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Archive for the ‘Children’ Category

Book Launch: Papaya … and other seeds

Posted in Children, Family, Seychelles, Uncategorized, Writing for a living on July 17, 2008| 9 Comments »

As promised, here are a few photos from the launch party. You can see how involved the kids were in the event by the fact that they are in the press shots like the one where I’m giving a book to the Minister of Education.

Sam signed every book I did and would say “Next!” when he’d finished one. Cracked me up! Cj sprinkled fairy dust in each copy for that extra touch of magic!

It was a good evening, but the bittersweetness of it all hit me hard.

I do hope to have a link set up here soon so the book can be purchased online.

With Minister of Education

With Minister of Education

Signing for the TV camera

Signing for the TV camera

Sam signs one of his illustrations

Sam signs one of his illustrations

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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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Earning the right to sex, and how others do it

Posted in Children, Family, Older women, Uncategorized, tagged , on May 7, 2008| 4 Comments »

I’ve been trying to figure out a way forward for Paradise Preoccupied … and for much else in my life at the moment … and have been finding it hard to even compose a follow-up to my last post.

I do not want to turn this into a litany of Mark’s almost daily screw-ups and petty cruelties, no matter how much of my energy is sucked away in the process of him being the “new” him, nor do I want to compete for the title of “Queen Whine of the blog world”.

I’ve considered composing long diatribes on my misanthropic tendencies … life-long and only getting stronger as man proves time after time his weaknesses and base nature … and have even thought of writing on just why it is that humans are my least favorite primate species.

That could be quite an interesting topic, actually, and I may put some time into it. The facts being that non-human primates, in all their various versions of societal behaviors, have worked out how to demand the most of the males in their species before they’re allowed to have sex. 

Unlike in humans, subadult males … the teens and twenties types … inhabit the bottom rung of other primate societies. They get no respect from anyone and are ignored as often as they are chastised for obnoxious behavior. 

The thought of a gang of young chimps or baboons starting wars, raping and pillaging is totally negated by the fact that everyone else in their groups, from adult males to their own mothers and aunties, would nip any such tendencies in the bud, and slap the shit out of them in the process, gives their cultures an advantage ours has lost.

Males in other primate groups have to prove themselves, and much of that proof involves developing into the type of grownups that have the power, grace and fortitude to make damned sure their children reach adulthood under the safest circumstances possible. Females base their choices on granting sexual favors on these factors and wouldn’t touch a flakey good-for-nothing, no matter how pretty or smooth, with a ten-foot length of bamboo.

Gibbons are monogamous. Marmoset fathers are primary caregivers, handing what is usually twins over to mom only at feeding time. Gorillas live in harem groups with the Silverback, having earned every one of his rights of reproduction the hard way, having his way with all the females in his group and taking care of everyone everyday in every way, including providing a vast and hairy playground for his youngsters.

Orang utans are solitary dwelling creatures and tend to mate with whoever they happen to run across in their foraging … they are also the only other primate species that rapes … and little but the genetic contribution is expected from fathers, but at least those rules are clear from the outset.

Chimps are the closest relatives we have in the non-human primate group and the most likely to experience violence and confusion in the social grouping. Multi-male is the standard, and although Top Dog usually gets some sexual action, females aren’t as picky as other primates are, and this causes friction, but usually only among the males competing for some action.

We humans are the only ones whose females will fall for any old line and with males who invest nothing but a few minutes of what is often copious amounts of spare time spent doing nothing else to experience the act of reproduction. We are also the only ones who are rejected out of hand once a relationship has developed, especially when there are children involved.

Loyalties are vital in primate communities, and although the width and depth of those loyalties vary from species to species, they are ignored at the peril of all.

Can we imagine a human world where young men are kept in line, children and women are valued for their very being, and where only men who have earned the right can not only breed, but have any sex at all?

Perhaps monogamy isn’t meant for humans at all, but it would be easier on all of us if we could figure out a system that doesn’t so often end up causing so much damage to so many.

 

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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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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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The UN: Sloppy or criminal? Would someone make the call, please?

Posted in Adoption, Cambodia, Celebrities, Children, International Adoption, The United Nations, tagged , , on February 11, 2008| Leave a Comment »

Getting back to the tens of millions of dollars the UN has wasted in Sudan that I mentioned yesterday, but had neither the time nor the stomach for, I find it more than a tad disingenuous that the same day this story came out in the Washington Post, the “UN News Centre” had only this to say … a long, drawn out whine from Ban Ki-moon as he “strongly condemned” Janjaweed militia attacks killing 200 people in West Darfur.

Mr. Ban “stresses that all parties must adhere to international humanitarian law, which prohibits military attacks against civilians,” according to a statement issued by his spokesperson.

First … Yeah, Ban. Like that’s gonna work! (Gee, whiz … slap forehead … Let’s just explain that genocide is “prohibited”! Wonder why Kofi didn’t think of that … )

And, second … Why the hell should the Janjaweed listen to the UN talk about obeying laws?

From the WaPo:

A U.N. task force is examining the United Nations’ handling of nearly $300 million in contracts for food, transportation and fuel for Sudan, including a $200 million contract with Eurest Support Services, a Cyprus-based subsidiary of the Compass Group, a British catering company. ESS also has been charged with rigging bids in Liberia, Congo, Ethiopia and Eritrea.

Anyone want to venture a guess as to what a “task force” not under UN employ might find?

But back to the UN news that goes on to sing the praises of something called the Status of Forces Agreement … unfortunately, but probably prophetically abbreviated to SOFA … that was signed recently.

A couple of points to make on this.

First, on this:

SOFA covers the activities of the military, police and civilian personnel of the mission, known as UNAMID, which seeks to stem the violence in the war-ravaged Darfur region, where over 200,000 people have been killed and 2.2 million others forced to flee their homes since fighting began in 2003 among Government forces, rebel groups and allies militia groups known as the Janjaweed.

Yep. Those same damned numbers they’ve been trotting out for the past five years … 200,000 dead, 2.2 million displaced.

When and why did the UN stop counting? Counting the dead and displaced is one of the few things the UN can actually do, but not in Sudan. There were 200,000 dead and 2.2 million displaced way back during GW’s first term and way before George Clooney ever went to Darfur … and now he’s not only been back for ages, he’s working for the UN. (Talk about a powerful PR machine!)

The other thing in the UN News:

Mr. Guehenno, who recently visited Sudan, emphasized that UNAMID operation is “severely under-resourced for the tasks which it was mandated to perform” since it lacks the necessary troops, police and equipment, including military aircraft and ground transportation, to provide protection to Darfurians.

No mention there what 10s of millions of wasted dollars could have provided on this front, is there? No. There wouldn’t be.

Back to George Clooney for a moment …

Last September I wrote a post responding to a question he asked during his testimony before the UN where he said:

We were brought up to believe that the U.N. was formed to ensure that the Holocaust could never happen again. We believe in you so strongly. We need you so badly. We have come so far. We’re — we’re one yes away from ending this. And, if not the U.N., then who?

I looked around a bit at the time and came up with:

In 2005, UNICEF received over $53 million in contributions for Darfur, meeting approximately 43 percent of total requirements. As of April 2006, UNICEF has received about $1.85 million in contributions from government donors, while UNICEF’s National Committees have raised approximately $966,000.

This means UNICEF has a total of just over $2.81 million in donor resources against its Darfur target of $89 million in 2006 – so its programmes in the region are just 3.1 per cent funded moving into the second quarter of the year.

Pointing to this as, “the UN’s own justification for doing squat!” led me to compose another post I called “If not the UN, why?”

Today, as last year, as the year before, what I said then holds true now:

Lack of funds … lack of will …

Where does it make sense, however, that this body … the UN, I’m taking here … would CHOOSE to sit back once again and allow a genocide to happen and happen and happen?

Which brings me to the real why?

Why does the UN exist at all?

A very quick look at stories from the past couple of days could be taken to prove the utter uselessness of the organization without even having to mention Cambodia, Rwanda, Srebrenica, or more stops along the genocide trail that’s been well traveled without hindrance from those folks in the big building with all the flags around it.

With a recent article in Newsweek addressing the UN’s creeping agenda on international adoption that does so much damage to so many and now seems to have the children of Haiti ready to serve up on a plate that doesn’t include adoption as an option, I do not feel any inclination to judge gently what the UN calls waste.

When 10s of millions of dollars disappear, that’s not just sloppy, it’s criminal.

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Warping children for war

Posted in Cambodia, Children, tagged , , on February 7, 2008| Leave a Comment »

A couple of items in the news recently have me lingering on the edge of despair, wondering if there is any hope at all for a world fit to live in.

First was a report I caught the end of on the BBC about how children in Gaza were handing out sweets in celebration of the suicide bombings in Israel that managed to blow some people to bits.

Then, this morning a brought this, complete with video, from an Al-Qaeda training school that teaches little boys how to be terrorists.

Also in the news, a Khmer Rouge leader asking to be released on bail … Brother Number Two, nonetheless.

All three of these are stories of child abuse, yet none are thought to be so in the minds of many.

Although Nuon Chea was a grown man at the time he participated in masterminding the murders of almost two million Cambodians, it was children in the country he turned to for the hands-on, get-their-backs-into-it killing, and the success of getting the kids involved hasn’t been forgotten.

“Lord of the Flies” is terrifying enough as a novel, but when the same inclinations that can take a group of boys from manners to mayhem completely on their own are guided with intent, and armed to the teeth, sinister and sordid no longer fit as descriptive terms, and cultural boundaries should not be allowed to come between kids and their right to be protected from the sort of horrors they are being inducted into.

There is nothing natural about a child feeling joy over death and destruction as a matter of choice, and a process that teaches this reaction to pain and suffering is wrong … just plain wrong. Getting them to cause the pain and suffering is not only wrong, but criminally so, and anyone perpetuating a system of hand-me-down terrorism should be subject to punishment.

Anyone inclined to agree with children being intentionally involved in the horrors grownups create has been warped beyond redemption, and unfortunately, this may also be so for the children at their mercy.

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