The Meeting

As promised, I’m going to backtrack and fill in some blanks, starting with my arrival in Aqtobe and the process to select my child.

My flight arrived at 9:15 in the morning – right on time. You go down the steps and wait on the tarmac for the single bus that shuttles passengers to the terminal, which is several hundred feet from where the plane is parked. A new terminal is under construction, but years away from completion. Construction is a very manual and slow process in these parts. The current “terminal” is a garage-like building with a corrugated tin roof (very common here) that only the business and first class passengers were privileged to set foot in. I’ve heard it has a dirt floor. The rest of us in steerage were offloaded outside and led through a gate in a wire fence and waited on the potholed, rutted, dirt/pavement combo that I think serves as a parking lot. Within about 10 minutes, a dumptruck backs up to the narrow space between the terminal and a fence with our luggage and the workers move at their own pace (paid hourly no doubt) to move the suitcases, one at a time, from the back of the truck to pallets on the ground. Once it was all unloaded, they reopened the gate and stampede began. I was told by my interpreter to move to the front – just push my way in – shortly before the gates were opened. So when in Kaz…. My bag was the third to be taken off the truck, but nearly the furthest from the gate. Retrieved it, then turned around to find a long line back to the gate. One by one, the lone woman guarding the gate checked every baggage claim ticket against every suitcase. I guess that’s a good thing, but I’m glad the weather was decent. Can’t imagine this process in the rain or late afternoon in 100F temps! It was hot enough at that hour.

And as for the winner in the amount of overweight fees I paid from Almaty to Aqtobe? It’s Susan, Griffin's mommy from Texas, who guessed I wouldn't pay a tenge. And that is exactly what happened. Zero. Zilch. Nada. They did not weigh my carry-ons as I had expected, only the checked bag. It was 22kg, which I think is 2 kg over the limit, but they let it slide. Either because they were very busy at the check-in counter, or because they felt sorry for the foreign sucker that let two guys grab her suitcase and wrap it in cellophane before she realized that it was a service she was going to have to pay for and not some strange/nice thing they do in Kaz. I had heard about the Aqtobe dirt floors and dumptruck in advance afterall. ;)

So now I’m loaded in the little mini-van, introduced to Ceric, the kind and funny man who is our driver and off we go. Aina, the interpreter, first tells me that the regional coordinator is not here, then announces that I’m going to stay with another American family for a few days before I am moved to my own apartment. I’ve posted about this before, but to say I was stunned after first getting off the plane to hear this is an understatement. No apartment, and more importantly, no agency coordinator to guide this process? Oh no!! But, off we went to Regina’s, which turned out to be the best place I could have been for those first few days. She was my saving grace.

I was told it would be afternoon before I went to the babyhouse, meanwhile Regina would be taken for her morning visit with Milan. Aina’s phone rang and I was told I too was going to babyhouse, like NOW. No time to change clothes, just get in the car. Grabbed a notebook and off we went. Stopped to pick up the gentleman from the MOE, who chatted with Ceric the rest of the way to the orphanage. I recognized the gates as we drove in and certainly the entrance to the building from other blogs. Ymit means “Hope.”

I climbed out when we stopped and was told to get back in. We were only dropping off Regina and then going over to the other orphanage were older children are housed. Okay, I was expecting to be shown kids outside of my approved age range. I can do this, all part of the process. Aina asked me in the car, “You want a 2 year old, of any gender.” Again, I’m stunned. Not quite the conversation I’ve been having with my agency for the past 16 months. I said, no, I want a boy as young as possible, preferably closer to 12 months than 24. She said there are no girls, but still got a worried look on her face and said she didn’t think there were any children under 2. Okay, now I’ve got this huge sinking feeling and the knot in my stomach has gone from baseball to cantaloupe size.

Turns out we were meeting with The Head Doctor (you only know titles, not names in all this) for both babyhouses in Aqtobe. It was a large office. He was seated behind his almost completely clear desk (except for what looked like a small appointment book in the middle) and a woman was seated behind a smaller desk facing his, just inside the door. The three of us sat on the long low sofa against the wall. The MOE Guy, me (sweating profusely), and Aina. The three of them exchange some words, there was some shaking of heads, The Head Doctor consulted his appointment book, then some more discussion, then the woman behind the desk shuffled through some papers and made a phone call, then some additional discussion took place. Aina then says to me, “Would you like to see some older children?” I said, thank you, but I would prefer not to, as I’m looking for a younger child.” She nods, then responded to The Head Doctor. Some more silence ensued with a few mumbled words all around. All very serious and stern. Then came a rather jovial conversation between The Head Doctor and The MOE Guy about some sort of long-necked guitar-like instrument sitting on the sofa next to him. Um, hello??!! About 30 seconds later, The Head Doctor said something to Aina and she said to me “He wishes you the best of luck.” What?!? We all stand up, I shake his hand and say thank you very much and we leave. This entire encounter took about 5 minutes, if that. We go back out to the car and drive away. The three of them (Ceric, Aina, and The MOE Guy) are obviously well acquainted and are chatting away and laughing. Laughing!! People, my life is in your hands! What can be so funny?! I am sure it has nothing to do with me, and I'm near panic. I finally am able to interrupt the jocularity long enough to ask Aina what is going on. She tells me we are going back to the babyhouse where there is one child I can see and he is the ONLY child available under 2 in Aqtobe. Okay then, but I thought you said there were no babies? I ask what happens if this single available child isn’t the right one for me. She says she doesn’t know, but will ask. Aaacckk! My head is spinning, I’m still sweating like a cold beer can right out of the cooler at a 4^th of July picnic, still feeling that cantaloupe in my stomach, and wondering how to say “pull over please, I’m going to throw up" in Russian. Keep in mind the distance between all these buildings is less than a mile, so from point A to point B takes mere minutes bouncing along on deeply rutted, mostly dirt roads.

Back at the babyhouse, (I think a whole 15-20 minutes has passed since we dropped Regina off), we go inside. Everyone has described being shown children in the director’s office on the first floor, which is quite small. Instead, I trail along as we head upstairs and right into the bonding room, which I recognize from photos on other family’s blogs. That, and the fact that Regina is there playing with Milo. I’m told to sit on the couch. I desperately need water, but am afraid to move. I may have in the end, I honestly don’t remember. Within a minute or two, a woman walks in holding this little baby boy. LITTLE baby! She sits down on the end chair in a row of chairs and holds the baby on her lap. He is smiling despite the pacifier that he is furiously sucking on, and watching everyone in the room with pure delight. I move to the chair next to her, say hello to him, he smiles at me, I hold his little hands, then finally pick him up and put him on my lap, which is when he spewed all over me and I went through my hide-the-gagging fit. Regina came over with a toy and a cloth for me to help with the spit-up. Bless her heart; she was keeping one eye on me and one on Milo. In the rush to leave the apartment, I completely forgot to bring a toy or two to use to interact with the children I was shown. Meanwhile, Aina disappears. And the MOE Guy and the nanny are chatting away. Aina returns holding a small scrap of paper from which she recites a few key facts about him. I ask a couple of questions, which she answered, then she asked me “Do you want him?” Yep, just like that. I looked over at Regina, she smiled, and I said yes. It had been maybe three minutes. Seriously. Aina then says “Give the baby back, we have to leave.” So I did, and we did, practically at a run.

I’m not quite sure what I was feeling besides overwhelmed, stunned, scared, hot, and suddenly exhausted. Following orders and going through the motions in this wacky dream-like movie that I had somehow walked into. We went back to Regina’s apartment and Aina dictates, while I hand write four letters to the MOE requesting to bond with this baby, whose first name I don’t even know. I had a small bottle of water that I set next to me on the bench by the table and started to reach for it a couple of times, but gave up due to the urgency in Aina’s voice. Finally, she smiled and said, “It’s okay, you can take a drink.” In Gulnara’s absence, Aina had stepped in (I commend her for that) and was obviously pretty stressed. She needed to get the paperwork translated, notarized and registered somewhere in order for the official 15-day bonding period to begin. As it turns out, my bonding period did not actually start for two more days as some necessary person at the MOE was on vacation.

You are always told to go ahead and start the official bonding paperwork even if you aren’t completely sure, because it prevents anyone else from being shown the same child. I did not want to take a chance on this baby slipping between my fingers. As it happens, not a single other family has arrived in the nearly 2 weeks I’ve been here. Little Kairat may truly be the only child that was available, I have no reason to doubt it, especially given my previous delays were due to a lack of available children in my preferred age range. I was prepared to also be shown kids out of my age range or special needs, since that seems to be the norm. I wonder if the absence of the babyhouse director and my in-country coordinator contributed to how this all played out. Or maybe not. As I have found, normal is whatever happens when it happens in this process.

That night, I confess to feeling like I had been rushed. I know that you are only given a few minutes with each child, but I probably should have asked for a little more time with him. For crying out loud, I spent more time choosing one of my cats from the SPCA!!! Frankly, it was kind of distracting to have so many other people and activity in the room. In the end, I still would have agreed to sign the bonding paperwork, but the world might not have been spinning quite so fast. As everyone who has been through this knows, it is very surreal. There is no bigger commitment, no larger responsibility, no greater life-changing event than bringing a child into your heart and your life. It’s a nearly hysterical feeling. Laughing one minute with the overwhelming emotion of it all, then crying the next for, well, the same reason. Regina talked me down that night. She reminded me several times that this wasn’t the end, only the beginning. I had not committed to actually adopt him (despite language to that effect in the letters that I wrote), I was just starting the process to evaluate him and make sure he was the child that was meant to be mine. Sleeping pill that night was a very good thing. ;)