Why Ethiopia 103

I do not want to give the impression (in my last post) that we are trying to "rescue" a child from Ethiopia. This is absolutely not the case. I could have come up with an equally appalling list of statistics for the United States as well. Ethiopia has a vast history and a rich culture and we plan on passing these down to our children, all of them. Through this adoption we will add an Ethiopian child to our family and Ethiopia to our hearts.

1. Ethiopia is one of the oldest countries in the world. It is mentioned in the Bible in the Old Testament as the nation of Cush. In the New Testament it’s also referred to as Ethiopia in multiple places including the story in Acts 8 when Peter baptizes the man in the desert. The fossil of “Lucy” was also found in Ethiopia and has been aged at 3.2 million years old.

2. Family is very important in Ethiopian culture and is viewed as the building block for society and worthy of special treatment and attention from the government.

3. Families are generally large and live close to one another so children grow up working and playing with their cousins.

4. Ethiopian society is patriarchal and has distinct divisions of labor for men and women. This is most true in the rural areas and beginning to change in the cities. Men are responsible for providing for their family and doing the farming or other labor. Women take care of the house and the children as well as tasks like gathering water and firewood.

5. Ethiopia is the home of coffee! There is a traditional coffee ceremony, which is still performed today and is an important part of Ethiopian culture and displaying hospitality. I’ll do a separate post on this later, since let’s face it, what I will have the most of during this adoption process is time! :)

6. Singing and dancing are common at celebrations and they have a very distinctive style of dance. Many reggae and jazz musicians talk about Ethiopian influences in their music.


7. The Blue Nile runs through Ethiopia and contributes the majority of the water to the Nile. (I think I read 55-60%) This provides Ethiopia with the potential to become a vast agricultural nation significantly increasing the outlook for many in the country. This is a complicated process to supply an entire country with adequate irrigation and will take time.


8. Religion is an important part of their culture and though there are multiple religions, Ethiopian Orthodox, Islam, and Christianity they are able to co-exist peacefully, which is a lesson many countries could take note of!

Why Ethiopia 102

"If you have come to help me you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together."
*Aboriginal Activist Group 1970s*

1. 
   
   Ethiopia has a population of about 85 million people.
2. 
   
   The vast majority of Ethiopian people live in rural areas.
3. 
   
   The average age of those people? 16.9 years old.
4. 
   
   A woman has an average of six children.
5. 
   
   The infant mortality rate is 80 deaths for every 1,000 live births.
6. 
   
   In Ethiopia, 12% of children under age 5 suffer from acute malnutrition.
7. 
   
   The lives of people in the cities are generally better than those who live in the rural areas, but still 55% of city populations live in slums.
8. 
   
   There are 2.6 doctors for every 100,000 people.
9. 
   
   The country suffers from poor sanitation and malnutrition.
10. 
    
    Most children aren't able to continue their education through primary school.

Stay tuned for the third installment in this series! :)

Why Ethiopia 101

Today's lecture, I mean BLOG...will be just some facts about Ethiopia and why we selected it.

I first heard of people adopting from Ethiopia through my sister. I don't know where she first heard of it, but this was where her heart was. She had just read "There Is No Me Without You" by Melissa Fay Greene and she wanted the rest of the family to read it as well. It was while I reading/crying my way through this book that I was first moved by Ethiopia. If you haven't read this book, you really really need to do so. It's not light reading, but it is worthwhile. While I was reading it I just had a visceral reaction that I/we (my husband and I) could adopt from Ethiopia. This was late spring/early summer of 2008.

When my husband and I got around to researching international adoption a few months ago I still had Ethiopia on the brain. We had, however, always been interested in adopting from a Latino country and so after checking out the requirements for Ethiopia I moved on to those countries.

What I found very quickly was that that option was almost certainly closed to us. Guatemala which had been our first choice (of that culture) had recently closed completely. The rest of the Latino countries either had extremely small programs that I wasn't entirely comfortable with, or they had prolonged waiting times to complete adoptions (think years and years), or they had residency requirements that were too long for us. Every time I would find another country and get excited it would just be a matter of a few minutes before I would see that the doors to that country were shut as far as we were concerned. In our case all roads were leading to Ethiopia. I'm still interested in these countries and so maybe our next adoption will be from within that culture. :)

I moved my research to the other "popular" countries to adopt from. It wasn't that I was trying to avoid Ethiopia at all, I was just trying to gather a comprehensive list of our options. As it turns out there is a very short list of countries that we are eligible for.

The biggest setback was because of our ages, or rather the lack of our ages! Being 30 is a fairly common requirement and we are not there yet. Other limits that we ran into were the amount of time in country and the number of trips that had to be made. I have two small children at home and I simply will not leave them for longer than 10 days. Even the thought of those ten days terrifies me, but I'm trying to be brave. :) I desperately want to travel and experience my child's heritage, but I just cannot be gone so long with such young kids. I can't do it. Other countries had programs that were slowing way down or were being restructured and so even though we met their requirements the timing wasn't right. We also wanted a child from a culture that we already had an affinity for as we plan to make this a significant part of our family life so that ruled out a few other countries. Then my husband has some travel restrictions a la the military and so that ruled out a few more countries that we were interested in.

The country that fit these requirements was Ethiopia. I really feel like God brought Ethiopia to my sister's heart so that she could bring it into my heart.

Holt International

The agency my husband and are working with is Holt International (I would make that a link if I had *any* idea how to do so). Our process for selecting an agency to work with took a few weeks during which time I read as much about selecting an adoption agency as possible, mostly online, but I also read, "The Complete Book of International Adoption" by Dawn Davenport (again, pretend that's a link). I joined Yahoo groups and asked stupid questions. I called agencies. I talked to my sister. I emailed agencies. I watched DVDs and read promotional material that I had requested. I made the mother of all spreadsheets. I thought and thought and thought. I also consulted with my husband, but generally he trusts me to do research on stuff like this because it puts my talent for obsessing to good use. :)

For us it really came down to a choice between two agencies and we chose Holt International. If you want to know about the other agency feel free to send me an email because I have good vibes for them too.

These are some of the reasons that we chose Holt. (Oh, and these aren't really in order of importance. I'm not quite that neurotic.)

1. They say that they are "Finding families for children" that might seem obvious, but if you contrast that to "finding children for families" it's a really big difference. I really believe that they want the best for these children. It's not a matter of profit and just sticking the kids with anyone who wants them. They are after the best homes possible. As a mother that really speaks to my heart because "there but the grace of God go I" and if it were my boys I would want the best home ever for them with a family that would walk through the fires of Hell if that was what it took. Melodramatic? Yes, but so true.

2. Holt is the Original international adoption agency. They started in the 50's out of one couple's love for children and they got the laws of Congress changed so that they could adopt internationally. THAT is dedication, and from what I've seen that dedication and level of expertise is still rampant in the Holt staff. I want that kind of commitment to children in my agency.

3. Humanitarian Work! This is a big one for us. We didn't want an agency that was just swooping in and adopting out children. Holt works with each family that comes to them to first of all see if there is any way that they can support them so that the child can remain in their home, then they see if there is extended family or a family in that child's community/country that could provide for them, and then they look to international adoption. They do community building projects such as helping build and take care of schools and hospitals. They sponsor children. They offer family preservation services through daycare centers. They make sure pregnant women have access to food, shelther, and medical care with no pressure to relinquish their baby. They teach skills to parents and help to improve communities. It's easy for agency to "talk the talk", but the bottom line is that we want an agency that really is committed to "walk the walk".

4. Their fees, contract, and terms of service (for lack of a better phrase) are fair, fully-disclosed, and readily available to view. Some agencies try to keep this information secret, have fees that are out of line with the "norm", and simply have certain things written into their contracts that are unpleasant for the families trying to work with them.

5. They are friendly, approachable, knowledgeable, and supportive. This is agency that we will be working closely with via email and phone frequently for at least a year and intermittently beyond that. I wanted an agency that answered my questions in a timely manner and without making me feel like my questions were a burden to them. We've been treated nothing but graciously so far and expect that this will be our treatment throughout.

These are some of the biggest reasons and maybe later on in the process something else will jump to mind about why we're working with Holt and if so I'll add it at that time. I really did do a lot of work in selecting this agency and so far we're extremely pleased with them and are looking forward to continuing on this journey with Holt.

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Links added after the fact in editing. I'm not a lunatic.