Our mantra for this trip to take guardianship of Anjali has
been love and adventure and we’ve had plenty of both so far. Deciding to come to India to foster Anjali
was not an easy decision, but it was the right thing to do for us. It has been 15 months since we were matched
with Anjali and we just received a court date last week of August 25th. The state of Bihar has not yet approved any
international adoptions, though there currently seem to be 4 of them waiting
for the court process to be completed. These
cases do seem at a standstill and being here I hope will make a difference. We have heard quite often from all parties, “This
is the first international case, it’s complicated.” When making the decision to
foster, it’s important to understand that once you take guardianship of your
child, the child cannot be returned to the orphanage. We are here for the long haul if it turns out
that court process is slow and cumbersome.
We fortunately have the financial means to take this risk. Additionally, Missionaries of Charities gave
us a huge gift by not charging us foreign adoption fees. We thought we had all the correct permissions
in place before heading to India. For us,
it is very important that we do everything by the book, as what we do will
impact other cases. We got confirmation
from CARA, SARA, Missionaries of Charity and the RIPA that is in charge of our
case that we had permission to foster and of course, our agency in the U.S. Our orphanage, Missionaries of Charity, is
not licensed to do international adoptions, yet they specialize in children
with special needs and these children will most likely not be adopted by Indian
families. MOC is in Patna which is a big
city where the SARA office is as well as the courts where our case will be heard. Our RIPA is in Nalanda which is a small
village about 85 km outside of Patna.
I think everyone was truly surprised that we actually showed
up to foster Anjali. Questions about
where we would stay and comments about how long the court process could take
were thrown at us. It was a fight to
gain custody of Anjali, but by Thursday morning we had gotten a custody letter
from our advocate. (You need a custody letter from the RIPA and Birth Certificate Affidavit in order to travel in India with your child). We had also met or
talked with all the major players who are here locally. We took a trip down to Nalanda on Tuesday and
met everyone in charge of handling our case there. We also spoke on the phone with the Director
of SARA. CARA sent an email to all parties stating that they needed to make our
case an urgent priority. We met with our advocate and the MOC
advocate. Our advocate was selected
because he can practice both in Patna and Nalanda (He resides and practices in
Patna). Unfortunately, he has no
experience with adoption. The MOC advocate
has however offered to assist free of charge, however, he can. Sister Meera at MOC told us that we can expect
the judges in Patna to scrutinize our case since it is the first international
adoption there. That we needed to make sure everything was in order perfectly. The first few days here were a whirlwind, but
I feel that we got across that we are serious about pulling our case through,
because we are.
The actual fostering of our daughter has been amazing (more
on that in a future post). An hour ride
home to an apartment that feels familiar to her is a world of difference than
the schedule that parents normally have to take their children back
home. I can understand why some
countries require an extended stay in country for parents. We are having to make a lot of adjustments
and get used to living in a totally new place without much support, but it’s
been such a smooth transition for our daughter and as long as we keep a
positive outlook and focus on how wonderful it is to spend every day with our
sweet baby girl, then I think we will be okay.
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