court closures this year will be a doozy

Every year in Ethiopia, the courts close for some period. The timing of this closure varies, as does the duration. Usually it's a six-eight week period, which generally falls during our August & September.

Not this year.

I spoke to the coordinator at my agency yesterday, and she told me that this year's closures will be a doozy. We're talking about a looooong time. Like [maybe] up to 3 months.

This year, the Ethiopian courts are expected to close sometime near the end of July, and stay closed until mid- to late October, because of the millenium celebration.

(Yes, you read that right - it's 1999 right now in Ethiopia. They use an entirely different calendar. And according to the Ethiopian calendar, the first day of the year 2000 is our September 11 (or 12?), 2007.)

I don't have my dossier complete yet, so I think the only way this will adversly affect me is when my case (probably) lands in the big ol' logjam of cases that will be lined up for the courts to hear once they do open up again.

So that makes it much more likely that I'm looking at travel the very end of this year, or perhaps early next year, to bring Sprout home. (But I'm still hoping for Christmas - reasonable or not!)