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Why are you adopting?

Three reasons:

#1, there are so many children in the world that need homes.  Adoption is a way for us to build a family without contributing to the world’s population problems.

#2, it would be a real hardship for me to be pregnant, with my arthritis problems.

#3, we love the idea of having a multicultural family.

Why did you choose Ethiopia?

Well, several reasons.  Firstly, the program in Ethiopia (ET) is well suited to us: you can adopt babies and small kids, even siblings.  The children are overall healthy.  Unlike some other countries, ET kids have very low rates of attachment disorder (common with children who have grown up in institutionalized settings.)  Secondly, there is a real need.  According to the UN, there are “34 million orphans in [Subsaharan Africa] today and some 11 million of them are orphaned by AIDS.” thirdly, we felt it was important that the culture of our children be a culture we would enjoy becoming a part of.  As we learn more about this country, we’re excited about the culture becoming a part of our lives.

Will your kids be healthy? (AKA will they have AIDS.)

Our kids probably will arrive with some treatable basic illnesses, but they won’t have HIV or AIDS.  In Canada, you cannot adopt HIV+ children from overseas.  There is a good chance, though, that AIDS will play a role in the loss of their birth family, though.  Jrock and I have been learning more and more about how children are losing their parents to the disease, and how AID is wreaking havoc on the social, economic and cultural systems in Africa.  If you would like to know more, follow some of the links on the righthand side of this blog.

What is the process like?

Here is the short story.  A social worker will come to our house to do a series of interviews called a homestudy.  This study and tons of other paperwork will be inluded in a fat file called a docier.  The docier will be sent from the local agency to one of the two Canadian agencies who handle ET adoptions.  They will send it on to ET, where the local foster house works will match us up with a child (or two!) We will get backa referral in the mail, asking us if we will accept the match.  If we do, then paperwork happens, and a few months later, we go and pick up our kids from the foster home in Ethiopia!

I’ll add to this post as we have more common questions…