As I said before, the state of New Jersey worked really hard to find out if
my parents were still alive in Ethiopia. They were unable to find them, or
any other family that I might have there, which is why my fathers were
allowed to adopt me. When I was 7 years old, though, that changed. A special
charity organization flew to Ethiopia, and started offering free DNA
testing. Anyone in our country can send in a sample so a computer can study
their DNA, but it’s not that easy in other parts of the world. An aunt of
mine participated in this special program, and when they uploaded the
information to the big worldwide database, they found that I was a match. My
fathers did it for me early on after I first met them, because they wanted
to know whether there were any medical issues that they should be worried
about. When they found out that I did have some family in Africa, they
decided that we would all three fly out there to meet them. As it turns out,
my birth parents were dead, but my aunt had a husband, and they had a bunch
of kids, who were my brand new cousins. They were happy that my papa and dad
were now my parents, so they didn’t want to take me away, but they did want
to have relationships with me. So my fathers worked really hard to help them
get to the United States. It has taken years since 2019, but they are
finally living here, and on their way to becoming U.S. citizens. I wish my
papa was alive to see it. Oh, and we had a really long layover in New York
while we were waiting to fly to Africa, so my papa was able to see it.
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