(posted 5/29/08)

The most amazing thing I have ever done up to this point in my life is adopting our daughter, Caeli, from China. Now our family will embark upon another amazing adventure—adopting Caeli’s brother from Ethiopia.

 

Ethiopia is a fairly new country in terms of allowing international adoptions, but with more than 5-million orphans, the government of Ethiopia has been dedicated to finding permanent homes for thousands of children. It also deserves high marks for the relative speed in which it moves, compared to many other countries.

 

Steve and I had assumed after bringing Caeli home that we’d go to Vietnam next to bring home a son. But we got sidetracked in starting the paperwork, as raising Caeli was great fun but the adoption process is not! In that span of a few years, wait times in China and Vietnam skyrocketed from months to years. The wait right now for China is about four years (it was nine months for us) and Vietnam, which is changing many of its adoption rules, is about three years. It’s no surprise that people are now switching over to Ethiopia, which averages about 6 to 9 months of waiting before you travel to get your child.

 

We’ve been learning a lot lately about Ethiopia and Africa and the more I learn, the more I want to know.

 

Ethiopia is one of the world’s oldest nations and one of the oldest Christian nations. It is the only African country that was never colonized by Europeans (kept that way by hard-fought battles) and to this day is a relatively stable nation in the Horn of Africa. It is a federal democratic republic with an elected parliament.

 

Most people my age think of Ethiopia and starvation because of the drought and famine in the 80s that resulted in Band-aid’s “Feed the World (Do They Know It’s Christmas?)” and USA for Africa’s “We Are the World.”

 

That drought and famine, combined with a long civil war and a terrible outbreak of AIDS, means the average life span for Ethiopian men and women does not even reach 50 years old and millions of children are left orphaned. It is heartbreaking to see tiny children crowded in orphanages or surviving on the streets.

 

We are looking forward to our visit to Ethiopia and to expanding our family. Our multi-cultural family is growing!