Why Ethiopia?

By far the most common question we have been asked is why Ethiopia?

Early on, we wanted to explore an international adoption. At the orientation meeting for Children's Hope International (CHI), the local adoption agent briefly covered some basic info about each of their programs. CHI works with several countries; China, Columbia, Ethiopia, Korea, Russia, Kazakhstan and possibly a few more. Of the countries CHI works with, the typical duration of the Ethiopia program was the shortest. This was important to us, because we wanted to complete the process while Gregg and Ben were still relatively young. For example, China adoptions can take as long as 5 years and that's after you complete all the paperwork. Ethiopia, on the other hand usually only takes 18 months once the paperwork has been completed. One risk with the Columbia and Korea programs is that, for political reasons, the programs can close without much warning and without regard to where adoptive families are in the process. In Ethiopia, the extreme poverty, short life expectancy, disease (particularly HIV) leaves children without parents or other family to take them in. In Russia and Kazakhstan, on the other hand, parents loose custody of their children due to drug / alcohol abuse and other reasons. Many of the children therefore suffer from emotional and / or developmental difficulties. We felt that adopting a child with emotional / developmental challenges would be too much for us.

All for now, got to board our flight!