Ethiopia Travel Log: Day 2

Friday February 29th, 2008:

O.k. everyone I just wanted to drop a line that we made it to Ethiopia in one piece and with all of our luggage in tact. The plane ride was really not as bad as I expected, it was around 16 hours but we watched 3 movies, were fed three full meals, read, and slept (with the assistance of a sleeping pill). The worst part was the line checking in to Ethiopian airlines in DC and then having to stand in line at the Ethiopian airport to get our visa, then go through immigration, then get our bags and change some of our money. We found out on the plane that most of the banks here will only accept US bills newer then 2001. So the bad thing is 1/2 our money was old but the good news is we found a bank at the airport that did exchange some of the money for a decent rate. Anyways the adoption agency picked us up and loaded all 8 families and luggage into two vans. Just a note on driving in Ethiopia, there are no seatbelts, they cram as many people as possible into the vehicles and 1/2 the roads are not paved and many may not even be flat. It is really an odd thing to experience. So we arrived at the guest house around 11pm Ethiopian time (1pm Colorado time). It is a nice house which the agency is renting. There are three levels with 6 rooms, several living rooms and two kitchens and dining areas. We get fully prepared meals three times a day. Anyways, Tony went to sleep not long after but I stayed up to read more information from the adoption agency and went to sleep around 2 am.
We woke up at 6am this morning to chanting prayers being broadcast over loudspeakers in the area of town that we are staying at. We were very excited to take hot showers, then as Tony was at the sink shaving all of a sudden the hose of the water heater (a small heater actually attached to the upper wall of the bathroom) busted off and sprayed hot water everywhere. Needless to say, he barely escaped being burned and our bathroom flooded. He and the security guard figured out how to turn off the hot water but cold water kept running out onto the floor. So we rigged it and used a baby tub to send the water into the bathtub. We then got ready just in time to eat pancakes for breakfast and load into a van and meet our beautiful daughter. The first meeting went wonderful! She was at school, yes they moved her to the care center with the older kids and she is driven to school everyday. She was not so sure of us at first, but came right out to the playground and not long after we had her swinging and laughing and popping bubbles. She let us pick her up and called us mommy and daddy before we even used those words with her.














We then toured the house were she is at in the evening, went back to the guest house for lunch and then had a brief meeting with the agency and all other nine families here then went to see her at the care center where she sleeps. When the van pulled up, she ran right over around to the side of our door and ran up into Tony's arms and then mine. It was precious, but then of course everything was chaos and she was off playing and running all over. I think her attention will improve with each visit. The second visit was much shorter and we were brought back to the guest house with the other families. We walked around the neighborhood with another couple. It really is a city of contrasts. I am not sure how to describe it without pictures. Let’s just say that it is a city of millions of people yet there are goats, cows, dogs wondering around and buildings that look like shacks. All the houses are secluded behind tall walls with barbwire on the top. And so our journey has officially began! I have now expired my internet usage time and someone is probably waiting to get on so gotta go.

One Year Ago

One year ago tonight we had our bags packed and sitting at the door waiting for our departure on Wednesday morning. If I remember correctly I got very little sleep that night. I had worked long hours the previous week to finish up reports that needed to be done at the school district I was working for and I had a long "to do" list of things to take care of at home before leaving. I was even writing checks to put in the mail that night to reimburse all the wonderful teachers who had just completed surveys for my dissertation! It is hard to explain what a person feels like the night before they get on a plane to fly to the other side of the world to meet your child for the first time. I was extremely excited to meet our daughter, nervous to leave our son behind, and apprehensive of how I would cope with visiting the poorest country in the world. Here we are with the bags packed. In total, we each had one suitcase with our clothes, one small suitcase with clothes to bring for our daughter, two large suitcases stuffed with donations for the CHSFS care center and mostly medical supplies for AHOPE orphanage. One carry-on each to help survive the 16 hour plane ride and a backpack filled with toys for our daughter. Needless to say packing was a bit overwhelming especially when you are trying to pack for a child who you have no idea what size of clothes or shoes she is wearing. If anyone is interested in getting a copy of my packing list drop me a line and I will email it to you. It is long! There are some medications and basic items I would say that you would definately want to bring such as prescription Cipro, in case you catch a stomache bacteria and some over the counter products for elevation sickness. We also brought several meds in case we needed them for our daughter, such as lice shampoo, antifungal cream, Tylenol, electrolyte mix. I am happy to say that we did not need any of them but other parents have not been so lucky. Many of the infants being adopted were sick and lethargic. At the time that we were there you could buy most anything that you needed fairly reasonable but I am hearing that prices have gone up very high for supplies in Ethiopia.
And of course here is a picture of what all the fuss was about. This is the last picture that we received of our daughter before traveling. After spending 4 months in the care center she looked amazing and if I posted a picture of what she looked like at her arrival to the care center on 10/31/07 you would not even recognize her. She weighed 24 pounds at that time and it is hard for me to even look at that very first picture now knowing that she would have been around 4 years old at the time. Tensae's name means "resurrection" in Amharic and I would say that her transformation before our eyes is close to that of a resurrection. She is the most resilient child I have ever met. Even now looking at this picture and of her most recent pictures I am amazed at how much she has grown. From her measurements on 2/23/2008 to 2/20/2009 she gained 6 pounds and has grown a amazing 4 inches in height.

Blessed to Be Stressed

Wow, as anyone who works in the public school system knows things get harder as we move into spring. I have been feeling a bit exhausted by the demands of my job lately and then somone gave me this really insightful quote by Mother Teresa:

"We, the unwilling, led by the unkowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much, for so long, with so little, we are now qualified to do anything with nothing."

Geez if Mother Teresa admitted to feeling like that, maybe I am not doing so bad afterall?

On another note, it was one year ago this week that we were packing up to get ready to board a plane on 2/27/08 to fly to Ethiopia. Hmm I may need to recap our trip since I was not doing the blog thing last year.

Feeling Thankful

So today I am feeling thankful for all the wonderful people in my life. There is a saying among professionals in the field of psychology that "We stand on the shoulders of giants". In otherwords most of what we as professional psychologists know, we learned from the wise theorists who came before us. When it comes to being a mom I have learned, and sometimes the hard way, that the African Proverb "It takes a village to raise a child" could not be more true. The proverb is from Nigeria and it shares a similar meaning to many African cultures such as the Sukuma proverb "One knee does not bring up a child", and the Swahili proverb "One hand does not nurse a child." And so it is with admiration that today I would like put out there a thank you list to all of the people who have helped me in the last year. Some of them are near strangers and some probably know me better then I do.

Thank you to:

• My best friend who when I called her in a panic for help last week she was able to be where I needed her to be within minutes, no questions asked.
• The mothers adopting from or who have already adopted from Rwanda and whom I have just recently met out in cyberspace. They have already been a enormous source of support, encouragement, and information.
• All the Ethiopian adoptive mothers on the various internet forums that I have accessed for information. They were able to answer my dumb questions when I was new to so many things involved in international and trans-racial adoption.
• The adoption agency staff that has served us for our adoption experiences so far, and to our most recent homestudy social worker who was more then accomodating when we decided to change our country request.
• The medical professionals who have provided our daughter excellent care and guidance since coming home.
• All of my children's teachers who are compassionate, patient, and very well educated.
• My own teachers, and more recently to the faculty on my dissertation committee who have been great sources of support and information whenever needed.
• My extended family who have fully supported our higher education endevers and who responded with excitement to our adoption plans. They understand that doing things one at a time just is not our style.
• Our church community who has been there to help out when help is needed and who welcomes our family every week with open arms.
• My husband who is a wonderful father!
• All those that I have not mentioned but whose "shoulders I stand on" everyday without even knowing or giving credit to.

African Cultural Event

Today we attended a fundraising event at Regis University in Denver for the Catholic organization "Team Africa". All proceeds will go towards community peace building in Uganda. It was a nice event for several reasons. One it was for a good cause and second I think it is important to teach and expose both of our children to the cultures of various African countries. Several countries were represented, including Rwanda, and they had a excellent performance group demonstrating traditional dance common to West African countries. Tensae was shy at first then made me join in a group dance while dad and brother watched in amusement.

And a added bonus when we left the building we saw two patches of pansies that were still intact and full of color! I just cannot tell you how much I love Colorado winters!

Worse then the DVM?

So today was the big day for our appointment with USCIS. Well actually my husband got the joy of submitting the priceless packet to the main Denver USCIS office. He had the day off so I scheduled a InfoPass appointment online and he drove to Denver to turn in the application in person. Again to recap, this is a important piece of the puzzle because the I-600A application ( https://infopass.uscis.gov/info_en.php), which cost us $670 plus $80 each for fingerprinting, will grant us advance approval to adopt a orphan and bring the child/ren to the US and for him/her/them to eventually become US citizens. He described the experience as worse then a trip to the DMV. There was a room full of confused looking people waiting around because they did not have InfoPass appointments (thus I highly reccomend making your appointment if you are doing this at: https://infopass.uscis.gov/info_en.php) and only two people working the "windows". By the time he got to the person that he needed to talk to this individal was not very friendly. Perhaps due to the amount of time that the previous customer had taken. But all that said the good thing is all our paperwork was in order and I was able to meet up with him at a second location after work to get our fingerprints taken. If all goes well we will be receiving the coveted I-171H form (our approval) in 6 to 8 weeks. Then many months in the future when we travel to our newly adopted child/ren we will either submitt the I-600, Petition to Classify Orphan as a Immediate Relative (http://www.uscis.gov/files/form/i-600.pdf) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia or Kigali, Rwanda. The annoying thing is we still have to refinalize our adoption in CO and not untill that is done will our future child/children be considered US citizens. Then to get proof of citizenship you need to pay more money to USCIS to get a Certificate of Citizenship or obtain the child's US passport.

Mean People at Dance Class

So I need to take a moment to vent. Tensae takes dance class at our local park and rec center. She really likes it but I have to say I am having a difficult time with some of the parents, or I guess it s actually the grandmothers who I am having a hard time with. Last fall I show up for her first dance class with a new teacher. She is so excited and after she goes into class a particular gradmother sits down beside me and says "So __ was in kindergarten with your son and I don't remeber him having a sister. Are you foster parenting?" I say no. She then proceeds to inquire about my daughter so I go ahead and explain that yes we adopted her and where she is from. The lady proceeds so say "Well, isn't it nice that there are people willing to adopt THOSE children." My jaw proceeds to drop to the floor and then I am saved by a nice great grandmother sitting on the other side of me (who is parenting her bi-racial great grand daughter). This other grandma says "Well all children deserve a home." The subject is dropped and then the first grandmother proceeds to ask me more questions which leads to "So she is your first girl. You mean to tell me you had to go all the way across the world to get yourself a little girl." At that point I decided there was no point in even responding to this women and I have not spoke to her since then. I am pretty sure she was just being naive and realized after the fact that she way overstepped her boundaries. What concerned me the most is that I have since learned that this family attends a well known church in town that has several young families in process to adopt from Ethiopia. I hope that they will not encounter the same rude comments.

Then when I thought we were past the rough introductions to this group, just a few months ago I am sitting at the end of the benches and I overhear this from the second grandmother. "Is that other little girl back, oh there she is, I can't remember her name, the black skinned one, her hair is all frizzy today." Again I am sitting there in stunned silence. What shocked me this time is that this is coming from the great-grandmother of the little girl who is bi-racial. Now she is very light skinned so no one would know it, but some day that little girl is going to need to come to terms with her identity and who knows what she has heard at home! Thankfully amidst all of this my daughter has heard nothing and is oblivious to the rude comments. I hope to keep it this way as long as I can. I have been reading the book "I am Chocolate, Your Vanilla" and the well researched author reccomends shielding our children from racism and racial stereotypes for as long as we can. So I am now officially a momma bear on patrol! What matters to me is that she knows she is the most beautiful, smart and talented ballerina I have ever seen! And anyone seeing these pictures, I am sure would agree! My personal assessment of these grandmas: They are crazy and not worth anymore of my time! You keep dancing girl, momma has your back!

This Valentine's Day

This was Tensae's first Valentine's Day. She has over the last year amazed me in how quickly she learns the rituals of her new life. So when we were at the store a few weeks ago and I showed her the valentines cards and explained what they were and that "On Valentine's Day we celebrate our love for each other, for our family and our friends." She interrupts me and says "I know mom, I want the Dora cards." Again I was blown away by her natural understanding of things that we adults try to make complex.

So it got me thinking "Why is the subject of love so complex"?. After all this is the very foundation of peace in our world. When children are raised with love they learn to see themselves as worthy individuals, to love themselves and then to love others. But what about all the children in this world who have lost their parents? Who do not have anyone to love them? Even if they are fortunate enough to land in a orphanage where they will receive food and shelter is there enough love to go around? If the love is provided by a older sibling is this sufficient? Is it sufficient for one adult to provide love for 20 or more children? So on this Valentine's Day I ask that anyone who sees this to take a moment and consider this, "Does your heart and home have room to love one more?".


* Turn off the music player on the bottom of the blog if it is playing music over the video

I Love Winter in Colorado!

Two weekends ago we enjoyed the beautiful snow covered Rocky Mountains during a relaxing church retreat:

Then this weekend my kids had a blast playing in the sandbox on a 60 degree day:

Got Patience?

I received a call today that more information was needed from our adoption agency.
For the time being please pray for my patience!http://www.spiritisup.com/patience.html

I do know that from our last adoption experience that this will be the first of many wait times. The wait for applications to be accepted, for appointments to be made, for documents to be collected, for signatures to be given, for notarized documents to be state certified, for the speed of mail, for the translation of documents, for the approval from government officials, for the referral of a child, for the anxious anticipation to pass court, and the worst wait of all, the wait to travel once you know that child is now yours. When my, wise beyond her years, daughter asked me not long ago "Why did it take so long for you to come get me?" I was heartbroken and could only reply with "We were also waiting, waiting a very long time, we loved you very much before we even knew you and you grew in our heart". And so the emotions of this journey start again..................................

The Burning Birthdate Debate

One of the dilemmas that some adoptive parents face is whether or not the reported birth date of your child is accurate. This has become a common occurrence in older children adopted from Ethiopia for several reasons. First of their calendar is actually 7 years behind ours, they do not celebrate birthdays in Ethiopia, and if a child is born at home in a rural area there is no registration system thus no birth certificate created at the time of birth. We learned about all of this the hard way, through experience.

We were told that our daughter was born June 2005, but immediately upon meeting her, when we traveled one year ago this month, I noticed that she seemed older. It also seemed strange to me that in Ethiopia they had moved her from the toddler care center to the school-age care center and had started her in school. We were told that she was still older 2 at that time so I was shocked! When I asked they said it was because she was doing so well that they moved her up.

Upon arriving home we gave her several months to settle in and watch for physical growth. We started her in preschool with other 3 year old children a few months into being home because she wanted to go to school. This last summer she started growing very fast in height and I started to think it was strange that we knew she was very malnourished yet she was above the 90th percentile in height for a 3 year old. I am a school psych so it helped that I knew what to watch for as far as development. One day this fall she brought home a picture from preschool that was perfectly colored in, I mean every tiny detail. My thought was “that is not normal for a 3 year old!”. BUT her pediatrician who had never seen a child adopted from Ethiopia before kept saying that her age was not that far off. Then we started to have a lot of tantrums which I now know were related to her being really frustrated. Finally when she had dental surgery the pediatric dentist came out and said "do you know her two bottom teeth are loose" she estimated that Tensae was at least one year old maybe 2. So I gave her an informal IQ test because I needed to know what was going on with my daughter! I say informal because I know that the results are not 100% accurate as I am of course her mother. I was immediately shocked by how well she did on the non-verbal items. Her nonverbal IQ placed her well within the 5 year old range of intelligence. What made me realize how frustrated she must be is that her verbal ability was still only in the 3 year range. Keep in mind that any testing involving English vocabulary would not be an accurate measure of her intelligence because she had only been speaking English for 10 months at the time. But it is truly amazing to me that she had obtained an English vocabulary in 10 months equivalent to a three year old child!

So I had finally had enough waiting and I talked to her preschool teacher. She felt 100% that Tensae would be ready for kindergarten next year, that she is advanced in her class of 3 year olds and she fits in very well with the 4 and 5 year olds who are going to kindergarten next year. I expressed my concerns again to her pediatrician. He ordered a bone-age scan which showed that she was in the 4 year age range which again he did not think was that far off and it was not worth changing her age. I disagreed because the bone-age scans were normed on average white kids in the 1950’s. If she was severely malnourished of-course her growth would be behind! So I requested a referral from her pediatrician to the International Adoption Clinic at the Denver Children's Hospital. It was a hassle getting the appointment scheduled because you need to clear it by insurance first (and not all insurance companies will pay for it). When you have a developmental evaluation with IAC they have an occupational therapist, a physical therapist, a physician, and a psychologist all there to assess your child. I voiced my concern about the age and they all watched her and said oh yes, I think you are right. So they tested her and she came out with the fine motor skills of a 6 year old and the gross motor skills of a 5 year old. They recommended keeping her reported birth date and changing the year by one to make her 4. I agreed and got the paperwork ready to send to court.

Then a month later I was brushing her teeth and there was a 6 year molar in the top of her mouth! So I called the dentist again, and she said “children never get molars before age 5, I am confident she is between the age of 5 and 6”. So here we go again I called the doc at IAC to discuss it and request a new letter with a new birth date recommendation. I talked it over with my husband and we agreed to move her birth date from 6/28/05 to 9/28/03. This way she may still be the same age as some of the children in her kindergarten class next year but we are at least being as honest as we can with her about her age. This would make her currently 5 years and 4 months of age. Yes, we could have left it alone in the first place but she is so smart it would not be fair for her not to start school next year and I sure don’t want a little girl in 4th grade starting to menstruate!

So all of this has put paperwork on hold for us. I will have to send a general motion to the court to the same judge to approved her adoption revalidation in Colorado asking him to order the office of vital records to change the date on her birth certificate. If anyone in CO needs the court form you can find it at: http://www.courts.state.co.us/Forms/PDF/jdf76.pdfThen we will need to request them to create a new birth certificate and get new copies. There is no charge for the motion to the court but there will be for the new bc to be created. I have waited to get her passport and certificate of citizenship because I want to have the correct birth date. I was told it is nearly impossible to get a birth date changed on the passport or certificate of citizenship. We are also waiting to get her US social security number and will have to fight with them when we do to get the birth date changed because we already have an alien status social security number. Uhhg! There is a really great article by Dr. Jane Aronson (The Orphan Doctor) titled The Conundrum of Age Assignment for Children Adopted from Abroad. She recommends waiting 2 years after arrival home to get the age question answered. That is all great but as I just said getting birth dates changed on paperwork is not so easy and neither will most school districts let kids start school without a birth certificate showing that they are age 5 prior to September 1st! Expert medical advice is great but then there is also the real world that we live in as adoptive parents.
Here is a link to her article: http://www.orphandoctor.com/medical/commondiseases/developmental/conundrum.html

And a Drumroll Please........

Some exciting announcements in our lives:

• We received news that our homestudy was signed by our local agency. We are approved for the adoption of 1 or 2 more children, of either gender, up to 3 years of age from the country of Rwanda. This is just one tiny step in many phases of approval. We still need to be approved to work with our international placement agency, to receive approval from USCIS, and ultimately to be approved by the Rwandan government.

• And on another note we are making progress in our educational careers. My husband who is a PhD Biology student successfully passed his written and oral comprehensive exams last month. He is now starting work on his dissertation and I will be defending my doctoral dissertation this spring. So thankfully we will have fewer things to juggle when we bring our new children home and a lot less multi-tasking to do!

Why International Adoption?

My husband and I have been married for ten years in May. While we have faced our share of challenges and disagreements one thing we have always agreed on is how to parent our children and that we wanted to adopt even if we had biological children of our own. In the miraculous year of 2000 our eldest son was born, however we experienced the loss of multiple miscarriages in the years before and after. So we decided to put our adoption plan into place sooner rather then later. When we joyfully announced our plans to adopt a child from Ethiopia here is a sample of some of the questions that I received:

Are you sure you want to adopt? I am sure you can have another child of your own?
Why wouldn't you adopt a child in the US, there are plenty of orphans here?
Why Ethiopia, just because it is something different?
Are you sure the child will not have HIV?

Hmm, I answered these questions as nicely as I could, but now that I have some experience with this I probably would not be as nice. First of all, "Why the heck would anyone not want to adopt a child in need of a home?". There are millions of orphans in this world and EVERY child deserves a forever family. For some reason people seemed to get caught up on the idea that a adopted child is not the parent's "real child". I have to say that the amount of love I feel for my daughter is no less then what I feel for my son. She is in every way "my child". As far as the international versus domestic question, this is a very personal decision. For various reasons we felt drawn to international adoption. Again once we decided to adopt internationally the choice of which country is also a very personal one. Each country has differences in the amount of time that a family waits to receive a referral and travel to their child, differences in the paperwork required, the fees to be funded, and level of care that the children receive in country, and the requirements of the country for whether parents are even eligible or not to adopt from that country.

I did my research and we decided that Ethiopia was the best fit for our first adoption. Orphans come into care in Ethiopia for various reasons. Both of the child's parents may be deceased or one parent may be living and unable to provide for the basic needs of the child. What I know for sure from our experience in Ethiopia is that they love their children dearly and no child is handed over to a orphanage by his or her family without it being the last resort. Adoption from Ethiopia is no longer "unusual" as one person had asked me. In 2008 1,724 children were adopted from Ethiopia into the US and this does not include the number of children going into homes in European countries. Unfortunately international adoption is not perfect and as country programs grow the challenge of ensuring ethical practices will increase. This is probably a whole new topic for another day. What I do know is that there are no easy solutions on how to correct the situation that results in millions of orphans in the first place. I am the first to admit that adoption is not the answer to the world's "orphan crisis". Yet there continues to be a enormous need for willing adoptive parents, particularly those who would be open to a child with special needs, a sibling group or a older child.

My Launch into Blog World

Well here I go, I never thought of myself as the blogging type, more the private type, but given all that we have experienced in the last year I feel the urge to share some information. My inspiration is the adoption journey to Ethiopia in which our beautiful daughter became a part of our lives. Needless to say the process was one that brought about every emotion under the sun not to mention key skills in paperwork completion. And here we are starting the process all over again for the country of Rwanda. But that story is yet to be told. For now I have way to many thoughts from the last year flowing around my head. I have been thinking about how to go about organizing this and I am not sure yet. Maybe one question at a time? We have been asked so many and so I will try to tackle them here as they come to me.