And after the ficha came the interviews. I think.

I tell you, you take your finger off the whatever for a second and you forget what's going on and what's been already. Fairly certain I know roughly what is coming next but one can never be sure... 

After all the paperwork stuff - doctors and legal stuff and letters saying I have no criminal record and things, I was waiting again for some months. I can't really remember why. Definitely I had to get repeat tests done as some were incorrect or something or my lungs were blurry or something, but I can't really remember why there was such a big gap between this bit and the next bit. Then I went home for Christmas and that meant putting things on hold for about 2 months. So once I arrived back in Peru in February this year, I had to restart the process by way of 5 interviews. Man, oh man. It's difficult to write about this bit as this is when I lost all hope and faith of ever being able to adopt in Peru. 

You see, the psychologist assigned to me a) did not like me, b) did not like that I was single, and c) didn't seem to know much about children. These interviews were, as I understood, to check I was a mentally stable person who knew roughly what I was committing to, wasn't going to bail on the process or, you know, turn out to be an axe murderer or similar. What they were in reality, however, were a series of lectures about how children want two parents. How, when these children are asked (because the child has a voice, don't you know) whether they'd like to go home with a mummy instead of a mummy and a daddy, they would say 'No, no quiero' and turn and walk away. Perhaps this is true of some children. Perhaps it really is. But from the children I've spent time with in these homes, DESPERATE for love and affection, I find it very hard to believe. I also questioned how you would ask a one or two year old child this... apparently they know, too... 

Anyway, after HOURS of this and a questionnaire of no less than 289 multiple choice questions, I had lost hope. Beautiful friends had accompanied me on some of these interviews, including my home visit, and were convinced of the same. My favourite soon to be Tia and I still laugh about how, when during the home visit they had asked about my family, and I explained that I'd left home to go to university at 17, they were HORRIFIED. What an AWFUL life I've had, having gone to get a higher education and lived all over the world with the incredible support and love from my amazing family. HOW AWFUL THAT IS. Really, I've suffered. Sheesh. 

From all of this, I was left in no doubt that this was not to be. They told me that there were NO other single, foreign women who have ever adopted in Peru. Ever. I left a message for a friend telling her this, feeling utterly heartbroken and her words still resound in my head: 

So no one has ever done this before. Sounds like exactly the right path for my trailblazing friend, Marianne. 

ENTER MAZ.