Would you like more information about FIESTA?

Click "webform" if you'd like us to contact you... Web Form

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

International Adoption- Back to the Motherland


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.