Meet Kobe.
His interest ranges from cookies to trucks and his favorite color is yellow, which he will tell you is pronounced “lellow.” An intelligent bundle of energy trapped in a 3-year-old boy, Kobe peppers his sentences with Creole words and hasn’t quite decided if he’s right- or left-handed. He also wouldn’t mind owning a puppy.
And now, after an earthquake largely destroyed much of his birth country, Kobe is a glimmer of hope for his parents and a connection here in the Flathead to the extraordinary recent events in Haiti.
Born in Haiti and adopted by Flathead residents Kristi and Nathan Dorcheus, Kobe has only been in Montana for seven months. Despite their relief that they were able to bring their son home before the devastation hit, Kristi, 27, and Nathan, 32, are worried for their son’s birth family.
“I don’t know if they’re OK; I hope we find out,” Kristi said.
But the building that housed the Haitian copies of their adoption records was destroyed during the quake, along with most of the country’s capitol city of Port-au-Prince. The adoption was finalized in the United States, but if the Haitian papers were obliterated there is little chance Kobe’s birth family could find the Dorcheuses, Kristi said.
“We’ll probably never hear from them again,” Kristi said. “I want to know that they’re OK.”
The Dorcheuses met Kobe’s family on their last visit to Port-au-Prince last June, when they left the country with Kobe in tow. They had been to Haiti to visit before, heading down after the adoption agency paired them with Kobe in October 2007. Meeting their son for the first time was, as Kristi tells it, thrilling.
“It was so cool, I don’t really have the words to describe it,” Kristi said. “For us, it was instant love.”
The country, however, was in disarray even then. Multiple hurricanes in the fall of 2008 had taken their toll, along with years of being one of the poorest countries in the world.
“The first time we went it was completely life-changing. It was overwhelming,” Kristi said, “the smells, the sights, the people.”
Kobe lived in one of the best orphanages in the country, Kristi said, with clean facilities and a caring staff of “aunties” dedicated to the children. When they first visited in 2007, there was roughly a four-to-one ratio of children to aunties, she added.
That changed after the hurricanes in 2008, which increased the ratio and debilitated many of the orphanage’s services. The children received only one meal a day in the aftermath, Kristi said, and rice had to be carried in on a donkey.
“We didn’t know it was happening at the time,” Kristi said. “But really, what could we have done?”
As far as the Dorcheuses know, everyone from the orphanage – kids and aunties alike – survived the earthquake.
The transition has been a surprisingly easy one for Kobe. After two years of waiting, the Dorcheuses finally brought their son home last June and Kobe officially became a United States citizen. He quickly began learning about and adapting to life in the Flathead, led by his curious and adventurous nature. His latest interest is the snow, which was a bit scary at first but sledding soon became his preferred mode of downhill transportation, Kristi noted.
Helping ease the transition was the unexpected placement of Kobe’s best friend at the orphanage, Peterson, with another family in the Flathead. Tifanni and Mike Watkins, who now live in Polson, adopted Peterson, 4, and his brother, Adlerson, 3, last year. They met the Dorcheuses on a flight down to Haiti during the adoption process.
“The fact that our kids ended up being best friends was totally chance,” Tifanni Watkins said. “When the kids leave (the orphanage), they leave under the thought that they’ll never see their friends again.”
The mothers said they try to get the kids together once a month.
Like Kristi, Tifanni recalled pre-earthquake Haiti to be a stunning, albeit bleak, place, with people full of spunk and faith battling overt malnutrition.
“It’s a beautiful country and the people have such spirit,” Tifanni said. “It’s so hard because it’s a great place, but you see such abject poverty.”
The latest reports estimate that tens of thousands of children are orphaned by the Jan. 12 earthquake, which may have killed up to 200,000 people. There were already 380,000 orphans before the 7.0-magnitude earthquake hit, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund.
Along with financial and medical aid, Kristi suggested people in the Flathead become advocates for others currently in the process of adopting Haitian children. Many of the adoptions are likely in limbo after the literal collapse of Haiti’s government, Kristi said, and organizations such as the Joint Council on International Children’s Services are working to ensure the kids make it to the United States.
Waiting two years for a regular adoption to go through is enough of an emotional struggle as it is, Kristi said.
“It would be years before they got their children home,” Kristi said. “It already takes long enough.”
For more information on advocating for international adoptions, visit www.jcics.org.