganda are a really tough place - really really tough place and people are desperate. So desperate they will give away their children to Muzungus (the Ugandan word for white people) if I took every baby I have ever been offered in the slums I would have about 2000 by now. But I am sensible and I don't and if a mother is desperate to give away her baby because she has no hope then I try to help. But oh no not this family, no background, no history, no sitting back and trying to help the mother. Oh no, lets just go into the slums and accept the first baby they are offered and even worse it's from there mother. There are millions of orphans in Uganda without either parent, why not choose one of those children.
I'll let you make your own mind up about this family, quite frankly I am disgusted!
I can completely understand your zeal for what is right, we are there with you, but it isn't right to drag families through the mud when you have NO background on what is taking place!
ReplyDeleteThat is one reason we walked away from our first match... We agree fully that his family should come to a choice for him, that is why we waited for 3 months for them all to decide what to do. We were blessed to meet them and to answer their question and respected their choice fully, despite their difficult living conditions we have always been committed to the conviction that ALL families have a right to parent their children!
Ill I will say is that every thing you wrote is in ignorance and based on your persumptions and bias. There was nothing but haste to pass judgement.
You stated that we had "no background, no history, no sitting back and trying to help the mother." That is the farthest thing from the truth... I know her full history/background and we are still waiting. In fact, the mother had had an opportunity to be adopted and a family member stopped it, she voice sadness and regret that this family member had done this to her and that she felt like this was the best thing for her child. I spent a total of 3 full days with the mother and baby, visiting their home, taking them to the doctor and fully finding our her family history. We have plans to stay in contact and methods of doing this.
You were not there, you do not know what has been done for the mother for the last 3 months and you, most importantly, do not know what HER wishes were. First of all she has been helped by a ministry for the last 3 months, she has all she need to raise this baby, but as a teen she expressed to one of the workers she didn't want to be a mother and that she might "dump" the baby, they talked to her about a better option... adoption. She has a right to do what she wants to do.
Your statements about "lets just go into the slums and accept the first baby they offered..." is silliness at best. This mother contact our lawyer and set up a plan for her child, we were matched with her after she came forward.
She was unwilling to be a mother. It is hard to help a mother take care of her child when she is unwilling.
Please don't think that you know it all... it is obvious you don't and could not know from each circumstance to the next.
We have been far above board in all we've done. Please remove this slanderous, ignorant and erroneous post.
Sarah, did you bother to contact Marci and ask her for more information about her possible adoption? Or did you jump to conclusions based on what she had written on her blog? I have "known" Marci in the virtual world for a few years now, and I am also all for upholding ethics in Ugandan legal guardianships and adoptions. When Marci told me the child she was thinking of adopting was not in an orphanage, my radar did go off a little, and I ASKED HER ABOUT IT, because, as a rule, I give people the benefit of the doubt, and having known her to be an ethical person, I assumed there was a good explanation. I know a few people who have ethically adopted children directly from family members, and while my own childrens' mothers will always be unknown to us, it is heart wrenching that their only option to find someone else to take care of their babies was to leave them in a ditch, in one case, and to lovingly tuck the baby next to a shop with clothes and supplies for our other child. We will NEVER know the motivation behind them being left where they were, by whomever they were left by, but their mothers are no different than the mother that Marci has been trying to help -- oh wait, they are, because they will never know what happened to their children, and they were forced to leave their babies in mortal danger to give them a future. How is that better?
ReplyDeleteIt sounds to me like you live in Uganda, currently, so you certainly know that at times, family members might have differing opinions about what should happen with these kids. Marci was generous and involved enough to actually GO to Uganda to make sure everyone's voices were heard, and in the end, the family members who did not want the child to be adopted won out -- she did absolutely nothing wrong, and you owe her a serious apology.
as we tell our kids, "don't freak out until you get the facts!"
all the best,
tiffani