Why Africa?

So why Africa?

Once we ruled out infant and foster care adoption in the states we evaluated the four main international regions: Asia, Eastern Europe, South America, and Africa (as well as some individual programs like Haiti and Kazakhstan).

We don’t qualify for most of the Asian countries programs.  To adopt from China there is a 5-7 years wait list, we both have to be 30 years old and we have to have a net worst of $80,000.  We basically don’t meet any of the requirements nor do we want to wait for that long.   Many of the other Asian countries either have similar time lines and requirements or only adopt older children internationally.

We are uncomfortable adopting from Eastern Europe because of the fetal alcohol syndrome risk.  FAS is common in many eastern European countries… and it may indeed be our bias showing but we just are not willing to risk it.  I’ve read a lot of FAS and honestly at this point I think I’d be more willing to adopt a child that had been exposed to hard drugs before I’d knowingly take on a child at risk for FAS.

The South American programs are riddled with corruption.  The Guatemala program was shut down due to some serious child trafficking.  Columbia still has a program going but when speaking to a few agencies it is mostly and older child program and the implication is that if someone tries to promise you a child under two either a) they are lying and trying to get you involved and hopefully you’ll adopt an older child or b) the adoption of a child under two will probably be unethical. 

That left us with a few single country programs to evaluate, none of which seemed to fit our needs and Africa.  We looked into different programs and settled on DRC.  While we qualify for Ethiopia and Uganda as well there are things that made us hesitate with both programs.  Ethiopia has slowed down significantly to the point that wait times have doubled or tripled and there are families that have had referrals for a long time who have not been able to bring their children home.  Ethiopia also now requires two trips to adopt.  Uganda’s program is very new and is mostly an older child program.

So we decided on DRC.   They have a program we qualify for and we can adopt a child under two pretty easily (from what we have been told so far).  We also have settled on an adoption facilitator that we believe will help us adopt as ethically as possible.   The ability to find providers we are very comfortable with was also a huge consideration in the process.