We are still #3. We were #4 for a few months and then bumped up one in November.
Here's the scoop if your interested, from my adoption agency on WHY there is no movement:
"To answer another of your concerns about pushing orphanages to get paperwork completed faster, it is much more complex than filling out papers. That process for our families in the US is fairly straightforward. In Ethiopia an orphanage may have to send staff out many times to distant locations to try to reach people in person to gather information. I remember talking to a social worker at one of the orphanages we work with about his job. He shared that he had to take public transportation (which would often take an entire day) across his region to try and locate a specific family member. No addresses. No telephone. Just finding people by word of mouth. It may take many days and weeks of attempts. They may need to arrange to have that person brought to a specific office for testimony more than once. They may be ill, or not available to travel any time soon. It can take a great amount of time for just one encounter to occur. There are multiple interviews and people to locate. Perhaps one social worker is responsible for many, many families and has to travel repeatedly to other areas to see adoption authorities. They may have to wait for a doctor to come to town to examine a child. What are simple blood draws to us may be taken great distances to a lab that will process them. And they are slow as obtaining the results is never fast. They are working with such limited resources that nothing functions there at all like it could here. Things are not a phone call away, or an hour away by car. The social worker I talked with told me about the constant roadblocks and difficulties they have to gather the needed information and the time it takes to do it successfully. Again, I liken it to the many, many months it can take a family to go from the start to the finish of their own adoption paperwork processes. Except when in Ethiopia, I see it as happening as if moving through honey. It takes a lot of patience!
Another challenge we experience is that our families are accustomed to how things work in developed countries and the mindset that goes along with that. Planned meetings and timeframes. An email away, or Fed-Exed overnight. As a culture Ethiopians get things done when they get done. They may have a goal for something to be done in a couple of weeks, but if a couple of months pass, that is nearly the same. To push for a specific time frame with so many challenges and pitfalls and limited resources they know nothing can be promised nor deadlines easily met. Nor do I see them striving to live like that. They are more relaxed and do move forward and are doing so at their capacity. However when interfacing with what we know is possible in the West, it is hard for families to understand or imagine this. Their mindset is not the same as ours. So unfortunately the preparing of a child’s legal adoption documents is not one of only papers needing to be filled out but most are fraught with complicated information gathering with limited resources in which to do it. Thus the waiting until it is done for each child. "
WOW! That put it pretty plainly to me. I cant imagine that the social worker has to track down each child's info like that. Insane...just actually recieving a child's refferal now will look like a miracle in it's self after learning how they have to track down this stuff!
It will happen! Praying for some forward movement! My heart is learning a lot through all this and I'll never regret a minute of it.
