Two couples strive to adopt teenage Ethiopian orphans

By Deborah Mcdermott

Certainly two local couples would describe their decision to adopt two young teenaged orphans from Ethiopia as exactly that.

Margie and David Bosse of South Berwick, 46 and 47 years old, have five daughters ranging in age from 16 to 26 and are grandparents three times over. Jeannie and Lee Petrie of Eliot are 50 and 47 years old. She has a 25-year-old daughter from her first marriage and is a grandmother twice over.

If everything goes as planned — and nothing is yet certain — the Petries will soon be the parents of Temesgen, a 13-year-old orphaned boy, and the Bosses will adopt 14-year-old Eyob, Temesgen’s best friend.

Both boys are at the Kolfe Orphanage for Boys in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, a long way from Eliot and South Berwick, but close to the hearts of these two couples.

Some significant challenges face them, most pressing among them the $15,000 to $20,000 cost to adopt each boy. The couples have held numerous fund-raisers to help them reach their goal, including one that will be held this Saturday evening in South Berwick.

And Lee Petrie, a longtime eighth-grade social studies teacher at Marshwood Middle School and coach at both the middle and high schools, said former students have come out of the woodwork to help them.

Still, that’s where the leap of faith comes in.

“So far, God has met us every step of the way, so you just keep going; you just keep plowing through,” Jeannie Petrie said.

Both couples initially were only going to sponsor the two boys through the church they attend, Eliot Baptist Church. As sponsors, they were able to send the boys care packages and monetary assistance.

“That’s all I thought it was going to be,” Jeannie Petrie said. “Then I got the e-mail with a photo of Temesgen, and I said to myself, ‘Oh, oh, I’m in love.’ It was just like looking at a picture of your own baby.

“I kept it to myself because I said, ‘You’re nuts.’ I thought the feeling would go away, but it got stronger and stronger and stronger.”

Meanwhile, Margie Bosse received a photo of Eyob and had the same reaction.

“I automatically was in love. I wanted him home with us, and I miss him just as much as I do my daughter who went off to college.”

Their husbands took some convincing.

“She said, ‘How about we adopt him?’ And I said, ‘How about not?’” said Lee Petrie, who has no children of his own. “I had no problem with the sponsoring, but I wasn’t ready to adopt.

“Then, the first time he called me Dad, it pushed me over the edge.”

“I felt similar to Lee,” David Bosse said. “Here we are, close to finishing up number five (children). I said, ‘I need a break.’ I gave it a lot of thought and a lot of prayer. And, eventually, I agreed.”

Both boys come from grinding poverty. Temesgen has been in an orphanage for most of his life, although his father is still alive.

“He knew he couldn’t care for his kids,” Jeannie Petrie said of the boy’s father. Temesgen has a 17-year-old sister he’ll have to leave behind, but Petrie has told him that her family will do everything in its power to bring the girl to the United States.

Eyob never knew either of his parents. He lived with his grandmother until he was able to enter the orphanage, “and he was happy to go. He gets three meals a day,” Margie Bosse said. He thinks his grandmother is alive, but isn’t certain.

Both couples have months and months to go before the boys come “home,” including a stint in Ethiopia to make sure they bond with the boys.

But the two women can’t wait for the court and adoption system. They’re planning to go to Ethiopia in November.

“I just have to hold him,” Margie Bosse said.

They families said, while they may be bringing home the two boys, they are not leaving the orphanage behind and intend to sponsor other children and hold fund-raisers for years to come.

Their T-shirts, which they are selling to raise money for the adoptions, feature a quote from Proverbs on the back: “Once our eyes are open, we can’t pretend we don’t know what to do.”