This minute...

Things seem to be in constant change these days with Ethiopian adoptions, but after having a long conversation with WACAP today, this is where things seem to stand at this minute.

FACT: There was an uproar from many organizations toward MOWA for their hasty "5 cases to be processed per day" mandate. As a result, they have fired, hired, and are in process of restructuring. There has been no official statement as to how many cases will now be processed per day, but the "rumor" is that it could be up to 20. Not as good as long before, but better than before.

WACAP prediction: All of us waiting families have been gripping for that "wave" of referrals that was indicated to come last month, but apparently, now that wave will be more like a bobbling creek. The restructuring of the adoption process in ET has been complicated, but a part that we are not hearing as much about is what needs to be done to prove that these orphans are legitimate before referral. The orphanage we work with only has one social worker to make sure this process is done accurately and cleanly - often up to 40 different signatures for one child. This is threefold to what it used to be, so this one social worker is feeling overwhelmed. It seems there are 2 lucky families that got referrals this week (the first trickle from that wave)and there is no indication as to when the next few might come.

Our predicated reality: WACAP indicated that we might be in the most precarious situation being that we are so close to the top (amongst all of this change). Families that are much farther down the list are contemplating putting a hold on or pulling out and going with another country. To us, however, it might not be to our advantage to do that as far as our desired timeline. I was warned that we do need to shift our expectations. Even if things bump up to 20 court cases per day, if we are "very lucky" to get a referral in the next few months, we shouldn't expect a court date until late fall due to the court's bottlenecking. After that, we will have to wait it out for the embassy date, which can also be unpredictable. A few months ago a family would get a referral of a 4 month old and have her home at 6-7 months old. Now she could be more like 12-18 months old. We need to be prepared emotionally for the fact that we could know who she is, yet can't have her home for months and months. Tough.

*sigh* As for this minute, we will continue to hold on and just hope that maybe the next minute can bring more uplifting news. I read other blogs and they seem to feel uplifted by the news of a "more than 5 a day", but our glass is definitily 1/2 empty. After over 4 years, a 8-12 month extension seems an eternity!