Some Supplies Arrive

Since the earthquake we've been able to send clothes, diapers, and blankets to Henry's orphanage, the Pingliang Social Welfare Institute (SWI), through two separate organizations. In each contact the orphanage director has reported that the children there are okay. She provided the recent photos included with this post to the organization Love Without Boundaries, which just delivered the clothing and other supplies we bought using a little over $1500 USD donated with help from other adoptive families with Pingliang children. (In the adjacent photo, Henry is the child on the far left, scratching at his ear.) A smaller delivery of about 25 blankets and about a dozen more warm outfits was arranged through a service provided by Red Thread China.

The children appear to have spent a lot of time out in the sun, but they look healthy. There are about 80 children at the orphanage. Civil affairs officials apparently supplied the sturdy tents seen in the photo's background, and the orphanage is said to be a high priority for local assistance. Gansu's earthquake-effected region continues to be susceptible to aftershocks. One on May 25 was centered around the Wenxian area and is said to have measured about 6 on the Richter scale. Wenxian is close to the northern border of Sichuan Province, about 200 miles south of Pingliang.

We plan to send Andy and a guide to bring the orphanage whatever additional supplies and assistance that can be carried by SUV from Lanzhou, where things are relatively tranquil. Our agency has agreed to make arrangements for this.

At this point, we've secured our visas, flights, hotel rooms, and other travel arrangements. We'll fly out on June 9th as planned and spend about four nights in Beijing before heading on to Lanzhou, where Henry will indeed join us on Father's Day (the 15th). Dorothy and Clara are very excited about the trip and for them we've scheduled visits to the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, and a northern section of the Great Wall to take advantage of our stop in Beijing. There should be a lot of really cool, memorable things for the kids to see in Lanzhou also, including a very old section of the western end of the Great Wall. After about a week in Lanzhou we'll head way south to Guangzhou and the U.S consulate on the 21st. We should be home by the end of June.

Travel Approval

Today we received our travel approval notice from China, the last step in this phase of a long process. In other words, the way has been cleared to begin our trip, which is about giving hope to a little boy who became our son like our girls became our daughters. They were each born in our hearts long before we traveled to adopt them. We know we are very lucky to be able to do this, which is in essence our point.

For Trish, this is about again being a mom for a very special child, having discovered that to our daughters this is absolutely the most important job in the world. For Andy, this trip began with a pledge he made in China more than a few years ago now in a room full of children who were in a lot of ways much like Henry, a moment that, until now, seemed to be slipping away with time. He whispered assurances then that he would be back to do exactly what we're finally about to do. As our friends and neighbors here in New Orleans all know, we needed some time to put ourselves back in order. The repairs are complete and it is good to be in this way moving on, at least on our little corner of Green Street. Now we’ll scramble to book our travel arrangements as quickly as possible. Then we will soon be off on another adventure into the familiar unknown to softly repeat one more unforgettable promise between sniffles in a strange hotel in a far away land, that everything will be okay from now on. Our third. Probably our last. This one to Henry.

If all goes well we will meet him in Lanzhou, which is Gansu’s provincial capital and for our children a safe distance from the earthquake-effected zone. It appears likely that we will leave New Orleans around June 9 and Henry may join us on Father's Day.

We're not young or untouched by disappointment so we began this process realistically with few expectations. But when we return home with our son we will reasonably ask that more be expected of the regional district office of the USCIS in Metairie, LA. There a self-important officer, whose duties include processing a federal form required for international adoptions called an I-600A orphan petition, delayed putting a stamp on our petition for more than four months and forced us to eventually file a request for “expedited service” through the offices of our congressional representatives. This stamp simply attests that the petition has been submitted with the required documents attached. No family should ever again have to compile unnecessary, unrequired expert medical testimony to secure timely acknowledgment of a form needed for adoption of a child already documented in his or her native country as having very serious special medical needs. A similar delay had the most tragic consequences this spring for another child with the same medical diagnosis, and for the central Louisiana family in whose hearts she is carried now on wings. Our thoughts are with them.

China's Recent Earthquake and Henry's Orphanage

Pingliang in Gansu Province where our son Henry's orphanage is located was apparently among the areas damaged in a series of huge earthquakes and aftershocks that struck western China beginning on Monday, May 12. The worst damage was in northern Sichuan Province about 200 miles to the south and overall some 80,000 people have been killed or are missing, mostly within the area near the epicenter of the initial quake around Sichuan's Wenchuan County. Many millions of homes have been destroyed or damaged across a very wide area.

News of quake damage in Pingliang has trickled in over news groups and largely from contacts with a few westerners working in the area. The children and staff at the Pingliang Social Welfare Institute (SWI) are said to be uninjured but staying outside in tents because of concerns about the stability of the orphanage building. The orphanage is said to be in need of more tents and instant food rations. Most of the damage at the orphanage may have occurred during an aftershock this week. Within the quake region, unfortunate rumours have been circulating about additional aftershocks expected, although neither earthquakes nor their aftershocks can be scientifically predicted with much accuracy.

Media services have reported only generally on quake damages in Gansu but early on noted significant damages such as collapsed buildings in Pingliang and in Longnan, which is closer to Sichuan’s northern border. About 400 people were killed and many more injured within the province overall, mostly around Longnan. One report said that about ten people were killed when some older buildings collapsed in Pingliang. Several news agencies carried reports of a 40-car freight train, including 12 gasoline tankers, that derailed inside a tunnel in Huixian County between Pingliang and Longnan, and that exploded in a massive fire immediately after the first earthquake struck on the 12th. The rail line has since been reopened.

A local branch of the Red Cross relief organization in Gansu has allocated Y300,000 (about $50,000 USD) to provide food, medicine and quilts to the areas around Pingliang, Longnan, Qingyang, Tianshui and Gannan within the province. In addition, 3,000 quilts and 200 tons of flour have been collected from donations locally for transport to these areas.

We are expecting travel approval at any moment, will head to China as quickly as we can, and once there will try to gather a more detailed description of the orphanage's specific needs.

Meanwhile, it is possible to make a donation now in support of the Pingliang SWI through a reliable organization called Love Without Boundaries (see http://www.lovewithoutboundaries.com/) . To make a contribution online go to the LWB web site and at the top of the homepage click on the circle icon labeled “Donate Now.” Under "category" select “Orphanage Assistance” and enter "For Pingliang SWI" in the “Notes” section. To donate by check make your check payable to Love Without Boundaries and write “Pingliang Orphanage Assistance” on the memo line. Mail your check to: Love Without Boundaries, 306 S. Bryant St., Ste. C, PMB 145, OK, 73034.

Kids and Clefts

"Oh, they can fix that pretty easily nowadays. Can't they?" Oral-facial clefts are birth anomalies that in the United States occur in about 1 in 1,000 births. They appear far more often in children in developing countries and especially in Asia and Latin America. Clefts occur when the tissues of the lip, maxilla, or palate of a fetus don't grow together early in pregnancy. There are varieties of clefts: cleft lip without a cleft palate; cleft palate without a cleft lip; cleft lip and cleft palate together. In addition, clefts can occur on one side of the mouth (unilateral clefting) or on both sides of the mouth (bilateral clefting). Doctors don't know exactly what causes this condition, but both genetic and environmental factors, especially smoking during pregnancy, are strong candidates. Most children born with cleft conditions in the U.S. have early reconstructive surgery within their first 6 to 10 months and related therapies can begin even earlier.

Severe (acute) cleft conditions are those in which the cleft is wider than usual or stretches further back into a child's mouth or skull, and these can include the absence of bone above the mouth or near the center of a child's face. This is the case with our son Henry, whose cleft condition is technically described as an acute bilateral cleft lip with cleft palate III. All clefts are as a different as the children who have them, but few are easy.

We belong to a wonderful email news group called adoptcleft, which has about 1,100 members who have adopted children with cleft conditions. Discussions among this group stay remarkably on topic and as a result we've learned a lot about the complex terrain that lies ahead. We know we may for many years be up to our ears in alligators with lip repair, hard and soft palate construction, bone grafting, potential bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) therapy, obturator fittings, ear canal tubes or replacement, dental prostheses, oral surgery, fistuli (maybe), orthodontia, speech therapy, and occupational therapy not to mention food and a strong odor often emanating from Henry's nose, plus a lot of drooling.

But we also know that children with very severe clefts can be among the least likely to succeed in orphanages. It takes much longer and much more effort for cleft children to drink or eat, and orphanage staff must often feed dozens of small children at each mealtime. This quickly leads to nutritional problems which leads to developmental issues which leads to failure to thrive. Later, even if through international or other assistance cleft children are able to receive lip repair in their orphanages they will still be unable to speak if they also have significant palate issues. In Henry's case, a medical team in China attempted to construct an upper lip by stretching surrounding tissue across his wide bilateral gap; the result has torn open. In March this year he was below the 10th percentile on length/height and not even within the percentile curve for weight on the standard CDC growth charts. There are a lot of things that are important and then there are things that truly matter. We simply placed little Henry in that second category, where he should be.

About Gansu Province and Pingliang

China is the land of contradiction, a graceful chaos that one out of every five people on the planet calls home yet a mystery for almost everyone else. Because we have scurried through China a few times already, we're careful to avoid generalized descriptions of the place. But undoubtedly the country is massive both in scale and in its human potential for success or sorrow.

Gansu Province is in China's northwest. Inner Mongolia and Ningxia Province are to the north. Xinjiang is to the west. Qinghai, Tibet, and Sichuan are to south. Shaanxi lies to the east. Approximately 26 million people live within Gansu Province's borders. The Yellow River passes through the south central part of the province, in the area near the provincial capital of Lanzhou. Like many Chinese cities, Lanzhou is rapidly growing economically and otherwise. It is also said to be among the most polluted cities in the world. While the skies over Langzhou are less hazy than in larger Chinese cities to the east, its water supply is badly fouled by waste and other contaminates.

The snaking oblong shape of Gansu was settled in ancient times alongside the first leg of the Silk Road, which led out of the old city of Xi’an and served as the primary trade route from China to the west starting around 7500 B.C and ending about 400 years ago. As a result it is still inhabited by a varied mix of cultures, notably those shared with people to the southwest on the plains of Tibet and Qinghai, and Inner Mongolia just to the north. Even among its majority Han Chinese are many who long ago converted to Islam and are called Hui.

As a frontier region Gansu became increasingly isolated from outside contact in the later imperial era. The region was also somewhat on the periphery during the later nationalist and communist periods, even though many people in Gansu supported the early communist revolutionary movement, which based itself in neighboring Shaanxi when Red armies converged there at the end of the famous Long March northwest from Jiangxi Province in 1935.  As in Tibet, many minorities in Gansu preferred independence.

Today in Lanzhou there is said to be a new sense of optimism linked to China’s overall economic development and a new industrial emphasis locally on mining, but Gansu is still among the poorest of China’s provinces. Per capita average annual income for its urban population is 6,657.24 yuan ($952 USD). Per capita net income in rural areas is 1,673 yuan ($239 USD).

Earthquakes are unusually common in Gansu; indeed the entire lower third of the province has apparently suffered greatly from a massive quake reported just a few days ago on May 12 and centered across its southern border in Wenchuan, Sichuan Province. Pingliang is located within the reported quake zone and we are checking now through several reliable sources on the status of conditions at the orphanage there.

At any rate, earthquakes along with periodic drought and famine have often helped to hold back the province economically. One earthquake in Gansu in 1920 measuring about 8.6 on the Richter scale killed around 250,000 people and another with a magnitude of 7.6 killed 70,000 in 1932.

Reports in the China Daily say the area around Pingliang and Jingchuan County, normally arid anyway, is in the midst of a drought, the area's worst in more than 60 years. Still, Pingliang lies in a broad valley next to a forested mountain range called Kongtong Shan. Tree stands are somewhat rare in this region and these dry mountain forests are home to an ancient Taoist temple built on the mythical site of meetings between Huangdi the Yellow Emperor (2697 BC to 2598 BC) and a legendary immortal hermit and master.

Jingchuan County, where Henry was found, is southeast of the city of Pingliang although part of its prefecture administrative district. The land there is typically hilly with steep, often terraced gullies. Its climate is very dry and cool, with only about 170 frost-free days each year. Within Jingchuan are 1,465 sub-villages, 215 administrative villages and 18 townships. Its population in 2002 was 335,447 (311,078 rural). The area is known locally for its harvested fruit, especially a Fuji apple (Jinglong brand) that is labeled “famous fruit in China," and also for several hot springs and some ancient religious sites. Annual per capita income for the county's rural wage earners is Y1,551 ($221 USD or about 60 cents per day).

For more information about Pingliang see the later post A Very Humble Beginning. It describes a visit to Pingliang, its orphanage, and the area further south around Jingchuan where Henry was found. See also A Lesson from Crows.

Jingchuan was one of four Gansu counties closely examined in a 2003 study concluding that Gansu Province had the highest rate of birth defects of any province in China. It also had the highest infant mortality rate with more than half its infant deaths due to birth defects. Causes could range from general nutritional issues, to natural radon found in soils and wells, to pollution routinely dumped onto the ground or drained into a very limited number of rivers and aquifers.