In all the horror from Haiti, I’m particularly aghast at the story of the bodies of the two Dutch couples found in the ruins of a collapsed hotel – they had gone to adopt a child there – their children’s bodies were recovered with them.
It’s a story that has a particular resonance with me. Almost three years ago to the day, I was in a hotel in China, having breakfast for the first time with my newly adopted daughter. I’d met her for the first time the day before. It was the culmination of two years of paperwork, tearful arguments with bank managers, embassy personnel, and local council public servants, none of whom understood my rush. I had to get the paperwork in before I turned 46 – and therefore officially too old to adopt a child in Holland, but there’s no rushing bureaucrats.
It had been a painful and protracted gestation for a child I never thought I would get. And then finally, I did.
And then finally, there she was, eating a vast breakfast while I watched her with a bursting heart.
So the idea of the walls literally caving in on our new family at that moment, is one that brings me to near emotional spasm.
These families had only just had a moment to re-define the word family for themselves, only just started to form the bonds that were supposed to tie them together for the rest of their long lives – the cruelty of it seems particularly sharp though the rational part of me realizes its no more cruel than what’s happening to the other hundreds of thousands of people living the horror there at the moment.
The families who had gone to Haiti to pick up their adopted kids were on what every one of them would have said was the most important trip of their life. Some of them emerged alive. But not all.
Last week, the Dutch government cleared the way for 109 orphans from Haiti who were already cleared for adoption to be rushed to The Netherlands. They’re the lucky ones. Before the earthquake there were more than 300,000 orphans already in a country that’s routinely called the poorest in the Western hemisphere. How many more will there be when the body count in Haiti is complete? What future can they hope to have?
Watch a video made by Dutch aid worker Robert de Vries. You may find some of the images shocking
