The Fruit of My Womb

The Columbian church and legislation keep strictly to the rules the Vatican has formulated with respect to birth control. Contraceptives, particularly the pill, are prohibited. Abortion is a criminal act and the offender is sentenced to jail.
Women who cannot properly look after their future child can go to FANA, the Columbian adoption organization. The women are often young, poor, and jobless. Some of them come from well-to-do families who will not bear the shame of an illegitimate child.
In Bogotá, Street 27, is the reception home for these women. They live there like persons in hiding, each with her own secret history. They live, pray, and wait together for the delivery, closed off from the outside world. Their children are left to FANA. After the period of breastfeeding, they are flown to Western countries.
Their prospective European and American parents are always staying in the hotel across the street, nervously awaiting the child of whom they know nothing and whose picture they have not even seen. FANA makes a ritual of every adoption. Every morning at eleven o'clock, at least one baby is handed over to his or her new parents. This is done in a specially arranged 'reception room', by the chairwoman of FANA, Mercedes de Martines.
FANA owns another building, close to the 'house of the mama's'. This is the meeting place and school for orphans and street urchins between two and nine. These children all know too well that one day they will be adopted by Western people they have never seen before. They are constantly talking to each other about this: when will we be picked up, by whom, and to which country will we go?
Antoni and Mario (seven and nine years of age) are fetched from the classroom one day at eleven o'clock by Mrs. De Martines. They both know that if you are fetched from school at that time you are going to a rich country. The two boys are very nervous and have trouble washing and changing. When they are introduced to their future parents the company bursts into tears. The French-speaking parents and the Spanish-speaking children have totally different backgrounds but immediately fall in each other's arms. After having said goodbye to their classmates, Antoni and Mario set out on their journey to France. From now on their names are Vincent and Julien.