What to Ask?

Tomorrow morning Alex and I have a conference call set up with the California Branch Director of Holt International. The call is supposed to take about twenty minutes, and it's supposed to give us the opportunity to ask all sorts of questions.

This kind of feels like the part of a job interview where the interviewer asks if you have any questions for them. Of course you do, but you just can't think of any that don't sound stupid, and you don't want to sound stupid to someone who will be making a very big decision that affects you.

Alex is very good at asking questions. It's what he did for a living for twenty years. Because I was in radio, I just turned on the recorder and let people talk, only nudging them if necessary. My worry over sounding like an idiot overrides my natural curiosity.

But this is too important a call to let my insecurities take over. I'm pretty sure a social worker has never gotten off the phone with a prospective adoptive couple and said, "They're just too dumb to adopt."

I want to know about the political climate in Ethiopia, and if there's a reasonable chance the adoption program there could run into trouble, like those in many other countries have. I want to know about the care the children receive before they are adopted. I want to know how Holt matches children to parents.

Any other suggestions?