Evelin Tai talks about her organization, The Baobei Foundation, and the personal stories that she has had with the kids. The Baobei Foundation raises money for kids that suffer from health defects for surgery and a chance of a better life. Evelin Tai is the founder of an organization called the Baobei foundation, which seeks to fundraise for babies in China to have surgery for their birth defects and disorders, in hope for a chance of a better life.
As a culture we love life and health, healthy foods. In contrast, we hate death. Death is like a giant gully, the very topic we just don't want venture too close in case we might fall in. But my work and my experience in the past decade have often given me first hand glimpses into that boundary between life and death. And I've learned that there are lessons to be learned at that vantage point. But let me back up a bit.
My name is Evelyn. Nine years ago, my husband and I were living in the New York city area with our two beautiful children. And then we took a trip to Western China and we met a beautiful baby girl who was abandoned at the hospital because of her life-threatening birth defect. She was near death and we just fell in love with her. And we ended up moving to China a year later to take care of her and fast forward, seven years later. And we thank God that we were able to adopt Anna Tai, our miracle daughter.
So, while we were in Shanghai slogging through adoption papers, we started volunteering with Baobei foundation, with the very people who helped Anna get her surgery when she was just two months old. And Baobei helps children like Anna by providing lifesaving surgeries and after care for Chinese orphans, suffering from severe birth defects. And now in Baobei, we operate daily on the edge of life and death.
It's not unusual for us to get kids who are just right there at that border. For example, Hope, when she came to us, she quickly became unconscious and unresponsive, but our amazing neurosurgeon gave her emergency surgery. And this is Hope three years later when she was about to be adopted, and she went to the US.
And more recently we have Luca, he came to us in from palliative care, which is a place you go to live your final days when nothing else can be done for you. But we thought there was hope. And we got him a pacemaker, and this is Luca right after his surgery. And now he is running around and his future is very, very bright.
So, we have many stories like Luca and Hope. Baobei children who come to us at death doorstep, but we get them their surgery. And then by a miracle, they survive and they get adopted and they go on to live very full and vibrant lives. There are 200 Baobei children adopted and living all over the world.
And here's one of my favorites. Gabe he's with its family in Tanzania, Africa. Unfortunately, since we operate on this edge of life and death, there's some children whose stories don't go the way we would've wished. When Zach was two days old, he was found naked and lying in a ditch. The people who found him, the tenderhearted policeman, who rushed into the hospital and the ladies of a local Chinese charity, all harbored hope that he could somehow be saved. So, they called us at Baobei and they took a 17-hour train journey and came. When Zach came, the nerves in the spine were open, exposed and infected, and he was in bad shape. I picked him up at the train station and we rushed to the hospital.
The following days and weeks and months were agonizing as Zach endured procedures and surgeries. I remember one time going to visit him at the hospital and Suna, our Baobei Ayi of eight years, was crying. She said that there was nothing left that could be done. And the doctors said the end would be near. It turns out that Zach actually had a couple of these moments, but he kept fighting and he kept coming back, thus earning himself the nickname, the comeback kid. Finally, the glorious and unimaginable day came where he was going to be discharged from the hospital and this beautiful SAS Pudong family opened their heart and their home to receive Zach. So, he could continue to get medical care.
I wish I could stand here today and tell you that all this medical care and surgeries resulted in a happy ending for Zach, but it was not to be. After two years of fighting the good fight, Zach passed away as human beings. We struggled to make sense of our world. I used to like to say this bad thing happened, but it led to this good thing. But when Zach passed away, I didn't know how to pick up the pieces or make sense of his life.
One of the first questions that emerged was if it is worth for all the fighting and all the suffering. This is a good and hard question. In my former life as an economist, I was very comfortable thinking about things in terms of net benefits versus net costs. But that kind of thinking fell apart here. I mean, how do you make those kinds of evaluations? And is there really a magical cutoff point where suffering becomes worth it? As I conjure these and other questions, the answers came from Zach himself.
And from thinking about the way he lived. You see Zach was only given two years on this earth, but he wanted each and every day, he literally fought for every 24-hour period he was given. And somehow this very special boy knew something that took the greatest mind a while to figure out. And that is, there are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. And one is as though everything is a miracle.
Zach found the miracle in the every day, he celebrated, he ate, he played, he ate, he drew, he ate. Did I mention he ate? It is because this kid loved his food. Sometimes after a particularly satisfying meal, like Brazilian barbecue, his favorite, he would give us satisfying thumbs up, just to show his sheer pleasure.
There were a lot of things Zach couldn't do. He couldn't walk, he couldn't crawl. He couldn't even sit up unassisted, but that didn't stop him from embracing life. He loved going outside, going to the park, loved playing Peek A Boo, listening to music. He loved camping out with the girl Scouts and he was a big flirter. And Zach had a secret vice, not so secret - he loved to pick his nose. He loved talking on the phone, he loved to pick the tissues out of the tissue box one by one. But most of all, Zach loved people. He loved his host family. He loved watching Tom and Jerry with Catherine and lying on the floor. He loved giving and receiving hugs and kisses. Somehow just being with Zach, it's so clear that life is good and that there is so much beauty and joy all around us.
Ironically, Zach taught us that life is good. Not only through his life, but also through his death. When he died, we knew life was so good because of the very fact that we mourned him so deeply and hated death so much. We mourned that he didn't get to experience more of the goodness of life. And we realize that despite the heartaches and the challenges and the suffering, that it's still tragic when a young boy dies precisely because life is good. I also learned from Zach that is horrible and terrible as death is. And it is.
There are things greater and stronger, which death cannot touch. And that brings me to my final lesson from Zach about the preeminence of love. Unbelievably, when Zach passed away, the beautiful SAS Pudong family who cared for him for two years, actually thank me for the privilege and honor of knowing Zach. I was floored.
I couldn't think of anything except their tremendous grief. And yes, their grief was so great, but their love was greater still. So, we see that love had the final word and love triumphed over a death because Zach loved and he was, and is loved.
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