I remember thinking for a moment when I was very young that all I wanted was to grow up and have a family. Somehow instead I began traversing the country, traveling the world, amassing businesses. And then suddenly, completely unexpectedly at the age of 42 I learned I was going to be a mother. I always tell Willow the story of her birth and how she came out of my tummy laughing, looking around in wonder with mischief in her eyes, anxious for life’s great adventure. Although this isn’t quite the truth, if you’ve met my daughter, you might believe that it is – it so perfectly illustrates the way she approaches the world.
If you’ve been following my blog, you’ll know that recently, completely unexpectedly, another child came into my life, a ten year old Sierra Leonean boy named Tejan who I’m adopting. Tejan didn’t come out of my tummy laughing either, but if you met Tejan who looks at me with a smile so bright and the most intense adoration in his eyes, you might actually, just for a moment, be able to close your eyes and forget about the vast difference in our skin colors and imagine that he did.
But Tejan’s story is a little different than Willow’s. Although, like Willow he was born at home, the home he was born in had dirt floors and he was born to a woman who had lost one of her legs to Polio. Tejan grew up with a disabled mother in the aftermath of the war, one of Sierra Leone’s poorest children in a country of very poor children. Like many, his childhood was spent with less than enough to eat, his only possessions the secondhand clothes that he was wearing at any given time, sleeping on the ground in a small hut with no toilet, the only water a single well or spigot for the entire community. And toys? I’m pretty sure Tejan has never even heard the word toy before.
Tejan’s mother died several years ago in childbirth, leaving him in the care of an amputee soccer player, Obai, and his “uncle” a man who late last year raped his half-sister Bekiss. It was after this rape that Tejan was literally snatched from Obai and returned to the village he was born where he met his father for the first time – a man who may only be 55 or so, but looks about 75 and is mostly blind. I visited this village on my last trip in order to convince Tejan’s family to allow him to return to Freetown and Obai. When Tejan saw me, he smiled and came running. I opened my arms, he jumped in, and I picked him up in the air and swung him around – as I’ve mentioned African children are much smaller than their counterparts in other parts of the world, especially if, like Tejan, they’ve spent 10 years without enough to eat. As we negotiated for Tejan’s return, I watched out of the corner of my eye as this possessionless boy called all of the other children around and equally distributed a few cookies I had given to him.
Adopting Tejan even then really wasn’t part of my plan, but life has a funny way of unfolding. And as I’ve come to believe, the family you’re supposed to have magically comes together despite distance and the most unimaginable and seemingly insurmountable odds.
On Wednesday night I saw Tejan again and once again he saw me and came running. And once again, as I picked up this boy who was wearing a pair of girl’s tennis shoes because that was all he had, I swung him around and held him tight, and I thought about how, of all Africa’s amazing gifts, its children certainly must be the most beautiful. And really, how could you not believe in hope…and miracles…and fate, when you hold the brightest light imaginable in your arms and really know for the first time that he is your son.
