The First Agency Update of the New Year

We hope the New Year is starting off on the right foot for all of our family and friends. We hope this is the year that our daughter joins us.

There is only one girl referral in 2008 left to be processed and then onto January 2009 dossiers. At least we will be in the right year then.

Below is the most recent update from our agency.



We have been busy here already this year. Twelve families have accepted new referrals and at least two more are pending. We are receiving more files and currently have some preschool aged boys ready to refer but no families with complete dossiers. These include a set of six year old twins; both are boys.

Some old cases are still dragging but gradually they are getting finished. New cases are being filed in court rather quickly but the court hearings have not occurred on the dates originally given in some cases.

Many families are traveling in January and February and Temesgen sent the following message of concern a few days ago.

“The Ethiopian adoption agency network would like to reiterate that parents that come to take their children should refrain from taking children to public places. Some agencies are not strictly informing parents about this issue and so many families are seen around with adopted kids.”

I asked Gail to go into detail as to what AAI families are being allowed to do and this is her response:

"As you will have seen from Temesgen's email, it is still considered very important to limit or not take the children out in public. It is written into the Ethiopian adoption law something like this "a child shall go from the orphanage directly to the airport.”

Because this is very hard we have made a few small exceptions. These include ONLY: Caribou Restaurant for dinner only, Sabahar Silk company, where the compound is an enclosed space with the weaving and shop and generally only foreign visitors go there and we have added the leprosy hospital (Alert) gift shop, though it doesn't have much to offer.

We are NOT allowing children to go to the Hilton unless it is part of a school field trip, in which case all siblings can participate. We are NOT allowing families to take children to any other locations in Addis unless part of a school field trip.

We are allowing a day trip for families staying longer than 1 week, to drive to the lakeside in DebreZiet. Generally families who come only for the adoption week do not have time for this. There is not much to do, but the drive out helps those families who are staying for a longer time. Families can also take their children on the official family visits that are arranged by the AAI social workers.

There are times we make some exceptions but those are generally only for families with older children, as the large issue with adoptions are in regards to infants and toddlers. These exceptions have generally been limited to church on Sunday and the Yod Abyssinia restaurant with dancing. It is not an Ethiopian custom to take young children out in public, except generally to church, or the doctor or to a daycare or school. Otherwise most families do not take their children shopping or to restaurants. It is not part of the culture. Therefore when locals see foreigners taking "their" children to such public places it becomes like a double insult, especially if is to a restaurant/bar late into the evening. This continues to be one place where families are often seen with babies (not AAI families) and we have heard many times from our staff and other locals who frequent these restaurants how everyone in the restaurant is talking about the adoptive parents in a negative way. Our own staff has talked about this."

With regard to referrals, the we have one December family left, and then we will be starting with families whose dossiers went in January. For boys, there are a couple of April families left, then we start on May and there are many May families.

We ask all families who have not yet received their child to check the status of their immigration file. Be sure that fingerprints and homestudy are current. Recently we have had several families have to delay travel because fingerprints or homestudy needed to be updated. AAI’s policy is that we will care for a child for three months after the adoption decree, but families who delay traveling to get their child beyond that point are charged a foster care fee to cover the cost of caring for the child for extra months.

We are looking forward to a good and busy year. The only cloud on the horizon is that our accountant says that AAI’s expenses are rising faster than our income, even though we are working hard to keep costs within bounds. We will likely have to announce fee increases in the near future.

Best wishes to all in the New Year.