The importance of family cannot be overrated in any way, any context, any country or under any pretense. It’s one of those things that are taken for granted by many. A while ago, a picture on Humans of New York featured a man who spoke about his and his wife’s discussion about adopting a child after they had grown too old to have a child of their own. ‘Maybe God is steering us towards an unfortunate child out there.’ Of the (thousands) of comments from readers, the most striking and heart-felt comment to me was one young man’s statement: ‘Do it, man. Adoption saved my life.’ There are almost no statistics on adoption rates, orphans and children born out of wedlock and/or abandoned in Sudan. What little information available is guarded under lock and key by social welfare authorities, but previous studies estimate that around 1600 babies are abandoned annually (1). Family and marriage are given an impossibly high importance in Sudanese culture, and adoption (of abandoned children) is almost an abomination of this norm. One particular saying goes: “صرخة جنى الحرام بتجيب الشيطان” Which means: ‘the cry of a child born out of wedlock attracts the devil.’ So not only [...]
↧