Where are they? Go to Hawaii. Keep going. If you get to the Phillipines, you’ve gone too far.
Why are we going? Our adopted daughter, Maritha, lived there with her family until she was 9 years old. She’s now 16. It’s long over due.
How did Maritha get here? We met a doctor who served in the Peace Corps there in the 1980s. During the ’90s, she facilitated close to 100 adoptions in central North Dakota, where she (and we) lived.
Why did she come? Technically, we are Maritha’s legal guardians. The Marshall Islands are a very crowded nation of high unemployment and very bleak futures, especially for girls. Typically, girls Maritha’s current age are pregnant, uneducated, and have health problems. Maritha, for example, arrived with severely damaged hearing from untreated, repeated, parasitical ear infections. Her parents agreed to send her to us to give her an education and better healthcare.
Now you know as much as we do. I just bought a 2 gig memory card for my camera, so there will be more pictures forthcoming.