things i’ve learned from working with adoptions:

1. you never get the same information twice. here’s how something will play out (a different color for the different days & different info)-- the dad is coming to the Orphanage and will bring his birth certificate. the mom doesn’t have one. the parents live 11 hours away in the country side. we will have to go there to get their birth certificates. they have no phone, we can’t contact them any other way. the mom lives in the country side, the dad is here in petion-ville. but the dad’s birth certificate is in the country side. the mom doesn’t have one any more, she never got it back after a previous child was adopted out. the mom never had a birth certificate, it used to not be required, so she didn’t need one from when her previous child was adopted out. they made the 2 day travel back and forth, but couldn’t find the dad’s birth certificate. it must have been wiped out by the flood.

2. you can have many different spellings for your name. in fact, you can spell it a different way every day if you want to! it might be spelled one way on your birth certificate, another way on your ID card, another way on your passport, and you sign it matching none of the above.

3. never take “it should be done in a week” to actually mean “it should be done in a week”.

4. Petèt se vre (maybe that’s true) is the only way to respond to info birth parents give you.

5. you can never ask too many questions. it’s also important to ask the same question many different ways. of course, that might give you many different answers. maybe one of them will be what you were looking for.