Adoption Update: We saw him!

Danna,

Congratulations! What a feeling to see your child for the first time! Best wishes to you at the beginning of this awesome experience!

Vonnie

I forgot to ask, how did you pick Ethiopia specifically?

Becky, when we decided to adopt (I had informed Frank on our second date that I was going to adopt a child/children, and he'd said, "Me too."), we looked into lots of different options. I worked for 2 years for a public foster care and adoption agency, so I had a lot of knowledge about that process and knew there were a lot of kids in America who needed homes. And we knew we didn't want an infant, so we knew if we went domestic we'd go through a public agency. But for some reason, I had always envisioned myself adopting a 5 year old boy from Russia, so we looked into the international options as well. The more we learned about international adoption, and the more we talked about it, the more convinced we became that it was what we wanted to do. All children everywhere in the world are equally deserving of loving homes, but we knew that conditions for orphaned/abandoned children in other countries can be a lot worse than they are for orphaned/abandoned children in America, and we also knew that, even if they are never adopted, once American kids graduate foster care they have a whole host of resources and social programs available to them that just aren't even a remote possibility for kids who graduate from overseas orphanages. So then the only question was, where? We looked into the programs in several countries (and quickly ruled out Russia because we weren't comfortable with the process there) and were thinking we'd probably go with Kazakhstan. But we knew we'd have to save for a long time to afford it, so we figured that we would adopt a 4-6 year old boy when Danika was 5-7 years old. About a month after we'd decided that, we heard a radio program called The World do a two-part series on the AIDS crisis in Ethiopia and specifically about the fact that there are now over 1 million children in Ethiopia who have been orphaned by HIV/AIDS alone. The second part of the program profiled two American agencies (Americans for African Adoptions, our agency, and Adoption Advocates International, at the time the only two agencies in America licensed to do adoptions from Ethiopia [now there are 4 agencies]) who were doing Ethiopian adoptions. It was truly an "ah-ha" moment for Frank and me. I looked at him, he looked at me, and we KNEW that was what we were going to do. I volunteered for 5 years as a camp counselor at a summer camp for children with HIV/AIDS and I was also an HIV case manager for a year, so HIV/AIDS has always been a special interest of mine. It just seemed the right thing for us. We requested information from both agencies, just so we could know what was going on, and found out that adopting from Africa (while still expensive) is relatively inexpensive in the world of international adoption. A few weeks after we got the information (this was last August), Frank and I were working in the yard one day and I said, "So when do you think we should do this?" and he said, "How about next year?" I said, "Well, if we want a child next year we'd better start now," and he said, "Ok."

So, I could have answered your question with, "We heard a radio program about the AIDS problem in Ethiopia," but, as Paul Harvey says, "Now you know the rest of the story."

Danna =]

Wow! It's great to find your story. My partner and I are in a domestic adoption process now--just starting out--and it is inspiring to read about others further along. I hope the rest of this goes as smoothly as possible for you.

"All that you have is your soul."
-Tracy Chapman