Michelle and David Huck know well the promise and peril of adopting from Africa.
The Calgary couple's first attempt began smoothly: A Canadian adoption agency newly licensed to work in Sierra Leone matched them with orphaned siblings - Amie, 3, and her one-year-old brother, Sorie. For a year, the Hucks filled out paperwork, prepared a bedroom and paid more than $20,000 in fees. But when Mr. Huck flew to the war-torn country, he made a terrible discovery: Amie and Sorie did not exist. "It was devastating," says Ms. Huck, a social worker.
The Hucks eventually returned to Sierra Leone, adopting baby Samuel from a reputable orphanage run by Canadians.
And last year in Ethiopia, six-year-old Bethlehem Soleil jumped into their arms and completed their family, which also includes two biological children.
The Hucks' story, even with its happy ending, highlights the potential pitfalls as more Canadian families travel to Africa to bring orphaned
children home.Canadian adoptions from Africa are on the rise: Last year, there were more than 100 adoptions, a more than threefold increase since 2002. Most are from Ethiopia - now the second most popular country for Canadian international adoptions - rising from 13 adoptions in 2002 to 96 in the first nine months of 2007. South Africa, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Congo have begun sending children to Canada in the past five years.
The trend is in large part due to supply and demand: China's adoption program is slowing down drastically - there are now five-year waiting lists for Chinese infants - so Canadian adoption agencies are spanning out across the globe looking for new programs. Many are turning to Africa, where conflict, poverty and disease have orphaned millions of children - 12 million from HIV-AIDS alone.
Despite the need, and celebrity endorsements from Madonna and Angelina Jolie, Africa's future as an adoption hub troubles some experts because of the potential for abuses.
Earlier this year, Ottawa alerted provincial adoption regulators about serious child-trafficking problems in Liberia - where Canadians have adopted 26 children since 2005. Three jurisdictions - Alberta, Newfoundland and Nunavut - responded by halting all adoptions from Liberia. (Canada-wide moratoriums apply to Cambodia and Guatemala.)
Some experienced adoption agents say there is potential for more problems as agencies scramble for licences in countries where international adoption is new, and proper checks and balances are not yet streamlined.
"Is it competitive? Yeah, it's competitive," says Cheryl Carter-Shotts, who directs Americans for African Adoptions, the first North American adoption agency licensed in Ethiopia in 1996. Now, she says, there are about 60 licensed agencies.
"Families want babies and toddlers. Who's going to come up with babies and toddlers? And how much are you going to charge? Are you soliciting pregnant girls?"
Nothing about adopting from Sierra Leone was easy for Tom and Monique Yurkiw. Almost three years ago, Mr. Yurkiw, a Canadian military medic, was in the country helping to train local soldiers when he met a bright but destitute five-year-old girl named Melrose. Melrose's grandmother, her caretaker, explained that the girl's parents were dead, and encouraged Mr. Yurkiw to adopt the child.
But the Yurkiws soon learned that even humanitarian efforts can't steamroll poverty and corruption. One social worker in Sierra Leone hinted that they could speed up the dragging process if they bought her a laptop. It turned out that Melrose's grandmother, hoping to grant Melrose a better life, had lied about her orphan status. (Melrose's father, who had been in jail, and her mother, who gave birth to Melrose at age 13, later went to a Sierra Leonean court and gave up their legal parental rights so the Yurkiws could adopt.)
Finally, after more than a year of complex paperwork, long-distance calls and about $24,000 in flights and fees, the Yurkiws travelled to Sierra Leone to gather Melrose - then learned her visa hadn't been approved because of a glitch at the Canadian High Commission in Ghana. That threw the entire adoption into question. Two months and another flight later, the adoption went through, but only after the Ottawa Citizen drew attention to the family's plight.
Other couples have had similarly turbulent adoption journeys. Karen and Dave Bakelaar met a boy named Thabiso while volunteering in a South African orphanage. On the advice of a local social worker, the couple returned home to Ottawa to begin the adoption process, only to discover that no Canadian adoption agency was licensed to work in South Africa. What they naively assumed would take three weeks dragged into nine months of angst and dogged effort.
