Clementine's Story; Part 2

Part 2

The first time Andrew and I met Clementine, we were sitting in the back seat of a car masquerading as a taxi cab and she was passed to me through an open door by the director of the orphanage. Clementine was 9 months old and we were in Haiti for the first time. She was a vision of chocolate to me, the small beads of sweat trailing down our temples being the only thing we had in common. Mr. Big, our aptly named escort, was filling up the front seat of the ancient car. Port au Prince was not a place for two uninitiated white folks to be driving around. Andrew and I had traveled more than most, mainly to third world countries not listed on America’s favorite vacation destinations. We knew enough to willingly submit to Mr. Big and felt no need to see the sights of Haiti. Several white missionaries had been kidnapped for ransom the weeks prior to our trip which sounds menacing, except that this happened all the time to black Haitians; a fact that escapes the attention of the media at large. Haiti is, in general, a hazardous place to live but this was not enough to keep us away from our daughter. It only cleared any hubris, leaving us sobered and alert.

Clementine was born Esther Touisannte the first week of December 2004. Unlike most babies in Haiti, she was born in a hospital suggesting some measure of means. Her parents did not share a last name on her birth certificate but this is all we know of her birth family. Clementine was dropped off at an orphanage before she was two weeks old and we were called by our social worker, alerting us that a baby girl was available for adoption. We made a mad dash to complete our home study so that we could officially be placed with this tiny child. It was surreal. Sitting in the steamy cab being introduced to a person I would know for the rest of my life felt like meeting your betrothed on a bus. We spent 5 days on a “babymoon”, the solitary guests of a B&B run by an American from Houston who moved to the island in the 70’s. We were first time parents playing with our baby who was just learning to pull herself up, put gummy pieces of plantain in her mouth and in general familiarize herself with us. I was 5 months pregnant by then and my round middle served as both a climbing challenge and pillow for her, depending on the time of day. Our baths were cold and electricity was intermittent but it was a precious time. We bonded and tried to memorize every nook and cranny of our brown baby. She learned to come to us, to look for us as we entered the room, to hear the voices of her mommy and daddy. Our paperwork had been in Haiti for 7 months and we hoped that the remaining time would pass quickly. Now that the smell and feel of our child was impressed in our mind, the waiting would be excruciating.

In the ebbs and flows of this story, our first trip to Haiti to meet Clementine would be the highest peak quickly followed by the all time low. The plummet took my breath away. I often hesitate to tell people the full story of our adoption because what happens next plays into the worst fears for all families embarking on their own international adoptions.

Surrendering yourself to the scrutiny of adoption, laying bare the most intimate details about your family history, life, finances, and then entrusting your hopes of a family into the anonymous arms of a capricious government is a vulnerability rarely experienced in life. We were completely at the mercy of many people, most of whom were faceless civil servants. We could attach our minds to a few familiar faces; our U.S. social worker who patiently walked us through the paperwork and liaised for us on the American side, and the directors of the orphanage who were our touchstones in Haiti. The directors were American and 20 plus years as activists in the US adoption world had given them plenty of experience notwithstanding their own brood of adopted children. The agency we chose to work with had professional relationships with this couple that put them in good standing and we were led through the murky waters of paperwork by those wiser and more experienced than ourselves.

We could tell that all was not well when we arrived in Haiti for that first visit. The strain on the face of Mrs. Director was self evident and an orderly system to process everyone’s precious dossiers was buried under the chaos of her home office. She reassured us that all was well but we communicated otherwise to our agency and social worker. Several weeks after we returned home our worst fears were realized. Our paperwork, sent to Haiti 8 months earlier, had never left her office, had never been submitted to the government and was languishing in a pile on Mrs. Director’s desk. She lied to our faces when we asked for a progress report. The thousands of dollars spent to escort our dossier through to the finish were gone; spent on operating expenses for the orphanage. And we were not alone. Many families were in the same situation-- Or worse--. The orphanage was bankrupt and the staff, who had not been paid in weeks, were threatening to leave. All supplies were low. Things were very dire.

A series of events led to this catastrophe; a change in government led to revision of laws that made the process of adoptions extend from 9 months to 18 months slowing down the flow of funds through orphanages, a lack of planning and preparation on the directors side and an the acceptance of too many children swelled the ranks and overextended the existing resources. The staff left and Mrs. Director fled the country with her youngest children, leaving Mr. Director and their eldest son to care for the entire population of kids until emergency measures could be put in place. Adoptive families responded to the horrific state that the children were left in and those that could flew down to organize. Birth families, hearing that their children had been abandoned, stormed the compound to reclaim the children they had surrendered in good faith. We read the parade of emails, one more unbelievable then the one before. I remember sitting in my dimly lit office, my swollen belly shaking as I sobbed, reading the catastrophic news. The baby that we had just met, just bonded with, could very well be lost to us.

We faired better than most in the end. Some families, already awaiting final approval from the Haitian government, lost their long awaited children when the birth parents returned to reclaim them. Some families lost whole or significant portions of the much labored over dossiers. All of us lost the tens of thousands of dollars in fees we paid. Our dossier was found intact and because we used a US agency, we had an advocate to untangle the mess we were in. Clementine developed pneumonia during the days of neglect, which put her on the critical list when the triage team of parents and volunteer medical staff arrived to assess the damage. She lived with a few other critical babies at the very B&B where we had just spent our “babymoon”, waiting for a place to open up at another of Haiti’s overwhelmed orphanages. We were shell-shocked to say the least. Feelings of helplessness overwhelmed us as we assessed the damage and mourned with those who had suffered fates worse than ours.

Should we continue with the adoption?

Cut our losses and count ourselves warned?

Who do we trust now?

Slowly we were able to stand upright again. One step forward led to another. Life resumed it’s rhythms and we fell into a cycle of progress reports as our dossier passed through an alphabet soup of government offices. Clementine found a place at the orphanage where she would spend the next 3+ years. We thanked God that she was in a safe place even if she was not at home with us. Our son was born, life was busy and we began to believe that Clementine’s arrival to our family was an inevitability.