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When the photos of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie at the Superbowl came out, astute readers pointed out that she was dressed in a way that was reminiscent of her humanitarian trips, especially her dusty boots.
Well, her boots were dusty but it wasn’t new dust – only because she hadn’t gone anywhere yet! However, after leaving Miami, while Brad and Maddox jetted home it turns out that Angelina headed to the Dominican Republic to visit with Haitian refugees!
Children who were still recovering from the massive earthquake that devastated Haiti last month were in the Dominican to be treated for various injuries. Angelina did a tour of the pediatric portion of a hospital in Santo Domingo. She also met with Dominican President Leonel Fernandez to discuss the current refugee situation, and was then preparing to head across the border to Haiti itself.
I know Angelina has been to Haiti before; I can’t imagine the shock it will be to see its current state in person.
I’m not at all surprised to find out that Angelina Jolie has gone to Haiti. It was really only a matter of time!
(In some other good news, I was watching CNN earlier and Dr. Sanjay Gupta said a man had been pulled from the rubble today after almost four weeks and other than extreme weight loss and severe dehydration he appears to be doing well. What a miracle!)
Image: Fame
As has been mentioned, adoptions from Haiti that were already in progress through orphanages have been fast-tracked to get the children to their new families faster. In Canada there was also talk of possibly fast-tracking immigration to bring people over here if they had family living here; where I live (Montreal) we have the largest Haitian population in the country and I know that the immigration offices were flooded with people desperate to find out how they could get their relatives brought over here to be safe. I’m not sure what the status is right now, but I do know that’s what the government was considering.
For adoption they have to be very careful and if they have indeed tightened the international adoption laws (I don’t know one way or the other) it would be because of a couple of dangers. Not all the children who are seemingly alone are without family. Children in orphanages are one situation but there are many, MANY children living “alone” in parks right now who may have simply been separated from family. Maybe a young boy lost his mother in their home but the father was on the other side of Port-Au-Prince at work and is alive but injured or unable to find the son. Also, even if both parents are dead now there may be grandparents or aunts/uncles who could take the children in and as devastating as it is right now, sending a child all alone to a brand new country with a different language could be even more traumatic.
The main reason though is the dangers of trafficking, either for black market adoption, slavery, or the sex trade. Just recently a group of ten missionaries has been jailed in Haiti for trying to illegally take over 30 children across the border into the Dominican with the intentions of bringing them to the U.S. They had tried it a few days prior with a different group of children, were warned they couldn’t do that without proper paperwork, and then they were caught and arrested the second time. There’s something extremely frightening about that.
It disgusts me that these children could go through so much terror and trauma only to have to face the possibility of an even worse fate.
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Atimo, thanks for that cute video. I think it is so funny to see Angie shift her eyes towards the right to see how many people saw the bottle go flying off. A typical Mom reaction, oh my god how many people saw that?” Love Love this family, can’t say it enough
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I love you Angie
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dhc – I agree. I too believe Angie will support the orphans through the SOS Villages in Haiti.
I hope we’ll be seeing later today photos of her trip to Haiti. In the meantime here’s a clip with brief video of Angie meeting with the president of the Dominican Republic.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIt1HxsDRDY
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8507067.stm
A video of Angelina in what looks like Haiti in a UN truck.
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Thanks Lisa for the video. Here are some photos of her in Port au Prince. She visited one of the Doctor’s Without Borders field hospital.
http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/slideshow/photo//100209/ids_photos_ts/r2182554029.jpg/#photoViewer=/100209/482/b8a677d43b944ff2a792d2817a763459
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[...] I wrote earlier, Angelina Jolie traveled on Monday to the Dominican Republic to visit with some of the Haitian [...]
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I guess I was selfish in my thinking. My thoughts were just about getting these kids out of this devastation, not that their parents and families may be out there somewhere yet to be found. I’m just so saddened when I see these children in such horrible conditions. Even with all the material I’ve read, sex trafficking and slavery never even entered my mind. It still IS shocking to me that people are that sick in the head.
I just read that there was some sort of mess up where a little kid was put on a private plane to be sent to a family that had planned on adopting him, but they had changed their minds and abandoned the process. Can you say cruel?
And then I was reading this
“Currently, unless you are already in the process of adopting a child from Haiti, adoption from Haiti is not possible at this time. There is no information about what will happen to children who may be orphaned by the disaster.” I’m not sure if there is any truth to that since it contradicts what dhc heard on the news, but still its just very upsetting. Their fate is just.. unknown.
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Charms – No, no, that’s not selfish thinking. It’s kind and caring to think that way. But it’s a sad reality that there are people out there who would take advantage and use those kids for black market adoptions or other more nefarious things. I can barely use the words “children” and “sex trade” in the same sentence without vomiting but it happens and it’s a definite risk for these kids.
I hadn’t originally thought of the fact that the kids may not even all be orphans until Sanjay Gupta brought it up a couple of weeks ago on CNN (I’m a huge fan of his, can you tell? :D ) and I thought about how horrible it would be for a child to be sent to another country, never knowing his mother or father was still alive and looking for him.
It’s such a sad situation and even I told my husband that I wished we were in a position to adopt a child because I would have done it in a heartbeat then, but now I’d be reluctant unless I was sure the child came from an orphanage and didn’t potentially have surviving family desperately searching for them.
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charms- I’ve read the exact same thing (that adopting from Haiti is not possible at this time). Basically, what I read said that the Haitian government needs time to figure out if all the children who appear to be orphaned by the quake truly are orphans.
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Sherry: I have seen Dr Sanjay Gupta on CNN a few times now, I remember watching him treat a newborn baby and I got so emotional during that segment. I’m sure that image will stay with me for the rest of my life.. such a little person affected by such a huge tragedy. and isn’t it amazing how selfless and incredible some people are.
I was reading this morning that Angelina is also trying to discourage people from thinking about adopting from Haiti right now, for the very same reasons. Too many children may have family out there looking for them. Instead, if people want to help they should do so by giving to SOS, which is a wonderful thing to do. We have a grocery store out here called The Y and can you believe its the only store with a collection can still out asking for donations for the victims of Haiti. It’s not the store we usually do our grocery shopping in because their food is more expensive, but lately we have been picking up odds and ends there just to drop some money in the can.
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I’m sorry Sherry, it was actually trafficking issues that Angelina really stressed as the reason for trying to keep the children in Haiti right now. My mind was wandering while I was writing, I was also reading another article on the earthquake while I was posting here.
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