Life is genuinely not fair
I do some volunteer work at our local orphanage, just teaching English and hanging out with the kids. It's good fun most of the time, but today kinda bummed me out.
Japan is a first world nation, with excellent social programs. But adoption is a very rare thing here. Some of that is probably because the orphanage's funding is based on the number of children they have living there. I'd point out education after the Jr. High School level is also really expensive, so you can probably work out how well schooled these kids are.
Anyway... I was hanging out with one of my favourites today. I asked where she wanted to go for lunch; she wanted Chinese food. No problem. Then she said she'd need to learn to like it for when she "is sent" to China.
Apparently, a lot of the girls are thinking of this as their future. Address China's girl-deficit by arranging a marriage with a rural Chinese farmer.
I do know there are advantages to this. They get a roof over their heads for life, a place in a society, honest work and so on. But they don't speak the language, the lifestyle is so different from what they know and love doesn't even figure into it. It just makes me so sad to think of these girls preparing to be mail order brides in the same town where other little girls are collecting Hello Kitty lanyards and taking figure skating lessons.
Japan is a first world nation, with excellent social programs. But adoption is a very rare thing here. Some of that is probably because the orphanage's funding is based on the number of children they have living there. I'd point out education after the Jr. High School level is also really expensive, so you can probably work out how well schooled these kids are.
Anyway... I was hanging out with one of my favourites today. I asked where she wanted to go for lunch; she wanted Chinese food. No problem. Then she said she'd need to learn to like it for when she "is sent" to China.
Apparently, a lot of the girls are thinking of this as their future. Address China's girl-deficit by arranging a marriage with a rural Chinese farmer.
I do know there are advantages to this. They get a roof over their heads for life, a place in a society, honest work and so on. But they don't speak the language, the lifestyle is so different from what they know and love doesn't even figure into it. It just makes me so sad to think of these girls preparing to be mail order brides in the same town where other little girls are collecting Hello Kitty lanyards and taking figure skating lessons.
