Saving Fish from Drowning - Heal Burma

SAVING FISH FROM DROWNING
I have to adopt. But to adopt, I must be thirty. At that time, I am only
twenty-five.”
My friends were absolutely silent.
“My parents also cannot adopt. Too old to qualify. So we are
stuck, too young, too old. Even so, paper or no paper, we agree, we
try to raise her ourself. But even we earn the money for the special
surgery, she cannot have, because to hospital mind, she is not regis­
tered person. She is nobody. She does not exist. Then we know, with
us, no future for her. She can never go school. She can never marry
husband. In all situations, she is nobody. Because of this in-between
situations, we finally decide it is better this baby is adopted by other
people. Many American tourists already told me, Yes, yes, we want
her, give her to us. But I decided, better she lives with people who
look like her. That is why I gave her to a Japanese couple. So this ex­
perience, it is the time I had the most difficulties.” She stopped, and
nobody spoke.
“That is the saddest story I’ve heard in a long, long time,” Mar­
lena finally said.
“Sad only a short time,” Lulu said. “Today she is six years old.
Her face is so beautiful, mouth and nose already fixed, and no scar.
Every year I see her. She is always calling me ‘Auntie’ in Japanese.
Her parents are always calling me a good person.”
“But for you to give her up . . .” Marlena sympathized.
“My thinking is this: Her original mother, she did what she must.
I, her in-between mother, I did what I must. That Japanese couple,
they also did what they must. One day, this little girl will grow up,
and she will be doing what she must. So you see, we all do what we
must.”
At that moment, a slim young man with fine features boarded the
bus. Lulu greeted him and exchanged documents. “Ladies, gentle­
men, please to let me introduce Mr. Maung Wa Sao.”
There he stood, a slight young man of twenty-six, in a collarless
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