Welcome Home
(8/7/2008) A little girl, who has been named Nettie Tesfanesh Rattray, after her paternal East Hampton great-grandmother and with the name she was given in Ethiopia, joined our family on June 6, and has brought joy to everyone around her ever since.
Nettie’s parents are Paul Gartside and Bess Rattray, who are at home on Accabonac Road in East Hampton now. They spent one week traveling in Ethiopia and a second in Addis Ababa, where Nettie was being cared for in an orphanage.
I can’t help calling her a miracle child: She comes from a place where the H.I.V. epidemic and a lack of rain, medicine, and even basic modern farming tools have grievously exacerbated poverty.
Many, perhaps most, life stories there are stories of survival against all odds. Yet her nature is a happy one; she smiles and laughs, is easy to care for. The nurture she received in the orphanage, which is run by the Children’s Home Society of Minnesota, was loving.
Since her arrival, her story has been a series of firsts, like any child’s her age. She celebrated her first birthday on July 9, which was, coincidentally, her late grandfather Everett T. Rattray’’s birthday. She had her first checkup with Dr. Gail Schonfeld, who agreed with earlier reports that she is in good health. She is gaining weight. She says “mama” and waves goodbye. I’m sure she said “cat” the other day, and I hear that she said “duck.” We think “dad-doo” means either “dada” or “bird.” It won’t be long before she is walking. And — she is beautiful.
She has gone to her first Ladies Village Improvement Society fair. Think of that: Some day, when she is grown up, the L.V.I.S. fair may symbolize for her the huge divide between the life she will have here and what it is like for many children where she was born, Ethiopia’s rural south, where the simple advances of modern times — plumbing, electricity, a chance to learn to read and write — are available to the lucky few.
Childhood malnutrition today has reached a crisis in the southern regions of Ethiopia. Doctors Without Borders (Médicins Sans Frontieres) has treated more than 16,000 with what the World Health Organization calls a “ready-to-use therapeutic food.” The food is Plumpynut, which also is being distributed by other organizations (UNICEF and Save the Children, for example) and in other countries (Niger, Uganda, Somalia, and Sierra Leone). It was first given to children in Darfur.
Plumpynut is a 500-calorie peanut-based paste in a foil package that contains milk protein, powdered sugar, and many vitamins and minerals. It is not well known in this country even though “60 Minutes” had a program on it in 2007. It was formulated in France in 1999 and is manufactured by a French company, Nutriset. Many consider it a miracle food because it is inexpensive, requires no cooking or refrigeration, and can bring a child on the brink of starvation back to strength with only two a day for two to four weeks. Efforts have been made to have it produced in the places where it is needed, including Haiti, where it is called “Medika Mamba.”
Not everyone is able to, or will want to, adopt children. Most of us can contribute to organizations that are saving lives. Helen S. Rattray