RE: Chinese adoption

anotherone wrote:It is Veronika. I emailed you in 2007 when you were still in Dubai, to find out what we needed to put together a dossier for Cambodia. Unfortunately, we were unable to get any help or even find somebody to do a homestudy for us. Sorry about the error in stating May 2011, only after posting did I realize I got the wrong "M" month.


How are you all doing? What have they told you at the Department of Social Development? Any timeline or just NO?

Hi Veronika, this is really a small world... Good to hear from you again, it has been a while. Where do you live in South Africa? I started a adoption support group for the Pretoria area and our first get-together is planned for Sunday, 6 June 2010 from 11:00 to 13:00, so if you are around, you should pop-in for a coffee - would be nice to finally meet face-to-face (hope you don't live to far!). Well, I personally think that they are giving us the run-around, as they said we should contact them again in 2 months, maybe the situation would have changed by then, but most probably give us the same story....

Hopeful & Anotherone,

Sorry for hijacking your thread, I was just wondering why you are adopting internationally? I'm asking this with respect to your decision and you don't need to answer if you find the question inappropriate.

Carmen wrote:Hopeful & Anotherone,

Sorry for hijacking your thread, I was just wondering why you are adopting internationally? I'm asking this with respect to your decision and you don't need to answer if you find the question inappropriate.

Hi Carmen, not a problem... when we started to look at the option of adoption (around 2004/2005), we lived in Dubai and as we were both SA citizens, naturally our first option was to adopt from South Africa, but we were not allowed to adopt from SA, as the reason provided to us was that we lived abroad and the UAE was not party to the Hague Convention, so they could also not treat us as an inter-country adoption, so we had to look at other options. We investigated the very difficult route of international adoption, and after lots of research and seeking various different internatioal agencies, it was finally confirmed that we could adopt from Cambodia. The process was finalised in 2007 and we legally adopted our son at the age of 15 months from Cambodia. We then permanently returned to South Africa in 2008. We now want to adopt a little girl (or sister), as I don't want my son to grow-up as the only child, and as we adopted our son from Cambodia, would prefer if we could adopt again from Cambodia. Hope it answers your question.

Carmen wrote:Hopeful & Anotherone,

Sorry for hijacking your thread, I was just wondering why you are adopting internationally? I'm asking this with respect to your decision and you don't need to answer if you find the question inappropriate.

I explained our decision in my intro thread, you can read it here. There is more to it, but some of it's just not something I want to share on a public forum. I hope you understand.

Thank you Hopeful, I appreciate your reply. It's sad SA would not let you adopt even though you are SA citizens and we have so many of our own orphaned babies. I do respect your right to adopt from anywhere you decide, for me personally though, my choice is SA. I wish you all the best in your adoption

I totally understand, no probs, thanks.

Carmen wrote:Thank you Hopeful, I appreciate your reply. It's sad SA would not let you adopt even though you are SA citizens and we have so many of our own orphaned babies. I do respect your right to adopt from anywhere you decide, for me personally though, my choice is SA. I wish you all the best in your adoption

Yeah, it's unfortunately not always that easy... wish sometimes it was, but everything happens for a reason, although it only becomes evident much later.... it was meant for our son to come to us, and that was our journey that we had to follow... for him to come home.