Does Zahara's Birth Mother Want To Take Her Back From Angelina Jolie?
Globe-trotting Angelina Jolie has gone to the corners of the world to highlight the plight of people in impoverished areas. Just recently her travels took her to Western Sudan, just a stone's throw away from her adopted daughter Zahara's homeland of Ethiopia...and her natural mother.
What's that, you say? You thought little Zahara was an AIDS orphan, who's mother died of the disease? Well, think again, because her mother is alive in Ethiopia, and she is a bit puzzled as to why the world was told that she was dead:
The Mail on Sunday has discovered that not only is Zahara's mother, Mentewab Dawit Lebiso, alive and well, but that the man who arranged Zahara's adoption has been waging a campaign of threats and intimidation against her family.When rumours surfaced last week in America that all was not as it appeared with the paperwork, the American headquarters of the international adoption agency Wide Horizons For Children initially insisted that Zahara's mother was dead. And yet in Ethiopia, the man who brought Zahara to the agency knows Mentewab is alive and has been attempting to shut her up.
To make a long story short, Zahara was the product of an attack and rape in 2004, while her birth mother Mentewab was living at her grandmother's house. Her family disowned her when her pregnancy became obvious, and after the baby was born Mentewab and her mother lived with her uncle in a small, three-room hut with mud floors. Times were tough as the young mother struggled to work while her mother looked after the baby.
Finally, things came to a head when the uncle asked them to move out. Faced with a financial crisis and no food to feed her crying baby, in desperation and fear the young mother ran away and left the baby behind. The grandmother had no money and helplessly watched as the baby got thinner and thinner. Finally, after she became convinced the baby was near death's door, she took her to the Kebele (the local council), told them her daughter had ran away, and asked them to please take the baby before she died. She had to bring three witnesses to prove that the mother did in fact run away, and they all signed papers stating so.
A local man, Girma Degu, whom the grandmother had already been introduced to, agreed to take the baby to an orphanage. He also agreed to bring her back for a visit, to send photos of her progress, and to introduce the grandmother to the family who would adopt the baby. He followed through on none of these promises, and later when he told the grandmother that the baby had been adopted he warned her not to say anything to the journalists who would be coming around, other than to lie and say Zahara was not her granddaughter.
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