The Hill Times, January 28th, 2008
"When Liberal MP Glen Pearson and his wife Jane Roy took their adopted daughter back to Sudan in 2005 for a visit, they had no idea they'd be taking two more children back to Canada."
By Meghan Moloney
Rookie Liberal MP Glen Pearson is a former firefighter. He's also an internationally-known volunteer. He and his wife Jane Roy have been travelling regularly to Sudan since 1998 to help refugees in Darfur and have adopted three Sudanese orphans. Mr. Pearson (London North Centre, Ont.), 57, retired as a captain from the London Fire Department in 2006 after 29 years as a firefighter. He co-founded the London Food Bank in 1987 and has been its executive director ever since, along with Ms. Roy, the assistant director. They have each served as the head of Ontario's Association of Food Banks. In November 2006, Mr. Pearson was elected to office in a byelection.
But for the past decade, he and Ms. Roy have also been helping people in the war-torn Sudan. Their work to help end government-sanctioned slavery and their involvement in other development projects have kept them coming back to Sudan every January. During the civil war, they returned as many as four times a year. From 1998 to 2000, they worked with southern leaders, including the Sudanese minister of education, and a Switzerland-based NGO, Christian Solidarity International, to purchase people out of slavery through the Slave Redemption Program.
Mr. Pearson and Ms. Roy met with then external affairs minister Lloyd Axworthy in March 1999, announcing they would use funds raised in Canada to free slaves. Canadians and businesses from across the country donated $60,000, allowing them to free 800 slaves when they travelled to Sudan in May 1999 with CBC TV, The London Free Press, and a documentary crew. In 2000, Mr. Pearson said, they branched off and started their own NGO, Canadian Aid for Southern Sudan, which later established the New Sudan YMCA/YWCA in August 2002.
After bringing Mr. Pearson's predecessor, then-Liberal MP Joe Fontana (London North Centre, Ont.) with them to Sudan in April 2001, all three met with U.S. Senators and Congressional workers in Washington, D.C., to design a Canadian-American aid initiative.
Mr. Pearson and Ms. Roy met with then prime minister Paul Martin in 2004. CIDA gave them money to build schools and to start programs for women's literacy and recreation. Since 2005, they have helped build eight schools in the eastern region of Aweil, between the oil fields and Darfur. They have also helped the YWCA set up women's micro-enterprises by purchasing sewing machines and training girls to use them, so they can make some income in the markets and leave time to attend school. It was through their work in Sudan that they first heard the story of Abuk. In 2000, Christian Solidarity International mistakenly sent Mr. Pearson a newsletter written in French. On the front page was a picture of a four-month-old Sudanese girl, sick, and crying. The story described how her mother, who had been enslaved along with her children, had been killed while the family was trying to escape from Darfur.
Abuk, her twin sister, and their older brother had been travelling with their mother and grandmother when they were attacked by militia groups, Mr. Pearson told The Hill Times in an interview. "The mother got shot in the middle of a minefield, and she was holding on to Abuk, and the grandmother and the other two children escaped." They were later caught and taken back to Darfur.
Abuk was found by members of her community and taken care of. But when Mr. Pearson first heard about her, none of the people taking care of her knew that her relatives were still alive. "It was assumed by the grandmother and the other two kids that Abuk had been killed with the mother, and it was assumed by the community that had helped Abuk that the grandmother and the other two kids had been killed," he said. "So neither side knew that the other one existed." Mr. Pearson and Ms. Roy had already talked about adopting a Sudanese child. "It's hard–you see these people and your heart goes out to them," he said. "They lost three million people over 20 years and five million of them were displaced."
Mr. Pearson said that seeing local children and their desperate situations had led him and his wife to commit to going back to southern Sudan every year for the rest of their lives to raise money for relief projects, but they still felt they should do more.
"There were just so many children that were in such desperate shape that we thought, at some time we should [adopt a child]," he said. "But our hearts just went out to this particular little girl when we heard about her story. But we had no idea at that particular time that there had been a brother and a sister."
After deciding to adopt Abuk, it took Mr. Pearson and Ms. Roy a year to find her, since the Darfur refugees moved around constantly. When they finally met her, she was very sick. "She was like 12 pounds at a year of age. It was not good," he said. "We took her to the doctor. The doctor said, 'She will not survive,' because she had malaria [and] double pneumonia." They took Abuk to a United Nations hospital in Nairobi, believing she was going to die–but she ended up thriving. Three months later, when Abuk was 15 months old, they took her home to London, Ontario.
"Abuk is wonderful," Mr. Pearson said. Now seven years old, Abuk is no longer quiet and shy and is "more like a typical Canadian kid" who laughs, runs around, and loves to play sports and do gymnastics, he said.
"I think one of the things she loves to do the most is wrestle. She and I wrestle every day, probably 15 times a day."
Mr. Pearson said having Abuk in their family has helped to reaffirm his and Ms. Roy's commitment to Sudan and has kept them focused on important issues. "She's such a wonderful child, and a really peaceful kid, that we've always seen in Abuk the ability for what Sudan could be, if the people could just find peace." He also said that adopting Abuk meant so much to the people in her home village that it opened up communications with aid workers.
"We had been there building schools, but something happens when you adopt someone," he said. "The villagers there realized that Canadians were making a permanent commitment to one of their own people, and it just opened up the doors there for us to be able to get other projects done."
In January 2005, Mr. Pearson and Ms. Roy took Abuk back to her home village in southern Sudan for a visit. A peace agreement had just been signed between the North and the South, and Abuk's family and friends were finally able to leave Darfur, where they had been living as refugees, to return to their home. "Just as we arrived, as we were getting off the plane, a little girl was standing there who looked identical to Abuk," said Mr. Pearson. "And that was when we started to realize that these kids [her siblings] maybe survived." Abuk's grandmother was there with the other children. "As soon as she saw Abuk come off the plane, she just fell to the ground and started crying and crying, because she knew from looking at Abuk that she was an identical twin to the other little girl, so she knew that Abuk had survived. And that was the first that she knew that that had happened. It was a very emotional moment." When asked whether the children's grandmother objected to Abuk's siblings being adopted as well, Mr. Pearson said she asked him and his wife to take them home to give them a better life.
He admits that the decision was very difficult. He and his wife spent a day talking about their options. "We had planned what we wanted to do for our future–now all of a sudden we found out we could maybe have two more kids," he said. But in the end, it came down to their commitment to Abuk. "We realized we were never going to be able to face Abuk and say, 'Look, we knew that you had a brother and sister but we never tried to adopt them.'" It took two and a half years of red tape, medical treatment, and waiting, but Achan and Ater came to Canada at the end of August last year. Like Abuk, Achan, and Ater have had malaria and are still susceptible to recurring bouts of illness. Mr. Pearson, who has had malaria his "whole adult life," said the disease is "just part of life in Darfur." Recently, he has served as an ambassador for the Spread the Net Campaign, an organization founded by MP Belinda Stronach and comedian Rick Mercer in 2006 to raise money to buy bed nets, which prevent the spread of malaria from mosquito bites. Mr. Pearson told CBC in April that malaria "can be beat, and has been beat in our family's case," but that treatment is much easier to obtain in Canada than it is in Africa. Achan, 7, and Ater, 10, have gone through changes similar to what Abuk went through after arriving in Canada, said Mr. Pearson. Much like her twin, Achan was "very quiet and withdrawn," and Ater was "very serious all the time." Ater had to bring up his sister after their family was split up in the attack, Mr. Pearson said. "He's a very mature 10. He's kind of like 20. But now that they're here, and we're taking care of the sister, he's reverting. I think he's becoming a kid, and I love to see that." He said Abuk has done a good job at making her siblings feel at home in London. "They're monsters, all three of them. They jump all over me. It's a wonderful thing to see. It's brought these kids out of themselves." Mr. Pearson has taken the children to Ottawa several times and said MPs of all political parties were great to the kids. He said it's important for people to meet Sudanese kids to understand the issues being discussed. "I think for all of us, all of us as politicians, we need those kind of personal stories so that we keep focused on Africa and keep focused on Sudan."
Since being elected in November 2006, Mr. Pearson has made Darfur a priority in many of his House speeches. His obvious passion for the refugees' situation must have made an impact: when he was in Sudan in early January, he discovered that the Canadian government had told local leaders that they may contribute $3-million in aid by March. "I asked for six million and they're going to give three," he said. "I've been up there in the House of Commons, speaking all the time, saying 'Do something, do something,' and I think to a certain degree, they were listening to what I was saying, and were trying to find a way to give an answer to it. So I appreciate that."
Mr. Pearson said he has been working with retired general and Quebec Liberal Senator Romeo Dallaire, Liberal Party Leader Stéphane Dion (Saint-Laurent-Cartierville, Que.) and Deputy Leader Michael Ignatieff to "develop a broader capacity around Darfur and Sudan." As well as Abuk, Achan, and Ater, Mr. Pearson also has four older children. "I've got seven children and one grandchild," he said, laughing. "And I'm 57. But it's made for a pretty interesting life this last year." While in Sudan this month, Mr. Pearson said he and his wife saw the children's grandmother. They have been supporting her financially since the adoption, but he said she has heart disease and is struggling. "She's just thankful that somebody took these kids off of her hands before her health continues to deteriorate farther," he said. "I think if their mother could see them from wherever she's at, and see what has happened to them, she would just be overcome with joy about her family."
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