FAQ

I appreciate all the support we've been getting as we navigate the latest bump in the road. Here are the answers to some common questions.

Where are your boys?
The boys are still in Burji, in the same orphanage where they have been most of this time.

Why are they still there?
As we understand it, local officials have instructed the orphanage not to release them.

Why don't the local officials want the boys to be released?
There is no way that we can know the motives behind this, but it looks like some local officials are against the idea of international adoption in general. There is no specific problem with our case. Some people believe that it is better for children to grow up in an orphanage in their own country instead of with a family in a new country.

Do they have the right to hold the boys?
No, they do not. What they are doing is illegal.

How is the boys' family involved?
The boys' family has confirmed on at least four separate occasions that they want the boys to be adopted. They are not the ones preventing the boys' release.
  
 What about the other families adopting from Burji?
The families we are in contact with are facing the same situation.

What is your agency doing to help you?
The agency requested the assistance of regional Ministry of Women, Children and Youth Affairs (MOWCYA) officials who have more experience with the adoption process. This week the regional officials summoned the local MOWCYA officials to a meeting and told them very clearly that the children must be released. If the local officials continue to hold the children, our agency will contact the federal court that issued the adoption decree. At this point there would be something like a contempt-of-court decree issued.

Why can't the agency social worker just show up with a police escort and take the children?
This does seem like the simplest solution. But as our case manager pointed out, which police? A local police officer in Burji, whose biggest case up until now probably involved a stolen cow, is unlikely to interpret and act on a federal court order. Our agency believes that the most efficient solution for now is to go through MOWCYA.

What are the children being told?
I hope nothing. Our (very limited) understanding of Ethiopian cultural norms is that adults generally don't discuss adult issues with children. I hope the children are just continuing their lives as before.

Why can't the boys stay in Burji until it is time for them to come to the United States?
Bringing the kids to Addis is one more transition for them, and I wish we didn't have to do it. But to get a visa, they must be seen by a U.S. Embassy physician, and the U.S. Embassy is in Addis. Our case cannot be submitted to the Embassy until the boys come to Addis.

When do you expect the boys to come to the U.S.?
The time frame our agency gives is 2-4 months after our case is submitted to the Embassy, so until they are released from Burji we can't estimate when they'll come to the U.S.

Is there anything you and Tabb can do to fix this?
We will rely on our agency to act on our behalf until we hear the result of the meeting between the regional and local MOWCYA officials. If the local officials continue to defy the law, we will contact the U.S. Embassy for help.

How are you holding up?
Pbbbththth.

Emotionally surviving a canceled court date

Today is one month since we were supposed to appear in court in Ethiopia. To mark the occasion I am listing the things that have helped me deal with our canceled court date.

• Remember the adoption bell curve. As much as this stinks, it helps to remember that most international adoptions involve some sort of setback.
• Assume the very best of intentions by the person who is causing the delay. I feel better thinking that the official delaying all the Burji adoptions has the children's best interests at heart.
• Find a way to connect with Ethiopia that doesn't directly involve the adoption delay. Writing about our trip has been therapeutic for me. Last weekend we cooked up a lot of Ethiopian food and had friends over to share it. And we are learning to read Fidel. All this helps me feel connected to the boys without dwelling on what we're missing.
• Accept any negative emotions that come up for what they are. I feel jealous when I read about other people in our agency passing court. It's a normal reaction. I can name it, accept it and move on.
• Be mindful of things that can affect mood. Get more exercise and limit alcohol.
• From another Burji PAP: Don't hope for good news every time the phone rings. Pick a date in the future and don't expect any news before then.
• From another Burji PAP: Make a list of positive activities to keep you busy during the wait. Every time you feel bad about not meeting the kids, work on doing something off the list.
• If all else fails: Fake it. Go through the motions. Put one foot in front of the other. Focus on what you have to do in the next five minutes and eventually you will find yourself busy with your regular life.

This is hard!

I think I've entered a new phase of waiting.  Now that we have our plane tickets, it feels different than anything I've felt up until now. I find myself incredibly distracted. Unable to think of anything else. I'm talking to anyone who will listen about our trip. I'm having trouble focusing on anything or getting anything done. My house is a mess. I'm spending too much time on adoption blogs and Ethiopian travelogues. I'm wondering how I'll get through the next thirty-two days without going nuts.

Great week!

On Saturday night I went to the Ethiopian church for the celebration of Mesqel. You can read about the significance of the holiday here. It involved candles and a bonfire. I met a nice Ethiopian man who turns out to live only a few miles from our house.

And we got a court date!  I got the email yesterday afternoon. We will be appearing in court on November 24, Thanksgiving Day. So excited!!!!!

a few updates

We are in the middle of the annual court recess in Ethiopia, so not much news. Here are a few things:

• In the last few months, the Ethiopian government has shut down several orphanages. I've seen different estimates for the total number, but it's well into the double digits. This seems to be part of the effort to address concerns about international adoptions from Ethiopia.
• I have read multiple reports of the U.S. Embassy in Addis Ababa stepping up their investigations into children's orphan status. They are requesting more legal paperwork, re-interviewing relinquishing families and sending investigators into the field. Although this is positive, it still is being done at the wrong time - after the child is already legally adopted.
• Three families using our agency who received referrals only a few weeks before us have received court dates for late October/early November. We had been thinking we'll get a court date in January, but now we hope it might be earlier.
• In mid-October we'll be participating in a phone conference to prep us for our court date and first trip to Ethiopia.
• We have no updates on the boys. As far as we know they are still somewhere in or near Burji. We hope that they are fed, sheltered, being visited by family, being well taken care of... but we just don't know.

The new school year has started. So far it's going much better than last year.
And that's all for now.

They're not ours

I have found myself in the last few days explaining many times that the boys are not actually "our boys." I am trying to be very clear about that in my own head, and I think it's important that other people are clear on that, too.
The boys are living in an orphanage. The local kebele accepted their placement, our agency sent a social worker out to check the facts of their case, and it was decided that they could be placed for adoption. But. The Ethiopian court system still needs to review the case. The Ministry of Women, Children's and Youth Affairs (MOWCYA) still needs to review the case. Circumstances could change for the boys' surviving family members, and they might be able to reclaim them (and yes, that would be very sad for us, but how awesome would that be for the little guys?!). So until we appear in court in Addis Abeba and are legally declared their parents, they are not our kids. And I think it's very important that we are all very clear on that.

Orphanage closures

Lots of news swirling around the internet lately about mass orphanage closures in Ethiopia. In trying to find something substantiated, I came across this: http://etorphanage.blogspot.com/
Please go to this site and add your information IF YOU HAVE VERIFIED NEWS and are not just repeating rumors. 
I - and I'm sure many other APs and PAPs - am particularly interested in the reason for these closures. If it is, in fact, part of the Ethiopian government's plan to root out corruption, it is very good news. I just hope there is a solid plan in place for the children who lived in these orphanages, one that includes family reunification if at all possible.
Again, please post any information you have at http://etorphanage.blogspot.com/.
Thank you!

Church

I went to church yesterday. I had not been in a church for about eight years, but when I discovered that there was an Ethiopian Orthodox church here in our city, I had to go.

I had emailed with a man from the church whom I'll call Ato A and he had told me I was welcome to come anytime. So after putting it off for a few weeks, I decided yesterday was the day. Our tutor warned me that Ethiopian Orthodox services are very long, and Ato A had said the service was from 8:00AM to noon, so I was prepared.

I was late getting there because the church was hard to find, on a gravel road. When I arrived the doors were closed and the service had already started. I opened the door onto a foyer where people could leave their shoes. Then there was a little hallway, and I could see into the main room of the church. When I came in everyone was prostrate on the floor praying. I wasn't about to walk in stepping over people, so I waited in the hallway until people stood up, then I moved into a pew toward the back.

The men were all on the left side and the women on the right. All the women had their heads covered with a white scarf, called a ne'tala. Most of the women also had a matching white dress. The men also wore the scarf, but over their shoulders. When more and more people came in and all the women had the ne'tala on, I wished that I had known to cover my head.

The service had a lot of similarities with the Greek Orthodox service. Lots of chanting in an ancient language (in this case, Ge'ez), lots of repetition, incense, ritualistic gestures etc. People stood the entire time. After I had been there about 45 minutes, the man across the aisle from me, who I discovered afterward was Ato A leaned over and whispered, "You can sit down if you are tired." I did sit down a couple of times when a woman with a baby and an older woman sat down, and I used them for my cue for when I should stand back up.

Most of the service was just chanting. At three different times people got prostrate on the floor again. I did the sit-on-the-edge-of-the-seat-with-head-bowed pose, and other people were doing that too. At one point a young man came around with a big book followed by another young man carrying a fancy umbrella. Everyone did a quick forehead-lips-forehead-lips touch to the book. I skipped that part. 

At 10:15 we sat down for about one minute. A group came to the front. Then everyone stood back up and the group started singing and dancing. This part of the service was definitely more African. A man played a drum and everyone started ululating. This was my favorite part so far because it reminded me of Namibia.

After the singing was a reading. This part may have been in Amharic. At this point I can't hear the difference between Ge'ez and Amharic. I recognized a few words throughout the service (igziyaber = god, nachu = you are, mefelleg = need, memar = have mercy and habhab = watermelon... OK, probably wrong on that last one). The reading was about Dawit (David), Samuel, and Petros (Peter). I've heard of David and Peter, but I thought one was old Testament and the other new Testament, so I really had no clue what part this reading was from.

Finally the priest came out and talked for about 15 minutes, again I think in Amharic. Then everyone lined up and went to the front where the priest would do something and then put his hands on people's heads. I asked the woman next to me if I should go and she said yes, so I got in line. When I got to the priest we did an awkward little shuffle - was I supposed to kiss something? His hand? A cross? - and then he put his hands on my head and sent me on. I got a paper cup with "holy" water in it, walked around to the back, and the service was over.

Overall it was as monotonous as a Greek Orthodox service. I have to say that standing listening to chanting for over two hours does induce a trance-like state. Maybe that's the point.

After the service I met Ato A and he told me to get some tea and bread from the building next door. I went over and got some bread, and then stood around outside trying to catch someone's eye. I was kind of surprised that no one asked who I was. After a few minutes a man did come over and tell me to go back in the building and get tea. Since the tea wasn't ready, he told me to sit at a table and wait.

I sat next to a kid and said hi to him, and then I said hi to the woman sitting next to him and introduced myself. She smiled and shook her head to show she didn't speak English. So I tried Amharic - sime Kyra new = my name is Kyra. She looked a little alarmed, and turned around and called out to a group of women behind her, I think asking what "Kee-rah" meant. Finally the kid tapped her on the shoulder and said simwa new = it's her name. The woman just smiled and shook her head again. First attempt at Amharic in public - FAIL! Our tutor says that she probably didn't speak Amharic either, but some other Ethiopian language. Either that or my accent is terrible.

After that Ato A came in and sat down and talked to me. He told me about his family and a little bit about the service. I asked him about getting a ne'tala and he said his wife could get me one. Then I went over and talked to the priest. He also seemed to not speak much English, and he quickly switched to talking to me through Ato A. He invited me to a big celebration on August 20. I had prepared a respectful but honest answer in case he asked me about my beliefs, but he did not.

Around 11:30 things were winding down, and I left. I felt like I'd taken my first little trip to Ethiopia. I had had no idea there were so many Ethiopians in our area, and I'm glad I went.

Advice from T

          So far in our wait we have had two disappointments with the waiting child list. Without getting into details, I'll say that both events were difficult for me. They were difficult for T also, but he's much better at recovering from disappointment. Equanimity is T's middle name. I asked T for advice on how to move on after a match doesn't work out, and his advice was pretty good, so I asked him to write a guest post. Here it is, complete with a graph, because Lovable Nerd is T's other middle name.

Emotionally Surviving the Wait

Step 1: Be prepared. Before diving into applications, home-study, and dossier work K and I did some reading on adoption (K far more than me) and attended some information sessions. We did enough research to know adoption was going to be an emotionally draining process. For statistics geeks out there, Figure 1 shows the normal distribution of adoptions along the continuum from “nightmare” to “sunshine and daisies.”

For those of you who are not statistics geeks, this graph has a very simple explanation. Ninety-five percent of adoptions will fit into the blue shaded zone, meaning they will be emotionally exhausting. Only a handful of adoptions will go so smoothly that they fit into the “sunshine and daisies” category. However, it is also important to note that only a handful will fit into the “nightmare” category.

          There are a few points that can be made by this graph. First, when the emotional roller coaster hits, think back to this graph and remember, this is what we signed up for. Second, and this is very important, if you think you are having a sunshine and daisies adoption, don’t let your guard down. Chances are, something will happen to draw you into the shaded zone and you should be prepared for that eventuality. Finally, if you think you’re having a nightmare adoption process, chances are you’re not and you might benefit from talking to others in the adoption community at various stages of the process. These conversations will probably help you understand that your experience is “normal.”

Step 2: Understand your emotions. It is important to remember that because of the circumstance your emotions can be on a hair trigger. Think about it: you’re getting ready to add a child or children to your family for the rest of your life. You don’t need me to tell you that this is not a trivial event, but be aware of how the gravity affects your emotional response. This goes for the ups as well as the downs. While the ups feel good when you’re experiencing them be aware that a setback can bring you back down. If your emotions were already running high, albeit a good high, the swing in emotion will probably be more severe in response to the setback.

Step 3: Attach to children not ideas. There may be times during the process where you feel very close to being matched with a child for adoption. You may have seen pictures, or even have been offered a referral, but for whatever reason it doesn’t work out. This will probably be one of the hardest times of the process because the promise will send you to a high emotional state and the let down will feel severe.

My advice in these situations is to approach with extreme caution. The tendency is to get very excited, and I understand this. However, with this excitement your mind starts racing, you look at the picture, and in your mind you’re holding that child. You imagine him/her running around the orphanage playing, or running around in your back yard playing with the dogs. You’re becoming attached to this child before s/he even knows you exist.

Attachment post-adoption is very important; pre-adoption attachment may be counter-productive. If all you have is a picture and basic information about the child, chances are you’re not getting attached to a child, you’re getting attached to an idea. I try to avoid the inclination to let my mind wander into the "what could be" realm because it only serves to make loss of the referral/match more difficult to deal with. Additionally, if you become attached to the idea of a child, the reality of that child could be very different, which in itself could cause hard feelings.

Step 4: Let go. If your referral/match doesn’t work out I recommend thinking of the event as “what happened” as opposed to “what happened to me”. At this point what happened is now in your family's history. Worrying about what happened or where the child(ren) will end up won't help coping. Look forward to the match that will eventually work for your family. Don’t take it personally, and don’t waste time ruminating over what you could have done differently. Remember it is “what happened” in this situation. Next time it may be different.

          This is my advice for dealing with the ups and downs of the waiting process. I’m sure the post-referral period involving travel, court, embassy and first family visits will have some intense emotional moments. Being in the waiting period I can’t speak on these events. Maybe when we are at that part of the process K will ask me for another guest post.

Hope this helps,

T

More Amharic resources

Here are a few more resources that we have been using as we start to learn Amharic:

www.internetpolyglot.com
44 different lessons with categories like food, clothes, greetings, nature, colors, work, verbs, adjectives etc. You go through a tutorial and then can play three different kinds of games. Start with the multiple choice and work up to typing the word in yourself, then use the matching game to practice reading Amharic letters. To see the Amharic letters you will need to download the font, which you can do here. Scroll down near the bottom of the page and follow instructions to download.

Foreign Service Institute Amharic basic course
You can download the entire text, all 500 pages. It's from the 1960's, stupefyingly boring, and focused on teaching you how to navigate government ministries... but it's also thorough, organized and written entirely in English letters. You can also listen to the text with the accompanying "tapes."

"Amharic for Foreign Beginners" also came in the mail the other day. It's a small book and I think everything in it is covered in "Let's Speak Amharic." "Amharic for Foreign Beginners" contains both Ethiopian and English letters throughout, so you don't need to learn to read Amharic before you can use it.

What has worked best for us so far is to memorize vocabulary lists on our own and then come to our tutor with questions. Right now we are working to the verbs "to be" and "to have." This afternoon we sat on the back patio and played "Guess Who" in Amharic.

A liitle Amharic goes a long way

Tabb and I have been hitting the books hard since our first meeting with our Amharic tutor last week. We have memorized about 100 words. Last night we decide it's time to have a conversation. We take the dogs for a walk and we begin.
Unfortunately, we know only nouns and adjectives. This limits our conversation potential. All we can do is point at things and name them. We sound something like this:
Me: "Dog."
Tabb: "Two dog. Two dogS!" He is excited to pluralize.
Me: "Dog pee."
Tabb: "Dog pee. Leaf."
Me: "Leaf?" I don't know this word. Tabb points. "Ah. Green leaf."
Tabb: "House."
Me: "House. Window."
Tabb: "Bird."
Me: "Flower." I point to a magnolia.
Tabb: "White flower."
Me: "White BIG flower. Big WHITE flower. Rabbit."
Tabb: "Rabbit?" He looks at the squirrel I am pointing at. He is incapable of contradicting me.
Me: "Small animal. Small animal fast tree."
We go on like this all evening. We ride our bikes down to a restaurant at the end of the bike path, pointing out trees, houses, men, women, children, cars and dogs along the way. We comment on our bikes - black bicycle, black and red bicycle, fast bicycles. We pass another rider and gossip about her - big woman, slow bicycle. We name colors and count things. At the restaurant, we name foods - potato, tomato, greens, beer, water. Tabb makes faces at the baby at the next table, and I call him "Face Bad." After dinner the ride home is slow, and we lament, "Two beers. Stomach full. Tired. House."
It's a fun evening.

We're gonna learn Amharic

We've decided to spend the summer working on learning Amharic. A few weeks ago I sent an email to all the members of an Ethiopian student organization at a local university, and I got a reply from a lovely young lady who is willing to tutor us. We met her last night, and I think she will be great. We will be meeting with her twice a week. She's going to help us with grammar and pronunciation while we work on learning vocabulary on our own.

To help us study, we'll be using the following -

• "Let's Speak Amharic" by Bezza Tesfaw Ayalew. You can order the book and CD by writing to the National African Language Resource Center at the University of Wisconsin. The main problem with this book is that it is written almost entirely in Amharic. So to use it, you have to learn to read the language, which we hadn't really planned on doing. But, I've started working on it. I've been carrying around flashcards in my back pocket and I'm practicing during my free moments.

• "Simple Amharic for Adoptive Families" by Amy Kendall - This is a small, spiral-bound book that comes with a CD. The main problem with this book is it's just a list of phrases, and it doesn't explain what each word in the phrase means. For example, "We're going to your school" is transliterated as "Wuh-DAH ahn-TEH tih-MIRT bayt ee-yeh-HEH-din nohw." Which part means "we" and which means "going" and which means "school" is a mystery. There is no way I can learn a language by memorizing a string of sounds with no meaning. However, once we advance some with our vocabulary, this book may become more useful.

• "Amharic for Foreign Beginners" by Alem Eshetu. It took a long time to figure out how to get this book. I ended up ordering it from a seller in Canada. It hasn't arrived yet, but it looks promising.

• An Amharic app for the iPad. This has been the most useful resource so far. It includes a list of vocabulary words organized into a couple dozen categories. When you select a word you can hear the pronunciation. It also has the words written phonetically in English letters. 

In other news, our revised homestudy arrived today. We will send it off to USCIS tomorrow.

Have a good long weekend!

Changing our homestudy

It seems like forever ago that we started on our adoption paperwork. Ah, how young and naive we were. We thought we knew what kind of child we wanted, and we thought that the only other factors we had to consider were wait times and choosing a good agency. How wrong we were!

 

Luckily, there are many experienced adoptive parents and adult adoptees out there who tirelessly educate and argue with and encourage us new PAP on the various online forums (like this one and this one and this one). And we started to see that it's not just about what we think we want. It's also about what other adoptive parents want. And about what birth families need. And about what the @%#&!s, who would make money off a child, want. Most importantly, about what the kids need.

After much time and reading and talking, we began to realize that what we thought we wanted maybe wasn't exactly what we wanted. Maybe we could want something a little different, maybe a little less of what the other adoptive parents and the @%#&!s wanted and a little more of what the birth families and the kids needed. To be clear, it's still about what we want. We're not going to adopt a child that we feel incapable of parenting. We’re just slightly redefining what we want.

There are two lists in the adoptive world: the waiting parents list and the waiting child list. The waiting parents list is very long, and most people are waiting for a healthy baby. The waiting child list is for children who don't have anyone to adopt them. These children are there because they are older, or have medical issues, or both. For the last few months, we've been thinking about how we can move farther from the waiting parent list and closer to the waiting child list. We've been talking to many other adoptive parents and some health professionals. 

We know that there are wonderful people out there who have adopted seven or ten special needs children. That's not us. But a slightly older child, we decided we want that. And we found a special need that we feel comfortable with. 

We have decided to ask for one or two children, up to five years old, and Hepatitis B positive.

Yesterday we began the process of changing our homestudy. It’s going to be pretty simple and hopefully will not take too long. We took a long time to make this decision, and we’re pretty excited about it, and confident it was the right one for us.

Waiting

I've discovered something about waiting. Waiting for an indistinct future which may be five or fifteen months away is pretty easy. Waiting for something that will happen in the next few days (doctor's appointment etc) is really hard. Waiting for someone to reply to an email is excruciating.

This and that

We've been on the waiting list about a month now. Not a whole lot to report, but there have been a few updates from our agency and Ethiopia. This is for family and friends who don't live and breathe adoption - everyone in the adoption community already knows this stuff.

• The slowdown in cases processed in Ethiopia is confirmed, but no one knows how long it will last. 
• We have been told to expect "significant delays" in the wait between a referral and clearance by the Ethiopian courts. As of now the wait for a referral hasn't changed. No clue what a significant delay will be. Right now the wait between referral and court is 3-7 months. Whatever the increased time is, it means additional time that our child will be living in an orphanage.
• The official reason for the slowdown is still "increased scrutiny," which is good. However, cases from before the slowdown are being expedited to clear the backlog, so it seems the increased scrutiny is still to come. I'm eager to hear what additional procedures will be implemented.
• The U.S. embassy and USCIS are considering implementation of a pre-approval for issuing a visa. This would be good. Right now a case passes the Ethiopian court, the adoptive parents become the legal parents, and THEN the case goes to the U.S. embassy. This creates a lot of pressure on the embassy to approve the case - they know that if they don't, the parents will be stuck in limbo with a child that is legally theirs but cannot come to the United States. With pre-approval, or with cases being processed simultaneously by Ethiopia and the U.S., there would not be that pressure to approve a less-than-valid case.
• Our agency has stopped accepting applications for children under the age of 3. They say the waiting list is already long enough and they don't need more people waiting. This doesn't affect anyone already in the process.

That's all we know right now.
Have a super evening!

March 10, 2011

We are officially on the waiting list! 

Notification came today, but our official wait date is the day our agency received our dossier. Going out to celebrate!