Adopted kids stranded in Ethiopia
Adopted kids stranded in Ethiopia
Ardrossan family plans rescue trip despite government advice to wait
BY JAMIE HALL, EDMONTON JOURNALJULY 18, 2009
Mark Kostelyk will fly Monday to Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa to bring his two newly adopted children home with him to Ardrossan.
Kostelyk and his wife, Sharla, are among about 400 Canadian families, including six from Alberta, whose adoptions through Ontario-based Imagine Adoption are in limbo after its collapse earlier this week.
The couple's five-year-old son and three-year-old daughter are living at the agency's transition home in Addis Ababa with about 40 other children.
They're being cared for by some adoptive parents who happened to be in Africa when news of the agency's collapse broke and by staff members who are no longer getting paid.
Sharla, who has been communicating with them via e-mail, said the parents already there have been using their own money to buy food for the children because the agency's accounts have been frozen.
"It's a very dire situation," she said.
It's also why the couple has chosen to ignore advice from the Alberta government, which told families not to travel to Africa but to remain home until the situation is sorted out.
"Most people in our shoes would do the same thing," Sharla said. "If your kids need you, you do what you have to do. They are our children, and we need to do everything we can to make sure they're safe and get them home where they belong."
The couple started working with the agency two years ago, after they learned there were more than five million orphans in Ethiopia.
They have five children who range in age from four to 14.Two are their biological children, three were adopted in Canada.
In May, the agency matched the Kostelyks with two siblings, a boy and a girl.
Last month, they completed the necessary paperwork to finalize the process, and even received copies from the agency of the children's birth certificates, showing them as the parents.
All that remained was to bring them home, something they planned to do in September.
All that changed when they got a phone call from a friend Monday telling them of the agency's collapse.
"It turned our world completely upside down," Sharla said.
Since then, they've been scrambling to get clothes for the children, and beds.
More importantly, they need visas that would allow Mark to bring their son and daughter back to Canada.
A spokeswoman for Alberta Children and Youth Services, Cathy Ducharme, said the province is working with the Canadian High Commission in Nairobi, Kenya, to expedite the visa or passport documentation for families who have legally adopted children.
More information about the agency's dealings overseas have come to light which suggests the operation wasn't running smoothly in the months leading up to Monday's collapse.
Earlier this year, Immigration Canada suspended nine adoptions in Ghana linked to Imagine Adoption after local authorities shut down the orphanage due to concerns over child trafficking.
The Kostelyks had no inkling there was anything amiss with the agency, or the people who ran it.
Sharla said as far as she knew, the children were receiving "excellent care" at the transition house.
It was only a week ago they heard from their caseworker, who told them she had received the care package the family had sent.
In it were photographs of the Kostelyks and their children in Canada.
The boys were dressed in Canada T-shirts, the girls in dresses; identical outfits were included for their new brother and sister.
"We were trying to get them to understand that we loved them and that we were their family," Sharla said.
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