Chapter 2:
Back and Forth but not to Azerbaijan
Since she was new and fresh to the vagaries of the international adoption process, she didn’t question anything the agency had her do. She believed what they told her. She believed they were knowledgeable professionals, following the laws in Azerbaijan. She believed this whenever she drove to the state capital to have yet another document authenticated. She thought she was one step closer to receiving an official referral from Azerbaijan, one step closer to being a mom.
Unfortunately, she was ignorant about the Internet when her journey began. She was therefore a perfect BBAS client. She did not know to look beyond what was being fed to her by the vicious clowns at BBAS. She did not know how to search on international adoptions. She was unaware of country specific Yahoo! groups and internet forums where adoption information and support was freely shared. Information such as timelines, bad agencies, available referrals, and country laws was all there.
She believed Denise Hubbard’s caring, humanitarian persona, as Alysha Towell had in the beginning. She believed Denise had competent people scouring the orphanages in Azerbaijan looking for her baby.
Denise Hubbard never informed Janet of the cataclysmic changes which took place in Azerbaijan in 2003. The adoption program slowed down in May 2003, a month before Janet signed the contract. A year later Azerbaijan’s adoption program was halted indefinitely. As of this writing, June 2005, Azerbaijan is closed to foreign adoption.
Denise knew Azerbaijan was nearly a dead end, yet she let Janet willing allowed Janet sign a contract which stated “Azerbaijan.”
Denise must have figured Janet Ostrander’s $4,300 contract and application fees were enough to cover her lack of knowledge about the program. It also gave Denise leeway in not giving Janet concrete and true information. Janet, after all, wasn’t one of the high-paying, high margin Guatemalan clients.
Knowing Janet ‘s ignorance with international adoption and isolation from the Internet adoption community, any questions Janet had were answered by sending her on document gathering sprees. Each time she traveled to her state’s capital, she spent the night in a hotel. While getting her documents authenticated, she ran into others adopting internationally. The other PAPs looked at her oddly when she stated how many times she’d been back and forth. “We’ve never had to come back here that many times, for so many documents. Are you sure that agency knows what they’re doing?” they’d ask.
Janet reassured them. BBAS knew the ropes. BBAS was in control. BBAS in turn, reassured Janet her baby from Azerbaijan was coming soon. To hang on, it was any day now. All that document gathering would pay off in the form of a baby for her to hold and love.