My trip to Israel

Israel – wow, what a country!  The Israelis define themselves by their religion, whether or not they are practicing.  The majority are Jewish, but there are a large number of Moslems, some Christians and a few other religions besides.  They mostly rub along with each other, but some areas are designated Jews only, or Arabs only.  It felt really strange, coming as we do from a largely secular culture.  I guess the nearest we’ve had would be Northern Ireland during the Troubles.  Most of the time we felt quite safe – the only time I was a bit uncomfortable was in Nazareth, which is a largely Arab city where we were told foreigners weren’t particularly welcome.

We packed so much into our six days – visiting about 6 different sites per day, the coach leaving at 8 o’clock in the morning and often not getting back to the hotel until after 6 in the evening.  The first 3 nights we stayed on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, then moved south to Jerusalem for 3 nights.  We visited many places familiar from the Bible stories, both Old and New Testament.  I’ve been asked what was the highlight of the trip, but it’s so hard to single out just one thing – we found ourselves frequently overwhelmed by what we were seeing.  Such as the home of St Peter’s mother-in-law in Capernaeum, setting for the story of the man whose friends lowered him down through the roof to be healed.  Or the actual steps in Jerusalem that Jesus would have walked up the night before the Crucifixion.  And the Western Wall (also known as the Wailing Wall) where Jews, Christians and Moslems alike go to pray – that was such a peaceful place. 

And it wasn’t only religious sites that we visited – we went to the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem, which was harrowing, and we visited a national park where we hiked up the mountainside past beautiful waterfalls and saw ibexes (a type of deer) and a small mammal a bit like a tail-less badger, known as a coney.  They were quite tame, and we managed to get some good pictures.  And we swam in the Dead Sea, the lowest point on earth at 411 m below sea level.  A bizarre experience – the high salt content in the water means it’s impossible to sink below the surface – you literally just lie there and float.

My head is absolutely chock full of my experiences, and it’s going to take a while to come back down to earth.  I would definitely recommend Israel, but if you decide to go it’s best to be part of an organised party.  Our guide was brilliant, and we learnt so much more than if we’d been travelling independently. 

Shalom!

 

Daniel - Part 2

Overseas adoption isn’t easy.  Well of course, it isn’t meant to be. Firstly, everything has to be translated into the language of the child’s birth country, and stamped by a notary.  And if your child lives in a country that doesn’t have a reciprocal arrangement with the UK, you actually have to adopt him or her twice – once abroad, in a bewilderingly strange court where you understand nothing of what’s going on, then again when you get the child home.  And they may be more enlightened now, but 20 years ago Social Services were against overseas adoption in principle.  They banged on about ‘depriving a child of their culture’.  I mean…???  What culture are you going to experience living in an institution, abandoned by society, unwanted and unloved?  And that’s if you survive long enough to know what the word ‘culture’ means.

So, before we could adopt Daniel there was miles of red tape to be got through.  Which meant – heartbreakingly - we had to leave him in the orphanage and return to the UK.  One of the hardest things I’ve ever done.  We left him some toys, and some friends who were going out a couple of weeks later promised to look in on him.

It took an agonising 4 months to complete all the paperwork, so it was the end of April before we were able to return to Romania.  We were shocked when we saw Daniel again.  He was now nearly a year old, but apart from being slightly bigger he hadn’t changed noticeably since January.  He couldn’t sit up, wouldn’t make eye contact, and formed no recognisable words (even in Romanian).  He was also quite floppy when I held him. To all intents and purposes he was a rather big newborn.  Naively we assumed his delayed development to be due to the deprivations in the orphanage, and that with a bit of love and attention he would soon catch up.  And when we brought him home – after a far from straightforward Romanian adoption process that would take about another 6 blogs to describe – I took him along to our GP who said more or less the same thing.

However, Daniel’s development progressed slowly, and at the age of 3 he was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome – a term we’d never heard of, but is now quite widely known as a high functioning form of autism.  We will never know for certain how much of this was due to lack of stimulation in the first year of his life.  He has been seen by one of the top experts in the country – possibly the world – and he doesn’t know either.

People often say to us what a marvellous job we’ve done with Daniel; what a credit he is to us.  But let’s get one thing straight – neither of us would have chosen to adopt a child with a disability.  We aren’t that altruistic.  Having said that – would I do the same again?  In a heartbeat – the alternatives for Daniel just don’t bear thinking about.  He will be 21 in May, and he’s halfway through his first year at Uni – a situation we couldn’t have imagined even as recently as 2 years ago.  He’s gifted musically, has a steel trap memory for facts and figures, and knows more about computers than I ever will.  But he is socially awkward, preferring his own company to other people’s.  And yet, everyone who meets him, once they get used to his idiosynchracies, finds him very likeable, loveable even.  And he has quite a sense of humour too!

Daniel - Part 1

Daniel was born on 27^th May 1990 in Suceava, northern Romania.  His mother Aurelia was a farm worker; a young widow with three other sons all under 10 who she was struggling to bring up alone since her husband had died, in a house about the size of a British domestic garage.  Who knows who Daniel’s father was – a casual worker on the farm where she worked, or a gipsy perhaps.  She may not have known herself.  She certainly hadn’t planned to get pregnant again – there was no way she could afford to feed another child, it was hard enough managing to feed the ones she already had.  So Aurelia took the tough decision to take Daniel to the nearby orphanage to be cared for.  During the time of dictator Ceaucescu contraception was banned in Romania and couples were actively encouraged to have large families.  The revolution left many families desperately poor and it was common for them give their children over to orphanages where they would at least be given rudimentary care.  The result of this was that the orphanages became overcrowded, there wasn’t enough food to go round and the staff struggled to cope.  I’m sure you remember seeing the terrible pictures on the TV. 

Eight months later, Bryan and I met our son for the first time.

We were unable to have children of our own.  We had tried IVF twice, and the second time I believe I was pregnant for a week.  The whole process was incredibly traumatic though, so eventually we took the decision to apply to adopt, and so at the end of 1990 we were on the waiting list for a baby.  We had been warned however that it could be quite a long wait.  We were away with some friends for the weekend, and the subject of the Romanian orphans came up, and someone said “why don’t you try and adopt one of them?”  We had absolutely no idea how to even begin to go about doing such a thing, however it was only about a week later that we had a letter from some other friends, saying they had just adopted a baby girl from Romania!  Coincidence?  Some Divine plan?  I leave that up to you to decide - we have our own views.  Our friends Richard and Pauline gave us lots of practical help and advice and put us in touch with an English speaking guy who worked at the orphanage in Suceava where their little girl had come from.   And so in January 1991 we made the journey to Romania to look for a baby to adopt.  And found Daniel.