Some Questions...getting personal

We have not yet formally held our family/friend news conference announcing the adoption, but many people know already.  Tor and I want to wait until we actually ship our papers off to Ethiopia, we've learned our lesson about getting too excited for a new baby too soon.

Question 1:  Why not a domestic adoption?  
As far as I know, the 2 ways to adopt in the U.S. are through the County's foster-adopt system or a private adoption.  Tor and I took 99 of the 100 steps to becoming licensed foster parents, and then realized this may not be the best route for us to actually build a family. It is a great and selfless act, but after already losing 2 of our own babies in 1 year...we are not ready to become attached to a little one only to have them return to the birth parents.
As for private adoption, it is even more expensive than the already-pricey international adoption (the price people pay for a healthy, white, American baby!!).  I have no energy or motivation to create a happy profile for a birth mother to select us over all the other happy profiles and determine we are the perfect pair for her to hand her child over to.  It sounds a little like on-line dating to me and despite the success I had with finding Tor, I'm not sure I want my child to come to me that way too.  Besides, at the end of the day, no matter how f*cked the American healthcare and social services infrastructure is...it's still America!  You can still find a way to an emergency room or a food stamp card...not in Africa.  If you are the son of a goat herder, with no food or education, and you get pneumonia - well, you get the picture.

Question 2:  Why Ethiopia?
Logistically, it is one of the few countries in Africa that welcomes foreign adoption and has a fairly straightforward process.  There is enough political stability that approx. 2,000 adoptions are completed there each year.  Bigger picture - there are MILLIONS of orphans in the country who have lost their parents to AIDS, poverty, famine, or a combination thereof. The AIDS crisis has hit the country hard and almost wiped out an entire generation of parents.  In fact once you are tested positive for the disease, your family may disown you as the lack of education about AIDS has created a society in which fear and shame take the place of empathy and help.

Question 3:  Why a little girl?
I know, I know - how cliche - American parents requesting a healthy baby girl from Africa...but there is a reason this has become so common.  Initially, Tor and I thought "boy or girl, over 2 years old" - let's skip the diaper phase, save on daycare, and bring home a slightly older child that no parents are requesting.  But wait - we have no children, and are we really prepared to start on Day 1 with a 3-year old?  Maybe - I mean we would figure it out.
For us, it came down to 3 reasons:
a)  In third-world countries, gender inequality is still a big deal!  Little girls still face a more severe level of injustice than women in the U.S. could ever think to complain about.  A quote from the book I am reading "Girls in Ethiopia received less education and had fewer job prospects than boys, and they had no property or inheritance rights.  An orphaned girl lost the protection of her father, if she had lost her parents to AIDS, she might find herself turned from her house, school, and village.  Orphaned girls are at the absolute margins...they are the very bottom of the barrel.  They are much more likely to engage in risky behavior just to survive."  A survey of young women in Kenya and Zambia showed that 40% of women were infected with HIV by the age of 20!!!
b)  As a black woman, I feel that there is a possibility my little girl will feel a special connection with looking at me and seeing something familiar.  Don't get me wrong - I FULLY support ANY family that takes on the challenge of bringing an orphan into their homes and giving them a better life than they could ever imagine.  But I do feel that there is just a little something extra that comes with seeing "mommy" and thinking "wow, that is me in 30 years" or "wow, Michelle Obama is coming to take me to America"...okay so I giving myself a little too much credit there.  :)
c)  After losing our little girl Cali last June, I think there is definitely a part of us that feels that although we could not save her, we can save another little girl and Cali would be happy with that.

These are just some of the questions I know people want to ask, and some people have asked.  Fair enough - hopefully these answers shed some light on what we have been going through in making this decision.  There is a mix of logic and analysis, with a bit of a gut feeling that this is the path we are supposed to be taking. Now if I could only think about something else all day long..........