I take my pups for walks every day. Sometimes we go out twice. If weather (and work) permits, we’ll even shoot for three. Living in a small town, our treks often means we’ll hit every street in town… sometimes we’ll hit them twice.
But there’s one scary house I always try to avoid.
Former missionaries, these people have a BIG pit bull that has nothing on its mind except to chew up our little Jake, the 13 year old rescue Mini-Pin. If Mr. Pit is outside, he’ll lunge, growl, and leap trying to get us. If I remember to grab it, I carry pepper spray. Once, Mr. Pit broke his chain and tore into little Jake. When we complained to the owner, he just stroked the gun strapped to his side and told us to “F*ck off.” When we complained to the city council, they told us to carry a bat on our walks.
This former missionary couple is SCARY.
Yippee.
As the weather warms, we tend to walk outside the city limits. Out there, we only have to deal with large owls, snakes, and coyote.
But it gets worse. Surrounding these odd former missionaries are a gaggle of adopted children. Once when we passed, one of the boys was outside screaming his lungs out. Just standing outside screaming. All home schooled, these kids run around outside throughout the school year, have few “outsider” friends, always stop what they’re doing and stare as me and my two pups pass. A friendly, “hello” is never acknowledged.
I couldn’t help but think about these kids as I read this very long (and thorough) article from Mother Jones.
IN 2005, SAM ALLISON, a Tennessee housepainter in his 30s, arrived at Daniel Hoover Children’s Village, an orphanage outside Monrovia, Liberia. He’d come to adopt three children, but ended up with four: five-year-old Cherish; her nine-year-old brother, Isaiah; their 13-year-old sister, CeCe, who had taken care of them for years; and Engedi, a sickly infant whom Sam and an adoption broker had retrieved from “deep in the bush.” The older children’s father had sent them to Daniel Hoover during Liberia’s 14-year civil war, after their mother died in childbirth. The orphanage, run by a ministry called African Christians Fellowship International, often ran short of food, and schooling was sporadic. The children, who were forced to flee temporarily when rebels attacked the facility in 2003, referred to America—whose image looms large in a country colonized by freed slaves in the 19th century—as “heaven.”
Evanglical parents are adopting copious children from third world countries, like Liberia, with the mistaken notion that some sort of idyllic life will transpire. It rarely does.
In October 2006, a year after their first Liberian adoptions, the Allisons adopted another pair of siblings: Kula, 13, and Alfred, 15. “In Africa we thought America was heaven,” recalled Kula, who is 19 now. “I thought there were money trees.” Primm Springs was a rude awakening: It was dirty, she recalled, and she had no toothbrush. The new house Sam was building—with the older kids working alongside him—often lacked electricity. There was only a woodstove for heat, and no air conditioning or running water yet. Toilets were flushed with buckets of water hauled from a creek behind the house. The children recalled being so hungry that they would, on occasion, cook a wild goose or turkey they caught on the land. “We went from Africa to Africa,” CeCe said.
Discipline is often tough.
Discipline included being hit with rubber hosing or something resembling a riding crop if the children disrespected Serene, rejected her meals, or failed to fill the reservoir. For other infractions, they were made to sleep on the porch without blankets. Engedi, the toddler, was disciplined for her attachment to CeCe. To encourage her bond with Serene, the Allisons would place the child on the floor between them and CeCe and call her. If Engedi went to CeCe instead, the children recalled, the Allisons would spank her until she wet herself.
Many churches are getting involved in this strange form of evangelism.
IT WASN’T JUST Above Rubies readers catching the adoption bug. In 2007, the Christian Alliance for Orphans, which took root around the same time Campbell published her first adoption articles, held a pivotal meeting at the Colorado headquarters of James Dobson’s Focus on the Family; pastors emerged ready to preach the new gospel of orphan care and adoption, according to an account in the Los Angeles Times. Focus was soon predicting that, within a decade, it would be “pretty uncommon” for Christians “to not adopt or not care for orphans.”
Indeed, just two years later the Southern Baptist Convention, America’s largest Christian denomination save the Catholic Church, passed a resolution calling on its 16 million members to get involved, whether that meant taking in children themselves, donating to adoptive families, or supporting the hundreds of adoption ministries that were springing up around the country to raise money and spread the word. Neo-Pentecostal leader Lou Engle also called for mega-churches to take on the cause, which would give them “moral authority in this nation.”
But things are going sour and some of the children are getting sent back to their original families. It got bad enough that in ’09, Liberia imposed an emergency moratorium on international adoptions. But, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
On my very first night in Monrovia, as I ate at a hotel restaurant popular with expats and development workers, a Christian Lebanese logging executive came to my table. When I told him why I was there, he asked if I wanted to adopt a child, and offered to take me the next day to the interior, where he would help me find a baby to bring home. I declined, but he remained excited by the prospect, and was already forming a plan. “They all need adoption,” he said, his eyes growing misty. “It would be viewed as a miracle.”
Fascinating read. Highly recommended
