Sunday 11 November 2007

I didn't like my adopted daughter so I gave her back

Full Story:
http://www.stopinjusticenow.com/News_0547.htm
The moment Julie Jarman set eyes on Zahina she was smitten. The seven-year-old girl from Tanzania was desperate for a loving home and Julie felt sure that she and her 11-year-old daughter could provide it.
In turn Zahina would become the second daughter Julie longed for. "When I met her for the first time, she was a bit shy. I saw her hiding behind her social worker's skirt, peeping out at me with an enormous grin on her face. She was gorgeous.
"She was with her foster parents in Somerset. Laura and I spent a week with them, taking things very slowly.
"One day we took her to the park and one day we went swimming and I remember seeing Laura and Zahina teasing each other in the pool and thinking I had seen a glimpse of how things were going to be."
It was settled that Zahina would come to live with Julie, a programme manager for Oxfam, at her house in Manchester in July 2005. Julie was thrilled and spent the final days before her arrival getting everything ready.
She decorated her room with an African theme, she made curtains from some cloth she'd bought in Africa, and hung two framed batiks of African women on the wall.
She even stocked up on oats so she could make a similar porridge to one Tanzanian children are given called uji, which is made from maize-meal.
"She didn't seem upset at leaving her foster parents and was quite excited about the move," says Julie.
But almost from the moment she arrived Julie sensed a barrier between them. "Zahina would chat to me and ask questions about this and that, and on the surface it was fine.
"But I sensed that at a deeper level she was resisting me - I felt she was waiting for her mother to come back. Before she went to bed at night she would give me a hug but there was no warmth there. She was going through the motions.
"Often when I asked her to do something she would do it as the Tanzanians would say, 'kichwa upande' - unwillingly, or holding her head to one side."
As the weeks passed the house became filled with unspoken tensions, resentments and discord. Most worryingly of all, Julie's own daughter Laura began to withdraw into herself. In fact Zahina seemed to go out of her way to try to upset her.
"Once when I asked her to remove her mud-covered boots, she marched over to Laura, who was sitting in front of the fire playing Patience and parked her filthy foot right on top of the cards.
"Another time the three of us were supposed to go and see an African band but Laura refused to come because she was upset about something, but wouldn't say what.
"During the interval Zahina said to me, 'Laura was really upset, wasn't she?' and I could see she was really pleased that Laura was upset and that she felt she'd driven a wedge between Laura and me. There was something deeply unpleasant about the way she said it."
Her behaviour was a far cry from what Julie had hoped for. Indeed on paper, she reasoned, Zahina had been the perfect choice.

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