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Written by Gerald Gauthier
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Friday, February 05 2010, 11:01 PM |
When Les Aman’s newest grandson arrived safely a month ago from an orphanage in Haiti, the Lethbridge man had no idea how close the adopted youngster’s journey had come to going horribly wrong.
Three-year-old Noah and his adoptive father Ian Aman — Les’s son — arrived in Canada Jan. 5 aboard the only weekly flight available from Port-au-Prince, the Haitian capital, to Montreal. It came oh-so-close to not happening.
After facing numerous logistical delays that day, the pair got on that precious flight only minutes before it departed. Had they been further delayed, they would have been stuck in Haiti for another week until the devastating earthquake struck.
“Tuesday (Jan. 5) was the critical day. It you wanted to get home, you had to make sure you had everything together by then,” Les told The Herald. “They were on the plane for three minutes, then the door closed and the plane left.”
After a cautious start, the good-natured toddler is settling in with his new family in Airdrie, where Ian lives with his wife Sasha and their two biological children Chase, nine, and Hunter, five.
“He’s a very loving, caring little boy. He’s very cuddly,” said Les, a local businessman. “He’s a beautiful child. We’re very blessed to have him.”
But it’s still apparent, he added, that hunger has been an unfortunate component for most of Noah’s young life.
“He’s small. He’s wearing an 18-month-old (child’s) clothes on a three-year-old,” he said.
Ian, who previously managed a bank in Magrath for several years, and his wife had been waiting to receive Noah for nearly three years. He was promised to them when he was only six weeks old.
When it became apparent the couple might never get him unless they went to Haiti, Ian travelled to Port-au-Prince in late December. On the day Noah was finally handed over to him, the event unfolded in surreal fashion.
While travelling to the appointed meeting with a woman linked to the adoption agency, the car stopped without explanation in front of a van parked along the street. The woman then got out of the car, again without explanation.
“She walked up to the van. All of a sudden, I saw them hand the kid out the window to her,” Ian said in a telephone interview from Airdrie.
She then returned to the car and placed Noah in Ian’s arms.
Afterward, the father and his new son remained in Port-au-Prince for nearly two weeks trying to obtain all the necessary paperwork to get Noah out of Haiti. Ian quickly learned that travel documents for the boy couldn’t be obtained without pressing cash into the palms of Haitian government officials.
The passport documents he eventually secured provided only for direct travel from Haiti to Canada. That meant they couldn’t take any flights which made stopovers or connections in the United States.
Noah speaks some of his native Creole but is picking up English very quickly, Ian said.
“His world (has) been absolutely rocked in this last month,” he said. “Every day, you can just see him letting his guard down.
“Being surrounded by love has been part of it and he’s getting used to us.”
The time Ian spent in Haiti has left a lasting impression. He’s hoping word of his family’s story will spread, thereby help keep others engaged in Haiti’s relief and rebuilding effort.
“What really broke my heart the most is that the kids down there aren’t really loved. They’re more of a nuisance, a commodity,” he said.
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