Worldsuck: Adoption pains and those evil enough to cause them

Earlier this week I met up with an old friend that goes to a college near where I live. One of our various topic conversations was her expressing the stress of her friend who is trying to adopt a foreign child. As our discussion progressed I too felt the frustrations and disappointments her friend has as if they were my own. My friend—let’s call her Sally, filled me in on her friend “Mary’s” situation.

Mary already has a toddler adopted from Guatemala a couple of years ago. She recently began the process of adopting another child from Guatemala about a year ago. In that period of time, however, the political situation in Guatemala had sort of declined down a long slope of mud. Sally told me that this type of situation always makes it so much harder to adopt children from that said region.

I asked why this was, because I assumed if a country was struggling like Guatemala, then many would be more motivated getting children out of the line of fire and into safe families. Sally agreed but also told me that if people went by that moral code, there wouldn’t be many wars or many orphans either. She, of course, is right.

We talked more and later that night I called up my dad to catch up as well. I told him the sad news from Sally about Mary. To my surprise, he took it, albeit with a grim demeanor, in his stride. He said it happens all the time.

Adopting children from troubled countries is stressful, risky, and very complicated. With a suspicious government, adoptive parents don’t know if the children they get are child prisoners of war or ones stolen from their families and sold like merchandise (Adopting a child is far from free). Also with untrustworthy supervisors of such adoptions, parents can never be too sure of the health of children. Many children with months to live, missing limbs, cancer, or other disabilities and illnesses are sent over with the intent that they die and parents adopt another doomed little one.

My dad even had an example in our own family. My cousin once removed was adopted during a bad time in North Korea. My dad’s aunt and uncle thought they were getting a young healthy little girl, and although surprised and confused when Kim, a malnourished and abused toddler came into their lives, they loved and cared for her all the same. But as Kim grew up, her adoptive parents realized the extent of the starvation and abuse Kim suffered in the short 18 months in North Korea. Kim couldn’t advance beyond a fourth grade knowledge level. The period of malnourishment and neglect killed her brains capacity to learn beyond that. Because of the messed up situation in North Korea at the time, someone in my family’s brain actually shut down and kept her from moving on completely from those forgotten months in Korean poverty.

All I can think when I remember this is: ARE YOU KIDDING ME??? Why does the world have to be that way! What kind of twisted people would think of doing something like that? Not only neglecting a child to such intensity, but abusing her and then selling her intending her to die? Even though there are good people in the world like my dad’s aunt and uncle, they can't make things all better. Not for Kim, not for anyone.

I can't stand feeling so helpless because I'm only 15 and I can't even get my friends to recycle. I need help. I want to help the world and help people like Kim, but I really can't by myself. And I look at my pile of world-suck that I know about and I feel so dejected. Where do I begin? How do I begin?