The decision to take our live-in granddaughter to India, the
country of her origin, was made without an incredible amount of research or
thought. My husband, Ron, and I often make decisions this way (although I don’t
recommend it.) The planets just seemed to align, starting with an innocent
comment by an adoption professional friend that “they say” that the age of ten
is the best time to make the trip. After thinking it through, it rang true with
us. Pre-teens are still looking at life through their parents eyes, they feel
safe as long as their parents are close by, and they haven’t really processed
deep thoughts yet on heavy issues such as poverty or crazy traffic. (On top of
that, they are not yet worried about their makeup and clothes being the top
priority.) We decided that the best way to go back, considering our circumstances,
was for me to take Somi with a group.
After asking around, we found that a program called “India Ties” had a trip
scheduled in two months, so we signed on. Easy, peasy, right? Let me just say
that getting Somi’s passport and visa should be made into a scary movie…ending
in the fact that both came by FedEx to our home at exactly the time that our
flight was due to take off, two days after Christmas. I’m sure you can imagine
the stress…and the relief when we were able to arrange our flights to get there
in time to join the group. We were literally waiting in the driveway for the
delivery truck to bring the documents.
The Ties program has offered adoption travel plans for
eighteen years to sixteen different countries, so they have this stuff down. We
saw the typical tourist highlights like the Taj Mahal, rickshaw rides, and elephants,
along with out-of-the-way stops to see organizations that are helping India
solve it’s long-standing problems of poverty, homelessness and orphan care. At
one street-kid shelter about fifty homeless kids sat in rows in a small room
when we entered. We were able to interact with them, but it was awkward. Until.
One of them turned on the music of “Gangnum Style” and everybody- American
teens and parents and Indian street gang kids all started to dance. Crazy-fun!
One afternoon we all went to have saris made and then wore them out on New
Year’s Eve. One evening we were matched with a middle class family and had
dinner with them. Our family had a daughter Somi’s age. She was happy to
practice her English by telling us all about her life, school, and future
plans, including an arranged marriage. She and Somi exchanged email addresses.
We saw monkeys and elephants on the streets, camels being walked along, myriads
of women dressed in bright saris, people wrapped in thin blankets sleeping on
the streets in the cold, and candlelight vigils protesting the treatment of
women. We had amazing Indian food.
During the first four days and the last four days we were
with the group and during the middle we were on our own. There were ten
families of various sizes and stages, two Ties staff members and an Indian
guide. One staff member was a thirty-ish Indian adoptee who has his social work
degree and moved to India to start a foster care organization. He led the kids
and young adults in groups designed to help them process what they were
experiencing and spent downtime with them playing soccer and eating at a New
Delhi McDonalds. The parents had a group as well. During the middle days of the
trip, Somi and I traveled to the city of her birth in the south. Arrangements
were made for us to visit the place that she spent the first four years of her
life and we met with the doctor who cared for her during that time. Nothing
earth-shattering happened there, but I have confidence that the experience will
have a positive effect on Somi both in the present and in the future- it was well
worth the investment, the stress and the time away. For now, I am happy to report
that she absolutely fell in love with India and can’t wait to go back.
