| 7/14/2009 1:38:00 PM | Email this article • Print this article | An East Side program for Ethiopian adoptees goes national
Scott Nichols
news editor
Years ago, sometime around the time of my marriage but before my children arrived, I nearly did a story on an evangelical flock of Ethiopian immigrants who had found a home right in the heart of the East Side in the long-defunct Dayton's Bluff Commercial Club.
Converted to a church by a previous congregation, when Rev. Endiryas Hawaz and his flock settled in, they quickly learned a lesson about the frustrating level of bureaucracy that can bedevil St. Paulites: told by one part of the city administration that their building's brick exterior needed fixing up, they happily complied. But not before checking with another part of the city administration about regulations that come with owning a historic building in one of the city's historic districts, which means that they very nearly had to reverse course on the brick-red paint job they'd given their edifice.
Another paper beat me to the story, so -- given any reporter's typically tight deadlines and limited resources -- I never ended up doing that piece.
And I wonder now whether my life would have turned out slightly differently if I had.
You see, years after my future wife and I had settled into our DINK lifestyle, we both decided that we wanted to adopt children -- two of them.
Being rather deliberate in nature, we considered all the options. Public adoption or private? Local or international?
The choices were mind-boggling, and -- as anyone who has adopted children will tell you -- the decisions were nerve-wracking.
After much study, deliberation, and soul-searching, we realized we wanted to adopt from Ethiopia. We loved everything we read, heard and saw about the country and its adoption efforts through agencies like Childrens Home Society and Family Services, our chosen intermediary.
The country didn't hold you hostage for years waiting for a child. It didn't require numerous visits. You were given the option of meeting the birth parent(s). The orphanage was bright, clean, and amazingly well-staffed with workers obviously chosen for their love for young children.
Our adoption of two beautiful little girls -- sisters -- went more smoothly than we could imagine. Ditto for our transition from DINKs to double-income parents.
But there were issues, of course. All of them ours: in class after class, article after article, we'd been warned about the challenges that come with transracial adoptions. And let me tell you, there are a few. Language, being one. Hair is another, especially for someone like me, used to simply shaving off anything that sticks out more than an inch from my scalp. And that's just for starters.
We knew that to raise our well-adjusted toddlers into well-adjusted adults, we'd need help. And we found it, at the very church I nearly wrote about all those years ago.
Every immigrant we've yet met from Ethiopia has bent over backwards to be friendly to us, but the members of the Ethiopian Evangelical Church in Minnesota have taken an extra step for what is now a rather sizeable Ethiopian adoptive community here in the Twin Cities.
They'd formed a group called Ethiopians for Ethiopians, and began to do some serious outreach to the community -- other families like ours -- letting everyone know that an education in all things Ethiopian is available, just through their church doors.
My wife and I -- two very ambivalent agnostics -- were at first quite leery of any social programming offered by a church. Especially an evangelical Christian church.
But we needn't have worried.
Every volunteer in the program has helped to make us feel at home, as all four of us have signed up for session after session of weekend events. While the girls get separated by age into classrooms to learn such things as songs and games in Amharic - one of the country's major languages - the adults gather for lectures and demonstrations by Ethiopian immigrants in various cultural approaches, crafts and trades.
I've stumbled through classes on hair (twice). Enjoyed language classes. Eaten my fill at cooking classes taught by local noted chefs skilled in Ethiopian cuisine. Listened raptly to professors from places as near as Metro State University or as far away as Chicago State University discuss Ethiopian politics. And the list goes on.
Talking to the program's coordinator about its origins, I was told the members of the church had taken to heart some recommendations they'd learned from a past generation of adoptees -Koreans -about their experience. They also knew well -- and wanted to ease -the difficulty of looking and feeling like a stranger in a strange land. And so members vowed to help the ever-increasing numbers of children still arriving here in the U.S. from their homeland.
Well, the members of our newly-adopted church have been able to help not just our children but also us feel at home. And they've done it for quite a significant number of other parents in the Twin Cities, too, in the meantime growing the program from a dozen or so participants to more than 100 in a few short years.
And now I note with pride that the program is expanding. First to Chicago, later this month. And soon to Washington, D.C. And, from what I hear, hopefully soon after that to New York.
Even four years ago, if you would have told me I would be happily walking through some church doors week after week, restraining to the best of my ability two very eager children as I went, I would have looked at you like you were off your rocker.
Now I can't help but wonder how other internationally adoptive parents can cope without such a valuable program. Ethiopians for Ethiopians is a vital, strong link to all things Ethiopian, and many things would be sadly lacking from our lives if it didn't exist.
|
Reader Comments
Posted: Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Article comment by:
Roger Stoller
We adopted siblings (now 7 and 5) two years ago and can't wait for this to start in Chicago!
|
Article Comment Submission Form
|
