By Jackie Burrell
Contra Costa Times
Posted: 04/10/2009 03:38:38 PM PDT
Updated: 04/10/2009 05:37:45 PM PDT
Flashbulbs pop every time Angelina Jolie and Madonna appear with children they've adopted from nations around the world. But paparazzi aside, African adoptions are hardly a celebrity thing. In fact, the Jolie-Pitts are just one of the 4,442 American families who have adopted children from Ethiopia in the past five years. And the numbers are soaring.
Artists Erik and Charlotte Blome of Martinez adopted their 6-year-old son Noah from Ethiopia five years ago.Back then, "The yearly American numbers were still in the hundreds and Angelina Jolie was still talking about Billy Bob," Erik Blome said.
In 2004, just 289 Ethiopian babies were issued U.S. State Department visas. The numbers have quintupled since then, accounting for 1,725 of the 17,438 international adoptions last year. But with international adoptions on hold in Guatemala — from which 4,123 American families adopted children in 2008 — and in serious slowdown in other nations, including China, from which Americans adopted another 3,909 babies past year, and Russia (1,861), Ethiopia has become an increasingly popular option. "It's become a good place for families that want to adopt knowing that the child they're adopting is truly in need of a home, truly does not have family support," said Andrea Stawitcke, executive director of Bay Area Adoption Services in Mountain View, which has been operating for 25 years. "It's also a country that has been really careful about putting the process in place."
Fraud concerns put a halt to adoptions from Guatemala and Vietnam in the last several months. The Kazakhstan Embassy has ceased processing adoption dossiers — the inches-thick binder of required home study and family background documents. Russia is only now resuming adoptions after a complete revamping of its adoption system, and restrictions abound. China poses challenges as well. Not only does the process often take three or more years, but the parents must be married, preference is given to families of Chinese descent, and the list of requirements includes age, finances and body mass index. Ethiopia, by contrast, allows both married and single parents to adopt, and the process typically takes less than two years.
And the celebrity buzz? "What they have done is really raised the awareness," Stawitcke said. "Before Angelina adopted her daughter in Ethiopia, families weren't aware they could.
"It's also a country that, tragically, has more than its share of orphans. Ethiopia and its neighbors have been hard hit by the AIDS pandemic. According to United Nations estimates, 18 million African children will have been orphaned by AIDS by next year. And more generic diseases run rampant.
No safety net
Just weeks after Jolie brought her daughter home in 2005, a salmonella epidemic devastated Zahara's orphanage, killing three babies, including the little girl Wes and Kristin Stout of Redwood City were supposed to bring home a few days later. It was a church mission trip that first introduced the Stouts to Ethiopia, the ancient African empire of Cush whose history is woven through the Old Testament, and whose early hominid fossils — including "Lucy," discovered in 1974 — have given it the nickname "cradle of humanity" in every Anthropology 101 textbook.
"I really do have to say that God led us to that country," Kristin Stout said. "We had fallen love with the people and the culture. We knew kids in Ethiopia had no safety net. There are orphanages, but there are thousands of kids who wind up on the street."
Kristin Stout has made the 17-hour journey to Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa, and its outlying towns four times — twice to pick up her newly adopted children, daughter Kylia, adopted three months after that heartbreaking phone call, and baby Solomon, who came home in February.
"We brought Kylia with us, which was great," Stout said. "It was like the three of us welcoming a new member of the family. It was fun to look at everything through Kylia's eyes. She enjoyed that everyone, she said, was 'brown like her.' "These days Kylia attends preschool in Redwood City, and dotes on her new baby brother. And Kristin Stout does orientation sessions for other families at Bay Area Adoption Services. "A lot of people want to help," Stout said, "but it really needs to be about adding a child to your family — not to do something noble. Not to 'save a child.'
Intriguing requirement
Erik Blome agrees, saying at its heart, adoption is about loving a child and building a family."We would have just as happily adopted from China or Korea or Chicago," he adds. At the time the Blomes began thinking about a second child, a sibling for their older, biological son Max, only a handful of agencies handled African adoptions. Today, there are dozens, including Bay Area Adoption Services and Palo Alto's African Cradle.
But the Blomes' agency, based in Washington state, had an intriguing requirement. The Blomes made a lasting commitment to give back to the culture that had given them the greatest treasure, Noah — a baby so tiny that even at seven months he looked half his age. Every year since the adoption, Erik Blome has returned with crates of art supplies to run art workshops at eight orphanages, youth centers and schools in Ethiopia.
This spring, he'll be bringing his sons, Noah and 10-year-old Max, as well.The Blomes say they are forever indebted to the Sudanese and Maltese nuns who had rescued their son, nursed him back to health and cared so deeply about his happiness with his future family that they laminated Noah's new family's photos, strung them on a key chain and clipped the chain to the side of the crib.
"Every day, the Sudanese nun would point and say, 'Mommy! Daddy!' " Erik Blome discovered later. "For three months, they trained him to know our faces."Erik and son Max were waiting at the arrivals gate when Charlotte flew home with Noah, their newly adopted baby."Noah immediately said, 'Dada,' pointing at me," Blome said. "And I'm like, whoa, how did he know that? Then he said, 'Max.' He just felt like, 'This is my family from the first day.'"
Reach Jackie Burrell at jburrell@bayareanewsgroup.com.
International Adoptions
by the Numbers 2008
Total: 17,438, including 2,223 from four African countries -- Ethiopia (1,725), Liberia (249), Nigeria (148) and Ghana (101).2004 Total: 22,884, including 446 from three African countries -- Ethiopia (289), Liberia (86) and Nigeria (71). Source: U.S. State Department
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