Writer and social worker who was adopted recalls discrimination she experienced as a child

A woman who was left as a baby on a road in Uganda remembers feeling ashamed and judged while growing up as an adopted child in the 1960s and 1970s.

Bharti Dhir was discovered in a box of fruit by someone passing by in the town of Kabale in 1960. Later, a Sikh family took her in and became her adoptive family.

When she was only seven years old, she accidentally found out that she was adopted.

Now, she lives in Reading, Berkshire and helps families who want to start their own journey of adopting children.
MsDhir, who is 63 years old, recalls a time when she accidentally discovered information about her past while she was at her family’s house in Uganda.

“I went inside my dad’s room and found some torn papers with my name on them. I also noticed the words ‘adopted’ and ‘abandoned’,” she explained.

When I was growing up, many kids in school would tell me that my family wasn’t my real family. This was really painful because my parents always made sure I felt just as special as my siblings.

Ms Dhir stated that children like her, who have both Indian and African heritage, are seen as inferior or less than others.

‘A rude comment’

She still remembers when people said mean things to her parents, like accusing them of cheating by adopting a child from Africa, and saying it would bring shame to the family.

“She said that people couldn’t understand why they chose to take me in because they saw me as someone else’s child who they didn’t know. ”

I used to think that being dark and having curly hair was not good, and this made me feel bad about myself.

When I was young, I thought I was not attractive. It was only when I got to my thirties that I started to see myself as beautiful.
The family left Uganda in the early 1970s along with many other people from the Asian community. They were forced to leave because of the dictator, Idi Amin.

When they came to the UK, the family stayed with other refugees at a camp in Newbury. However, she faced the same unfair treatment.

People used to tell my mom that she has very dark skin and asked if she could use a cream to lighten her skin and straighten her hair.

This is something mean that was said to me, and I didn’t want to change the way I look for a partner or tolerate it. She wrote about her experiences in a book and now she is helping other families in the local Asian community with adopting kids.

‘Accept adoption’

“It’s more common for a family to choose adoption from within their own relatives rather than adopting someone from outside the family. This way, they already know the person’s background. ” said the person speaking.

She has met three families from Asia who have adopted children from outside their own family, and one of them is her friend.

She said, “They think it’s a good thing and treat the children like their own. ”

“I am currently assisting the South Asian community in accepting adoption and providing support or advice whenever needed. ”

I can see that people are starting to accept adoption more and more, but there is still a lot of progress needed before everyone in our community fully accepts it.