Imagine having a daughter who adopts a child you brought to Malta so that you would be able to adopt another two children who are sisters. Rather complicated, isn’t it? But it has happened.
Marianne Magri called The Malta Independent on Sunday to relate her wonderful story after having read reports of how Russian children were abruptly taken away from their Maltese host families following the death of a Russian boy in Valletta last February.
“Not all stories end badly,” she said as we started talking about her experience.
It all started five years ago when Marianne and her husband Joseph brought over Anya, who was seven at the time, for the summer and then came back for Christmas, after which the Magri family obtained permission to keep her for a whole year.
“She was a joy to have,” Marianne said. “Then we found out that there were two other Russian girls who needed a Maltese host family. We could not choose between them, and we did not want to separate them, so for a time we ended up with three children. The other two girls, Ekaterina and Margerita, were aged 11 and 12 at the time.”
Marianne said that the three girls settled down well in Malta. The Magri family gave them all they needed, taking good care of them and seeing to their education. The girls were also in contact with their half-sister, who was being taken care of by another Maltese family.
As time passed, the Magri family wanted to make the girls’ presence in their Mosta home official. They wanted to adopt them. But there was one problem that needed to be overcome.
“Being close to retirement age, I felt I could not cope with three teenagers. But I loved them all equally and I could not be forced to make a choice. There was only one solution available, and thankfully we managed to keep them all three – simply by having my biological daughter Rachel adopt one of them.”
As it happened, Marianne and Joseph adopted Ekaterina, now 17, and Margerita, now 16, while the younger child Anya, now 12, was adopted by Marianne’s daughter Rachel and her husband Joseph Grech.
“We followed the course for adoptive parents and also visited Russia as part of the procedures to adopt the children. My thanks go to Irina Malikova of the International Charity Society for her help. Thankfully, the adoption process took only six months to complete, which is quite a reasonable time,” Marianne said.
All three girls speak perfect English – Marianne is herself British – and they are also learning Maltese. They have picked up both languages well, having been exposed to them for so many years now.
There is another chapter to Marianne’s story. Ekaterina and Margerita have an older sister, with whom they had lost contact with when they were taken to a Russian orphanage and before they came to live in Malta permanently.
“We managed to trace her too,” Marianne said, “and the girls are happy to be in contact with her.”
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