What Happens Next?

Our dossiers should arrive at our adoption agency this afternoon. Yes, for an Ethiopian adoption you must submit three dossiers. Once our dossies arrive, our agency will spend some time reviewing them and barring any errors in them will send our completed dossier to Washington, D.C. for final authentication by the State Department and Ethiopian Embassy. That’s right, Hillary gets to sign off on our dossier. After that our dossier is sent by our agency to Ethiopia. On average, it takes about 2 weeks for our dossier to go through this process before it finally departs for Ethiopia. One of the neat things about the Ethiopia process compared to the China adoption process is that we get to track our dossier from the U.S. to Addis Ababa, so we will know the exact time it touched down.

Once our dossier makes it Addis Ababa, here’s what follows:

1. Our dossier is translated to Amharic. The dossier is then presented to the officials at the Ministry of Women’s Affairs (MOWA) and the orphanage, Toukoul. After reviewing our dossier, the orphanage will refer us a child that best fits our requests and family. This can take anywhere from 3-9 months.

2. We receive medical history, photos and information on our child. Once we accept we begin the wait for our court date. We will be unable to post any identifying information on our child until he is officially ours. So, sorry, no photos on this or the other blog.

3. The court date is several weeks after referral. Also, the courts will close this August for the rainy season, which, depending on when we receive our referral, could delay our court date. Our agency estimates from referral to bringing Oliver home will be 2-5 months. A judge will hear our case and will hopefully grant us custody of Oliver. We will officially be his parents and can plan our travel dates.

4.We go to Ethiopia to bring our son home!

I haven’t spoken to our agency about the latest timetable but am planning on doing so once we hear about our dossier.