time flies when you have children

Some photos to show that 2 1/2 years has flown by, changing my 18 month old baby into a gorgeous 5 year old boy! I'm posting these here and not on the private blog as I feel this is very much adoption related, and hopefully enough to bring a little smile to those families enduring the long wait.

Here is May 30, 2007 in Ethiopia.

Here is November 29, 2009 in Calgary.

It was absolutely wonderful to reunite with Selemnah while he was visiting Calgary on Sunday. Although it was a brief visit with other families, he still made time for a personal visit with each of us. We were also blessed to drive him and the other two guests around Calgary a little and take them to their hotel.

It was a surprise for Selemnah to see us too as he thought we still lived in BC. He said he had thought of us but then was saddened as he recalled we lived in BC. Surprise!! And what a memory he had, recalling so many details from our trip to Ethiopia. It shocked me a little because he has met so many families over the many years working with CAFAC.

Mikiyas remembered Selemnah too. He walked right up to Selemnah and, although Selemnah had his back to Mikiyas, Mikiyas said "danenah" [how are you in Amharic]. Selemnah whipped around very quickly and they embraced with smiles. Mikiyas doesn't speak the little Amharic he knows to just anyone so it was a special moment.

It is unfortunate that we won't be blessed to have Selemnah with us again when return to Ethiopia in 2010, but we will have the joy of reuniting with his brother Mesfin.

TWO ... 2 ... two ... 2 ... EIGHTEEN ... 18 ... eighteen ... 18 ... UGH!

You've Got To Move It and Escape To Africa!

I thought this poster was fitting for our big number 2. No, we've not taken a big leap backwards in our wait for a referral. It's our 2 year anniversary since we started our number 2 adoption.

I think of the time and how it's managed to fly by so quickly. Two years already. That is so annoying to me. I'm glad the time has flown by quickly. I am thankful that I have my first child home already and five more everyday to make the days move fast. It makes me glad that we've moved provinces and are continuing to go through the moving process into a new home [hopefully in January]. It makes me glad for career changes and rollercoaster rides. If my life had just maintained the same monotony as before, these 2 years would have dragged on and made me crazy.

How many months have we been waiting for our referral?

EIGHTEEN MONTHS!!

Do you know what that means?

It means we could see a referral as early March. Of course, it also may just mean it's 18 months and we could receive a referral anytime in 2010. One thing I've learned, stop guessing when it's going to happen because nothing in the adoption world is predictable. Remember, we have no control over our "pregnancies"!

So I think of March and hope that we receive our referral by then, if not sooner of course. Lyle has recently learned that his boss and his wife will be going to Africa for 3 weeks next summer. It would be detrimental if they were both in Africa at the same time. Hmm...

As well, we have another AMAZING plan in the works and I'd like to be in Ethiopia in June or July. But God's hand is in that amazing plan and His timing of knitting these things together is always perfect. Soon, very soon, we will be sharing this plan with all of you. Hold on tight ... the future is only gonna get more exciting. True optimism at speak!

What is it we do??

Here is a great article / answer to all those people who question what a stay-at-home mom does. Enjoy the read, then also think of all those stay-at-home moms who also endure "real" jobs from home, multiple siblings [especially those with more than 2 children], homeschooling, dayhomes / babysitting, juggling extra-curricular activities for more than 1 child ...

The article really hit home for me yesterday when it took me 2 1/2 hours to write one Christmas card, and I wasn't even making the Christmas card like some moms do!!!

Citizenship DOB Change Update

Yup, just another update to say nothing is happening.

It's been a few months since I last called Citizenship to find out the status of Mikiyas' DOB change application. I finally did the call today expecting, and receiving, the same answer. They are still waiting to hear from the Canadian Embassy in Addis Ababa.

They did tell me that they will re-send the letter they sent me back in March advising that the application is delayed. They'll just change the date. This way I have something current on my file. Well, isn't that just the answer to everything!

I know that I can get a new birth certificate while in Ethiopia, and I will do that regardless of the decision made here in Canada. But I am hoping that citizenship will soon approve the DOB change request without a new birth certificate. I'm already imagining what it will be like trying to obtain a passport with no original Citizenship card, no Canadian ID other than a medical card and having a child that commonly gets mistaken for six but is three ... let alone going through airport security when we do eventually go to Ethiopia. It's one thing to have a child that looks nothing like you and to produce adoption paperwork. It's another thing when the child looks nothing like his photocopied ID either. Hmm... Never dreamed it would take more than one and a half years to get citizenship to approve the change.

I know, I know. They never forget to remind me ... "it's precedent setting". Come on! Just hire a couple of people to open a new department because you know you've already admitted that you know once mine goes through, if it goes through, you'll get many more requests like this in the future. All my evidence is there. I've given you everything. You'd be off your rocker to say my son is still three years old. Approve it and get on with it. Or are you waiting for next years budget allowance to hire someone to do these applications? Well, we know that won't happen. Our tax dollars can't be used for something quite so productive when less than 75% of Canada requires something to be done.

Okay. I'm done venting for now.

BeadforLife and Sseko Designs

A friend of mine and myself have joined forces with The Power of Four to help raise money for two amazing organizations in Uganda Africa, as well as an orphanage in Ethiopia.

It is an amazing opportunity to buy Christmas gifts for your friends, family, yourself and help the woman of Uganda. In addition, Sseko Designs has agreed to contribute $5.00 from each sandal purchase to the Tikuret Orphanage in Ethiopia. Thus, becoming the Christmas gifts that give twice and thrice!

You can click on the poster below to read more about it the open house party, or you can continue to read below some background information on each organization. You do not need to attend the party to place your order.

Check out each of the organizations "shopping" sections online and I will do my best to accommodate your orders. However, prices will be a few dollars higher to allow for US exchange rates. If you would like to order online through me, send me an email and I will provide you with pricing options.

Sseko Designs is a not-just-for-profit enterprise that recognizes the power of business and responsible consumerism to support sustainable economic development, which in turn affects a country's educational, justice, and health care systems. The goal of Sseko Designs is two-fold: provide university tuition for these promising young women through a sustainable monthly income, while also contributing to the overall economic development of Uganda. Sseko Designs hires recent secondary school graduates for this nine month period to live and work together, while earning money that will go directly towards their university education. Every sandal has a story. This story has only just begun, but with your help, it will be a story of hope, success and change.

BeadforLife eradicates extreme poverty by creating bridges of understanding between impoverished Africans and concerned world citizens. Ugandan women turn colorful recycled paper into beautiful beads, and people who care open their hearts, homes and communities to buy and sell the beads. The beads thus become income, food, medicine, school fees and hope. It is a small miracle that enriches us all.

The Tikuret Orphanage is in Ethiopia being affected by the current famine. They have two orphanages, one in Addis Ababa and one in Awassa. In addition, they have an HIV clinic and a community centre for educating and providing health care to women and children in the community. It is a fabulous organization that needs a lot of help right now.

Harvesting Children Part 2

Since I posted about the Australian broadcast about Harvesting Children in Ethiopia, and gave my viewpoints on the whole thing, I feel it is fair if I let the other side tell their story. I received permission to post the following open letter written by Michelle Gardner, the lady portrayed in the broadcast as harvesting.

An Open Letter Responding to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's production "Fly Away Home"

To Whom It May Concern:

The Australian television show "Fly Away Home" has been distressing to all of us involved with Ethiopian adoption. Because I formerly worked with CWA and a DVD with me speaking was showcased in the Australian show I feel I have become something of a scapegoat for perceived wrongs in Ethiopian adoption and I want to clarify what happened so each of you can form your opinions more knowledgeably. The following is lengthy but I am hopeful the information will dispel many rumors.

I'd like to give you a bit of background regarding how I have worked in Ethiopia over the years.

My husband and I have three bio kids and we adopted a five year old with cleft lip and palate from China in 1995. That adoption was through CWA and I first met Tomilee Harding of Christian World Adoption on that trip.

In 1997 we adopted a 4 year old girl from Russia who was born without arms. In 2001 we adopted a 9 year old boy from India who is blind. While we were in the process of adopting our son we received many, many inquiries from people asking how to adopt, how to raise finances to adopt, and what it is like to adopt older children.

As a result of this interest we developed a non-profit ministry entitled Kingdom Kids Adoption Ministries in 2001. We held adoption conferences around the country and in Europe , helped families finance adoption, and did quite a bit of speaking about adoption and adoption issues.

In 2003 I was shown a video of waiting children in Ethiopia produced by Adoption Advocates International. Although we weren't planning to expand our family further, we were very drawn to a 9 year old boy and his baby sister shown in the video. We prepared our paperwork to adopt the children and about a month before we were to be assigned a court date we received the very sad news that the baby had died in the orphanage. My husband flew to Ethiopia right away to spend a few days with our son to be, and during that time our future son told my husband he would still like a baby sister. Three months later, in May of 2004, I traveled to Ethiopia to bring home our son and his new baby sister.

On that trip I met a medical missionary who had helped to care for our new son and his baby sister before the children were taken to an orphanage in Addis Ababa . She told me there were many, many children in southern Ethiopia desperately needing families (she met them when she did medical clinics in various villages) and she asked if there was any way I could help with this through Kingdom Kids. Since we aren't an adoption agency, I told her I would do some checking and see if there was an agency that might be interested in working in southern Ethiopia .

The first agency I asked wasn't interested, and then I thought of Christian World Adoption, through whom we had completed our adoption from China in 1995. I asked if they would be interested in becoming licensed in Ethiopia and working in the southern regions and they were quite interested. I traveled to Ethiopia with some of their staff and introduced them to people with whom I'd made contact. After they became licensed in Ethiopia they asked me to be the coordinator of their proposed older child program. I agreed to do so and over the next 2 ½ years I traveled to Ethiopia 5 or 6 times with their staff or on my own, with the trips paid for by CWA.

When I traveled my job was to interview children at the orphanages with which CWA worked.

Because it is difficult to find families for older children, I tried to show a bit of the child's personality in the DVDs. I also tried to be very clear with any relatives or guardians of the children that adoption is permanent, that the children would join a new family and have new parents, that the children would become American citizens and therefore would probably spend their lives in America . I told them that if they made a decision for a child to be adopted they would probably never see that child again. This was not to be hard hearted but was to help the families understand what a serious decision they were making.

These trips were extremely emotional for me because I feel such a connection with the Ethiopian women. It's not hard to imagine having our circumstances reversed, and envisioning myself in their situations. The women are desperate. If a rural woman is a widow she has so few options.

There are almost no jobs for illiterate women, which most of those in the villages are. A woman without a husband can often only become a prostitute or remarry. If a woman remarries very seldom will her new husband be willing to provide for a child who isn't related to him biologically.

Sadly often women feel they must make a terrible choice of trying to care for their children by themselves with no income or remarrying and probably not being able to raise their children. The choices women have to make are very hard for we Americans to imagine.

After interviewing children I would return to the States and produce a DVD of the interviews in order to recruit adoptive families for these older children. It was not my responsibility to do anything to check into the children's background or medical condition. That was the work of the CWA Ethiopian staff. They were to notify me of any medical problems that came up during the physicals, and also let me know if they found a child wasn't eligible for adoption, a relative changed their mind, etc. I was only supposed to do the interviewing and recruiting. I had nothing to do with having the children's medicals done or other information gathered in Ethiopia .

During this time I also worked as a case manager for CWA, primarily for families adopting older children, and at any given time had files of 30 to 40 families with whom I was working.

The CWA work was between CWA and me and was not really a branch of Kingdom Kids.

However, at Kingdom Kids we felt very strongly that families adopting older kids needed to be well prepared for the challenges and issues they would face. We developed a weekend long older child adoption training program and CWA agreed with us that all families adopting a child over the age of 3 would be required to come to Spokane for the training. Over the last four years nearly 300 families have attended our trainings. The trainings include specialists speaking on attachment issues, parenting issues, black hair and skin care, grief and loss issues, educational issues, etc., as well as experienced Ethiopian adoptive families sharing their stories of what worked well and what they learned. Older Ethiopian children share what was hard for them when they first came, what helped them adjust, etc. We have received very positive feedback from these training weekends.

In the Australian production, tiny snippets of a DVD I made for CWA are taken drastically out of context. In reality, in January of 2007 the four CWA case managers (three other women and me) traveled to Ethiopia on CWA business. We did several things and then two of the women went back to Addis Ababa to do some work and another of the women and I were asked to travel to Kembata, one of the poorest areas of Ethiopia , and meet with some government officials who wanted to take us to some villages. We met the men, and the other female case manager and I traveled with Eyob Kalcha, the man on the Australian show who says he resigned from CWA, two government officials, and an Ethiopian man from a well-established orphanage in Addis Ababa .

The six of us went to the first village and the orphanage man and government men had already notified the village that we were coming and had told them something about adoption. When we arrived there were two lines of children, each with close to 100 children in the line. One line was full orphans and the other was half orphans. The government men asked us to interview a child from one line, then the other, and on and on.

The other CWA case manager and I began filming as we usually do, thoroughly explaining to each family about adoption, how permanent it is, that they will not see the kids again, etc. We had interviewed several children when the government men told us we weren't working fast enough, that we could only stay in the village another hour and we needed to shorten the interviews.

We didn't want to eliminate the part of the interview where we thoroughly explained about adoption to each family, so at this point we decided to explain about adoption to the entire crowd at once rather than individually. That is what you see snippets of on the Australian production.

When I say on the Australian show that the children will become US citizens, this was said as part of the whole speech about what adoption means, and indeed was to help families understand that the children's allegiance likely would be to America and they would probably not feel compelled to return to Ethiopia since they would be U.S. citizens. When I ask the people interested in adoption to move to one area and the people not interested in adoption to go to another area, it was after this speech in which we hoped the families would better understand adoption and would know whether or not it was truly what they were interested in. It was not "harvesting" children, it was simply trying to identify which families we should continue to interview. Please remember we did not invite people to be interviewed; the government officials organized the whole thing and asked us to do the interviewing.

After we left it was the responsibility of the CWA orphanage staff to return to the village, determine which children actually were in need of adoption, get their medical exams and find out their social history. You may or may not know that the initial paperwork for adoption, the kebele papers, must be initiated by any relatives or guardians the child has. An agency or orphanage cannot begin the paperwork process - it must be started by those who have been caring for the child. It is also illegal to entice someone to "give up" a child for adoption by promises of any material goods, housing etc. So when things are done properly, as we worked to do, there really is no way to entice someone to give up a child. They really need to feel it is best for the child. Of course photos in the future are a wonderful thing and when adoptive families send post adoption reports yearly, as they are required to do, birth families can visit their child's orphanage and see the updated pictures. When I spoke to people about photos we did not say they would have photos delivered to them, but explained they could see photos at the orphanage through which the child was adopted.

I wish I could paint a good word picture for you of the desperation I saw when we interviewed children in Kembata on the trip in January of 2007. At each of the three locations we visited the lines of children went on and on, further than we could see. Parents usually hadn't died of HIV, but of malaria and tuberculosis, diseases we don't even think about here. The children's clothes were in absolute tatters. Nothing I've seen in Addis or southern Ethiopia compared with the dire poverty we saw in Kembata. Too many times when we finished an interview I'd turn to the next family, only to have the first family look at me with confusion. I'd smile and let them know they could leave, and they would say, "Aren't you going to take him now?" and push their six year old nephew toward me. The prospect of caring for the child for just a few months longer seemed impossible to them.

As a result of this, my biggest concern about the 2007 trip shown in the Australian show was that families weren't being offered any options other than adoption. I really believed that each family should be helped in a holistic manner with options appropriate for their situation. Therefore in May of 2007 I resigned from CWA and began African Widows and Orphans Project in order to give families options. It is NOT an adoption agency but just a way of helping families remain intact if possible. We have a sponsorship program so that children can remain in their families, we have a hospice care program to care for women, primarily, in their final months of AIDS, we have a donkey and goat program to help families become self sufficient, and other programs in which we try to help families remain intact. We also have two orphanages where we care for children who don't have other options. We particularly want to help older children who may not be adopted, so we educate them and give them skills they can use in the future. None of the children have been too old for the orphanage yet, but should that happen we intend to remain the child's "family", and be a place they can come for holidays, advice and help, etc.

Many of the children in our orphanages are adoptable, and believing it is better for a child to grow up in a family than an institution, we do try to find U.S. families for them, which then opens up room in the orphanage for other needy children. Many children from our orphanages have been placed with families in the U.S. through adoption agencies with which we pattner.

Since I no longer work with CWA it is inappropriate for me to speak for them. However, all of the adoptions of children from AWOP orphanages have been completely legal. As you probably know, relatives or guardians of the children must go to court in Addis Ababa to approve the adoption. I have been in Ethiopia many times and had the opportunity to watch the court processes and talk with some of the relatives. Quite honestly I can say they are grateful that the children will be loved and well cared for. The relatives come to our orphanages, often spending the night there before traveling home, and they are very pleased with what they see. On a couple of occasions children have moved into an orphanage and later a relative changed his or her mind about having the child adopted. In these cases we immediately returned children to their homes.

Parents or guardians can change their minds about having a child adopted any time until the case goes through court.

Ethiopian regulations have tightened quite a bit since January 2007 when the video Australian Broadcasting Corporation used for their show was recorded. Currently children are to be brought to an orphanage by family or guardians rather than interviewed in a setting away from the orphanage.

AWOP has DVDs of the humanitarian projects that we do, also showing our orphanages and the children living there. We no longer prepare DVDs made up of individual child interviews. All the children shown on a DVD are children already living in our orphanages.

I understand there has been quite a bit of criticism online about the way I conducted the interviews in January 2007. Please understand that prior to being filmed I spoke with each caregiver and child and then summarized the information on tape. Some have said I spoke too cheerfully when mentioning a child's father had died, and that I shouldn't have mentioned fungus on a child's face. Please remember that neither the children nor their caregivers could understand what I said. In the case of the father having died, the mother and I were laughing about something the baby did just before I spoke. In the case of the fungus, we were trying to give complete disclosure about a child's medical condition.

In no way have I ever been involved with "harvesting" children. I am well aware of Ethiopian laws and have sought to follow them completely both while working with CWA and also after beginning AWOP. We husband and I have now adopted six children from Ethiopia , including a teenage girl from a disrupted adoption, and I am absolutely committed to keeping families intact whenever possible, through a variety of humanitarian means. Adoption is one option available to families, but certainly not encouraged over other options. I believe in that so strongly that, although it is quite a struggle financially during this recession to operate our Ethiopian programs, we are absolutely committed to doing our humanitarian work there as long as we possibly can.

I have turned over the entire original DVD from the January trip to appropriate officials so they can see exactly what occurred in context.

I am quite willing to discuss our current work should there be questions, but anything related to CWA needs to be directed to them.

Thank you for taking the time to read this and I hope it has clarified many issues.

Blessings,

Michelle Gardner

Inspiration

After the last post, I thought I'd lighten the mood with some encouragement that people can do anything they put their mind to. Again, Rick Hansen inspires us all.

Martyrs?

Last week someone special emailed me about a blog post I did. They referred to me as a "martyr". I read the sentence a few times and thought that was a bit of an extreme label for me. When she emailed me a follow-up a couple of minutes later, she said she meant to write "mentor", not "martyr". I had a good chuckle.

Since then, as I've been reading other blogs and having a few of my own moments of drama, the word "martyr" has snuck into my brain again.

None of us are being killed because we choose to adopt or homeschool. Martyr is too extreme of a word. But I must say, there are definitely some moments where us families feel like things can't get much harder. I previously posted this, and I'd like to re-post it to really emphasize what adoptive families go through:

"Many of us families scrape together everything we can, and even fundraise, to get our adoption bills covered. We are scrutinized by social workers and various government branches. We sit on pins and needles and go through the longest "pregnancies" imaginable. We have happy moments and depressing moments. At the same time we feel joy for another couple with a new baby [adopted or biological] we feel sad and broken inside waiting for our own children. Yes, our OWN children. We get tired of explaining why we choose to adopt, especially to strangers. We get tired of telling people that although they are adopted, they are our OWN children; blood doesn't make us family. We finally receive some beautiful photographs, along with more bills to pay, and we have to continue in the forever long hurry-up-and-wait game until we can pass through some more government offices and pray paper work and visas are cleared. Then there's travel, and hope that jobs aren't lost as extended vacations are needed to unite with our family, not to mention giving up our family holidays to save them for the trip."

So we get home with our children. We're exhausted from the trip, but happy to be with our children. We're learning to be parents to a new child that doesn't know us, that doesn't know Canada, that doesn't understand English, that doesn't understand far more than most adults would ever realize. We're parents learning what kind of baggage our children may have gone through by dealing with unknown fears, insecurities, anger, neglect, sickness, malnutrition .... We're having to sit patiently and wait for citizenship ID, name changes, medical cards and other government agencies to acknowledge our family. Then ... we have to go to the store to get some groceries. Uh-oh. Out comes the stares and questions private enough they might as well have asked you if you’re wearing underwear and what size!

Sure, we chose to have inter-racial families. In a sense we chose to be a conspicuous families, but not for the sake of being conspicuous. Just because we chose these families, doesn't give the right to everyone else to invade our privacy.

None of us like having to tell people that it's none of their business what happened to our child[ren]'s birth families, or explain that we didn't "buy" a child, nor how much it cost to adopt them, or defend the fact that they don't have AIDS just because they're from Ethiopia. We don't need to tell complete strangers our life stories just because we have conspicuous families. We don't need to explain that we're not against domestic adoptions just because we choose to adopt internationally.

The children feel it and hear it too. "Mama, why do people stare at me?" "Why do people always want to touch my hair?" "Why is everyone taking my picture?" [My son finally hit a stranger’s camera out of his hands for taking his picture.] "Why did so-and-so say I'm the poor kid?" "Why did someone tell me I'm here because my parents are dead?" “Mama, if I’m not allowed to talk to strangers, why do they ask so many questions about us?”

And now that our family is homeschooling ... it's opened a whole nother can of worms for us. Another line of defenses have to come out. So, hopefully for the last time ...

Yes, I do enjoy homeschooling.
No, our son has not come to hate me for teaching him.
Yes, our son loves learning at home.
Yes, we let our son be part of the decision to homeschool.
No, we are not worried about socialization issues.
Yes, our son is involved in many activities outside the home. Perhaps more than most children as we're not confined to extra-curricular activities available only after public school hours.
No, we are not hoping to run a cult with children working for us.
Yes, we may choose to go the public route later. Just because we've chosen homeschool at this moment in our lives, does not mean we have to do it through graduation.

Are we adoptive families and homeschool families martyrs? By definition, no. But some days are a little more defensive than others. Forgive us if we occasionally snap when we get tired of the interrogations.

And yet ... we still would never trade our families for anything. We would still do it all over again in a heart beat. We still encourage everyone that the frustration is worth every moment and more!