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Archive for the ‘Adoption’ Category

Rainy Day Project: Sock Puppets

Posted in Adoption, Children, Family, Fun, Island life, Seychelles on July 27, 2008| 6 Comments »

Although I write … or usually can write when I’m not as depleted as I’ve been lately … any other artistic skills escape me. My oldest daughter is a wonderful artist, as is my youngest son, and my older son is a musician, but I live within the limitations of words.

This being a rainy day in Seychelles and me doing what I can to keep the kids busy, happy and living with a semblance of normal life, we needed a project for this dreary Sunday. With some donations of scraps and bits from my dear friend, Andrew, we made sock puppets; then Sam put on puppet shows for Cj and me.

Good thing the kids aren’t too picky about perfection in puppets, as my design and application leave a lot to be desired. Working together helped, even though I now have about 3 dozen tiny holes in my fingers.

It’s so good that some things still bring such a big smile with them.

Sam and Cj with their puppets

Sam and Cj with their puppets


Up close and personal

Up close and personal


Backstage at the puppet show

Backstage at the puppet show

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Healing from a heel, or just adjusting

Posted in Adoption, Adoption Advocacy, Children, Family, International Adoption, Older Parent Adoption, Older women, orphans, tagged , , on June 1, 2008| 18 Comments »

I must be beginning to heal … or, at least for today I’ve managed to work up a good head of indignation at the betrayal that has brought the end of my marriage.

One reason for breaking our family, out of the very few that my husband has managed to share with me, is that I was working too hard and not paying enough attention to him. 

Now, even though I could have some empathy for that as a reason to begin to distance oneself from a spouse, I can’t fathom that process happening without some discussion, but there was nary a word from Mark other than the occasional complaint that my dinner was getting cold as I was trying to post or that I wasn’t paid nearly enough for the number of hours I dedicated to my work.

If this work I poured so much of my soul into was without soul, if, perhaps, I was consumed by fluctuating money markets or with attending constantly to a process designed to grow more and more money for myself in an endless game of greed, I might also have some compassion for a mate who felt ignored by aggressive avarice.

The fact is, however, that through the adoption of our children I became a passionate advocate for international adoption. The millions of children without  families in the world are for the most part a voiceless lot, and given that there are no few people in the world very vocal about seeing to keeping these kids sentenced to a short life of misery under a banner misleading reading “Cultural Genocide” or something equally shortsighted or self indulgent, lending my efforts to remind that there are other sides to that coin with miraculous results seemed an effort worth pursuing and pursuing vigorously.

I personally know of a dozen kids who have wonderful families now whose shift from hopeless forever to chances and opportunities and love can be directly traced to my work.

I’m not trying to pull any “Saint” shirt on over my head with this, but it sure does piss me off that my husband, father to our two Cambodian-born children, has taken my work, my passion for the world’s orphans, my dedication, and turned it into an excuse for leaving our family for the Blow Job Queen of Trashland … fat face, big tits and all.

I think this just might mean I’m getting better.

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Perspective on misery

Posted in Adoption, Cambodia, Children, Family, Island life, Uncategorized on May 9, 2008| 6 Comments »

Readers now know the past few months have had me in a personal hell that I’m finding very difficult to rise above, to move along, to get myself back into life and seeing colors again.

Food, sleep, concentrated thought, energy of anything but the nervous type escape my abilities almost completely, and I’m perpetually frustrated by how easily confused I am about the simplest of things; I can’t even seen to keep track of my phone and my keys without relying on an energy-sucking system of constant double checking and everything requires a vigilance that used to come effortlessly as a matter of course.

I’m shaky and constantly exhausted, terrified of eventualities that may or may not occur, but certainly hit me like a ton of bricks throughout every day, and especially at night.

Spending some time contemplating the weak state I’m in and all the physical and emotional stress my present reality has presented me with took me on a mental spin around the world, and with a bit of forcing direction that trip outside my own misery has pushed my puny problems into a rather tidy, if bitter, pill I am able to swallow and manage to keep down.

As most know, two of my kids are Cambodian born, and anyone with a grip on recent history is familiar with the what happened in that country in 1975. 

Quick reminder:

April 17, 1975, the Khmer Rouge forced every citizen of the city of Phnom Penh to leave their homes carrying only what they could on their backs and head into a blankness that would not be explained. For the following three years, these people and others from other towns were starved, beaten, murdered, separated from their families, forced into slave labor building damns doing other such demanding labor that anyone well fed would suffer greatly, and almost 2 million people died. Many were tortured mercilessly, and there is no shortage of the evidence of this horror still to be seen today in Cambodia.

Today, millions of people are suffering in the same ways every single day, watching their children die, living as sex slaves, working until they drop with nothing but a lash at their back and very little food in their stomachs.

So, what the hell am I bitching about?

The love of my life has lost his mind and left me for a whore, tearing apart my lovely little family and leaving me scared and lonely. The way I’ve been feeling, the impact this has had on me, makes me question just how long I could survive … how long I would choose to survive … a horror of truly immense proportions like so many must.  

I’m a wimp.

It’s time to remind myself just how wonderful my life still is. Sure, my husband is a sleazy creep who has lost his mind, but I know that my life will be just fine, and I need to buck up and keep in mind just where it is in the scheme of things I am lucky enough to inhabit.

Perspective is a good thing. It doesn’t take away pain, but it sure gives it context.

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Eeek! A shark: Poor baby

Posted in Children, Family, Fun, International Adoption, Island life, Seychelles, tagged , on February 25, 2008| 8 Comments »

Steven Spielberg pretty much ruined the sea for me … a fact I have brought up with him on more than one occasion, and one for which he is not nearly as regretful as he should be … so I was more than thrilled when today I showed Sam the dorsal fin of a baby shark a friend had found at our neighborhood beach and saw his only reaction was a deep sadness.

I have long resented my gut response to all things shark-like, the involuntary dread that creeps over me as I snorkel in water with a tinge of mirk, a hint of looming possibility. That these amazing creatures bring out the worst in knee-jerk horror is a disappointment in my nature.

The knowledge, however, that I’ve not passed that along to my son gives me cause to rejoice.

Growing up as he has in the tide pools and shallows of the Indian Ocean where it touches this island is a gift Mark and I are grateful to give. Even with the inherent risks that come with island living, with the sea so close, so strong, so potentially deadly, our kids, like their father, have a relationship with it I can only dream of.

At five, Sam already has those velcro-like feet that allow him to jump from rock to rock without slipping and the balance to stand in a pirogue in choppy water. He learned the hard way not to jump in bait-filled water, as a graze with a stone fish was painful enough without serious consequence, thankfully … and the stay in hospital served to reinforce the lesson … and catching macabale in the lamar is as easy for him as it was for Mark when he was a boy.

Yes, it’s the right combination of joy and respect that he’s built, and at the same time the ocean feels like his vast and interesting playground he understands its power and the total disregard it has for life in any form.

Mark grew up with the sea at his doorstep. I did not, so didn’t learn the language it clearly speaks or to read the waves, and I still need a translator even after years of patient tutelage. Because of this handicap I can’t fully love it, as I tend to doubt its intent even on those days when it seems the Indian Ocean is as calm as a pond from here to Kenya.

Although I worry every time the kids are anywhere near the sea, I am pleased they don’t, and happy that the most basic of basics of island living … being surrounded by water … makes them happy.

So, although we have an abundance of Spielberg movies on DVD, “Jaws” will not be added to the collection. When it comes to his classics, we’re sticking with Indiana Jones since Sam’s not likely to develop an irrational fear of devil-worshipping nazis that could put a crimp in his Saturdays at Grandma’s.

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Getting it wrong on AIDS in Africa

Posted in Adoption, Children, International Adoption, orphans, The USA from the outside in, World politics, tagged , , , , , , on February 21, 2008| 2 Comments »

I’ve just read the most confounding bit of news I’ve seen in a while, and in a source that usually delivers it straight up, making it even more confusing.

It’s this article in the Washington Post that sent me scurrying all over the Internet in search of corroboration and reason.

The story is about George W. Bush’s Africa trip from the angle of PEPFAR, the President’s Emergency Program for AIDS Relief, where it has succeeded and where it has fallen short. It makes sense, for the most part, as it explains how $15 billion has increased the availability of treatment, but with the rate of infections going up faster than meds can be handed out, that the big picture is not rosy.

The statement that “nearly half of today’s 15-year-olds in South Africa, one of the biggest beneficiaries of the program, will contract the virus in their lifetimes at current infection rates,” jars gratingly against the claim of 157,000 cases of pediatric HIV prevented through providing antiretrovirals to pregnant women, and research that says 40% of those given the lifesaving drugs drop out of the loop, stop taking their meds and most likely die takes some of the gloss off the 1.3 million PEPFAR supports treatment for.

The political motivation combining with whatever portion of the PEPFAR dollar comes from pure benevolence puts an interesting point on the quill, as well:

Studies have shown that family planning could avert far more infections than antiretroviral drugs because many women, especially those with HIV, want fewer children. Critics say the restriction, along with PEPFAR’s emphasis on untested abstinence programs, exists mainly to win support from conservative congressional Republicans, undermining the full potential of a program that the White House bills as one of the biggest humanitarian ventures in history.

Yes, that’s confounding to me, as medical issues should not be cross-contaminated by moral judgement as far as I’m concerned.

Not nearly as confounding, however, as what wraps up the piece:

Yet the past five years have also shown that the AIDS epidemic can be contained by forces other than U.S. money and political will. Africa’s biggest declines in HIV rates during Bush’s AIDS initiative have come in Zimbabwe, where economic collapse has coincided with fundamental social change, including a shift toward monogamy and away from more-costly multiple relationships, research there shows.

Yep … Sandra reads those words, and goes scuttering in search of something that has THAT make any sense.

Zimbabwe put forth as an example of something going right? Hmmmmm. Me thinks there’s something rotten in Harare.

A quick search of “AIDS in Zimbabwe” comes up with 604,000 links on Google and not one I opened made any grand statements about a drop in the HIV infection rates.

Curious.

AidsPortal.Org has something about an increase in the number of people on antiretrovirals, but also mentions the “daunting task of breaking the vicious cycle of new infections,” which doesn’t sound like a big drop in infections is happening.

HIVInSite, a project of the University of California, doesn’t give any indication of a letup in infections, either. It does, however, give one tiny clue that moved me along … under “New HIV infections, 2005” the entry was “nd”: no data.

Hmmmmm.

Eventually coming across Avert.org’s page on AIDS in Zimbabwe, the true picture emerged.

In many cases, as one Zimbabwean doctor explained to reporters, the reality is that AIDS can now be counted amongst such concerns: “Put simply, people are dying of AIDS before they can starve to death.”

The situation in Zimbabwe is now so bad that:

Between 2002 and 2006, the population is estimated to have decreased by four million people.

Infant mortality has doubled since 1990.

Average life expectancy for women, who are particularly affected by Zimbabwe’s AIDS epidemic, is 34 – the lowest anywhere in the world. Officials from the World Health Organisation have admitted that since this figure is based on data collected two years ago, the real number may be as low as 30.

Zimbabwe has a higher number of orphans, in proportion to its population, than any other country in the world, according to UNICEF. Most of these cases are a result of parents dying from AIDS.

So, there’s the reason AIDS numbers are down in Zimbabwe … more people are already dead than they were last year and the year before, and the deaths are happening just that much faster than new infections are being reported. (We don’t even need to start in on the accuracy of reporting in the country.)

For the WaPo to suggest that Mugabe’s masterwork of horror that is modern-day Zimbabwe proves that “the AIDS epidemic can be contained by forces other than U.S. money and political will,” but rather through, “fundamental social change, including a shift toward monogamy and away from more-costly multiple relationships,” is irresponsible at best, and shows an inclination to accept “research” generated by tyranny in attempts to provide positive spin to genocidal maniacs.

I have come to expect much better from the publication.

Confounding, indeed.

This is x-posted to Adoption Under One Roof because it fits in both places.

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The New Black

Posted in Adoption, Fun, WTF?, tagged , , , , on February 20, 2008| 3 Comments »

No, I’m not harkening back to the flap last year that had tacky t-shirts emblazoned with the what was either cleverly hip or cynically horrid “Adoption: the New Black”, but rather the REAL New Black, which is black.

Yep. Black: The New Black.

Blacker than black, this new black is amazingly cool to a science geek wannabe like me.

It’s the Washington Post that puts out a version of this I can wrap my head around … almost … as it describes a new material that absorbs — get this — 99.955% of any light that hits it.

Hmmmmmm … If a moth gets to it, does it leave a Black Hole?

“It’s very deep, like in a forest on the darkest night,” said Shawn-Yu Lin, a scientist who helped create the material at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y. “Nothing comes back to you. It’s very, very, very dark.”

I’m trying to imagine aiming my eyes at a bit of fabric from which nothing comes back.

What’s that like? Brain death, maybe? Like, I’m looking, I’m looking, I’m looking, but there’s so much nothing to see that I might as well not have eyes?

Cool.

Wondering what use the New Black will have, besides being the height of whatever heights get that groovy designation?

Well, the military is jazzed about adding it to stealth coatings that absorb radar waves. Why not?

But check out this stuff:

Solar panels coated with it would be much more efficient than those coated with conventional black paint, which reflects 5 percent or more of incoming light. Telescopes lined with it would sop up random flecks of incidental light, providing a blacker background to detect faint stars.

And a wide array of heat detectors and energy-measuring devices, including climate-tracking equipment on satellites, would become far more accurate than they are today if they were coated with energy-grabbing superblack.

Of course, I’m thinking of the fashion potential. Those extra pounds I’m toting could disappear with just a little nip and tuck, not of me, but of an outfit sporting strategic touches of “super black”. And think of the contouring possible if it could be added to a makeup line! Double chin! What double chin?

And Halloween! Head! What head?

I also can’t shake the idea of Bug Bunny’s portable holes … those disks of black he’d toss when he needed a quick getaway. With big enough circles of the New Black anyone could appear to exit Stage Right for “Wonderland”.

Of course, having all the light sucked out of the immediate area is one way to hide, but not the only one almost possible these days.

Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak is also in the works, but rather than gobble light the stuff being used bends it backward.

Known as transformation optics, the phenomenon compels some wavelengths of light to flow around an object like water around a stone. As a result, things behind the object become visible while the object itself disappears from view.

Does that or does than not give goose bumps the size of headlamps?

Okay … now that we can cloak a Volkswagon like a Klingon war bird, can we please get that beamy-uppy thing in the works? I’d really like to meet my oldest son’s girlfriend.

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Cambodian news is up …

Posted in Cambodia, International Adoption on February 16, 2008| Leave a Comment »

The weekly wrap of news from Cambodia has been moved to Under One Roof, and this week’s is here.

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Teen pedophiles invade SE Asia

Posted in Cambodia, Children, International Adoption, WTF? on February 15, 2008| 11 Comments »

There is, reportedly, a new a popular new pastime for 18- to 20-year-old northern European men that is catching on and has many deciding to see more of the world, unfortunately; they are Asia’s new pedophiles.

There is a virtual invasion by northern European men aged 18 to 20 whose arrival has expanded the pedophilia market. Young Swedes come seeking sex with under-aged males …

WTF?

It was a sick enough world when the shriveled uglies headed for Thailand and Cambodia and other such countries where the people are lovely and poor and preyed upon the delicate young flowers, trampling them under their filthy heels as they satisfied whatever base and vile urges they felt the need to satisfy at any cost, and now the young are taking to the life of vermin?

Don’t know about you, but my mind conjures a rather attractive, if boring, image of the Swedish version of early manhood, but I’m sure there must be some population of moldy trolls there too, and I suppose it can be difficult for them to get a date anywhere, but I have to wonder about circumstances that now make a trip to Thailand for the rape of children THE thing to do.

Doesn’t a quick wank in the can do it for teens any more? That visit to the Rosy Palms was more than enough for millions of young men in the throes of needing a toss over the course of history, and although young boys have historically been used as a substitute … think Sparta … you’d think MANkind would have moved a bit beyond that in the last thousand years or so.

Apparently not.

It was one thing when any port in a storm was confined to the neighborhood … a boy could always join the Navy and see the world … but it seems now any horny little creep can pick up a cheap last-minute ticket to Bangkok and can get anything he wants, and what he wants these days in the big numbers is children.

Why would any 18-year-old want to have sex with a child? Yes, I know that question should also hold true for any 68-year-old, or whatever, but the idea of the dirty old man is well ingrained and less unimaginable than someone just over the line of consenting adult himself looking back down the path and deciding that a little boy is more to his taste than another grownup like himself.

If it’s power they’re after, these are some right scary guys here, for if they are already craving the sort of control they could have over children at 18 the world should shudder at the thought of where this leads as they move further into manhood.

Some in Thailand are advocating for European countries to do something:

It is important that the mass media not limit themselves to denouncing the problem and put the fiends’ names and pictures on their front pages. They must look at the pain and grave problems that are caused to the children who are used in such a vile fashion, then thrown away like some disposable rag.

For us it is impossible to defend them all. Europe and the world must do something.

Yeah. It would be a good thing to publish their names and faces and disgrace the slime. So would cutting off their nuts and serving them to the dog.

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Choking hazards from China

Posted in England, International Adoption, World politics, WTF?, tagged , , , on February 13, 2008| 2 Comments »

nazimos0902_468x196.jpgAfter posting yesterday on Chinese-made choking hazards in the shape of toys in really, really, really bad taste, this story out of Britain provides another.

British Olympic chiefs are to force athletes to sign a contract promising not to speak out about China’s appalling human rights record – or face being banned from travelling to Beijing.

… The controversial clause has been inserted into athletes’ contracts for the first time and forbids them from making any political comment about countries staging the Olympic Games.

What the hell is it with China and the huge and hugely disturbing and disgusting pass it’s getting, especially around this whole Olympics hoo-haa?

The upcoming games … and can we remember that this is what it’s about — GAMES? … should be providing an opportunity for the world to focus on the host country, and not through filters but with the glaring light of global attention thrown in every representation of the often ugly face of real-life China that can be taken in by the hundreds of thousands of people traipsing through the place this summer.

The Chinese government signed on for this sort of inspection at the time they begged, borrowed and pleaded to get the games to run, swim, dive, shoot and so on on Chinese soil, and if those doing the running, swimming, diving, etc. happen to notice some of that soil as it collects under their fingernails while in the process of cheerfully competing under the banner of good sportsmanship, or whatever, they damned well should be able to talk about it.

Or whatever else they want to talk about, for that matter.

Since when does an ability to move quickly disqualify one from developing opinions, along with muscles, and speaking out?

Apparently, for British athletes, since the 1930s when the photo above was taken, the year the British soccer … okay, ‘football’ … team did the Fuehrer’s High Five … the Nazi salute … and were so shamefully captured on film doing so.

Personally, I have been a supporter of the movement to boycott the 2008 Beijing Olympics and have wished a large proportion of participants would simply opt out and make a big deal of exactly why China does not deserve the implied respect the games convey.

I was very pleased to see just minutes ago that Steven Speilberg has bowed out of his role as artistic advisor … his stated reason is Darfur, just one of the human rights issues China should be forced to account for … and hope others will do the same, and publicly, as the games draw near.

(Interestingly, his withdrawal comes on the heels of the British “gag order”, so this step may backfire. One can hope … )

I do understand how difficult it would be for an athlete to just say no to what must be a lifelong dream, but these games, the competition, the ceremonies, the venues, and the medals that will come from victories, are tainted.

They are tainted with the waste of opportunity to force change, the whorish rolling over of those who should be standing and pointing fingers and demanding China play by rules of better-worldsmanship, the pandering to money interests with advertising dollars, the good-ole-boy, slap on the back, wink-wink-nudge-nudge cronyism that is spinning the world down to a place where rich and poor are so far removed from each other that neither seems human in the eyes of the other.

An article in the CSM called “The Olympics in China: a moment for pride – and world scrutiny”, gives a look at how important it is to the Chinese to come through the games unscathed:

An unprecedented opportunity to shine in the international spotlight for an intense three weeks. The Chinese government is treating the Games as a symbolic end to 150 years of humiliation by outside powers and a confirmation of its status as a global power to be reckoned with.

But the problem is China should be scathed and scathed badly in ways that illustrate just why 150 years of humiliation was deserved and why its status as a global power needs to be carefully monitored. Carte blanche has not been earned.

And as for the Brits … well, gagging their own athletes is about as spineless and unhelpful a move as can be imagined under these circumstance, but since it’s not the first time it’s happened, it didn’t take much imagination to come up with it.

If only Monty Python were still around to take the piss out of this mess, or if Sid Vicious and the rest of the Sex Pistols could do a rousing rendition of something appropriately irreverent.

It would be good to give the Chinese something to choke on for a change.

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Toys for kids? How about a “Path Cra”? (Bin Laden included)

Posted in Adoption, Island life, Seychelles, WTF?, tagged , , , on February 12, 2008| 14 Comments »

Path Cra toy?>The Internet was out all day today, so I’m far behind on way too much work and playing catch-up (ketchup?) tonight.

Had a meeting in town today … so at least had something constructive to do with the time I would have been working … and also needed to do some shopping, as a friend’s little boy is turning three this weekend and we have a birthday party to attend.

Shopping for gifts here is always an adventure, as options are always both limited and a bit on the wacky side. Plus, you never can tell which shop might have what, as a place with motor oil in the window might also sell dolls where somewhere that displays faded boxes of toys may have nothing but plumbing supplies.

The first place I stopped had nothing appropriate, but while on my way to another place that has proven fruitful in the past, I needed to pop into what we’d call a grocery store to pick up some diapers for Cj. Lo and behold, toys were presented near the entrance, so I did some perusal of offerings.

And just LOOK at what I found!

No, this is not what the soon-to-be-three-year-old is getting, but could I pass this up? As blog fodder alone it’s worth the SR 71/- (Seventy-one Seychelles Rupees) it cost me.

Made in China … where else? … I’m thinking the box is actually suppose to read “car” not “cra”, but the spelling error is nothing compared to the ultimate wrongness of the product itself.

Of course, I’m coming to this from an American prospective, and I’m sure people from other cultures are certain to have a far different reaction, but how this made it to Seychelles can only be chalked up to the likelihood that it was cheap and easy to ship.

There were a couple of more on the shelves, so if anyone is interested in the gifts that hit the height of tacky covered in sprinkles of bad taste, perhaps I could do some shopping for you … ?

Man! The world is a crazy place.

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