Of Waitlists and Spiny Dogfish

"Why is your adoption taking so long?"
*sigh*
We've been hearing this a lot lately.

A while ago I jokingly compared our waiting time to the gestation period of a spiny dogfish. (Thank you, Nelly, for filling my brain with random ocean trivia...) It turns out that our time on the waitlist will make even the spiny dogfish's pregnancy look speedy.

For the past year, the Ethiopian government has been engaged in furiously overhauling all of its adoption policies. Friends, this is a good thing. They are determined to stamp out corruption and make the system safe for orphans and adopting families alike. This needed to happen. The system desperately needed to be restructured, safe guards needed to be established, and failing policies needed to be chucked out the window.

But as we all know, governments do not move quickly. And change comes

ever

so

slowly.

So what started out as an estimated 9 month period on the waitlist has morphed into 36 - 42, months which puts our estimated referral date somewhere around October 2014, at the earliest.

Think of it like being stuck in a construction zone on a freeway. Every few minutes you ease forward another 3 inches or so and you chafe at the delay, fretting over the places you need to be while drumming your fingers on the steering wheel. The clock on the dashboard marches onward, oblivious to your impatience. But in reality you know this construction desperately needed to happen; the road was in horrid disrepair and the conditions were dangerous. When finally completed, it will be impressively smooth and safe, a pleasure for all future travelers. No matter how frustrating, this delay is a necessity.

So why is our adoption taking so long?
Because we are a spiny dogfish stuck in construction.

(How is that for a mixed metaphor?)