His and Hers Accounts: “What a long hard trip its been”. A new theme on an old tune.

“What a long hard trip its been”. A new theme on an old tune. This is my first post to Lynne’s blog, about 2 weeks into our journey. Lynne is doing such a great job of capturing this trip, there will be little for me to add most of the time. But after 4 days here in Arkalyk, I wanted to put my thoughts down as it has been quite an overwhelming experience.

After our 15 hour train ride (you’ll have to go to Jaden’s blog to hear his top 10 train lowlights), we arrived in Arkalyk at 7:00am, still dark, freezing cold, wind blowing hard, our bodies think its 2:00am (German time), very little sleep for any of us. Six heavy bags plus 3 back packs to unload and drag into some type of old school Soviet car. After a 5 minute drive we arrive at a building that is part of a complex that looks similar to the tenements I’ve driven by dozens of times in the Bronx, with one of the four buildings completely sealed up, I don’t think its ever been occupied. We open the heavy metal door and drag the luggage up the dimly lit cement stairs three flights to our “flat”. The inside is surprisingly decent given the terrible exterior appearance. After 4 flights, a long drive, the train ride, and a conference thrown in the middle, we finally arrived.

Our guide is Zhana, the sister of Habiba, the main adoption coordinator in Arkalyk. Habiba is in the hospital in Kostany, the nearest town (13 hour train ride), having just had back surgery (imagine her train ride back). Zhana barely speaks English, but she is very nice, and has breakfast prepared for us. We are so tired, but when I see her frying eggs, and she understands that I want her to flip them and cook them longer (I like mine over hard, as do Lynne and Jaden), I at least know we’ll get a good meal before we head for the orphanage which we are supposed to do at 10:00am. We sit down to breakfast with Zhana, and she is stressed. There is another family here for an adoption and today is their first court date. There is a problem with their paperwork (and we find out right then that we’re going to have that same problem). So she and the translator have to spend the whole day running around and we might not get to the orphanage. Turns out we don’t go to the orphanage, so one day down, we took a long nap and that was about it.

The living situation starts to become clearer. Habiba’s family is basically our guides for our stay. I’m trying to piece it all together, but its hard. Zhana is filling in as the main adoption coordinator, their aunt cooks all of our meals for us (she is a great cook!), their niece helps clean up after the meals, and she cooks when the aunt has to go to work, their uncle is the driver (although we quickly figured out we can walk to the orphanage quicker than the drive). Zhana’s son Darchon is 9 years old, and he has already become Jaden’s buddy. Yesterday they played War (the card game), chess (I taught Jaden on the train) and then had a wrestling match. Habiba owns the flat we are staying in, and when other families come, they have other places in the family where people can stay. So it’s a total family affair, and they do a great job of taking care of us, we are pretty much being “wined and dined” Kazakh style (without the wine and although not what we would think of as being wined and dined, the food really is surprisingly good and having someone cook and clean for us is a nice thing.)

I was very happy to find that we have Internet access (slow dial-up) already set up, so we were able to get online immediately and Lynne and I both have been able to stay in touch online, use Instant messaging and even skype to stay in touch with the world. My mobile phone works, so I’m not as disconnected from the work world as I thought I would be. So, one day down, things seem ok, we’re situated and we’re ready for the orphanage on day two.

We get to the orphanage at 10:00am and meet the head Dr. and a host of other people, who are not introduced to us. We also meet our translator, who is a very nice young woman who teaches high school English, and speaks English very well. Galena is our conduit to understanding here. They bring out two boys, Jenna and Timor (spellings are all approximate in this post). Lynne identifies health issues with Jenna right away, Timor seems better. We watch them play for awhile. Then two more boys come out, Nikolai and Valera. First they were in shorts and very strange shoes and they didn’t quite look right. The Dr. sent them away and they returned shortly in sweats and no shoes and they looked much better. There are balloons on the walls from a party they must have had a day or two ago and we start bring them down for the boys to play with. The 4 boys all start grabbing and hitting the balloons and Jaden is just dancing around adding to the mayhem. It was a crazy scene. We were trying to watch all of the boys and how they interacted with each other. They were all having fun, it was a pretty cool situation. The kids leave the room, and its time to ask the Dr. some questions. Lynne has immediately eliminated Jenna as an option, we really did not plan on a boy who wasn’t healthy. We know that whoever we bring home will have challenges with attachment and the other issues that arise from institutional care, but we want to avoid serious medical conditions.

We ask about Timor – “Do you know anything about his mother”. Dr. “Yes, I know her well, she is an alcoholic”. Our hearts sink. We ask more questions, but they don’t really matter. OK – what can you tell us about Nikolai and Valera – turns out they are brothers, or I should say half brothers, they have the same mother, but not the same father. One has beautiful brown eyes and the other one baby blue eyes. They are 10 months apart. Their mother was an alcoholic as well. We sink further. We ask, “what other options are there”. “We have two infants, one 6 months and one 8 months”. We ask, “what about girls?” No, they don’t have any girls available for adoption. “That’s it?” “Yes, that’s all”. We have just traveled half way around the world to come find little brother and he’s not here. We go back to Timor. There was something about him. “Can you get us his measurements? Height/Weight/Head Circumference”. We’ll get that when we come back at 4:00. We leave in a state of shock.

We talk about our “options”. Timor has something inside him, so let’s do more research on Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) (Lynne gets online immediately). The two brothers both seemed to have potential, but we really weren’t planning on two, and they might have FAS as well. A baby? Not what we were thinking.

At 4:00pm we return to the orphanage and the Dr. wants to know if we have made a decision. What? A decision, is she kidding? No she’s not kidding, its some kind of hard sell technique that I really don’t get. It just seems like orphanages want to pressure parents into making quick decisions, maybe its before you start to see negative things and change your minds. They want to place their children, and I’m sure they want to be as efficient as possible, but this is a lifetime decision we’re considering here. We tell her we want to spend more time with Timor and the brothers. The balloons are back and the boys have a lot of fun. Jaden, who has been an incredible trooper on this whole trip, is cruising around the room again, being the gentle giant he is, but is probably a pretty scary figure for them, he’s three times their size, and he’s well… he’s Jaden. I really like Nikolai, he’s spunky, and Lynne really likes his brother Valera. Timor continues to intrigue us. We ask if we can take pictures and we are told no. I tell the translator to tell the Dr. that we really need to be able to take pictures to help us with our decision. The real reason is that we want to send photos to the Adoption Physician we have on call at Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia to help us with the FAS determination, but they wouldn’t like that we are going to our own Dr. for a second opinion. They agree to let us take photos and we take a lot. We talk to the Dr. again, and express our concern about the alcohol situation with the mothers. Somehow the story changes and the mother of the brothers is not an alcoholic, “just” homeless. The boys actually don’t have the look that comes with FAS, so while I don’t believe the change in story, we do think the kids look healthy. Timor is starting to show signs of problems, that look you’ve seen in pictures of kids who just aren’t connecting with the outside world. (But the spark is in there, living in an orphanage your whole life can certainly shut you down and cause what’s happening with him. We can’t just let him go yet). We leave telling them we need more time. We are drained. We went from worrying about getting here, getting our massive amounts of luggage here, where we are going to stay, whether we could eat the food, and if we would have Internet and phone to the reality of the adoption. The shit has hit the fan.

After one day at the orphanage, our options are limited:
Continue to learn as much as we can about Timor
Bring home two brothers
Consider an infant
Go to another town in this region
Go home without little brother

We get photos and measurements and a description of Timor, Nikolai and Valera to the Adoption Doctor. We confirm a call with her for 8pm her time that night. That’s 6am the next morning for us, great since we are already sleep deprived and we’re up to 2:30am. The Dr. really just confirms our concerns. Timor most likely either has FAS or Fetal Alcohol Effect (FAE), both of which would be bad news and not correctable. This is based more on the fact that his mother was an alcoholic and our comments than the photos. She needs to see some better photos to be more certain. She thinks he would be a very risky adoption, and we already know that. She does not have the same concerns about the brothers, nor do we. So we sit there at 7:00am and decide we have the following options:

Take more pictures of Timor, and try to give the Dr. a little more to go on. Although his actions could be consistent with FAS, we don’t think is facial expressions are, and that’s a prime determinant. We need a professional opinion.
Consider taking home two brothers – we decide against this option, its just more than we bargained for, and at this stage in our life, not something we want to take on.
Consider an infant – same as above
Go to another town in this region – we’ve learned that the other 3 orphanages in this region likely don’t have any children for us either. A big issue is that there are plenty of children in the orphanages, but only certain ones are “Off the Registry” and available for adoption by foreigners. They have to be available for Kazakh citizens for 6 months before they can be adopted internationally. Other paperwork requirements exist, so the number of available kids here is small. (Something we just learned the hard way)
Go home without little brother – this seems like a very real possibility
Call our adoption agency in the states and see if they have any other options for us. Possibly a move to another region can be arranged. Although we have been told that they don’t allow this, we would argue the point that they sent us to a region with no kids that matched our request.

We get in touch with our adoption agency and tell our coordinator, what is going on. We hear back quickly, that there might be another boy who will be coming off the register soon that could be available. She is told that his mother was not an alcoholic (all of a sudden this is the most important issue in the world to us – we actually thought one of the reasons to come to Kaz was that there would be less likelihood of FAS here.) More details about this boy might become available later today. We go back to the orphanage for day two – focused on Timor. Every day, there are two, two hour visiting sessions. One at 10:00am one at 4:00pm. In the morning, Timor is pretty engaged with us. Having him one on one instead of the craziness the day before seems better for him. Lynne is convinced that there is a special boy inside and I agree there is a spark, but he just has that affect that looks like something is wrong. The caregivers have told us he has had significant developmental issues growing up (he’s 2 ½ yrs old) and they are starting to steer us away from him. They even comment that when we get home, if we have problems, they don’t want us to blame them, so they are being very forthright about his condition. His measurements look good overall, with his head in the 50th percentile for most of his life. He’s short, but stocky. Maybe with the right environment and some special treatment he would be fine…

At the 4:00pm session, we are told that they will let us see the other boy, his name is Termilanu, his nickname is Tuma. Tuma’s eyes and face are lit up compared to Timor’s. He’s totally aware and seems sharp. He’s a Kazakh native, just turned two, and pretty shy. He is interactive with his caregivers and Zhana. He understands and responds to what she asks him to do, all great signs. This could be a good option, what’s the story? We are told that he will become available for adoption on April 12. That means an additional 4 weeks to wait before we can start the bonding process, so instead of 6-8 weeks, its 10-12 weeks to adopt Tuma, roll the dice with Timor, or go home empty handed. We remain close to shock as this was not what we imagined in our journey for our little brother. We got so caught up in the spirit of the adventure, the reality of what we are doing here just hit us like a sledgehammer when it didn’t pan out as expected. Do we stay here for another month? Do we go home and return? What about Timor?

We discuss this over dinner. We definitely don’t want to stay here another month, and the idea of flying home just to return sounds unbelievably onerous, even if we can leave most of our luggage here. I’m not sure how it started, but I suggest we make lemonade out of lemons. How about if we take a trip somewhere in this part of the world, perhaps to somewhere warm, or somewhere cool (not cool as in almost cold). I would have to work full-time if we are going to take another month. My company has an office in Dusseldorf, we could go there. I have an associate and a big project going on in India we could go there. We could go to Goa! Lynne just mentioned last week that she wants to go to this world renowned beach resort, and I agreed we needed to go there before it gets even more overrun by tourists. Jaden tells us he’s “summer sick” so we all agree, if we have to go somewhere, let’s go to a beach, and an exotic one at that. We also think about southern Europe and our wheels start turning. We get online and begin looking at our options. Within minutes my Europe office has a great apartment available near Dusseldorf. I instant message with my associate in Bombay, and he convinces us that Goa is the right choice. I talk to my boss and he remains 100% supportive of whatever we need to do. He mentions the roller coaster ride we must be on, and I respond that on roller coasters you go down and then up and then up and down, this ride has been all downhill so far, more like a train wreck. Another night online until 2:30am looking at flights out of Kazakhstan and we quickly realize that no matter where we go, it will be 2 days or so to get anywhere. We agree to keep it as simple as possible. No more than three flights (after the 15 hour train ride) and no more than one overnight. We also have to consider costs, that’s a lot more airfare and lodging cost, but this is a once in a lifetime experience. We can’t believe we’re going to go through this again. Can we do this to Jaden? This is the kid who is still up every night until midnight because he’s (as he says) “in the Jaden time zone and can’t get out of it”. Maybe it’s the black tea that they serve here with every meal that he insists on drinking. We also hear back from the Adoption Dr. at CHOP. Based on the new photos we sent, she confirms that Timor does not have the classic facial symptoms of FAS, but still thinks he does have FAE. She has serious concerns. We do too. This is too much. We decide that Tuma is our better choice.

Day three at the orphanage. We want to spend more time with Tuma and make a decision. They bring him in and leave him with us. Lynne, Jaden, Galena (translator) and myself. As soon as the adoption caregiver leaves he starts crying his head off. He wants to go back to his friends where he’s comfortable. Lynne does everything she can to comfort him, but he’s inconsolable. After 15-20 minutes, we agree we should let him go back. Lynne remarks that it was fine having a baby crying on her, he wasn’t “stiff” at all, a good sign. For a two year old anywhere, stranger anxiety is expected. For one in an orphanage with people who don’t look like you or sound like you, we all agreed this is normal behavior and actually more in line than the lack of reaction we got from Timor. We come back at 4:00 to try again. Again, he starts crying as soon as he is left with us. Five minutes later, Zhana arrives and is able to somewhat soothe him by speaking Russian and just being more familiar. At around 4:30, they are ready to take the kids in his group outside, so we go out and play with a group of about fifteen 2-4 year olds and watch them in action. The caregivers don’t do anything to provide a play experience, so the kids pretty much just stand around, and some of them play with the snow. The more adventurous ones try to climb some little hills of snow that have been shoveled, but the caregivers take them right down, probably to avoid injuries. Our little Tuma tries to climb a hill over and over, a mountain climber – aha, another good sign. Other kids have fun throwing snow over and over at me and Jaden, or giving us snow in their little snow shovels. One of the brothers, the one I really liked, Nikolai, is a real pain, throwing snow repeatedly in Jaden’s face, almost throwing a shovel at him and when I tell him “Nyet” he spits at me! These kids were really cute and fun to play with. Tuma is one of the littlest ones. He opens up in this atmosphere to Lynne and we get some photos. He even cracks some smiles. He’s going to be fine once we can get him to stop crying… We’ve made our decision, we’ve found our little brother!

We come home, and get an incredible phone call from our translator. We are told they’ve talked to the social worker and she has worked it out so that we don’t have to wait until April 12 to start the two week bonding period after all. We can start immediately. In some ways, I’m disappointed, Goa would have been cool, but the reality of being back on track, with a healthy boy, and avoiding the train trip (twice more) was amazing. We don’t know how it happened, and why, and we weren’t going to ask questions. I know something is fishy, and I don’t know what, but this is great news. We drink a toast of spring water and start getting serious about what to do with Tuma’s name because we’re going to need that on the court documents, and soon.

An hour later we get another call. No, we can’t change the dates, that would be illegal (that’s what we thought!). So we’re back to waiting until April 12 before we can officially start the bonding period. Tuma is still available for adoption to a Kazakh family until then. The orphanage is promising to “hold him” for us, to do anything they can, are we supposed to give them money for this? I really don’t know. Lynne thinks I’m a skeptic, but I think I have good reason at this point. I don’t fully trust anyone or anything here, and I’ve heard and read that you need to grease the palms, but when is it appropriate and when isn’t it? Lynne insists its not in the adoption world, although we do have two brand new top of the line stethescopes to give as a gift to the Dr.’s at the orphanage (Lynne got them donated from 3M). I think we should at least give those before we leave as a token of our appreciation and to “encourage” them to leave Tuma in the back room and not “show him” to prospective families until we return.

So, back to our plans for Goa. The thought of that long trek is difficult since we thought we were going to avoid it, but the thought of about 3 weeks in a beautiful and exotic beach resort where its 80-90 degrees every day and where I can be effective for work with high speed Internet, good phone service and a focus on a project based in India is about as good an option as we could hope for at this point.

So yes, we are now on the roller coaster. We hit bottom yesterday at about 7am, and the hill climb started. Today we had the joy of finding Tuma and the ups and downs that have come with that so far. Once we can relate to and begin bonding with Tuma, I expect this will begin to get really intense in a great way. Because of this month wait, I don’t think we should start to try to get the bonding started, that will have to wait until April, and based on what we’ve seen the last few days, that will be another trying experience.

Stay tuned.

Peace, Out – Bruce