Our trip to Uganda has been beautiful and blessed.
I love it here.
My children are comfortable here.
Two of my children share this country as their home.
Uganda is forever *and happily* a part of our family.
Having now completed two adoptions here, I know that the time in country can be hard.
I am intimately aware of the feeling that you want to get out and take your new baby home.
I've lived it.
Twice.
But the ugly American thing is something I simply do not understand.
Recently, while wesat at the U.S. Embassy, I felt completely and utterly embarrassed to be an American.
While Zechariah and I waited to see if we could get an appointment, two other families from the States sat off to the side, loudly talking about their displeasure with just about everything in this country.
The children were clearly tired of waiting.
{I get this}
So while the three adults whined and complained loudly about drivers and how expensive everything here is and how much they want (need) to go home, their children amused themselves.
Two small ones crawled around the concrete, putting a variety of "no-nos" into their mouths with nary a glance from their new parents.
The older children busied themselves with sticks, stones, and grass.
None of the three adults seemed particularly interested in the children. In fact, the bulk of the interaction amongst the adults and children was for discipline. The littles were in trouble if they climbed anything. (Why were they allowed to be alone in an unsafe area in the first place????) The bigs were screamed at if they did anything the parents didn't like. So much so that at one point, one child did not throw away a piece of paper fast enough and the mother got up, stormed over to her, SPANKED HER IN PUBLIC and returned to her seat.
Are you kidding me???
And it didn't get better from there. The adults continued to whine and complain about how awful hard their lives are here. Have I mentioned that the courtyard where we all sat was FULL of Ugandans? And English is their national language? Oy....
I could go on with all of the things I heard them say that would make your skin crawl -- like "If they're going to have an orphanage and allow kids to be adopted, they should at least provide us with a driver" -- but I won't. Suffice it to say that it was embarrassing and I walked away with these thoughts:
If you do not like Uganda, do not adopt from here.
Your children WILL want to return.
If you do not have a heart for children who you did not birth, please do not adopt.
I've never seen such poor attachment amongst newly anointed parents and their children as I saw today. If your heart is not open, don't go there.
If you are not prepared to stay in Uganda -- and be happy about it -- for as long as it takes to get your child home, find another country to adopt from. May I suggest your own country where the culture of your child may be more like yours???
If you cannot exhibit just a little bit of class in a culture that is VERY different from your own, don't travel there. That's pretty simple, right?
And above all, if you don't have the respect for your children's birth country and culture that is required to raise that little person to be proud of who s/he is, you need to move on. International adoption is not for you. Stay yourself in the US and please, for the love of all decency, shut your flapper.
