An Amazing Book to "Inspire and Agitate"

I am reading the most amazing book about a woman who is working to save her country's children, one at a time. What follows is a very traumatic, heart wrenching scene from within this book. When I read this part of the book, it made our original reasoning in adopting an older child, very unimportant. We had decided on an older child (as well as a little one) so that our four to eight year old children, would have a sister that fitted right into their age range.

When I saw how the abandonment devastated this little girl (even that is too light a word!) it made me want to be *the* family that could stop her, or another one just like her, from languishing in an orphanage for years, simply because they were 'too old' - over babyhood - to adopt. Babies appear to be the most desireable adoptees.

I want us to be the family that gets that wonderful phone call that we have been chosen to have the privilege of being an older child's forever family - so that she will no longer feel abandoned.

Excerpt taken from: There Is No Me Without You - by Melissa Faye Greene

Background - this little girl (5) and her little brother (3) have been raised by their mother, father, two aunts, and a grandfather. The mother and father have recently died of Aids. The remaining family realize they can't raise the children and very lovingly prepare them (dress them, braid their hair, hug, and kiss them) to be be left at the orphanage. They are standing in the courtyard all together when suddenly Mekdes realizes her aunts are leaving...

- they were walking towards the exit! Mekdes shrieked and ran after them. How would she find her way home to her grandfather? Aunt Fasika and Aunt Zewdenesh turned around; they stroked Mekdes's face, kissed her many times, and told her good-bye.

Haregewoin (the lady with the orphanage) stepped up and took Mekdes's arm, restraining her as the aunts slipped out the metal door to the street and pulled it shut behind them.

Mekdes turned inside out with grief and terror. She understood; she was being abandoned! She arched her back in protest. She pulled out of Haregewoin's grasp, fell backward to the ground, and writhed there, beginning to shriek.

Then she stood up and ran after the departing adults. She ran straight at the metal door of the compound, without slowing down, and hit it with a bang; it threw her back onto the dirt; she was up again in an instant, running straight at the door again. Bang. Beserk, she screamed and ran in circles. She whirled and cried in high aii aii aii whoops. She dodged the elderly compound guard and aimed full tilt at the door again, determined to run straight through it and all the way home. Bang. It knocked her back. In the dirt, she went through all the prostrations of grief; she knelt facing the door, bowed forward til her head touched the dust, brought up fistfuls of dirt, and dropped it on the back of her head and neck as she cradled her head. She moaned and rocked and reached her hands out beseechingly toward the metal door.

I (the author) slipped out the door myself to see what had become of the adults who'd dropped off the brother and sister. I thought I'd spot them at the top of the dirt hill, heading home, but they were right there, right outside the compound door, and they, too, were grief-stricken. Two pretty young women in their twenties had covered their faces with their shawls and were rocking and moaning, too: "Aii aii aii," they cried. One held out her hands palms up as if asking God for answers. Elderly Haj Mohammed's (the man who helped bring the children) eyes looked red and hurt. People in the street gave them wide berth. Then we all heard bang and knew that Mekdes had flown into the door again; then again bang. I began sobbing, too. I rummaged through my backpack. "I have two hundred dollars," I told my driver and friend Selamneh. "If I give it to them, could they take the children home again?"

"No," he said, "Let it be. They are too poor to raise the children."

The adults looked at me with their red eyes and I looked back at them the same way. Bang! went the door. There was nothing to say. Head bowed, I stepped back inside.

The elderly guard picked Mekdes up from the dirt and carried her toward the house. She went limp and fell backward in his arms as though she had fainted. When that didn't make him stop, she began kicking and screaming again, the passion and terror unabated. Haregewoin approached and took the thrashing child. Mekdes twisted and flailed and cried, and Haregewoin, with squinting eyes, averted face, and strong arms, absorbed the blows.

Haregewoin was used to this.
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I will be buying this book for a couple family members because it tells the complete story of Ethiopia, AIDS, poverty, and orphans. Truly amazing!

To quote the back, "There Is No Me Without You is spectacular, both in its intimacy and in its reach. Melissa Fay Greene's writing sings. It agitates. It inspires. Even those who think they know about the AIDS crisis in Africa will savor this book; and for those who know little or nothing about it, this is the way in, a way paved with decency and with hope. It is our contemporary Schindler's Lis, one person's herioic efforts to right a tilting world. After you read There Is No Me Without You, the world will never look the same." Alex Kotlowitz - author of There Are No Children Here