Little Lost Boys

One year ago next week Nancy Dimmock, on furlough from Ministry of Hope Lesotho, spent two days in Louisville visiting our school and home. She shared her family's story and the story of children in Lesotho with the children of Christian Academy School System for missions month. Nancy and I also spent time talking and praying about our adoption of Palamang, which had been stuck in the bowels of the Department of Social Welfare for over ten months. She added to my sense of urgency that Palamang needed a family. NOW.

One hour after I drove Nancy to her denomination's headquarters in downtown Louisville I received the email - our adoption had been approved. Sign and FedEx the attached paperwork to the Lesotho lawyer to present to the High Court judge.

We were finally, miraculously unstuck. What followed was a five-week whirlwind of signatures and emails and international phone calls and travel plans until we boarded the plane to southern Africa to meet our son.

I've often heard it said that God is rarely early, but he was never late. The timing for us was beautiful - we were able to meet Frank and Jesse Dimmock in Johannesburg and travel with them to Maseru. Sam and I were able to end our school years on May 3 and I was able to spend three solid months in intense attachment work with Paul. (Exhausting but oh, so worth it.)

But the years in the orphanage had taken their toll. Emtionally and physically. While not malnourished (due, I think, to his early years with biological family), Paul was much shorter and lighter than his US peers, so much so that I asked Nancy if he was perhaps a year younger than the date on his birth certificate. "Oh, no dear," she replied gently. "He's actually one of the biggest of his age mates." He quickly caught up with his US peers. He grew two inches in just over a month home! I had heard of this happening, but it always sounded somewhat exaggerated. How in the world can the human body grow so quickly? Trust me - it can. The child jumped from a size four to a size six in a matter of months. Now people watch my little man run and plow into things and ask, "Running back? Or tight end?"

I remember crying the night we met Paul and brought him back with us to our cozy rondaval at Mohokare. Tears of joy that he was with us, of course; tears of exhaustion, too, yes; but mostly tears for the swarms of children who had watched Palamang meet his new family, who had tried to catch my eyes, touch my skirt, capture a smile. They longed for just the feel of a Mama, and it broke my heart. They were a group of little lost boys. I rejoiced that one would grow up with love and belonging and good food, but I mourned for the rest. When would they find their mamas?

Things were difficult for Paul's orphanage. I have the dubious gift of sensing tension in a room, at catching nonverbals, at reading between the lines. I knew there were struggles and I also guessed that those struggles had no easy answers. When the Dimmocks returned to Lesotho they tried to help, but again there are no easy answers. This was not their orphanage. They could only offer advice and support. Some problems don't respond to an easy fix or even to an outpouring of aid.

Last week Paul's orphanage was either closed or downsized. Reports are conflicting. Several online newspapers - the Informative and the Lesotho Times - reported on the closure of MIS. The newspaper articles come at the stories from different angles, and I know enough from my years in journalism school that the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. But we do know that many children from two or three orphanages, Paul's included, were sent elsewhere.

Beautiful Gate took in twelve of these sweet souls. We didn't have the chance to visit Beautiful Gate Orphanage when we were in Lesotho, but we did meet the directors, Bryan and Anita. (When I met Anita after months of following her journey online I felt a little awestruck so said something mature and intelligent like, "OMG! I read your blog!" She nodded graciously and I'm sure thought something like, "Stalker.") I have heard nothing but praise for this orphanage and their care of the children. They are set up to care for 60 children, and this is to ensure each child receives adequate care, attention and love. But due to the orphanage closures they are currently caring for 72 children. They've posted a video showing the need. (I'm having trouble embedding it, so follow the link. It's well worth the watch.) It can be difficult, sometimes, to assess how to help, to know that your donation money is making a difference. In this case I can speak confidently that donations will directly support the children and their caregivers. (The orphans and widows.)

Ministry of Hope Lesotho also took in SEVENTEEN children. This is the home where Paul had several "playdates" while we were bonding in country, and this is the home that begged and politicked to care for Paul's best friend Retselise when Nancy found him so ill. I can also speak confidently that any monies donated to MoHL will go directly to the care of the children: Ministry of Hope Lesotho, PO Box 1462, Black Mountain, NC 28711.

Paul on a playdate with MoHL friends

Paul fixates on pictures and videos of children in Lesotho. He's still on the lookout for his buddies, I think. He watched the Beautiful Gate video last night and tried to determine if the hands and backs of heads belonged to his friends. He names the children that he knows in Ministry of Hope pictures. That's his abuti, his brother figure. That girl broke her arm and the doctor put a rock on it. "A cast?" "Yeah, a cast." Those two are his friends, they played together. And that boy gave him a ride in a wheelbarrow. He wants to know when we can visit. "Will they get 'em family? When? Who's gonna be their mama? Can we 'dopt 'em?" He's angling for a brother. (Mostly only when his neighborhood friends can't play though, so I'm suspecting what he really wants is a playmate.) He told me rather magnanimously the other night, "If there's another kid what needs a family, he can have my bed an' I'll sleep on 'de top bed."

International adoption is a tricky thing, and this post has gone on for far too long already. I am, of course, a huge proponent of international adoption. Sharing ourselves with the world brings us all closer together. There is redemptive power in adoption that we get to experience first hand. But with redemption there is first a loss. And there is a part of me that wishes Paul hadn't had to lose his first family; hadn't had to leave his country and his people and his language. I wish he could have grown up surrounded with love, wrapped in a Basotho blanket and viewing the mountains of his homeland. I wish he didn't have to experience this heartache. But because he did, I am honored and humbled to play part in his healing, and to do everything in my power to let him know he is loved, he is worthy, he is whole. All that to say I do agonize with the difficulty for a country to admit to not being able to care for its children, to send those children away to the West, to give them up to another culture and place.

So now I wish for all the children at Beautiful Gate and Ministry of Hope Lesotho and throughout the country that there was no such thing as poverty or illness or abandonment; they hadn't had to lose their first family; that they wouldn't have to leave their country and their people and their language. But I wish even more that they would know the joy and love and redemption of a second family, that they could grow two inches in one month, that they could gain the confidence to talk and laugh so loudly their mama has to remind them to use their "inside voice". That they could make new best friends with skin colors of all shades yet still remember to pray for their friends who are still waiting.

Lesotho recently signed the Hague, which is essentially agreements between countries to ensure the best interest of children adopted internationally and to reduce instances of child trafficking. The overarching goals of the Hague are positive. It has the best of intentions. But with all "good intentions" there are pitfalls. It has resulted in several countries slowing or halting altogether (Guatemala, Vietnam, Nepal). In the United States, international adoptions fell from over 22,000 in 2004 to just over 8,000 last year. (In comparison, US citizens adopted over 50,000 children from foster care in 2012.) International adoption politics, the policies of people with good intentions, have left many children "stuck" in orphanages around the world. I pray this is not the case with Lesotho. I pray that adoptions in progress can continue and that those under the new agency just named by the Lesotho Goverment and the US State Department can begin. Brandon Hatmaker wrote a compelling blog about a documentary that address this issue of those children who are "stuck" and urges people to act.

On Saturday Paul was again lamenting that his neighborhood friends weren't home. "Let's 'dopt a brother," he declared as we walked around the neighborhood. His eyes brightened. "Let's 'dopt Retselise!" The his eyes filled with tears as he remembered. We can't. Retselise got the help he needed too late. Retselise got stuck.