Sunday, May 17, 2009

Thursday night we got an email from our agency with this notice from the DoS. (The original notice can be found at http://adoption.state.gov/news/ethiopia%20alert.html )


Adoption Alert

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Bureau of Consular Affairs
Office of Children’s Issues

May 13, 2009


Adoptions of Abandoned Children Halted by Ethiopian Court:
The Ethiopian First Instance Court has temporarily stopped accepting cases involving abandoned children from orphanages in Addis Ababa, citing concern over a recent increase in the number of abandoned children being brought for adoption. The number of abandoned children from orphanages in Addis Ababa has grown dramatically in recent months and Ethiopian authorities have become aware of possible cases of unethical practices associated with some of them.

Currently neither MOWA nor the First Instance Court are accepting any abandonment case from any orphanages in Addis Ababa pending an inquiry.

Please continue to monitor adoption.state.gov for updated information on Ethiopia.


As you can imagine, this about stopped my heart. Then I read the additional information from our agency and it indicated that this does not affect our adoption because it applies only to children who were abandoned in Addis Ababa and taken directly to an orphanage there. Children abandoned in other areas and taken to orphanages in those outside areas, as our baby was, are not affected.

On Friday I talked to our agency. They have been in contact with their attorney in Addis Ababa many times in the last week, and he indicated that officials are very busy investigating this. It appears to be isolated to the capital, and there is no indication at this time that they will widen the range of the investigation.

As scary as this seems, it reassures us that we made a good decision in choosing to adopt from Ethiopia. I am impressed that the Ethiopian government, of their own accord, took action to investigate a possible problem. Many countries have looked the other way when discrepancies arose, thinking that the children will get a good home anyway, so it's for the greater good to just continue as usual. In reality, that usually ends up in adoptions being closed in those countries. In addition, the attorney has indicated that officials are very busy with the investigation, so they aren't wasting time or being casual about it. They are truly concerned with making sure the children of Ethiopia are safe.

That rational response is easy for me to have now that I know this does not affect us. Before I was sure of that, my fears far overshadowed my rational mind.

My heart goes out to those families and children who are caught up in this.

Sunday, May 3, 2009

Gonder and Lalibela and Hanoi

ETHIOPIA
We had to send in our reservation and fee for the orphanage guest house, and include our travel plans with it, so we finally decided where we want to travel within Ethiopia when we make the trip. We feel it is important to see more of the country than just the capitol city, and figure it may be a long, long time before we get another chance to go, so we should make the most of this trip. We are going to visit the historical cities of Gonder and Lalibela.

Gonder (also spelled Gondar) is a former capitol of Ethiopia. It is known as The Camelot of Africa because of the castles built by the emperors and kings who ruled here. Check out this video about the history of Gondar:



Lalibela is known for its amazing churches which were carved out of bedrock.



On another note, we received two more pictures of the baby. She looks happy and healthy. No medical update yet, but there are rolling blackouts happening in ET which make it hard to get administrative work done and emails out. The children's care is not affected, but office machines and computers are down quite a bit. Hopefully we'll get that info soon.

VIETNAM
It's been awhile since we've had any news on this front, but we recently received an update from our agency. In late March the Joint Council on International Children's Services (JCICS) held their annual conference and hosted a delegation of 8 officials from Vietnam. The officials met with JCICS members, U.S. Department of State, and adoptive parents and their Vietnamese children in a series of 29 meetings in Indianapolis and Washington D.C. They said they had received over 9,000 letters from U.S. adoptive families, and were impressed. They expressed support for beginning dialogue on not only Hague convention compliance, which they expect to achieve by 2011, but also for an interim agreement to get adoptions to the U.S. started again. Our agency is hopeful that the interim agreement could be in place in the next 9 months. I am skeptical, especially since that will put us at 2010, and I can see the U.S. saying, let's just wait for Hague compliance in 2011. But either way we are advised to keep our USCIS approval in affect and up-to-date. So who knows what may be in store for VN in the next year?