World Vision has a project called Hope Child. I think that this is the next best thing to really adopting a child from one of these countries so heavily affected by AIDS. Aids is devastating in both the sense that, the children left behind have a bleak future being left in the care of aging grandparents and in the sense that the grandparents have also lost their old age security in a land where there is no public help when you get too old to do the hard physical labour that living in those countries requires.
We have children adopted by both methods – a World Vision sponsored child and then the second half of my family. I still remember the day we met the first daughter we were to adopt. She had just awoken from a nap. She sat on Leo’s knee still sleepy but mostly unaware of what was going on. The next couple of days were filled with things we had to do. There were the photos, the medical exam and then we went to Mama Yemo Hospital for the AIDs test. We were staying with the pathologist who ran the AIDs program. Physical disabilities, intellectual disabilities, we were prepared to accept. Adopting a child that was HIV+ would be another matter for immigration purposes. And at 2 1/2 if she was + it would mean that she was infected – not just maternal antibodies. Adopting a child we would have to see die was more than we thought we could handle.
Waiting
The child,
The little girl,
Was ours for the taking.
All we needed
Was a negative on the last
Little big” test.
We took her.
They did the puncture,
Drew a few drops of her blood
That was becoming more precious
Than our own
By the minute.
Waiting.
Do you know
The agony of that?
This little girl
Almost embedded in our hearts,
Almost embedded,
After a few short hours.
Holding her,
Not even knowing
If she liked us,
Her face still a blank slate
Eyes not allowing us to see
Too deeply.
We, not daring
To get too sharply entangled
By her innocence,
Her vulnerability,
Our love.
All hinges on the test.
Have you ever waited
Like that?
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