A Baby Rant

A friend recently posted a BBC article on her facebook page about growing concern over adopting children in Africa. She is based here too. She will soon turn 30. I have just turned 31 (I hope you appreciate the fact that I spared you the overly dramatic birthday speech this year, but you can click here and here to revisit what I had to say last year if you want to). Generally speaking, our personal and professional lives are in fairly similar condition.

Which is why I think this article struck a chord for both of us.

If you want to read the article, click here.

Now before you read the rant I posted on her wall in response to this article, let me be clear that I agree with a lot of what is being said about the challenges that are inherent in the systems (or lack thereof). I too, was shocked the first time I learned that an African orphan often has one living parent; they're called 'double orphans' if they've lost both parents. I also understand the threat and temptation poverty can affect on the decision making process of poor families.

I also know amazing families which were created by adoption.

Admittedly I was blinded by certain aspects of what was said, and may have slightly overshot and attacked the personal implications rather than the specific argument laid out by the author. Maybe the itchy empty space on the ring finger of my left hand distracted me and threatened to momentarily push me over the edge. Maybe the keebler elf that keeps the old fashioned alarm clock constantly wound up so that the ticking and tocking continues to get louder and louder, decided to vacate my empty womb for awhile and take up residence in my brain where I could hear him better. Perhaps I just overreacted.

But I do still have a point.

Her comment, on the original 'share' of the article was : "They are gonna block the adoption I have planned in the back of my mind... damn you Madonna and Angelina"

And this, is me then ranting:

There had better be some sort of exception for women like us. If, to be able to do the work we do in the places we do it, it means that we have to spend most of our 20s getting bachelors degrees followed by relevant masters degrees followed by multiple years of unpaid volunteer experience, internships and then subsistence wage paid 'volunteering' to finally start landing professional positions where we regularly work 10-12 hour days up to 6 or 7 days a week producing high standard work under frustrating and stressful conditions, in unaccompanied posts with a revolving door of friends/colleagues/partners, surrounded mainly by married men (though often 'Single in Sudan'), who, even if they were actually single we likely could never forge a lifelong relationship with on account of the fact that we are rarely in the same place very long (5 countries in 5 years for me, with no more than about 3 weeks consecutively in one location over this past year) and good fucking luck being in the same place at the same time except to be like 'oh right, that's what you look like, Im so used to staring at your skype photo when we talk', which will likely maintain itself until our mid thirties when we start freaking out because 'OMGitsalmosttoolateIbetterfigurethisshitout' only to discover that ya, I can land a job now with more stability, less working hours and far less travel, and there are some single men around but I'm not willing to settle and they're getting over their divorces cause their long distances marriages didn't work (mostly because they’ve been here being all douchy) and now I don't want them anyways.

So ya, be concerned about the quality of African adoption and be realistic about the challenges and the systems and how we can make it all work, but let's not forget about how my concern for Africa has significantly contributed to the fact that one day I may need to concern myself with the prospect of adoption, and it hardly seems fair to punish me for that.

Rant. Over.

(For now)