An Australian woman taken for adoption from a Sri Lankan orphanage when she was just four months old will be going to her birth country for the first time in 30 years.
In October British IT genius Sheree Atcheson, who is among the top 50 women in technology in England, made international headlines when she went to Sri Lanka and reunited with her Sri Lankan biological mother. But unlike Sheree who had a her birth certificate, Kacee Rhodes who works in Canada and plans to go to Sri Lanka to find her roots, does not have any records of her birth parents.
Kacee was adopted by a couple, Mark and Gail Rhodes when she was four months old. She now lives and works as a registered nurse in Calgary, Canada.
Speaking to Donna Sharpe of The Maitland Mercury, Kacee says as she grew up she always wanted to return to her birth place and next month she will go to Sri Lanka with her dad and her fiance Phil Jegard. Her adopted mom Gail passed away in 2009. She will visit the Peter Weerasekera Children’s Home, the orphanage that took her in, to learn where she came from and give a little back to the place where she lived the first four months of her life.
The Peter Weerasekera Children’s Home is presently situated in Yakkalla, one and half hour’s drive from Colombo. According to its Facebook page there are 82 orphan children housed there at the moment.
Kacee’s adopted parents had taken a dangerous trip to Sri Lanka in the 80s to look for a child for adoption when Colombo was experiencing ethnic riots and the war was intensifying.
“Abandoned isn’t a word I like to think of, even if that was the case. As my dad explained, a lot of children that were born around the time I was, whose parents couldn’t financially support them, would sell their children to become beggars on the street,” she said.
“When I was there babies were wearing rags for nappies until my parents brought disposables. There would be 20 cribs in one big room. Dad said they cleaned it the best they could. Mum and dad took over clothes, nappies, bottles and were hoping that I would get to wear some new nappies but the workers put them on all the other babies except me. They said I was going to Australia to a better home and the other kids weren’t,” she told the paper.
Kacee has started a Go Fund Me page (#makeachangeformysrilanka) to raise money for the Peter Weerasekera Children’s Home to give back to the place that was once her home. “It was my place away from the civil war. It was the reason I was able to have a life in a first world country. The kids that live there may not have the options that I had and may not have clean clothes and simple utilities, so I am hoping the money I raise will be able to help with that in one way or another,” Kacee said. She has already raised $2600.
Thinking about what could have been if she wasn’t adopted, doesn’t sit well with Kacee. “I would not have had such a loving family, wonderful friends, amazing health care, safe and clean housing, clothes and water. I wouldn’t have had healthy and nutritious food, an education or the ability to go to university. I’m an only child and was very spoiled. To not know the life I have now would not only be heart breaking, but I would not even be the same person.
“Going back isn’t just going to be a holiday for me. It’s going back to see what my life could have and would have been,” Kacee told the paper. “It’s going to be very humbling, very emotional, eye opening and amazing.”
“I struggled with a lot of identity issues growing up as everyone does, but I feel mine were in a different sense. I physically don’t look like anyone I grew up with apart from a few of my friends who were also adopted from Sri Lanka. But all my friends at school, and my family, are white. I was never made to feel different but I definitely did feel different”, she added.
“I think I’m going to be very emotional. There are a lot of issues about adoption that people don’t realise, unless you’re adopted and I think some of these will surface when I go back…I never really knew the culture I was meant to grow up in, so going to a place where I look like everyone will be so different. It will be funny to see how my blue-eyed, white-skinned fiance handles the attention.” Kacee said.
