By Craig Wilson, USA TODAY
Her name is Alemteshay, Amharic for “light of the world.” She’s 3, although her exact birth date isn’t known, because both her parents are dead. Casualties of AIDS.
I met her this month poolside at the Hilton hotel in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Alemteshay is HIV-positive and deaf, and she has survived tuberculosis. But nothing seems to slow her down. She was fearless, jumping into the pool as if she knew how to swim. She does not. If nothing else, she’s a testament to the human spirit.
She was waiting to head home with her American mom. Back in Colorado were her new father and five siblings, two of them Ethiopians who had made a similar journey.
Like them, Alemteshay had been in an orphanage. She made the transition from her spartan surroundings to the Hilton pool, however, with little problem. Her new pink sneakers — the kind that flicker and blink when she danced — also helped to make the trip easier. To her, they were as magical as Dorothy’s ruby slippers.
When I arrived in Addis Ababa to volunteer with an organization that helps orphans, Alemteshay had been at the hotel more than two weeks, delayed by bureaucratic problems with her visa. Not that she didn’t make the best of a bad situation. She became the Ethiopian version of Eloise at The Plaza.
By the time she finally left, she knew everyone from the bellmen to the front-desk clerk to the waitresses at breakfast. A charmer with a killer smile. And she was not alone.
Every night, another wave of Ethiopian children would come through the hotel’s lobby, carried by their new parents. I couldn’t help but wonder what they were thinking. The kids, not the parents. I knew what the parents were thinking. You could see the joy on their faces.
Angelina Jolie had a similar look when she picked up her Ethiopian daughter, Zahara. Madonna has the same glow whenever photographed with her Malawian son, David, whose adoption was finalized Wednesday.
But news that some countries are making adoption by foreigners more difficult — Guatemala and Vietnam are two — made me wonder whether Ethiopia, which has about 5 million orphans, eventually will clamp down, too. Corruption and baby-selling are concerns in all adoption circles.
At first, even I asked myself whether these children should be taken from their native land, but almost every Ethiopian I spoke with was philosophical about the situation, especially considering the alternative. I had to agree.
An 8-year-old Ethiopian girl sat across the aisle from me on the flight home. Her parents also had died from AIDS complications, but like Alemteshay, she carries on with boundless enthusiasm and the help of yet another wide smile. She was heading to a new home in San Francisco with a lesbian couple. Over the 15-hour flight to the USA, she took turns falling asleep against each.
I couldn’t help but wonder what she, too, was thinking, but somehow I suspect she and Alemteshay will be just fine.
They seem to travel with their own ruby slippers.
No comments:
Post a Comment