Guyana

Our youngest daughter is waiting for us in the country of Guyana. When I found out where she was, my first thought was, "Where is Guyana?" We knew absolutely nothing about the country when we said yes to our little one.  Since then, I've been reading and learning all I can - even how to pronounce it! It's a country full of contrast, much like Colombia, with the poorest of poor yet an infinite amount of natural beauty.

Kaieteur Falls: One of the Highest Waterfalls in the World

Guyana is the 3rd smallest country in South America with a land mass of only 83,000 square miles. The population of the entire country is approximately 775,000 people with the majority living on the coast near the capital city of Georgetown.

Guyana was previously a British colony and known as "British Guiana". To the west is Venezuela and Brazil, to the east is Suriname (formerly Dutch Guyana) and just east of that, French Guiana. Being a former British colony, the official language is English.  Although part of South America, they consider themselves part of the Caribbean region.

Guyana is a young country and gained its independence from Britain in 1966. The majority of its previous European settlers left the country at that time, leaving behind the endured servants and slaves they had brought to the country from India and Africa. Indo-Guyanese make up approximately 45% of the population and Afro-Guyanese 30%. One would hope that their newfound freedom would bring the cultures together, but unfortunately there remains a rift between the two main races.

The country is one of the poorest countries in South America. Political turmoil, racial tensions and poor infrastructures plague the country. All that being sad, it is a beautiful country with welcoming people, delicious food, amazing sights and festive celebrations.

Celebrating Mashramani - the day Guyana became a Republic

The process to adopt from Guyana is quite different than Colombia.  The first difference is Guyana is not part of the Hague Convention, which means that we apply for an I-600 with the US government (vs an I-800).  With the I-600 process, we are able to travel to Guyana once Guyana approves us and we do not need to await a second approval from USCIS before traveling. That will help speed up the process to when we finally get to meet our daughter! YAY! Unfortunately, adoptions are processed much slower in Guyana. It's a several month process (vs 4 weeks in Colombia) and requires 2 trips. Our first trip will be 2-3 weeks long. Then we must come home and wait until they are ready for us to come back for our final trip to bring our daughter home. This last trip requires a 4 - 6 week long stay while the adoption is finalized in Guyana. We will be spending our time there in the Georgetown area, right along the coast. Although the beach is not swimmable due to the powerful tides, the weather will be a hot 85 degrees, which sounds pretty amazing right now with our current temp at -4 with wind chill.

A couple other things make this adoption uncharted territory for us. One being the size of the Guyana adoption program. In 2017, 22 children were adopted from Guyana by US families. In comparison, there were 181 children adopted from Colombia during that same time period. The Guyana adoption program is tiny, making many of its steps a mystery as we have only found one other family who has gone through the process, and their experience was quite different because they are a Guyanese heritage couple with parents still living in Guyana.

But the biggest difference making this journey so much more gut wrenching...our daughter has already been identified. For all our previous adoptions, we did the paperwork and then waited to be matched - sometimes months, sometimes years - waiting to finally lay our eyes on our child. But this time around, we know who we are adopting from the very beginning. We've seen her photo. We've watched the calendar as months have slipped by and she turned 12 months, then 13 and now 14 months old.  Each bump in the road is all the more painful because we have someone waiting for us to come and bring her home.

So what's next? First we need to have our Home Study Report finalized by Evolve and once final, we will send our I-600a application to the US Government (USCIS) to await their approval. This can take 4 - 10 weeks. Once approved, Hopscotch will send our completed paperwork to Guyana where we wait to hear if they will accept our application to adopt Baby A. Once that happens, we will be on our way to Guyana soon to meet our daughter!

But for now, we wait...