Let’s get it started

​After being here for three days, the team started to arrive. Each with their own problems. From delayed and missed flights, to ticketing issues and missing luggage. But with all things, most thing…somethings…things, everything worked out.

Meta arrived from the Netherlands with her sister Jannette, followed by Li-Da from the UK and a couple of days later Claire (whom I will talk about in another post) from the Philippines. Already in country was Po-Thai.

Li-Da and Po-Thai

Clockwise - Po-Thai, Jannette, Vutha, Meta and me

Li-Da and Meta start the organization with Po-Thai several years ago. Each with their own motivation but having a shared goal; to help people who are looking for lost family.

Li-Da has a story much like mine, almost identical and with some of the same player. She was an orphan and was take out of the country with the aid of a nurse named Yvette.

 Interestingly Yvette was also part of my story.  She is seen in several pictures taken at the World Vision Nutrition Center where I was with my nineteen co-babylifters.

Yvette at the World Vision Nutrition Center

 Like me, Li-Da is searching for her family.

Meta has been on a search for the family of her adopted Cambodian daughter. She and her daughter have visited Cambodia several times. Trips before and after the introduction of DNA into the process.

Both of their stories have so many layers and complexities that I can not do them justice here or anywhere for that matter.

Our first meeting was at the hotel Meta, Jannette and Li-Da were staying. I’d met Li-Da before, at a film festival in Long Beach California and in Seattle where I live.

Meeting Meta was exciting for me, as we had been conversing online for several years. Jannette also works for the project and over a series of meetings, I came to see how well Jannette and Meta works together. They complement each other perfectly and seem to be a perfect team.

Over the years of work, trial and error, false starts and wrong turns; the team has developed a set of best practices in both the sampling process and the most effective way to determine who to sample to get the best results. 

I’ve been planning this trip for several years in the broadest sense, and had narrowed down the focus about a year ago to working with Reconnecting. I moved away from my original idea, removing land mines. I was totally down for it but I got over ridden by everyone who knows me…clumsy and impulsive and clumsy. 

My plan has been to help in anyway I can be useful. I am still here for that, but my mission shifted about a month before I left when I match to a second cousin through the Reconnecting Cambodia database.  Now I’m here and I’m making my family.  (The title of my next book)

My second cousin getting sampled by Po-Thai

I now know how this machine runs and know that I’m here to help…but now I see that I’m here to stay out of the way of the process and try not to trip over anything while doing so.