Other things I forgot to add about our police encounter. We asked for ID, which of course they didn't have, but one of them was wearing a uniform shirt which she pointed out to us. They were polite but very condescending to us. At the end of our encounter, they asked us if they had harassed us! William had accused them of harassment on the phone. We said no, mostly because we still didn't know the outcome so we had to be polite and careful. The orphanage director, Mandy, who coincidentally arrived from the USA the next morning, said the coming in the middle of the night is a deliberate technique to catch you off guard and befuddled. Thank goodness we had changed guesthouses, which gave us a few minutes to pull ourselves together, and the contact with Surjio. Also, we were seated outside during the entire interview, during which time dozens of huge bats kept swooping under the patio roof right over our heads.
The next morning before dawn, Micah and I got in the car and headed to Kampala. We arrived at the lawyer's office around 8 am where we were told our paperwork would be ready to pick up and head straight to the passport office. Of course it wasn't, and the junior lawyer who was supposed to prepare it said she'd start in a minute, after she finished whatever else she was doing. She basically had to make copies. After about an hour, they were done. The secretary handed them out to us, explaining which to keep and which to give to the embassy and William. Meanwhile, William had picked up Mandy in Entebbe and was on his way to Kampala to the lawyer's office to get Zariah's court order and take it to Jinja to show the police. William said he was 10-15 minutes away. They arrived about 30 minutes later. We got to meet Mandy for the first time in person (she lives in CA but spends several months a year in Uganda).
We had been told that we needed a lawyer to accompany us to the passport office, but the lawyer who was supposed to do that now had left for court. William called his contact at the passport office and then told us we could go without a lawyer. When we arrived, there was a large dirt courtyard with a ramada in the center, under which were benches with about 100 people seated waiting. A man in uniform approached us and identified himself as Ronald, our contact. He told us to wait and pointed to the seats. We didn't want to sit and a few minutes later he came back and asked for our court orders, which he took to photocopy. He told us to stand at a counter in the front of where a line would form. After he'd been gone a while, another uniformed man approached and told us not to stand there, as that line was for Ugandans waiting to sign their passports. He said that he would get in trouble with his supervisor for not helping people if we continued to stand there. We explained that we had been instructed to stand there by Ronald. He didn't know who Ronald was, and he wanted us to go stand in the center of the courtyard and look in all directions so we would see Ronald if he approached. We called Ronald and he said he was on his way back, so we moved slightly so we weren't in the line any more. After another 15 minutes or so Ronald reappeared with our documents. He told us to stand by another window and someone would call our name. Very shortly, our names were called, and we signed for our children's passports and were handed them. I got very lucky because a sign on the wall said said that you could not have someone else pick up your passport for you--you had to be present. Since Zariah was not with me (and Ronald did ask about her) this could have been a problem.
We just keep laughing to keep from crying. Our saying, when one of us in the group expresses dismay that something he/she thought would be quick takes hours,is "Have you been to Uganda before?" and then we all crack up.
Next we stopped at our new guest house, which was billed as being right behind the embassy. Technically it is, but the way the roads, yards and traffic is, it is a several block walk. We got our driver to drop us across the road, because there is no stopping standing or parking near the embassy. We then dashed across the road. I was wearing Micah in a baby carrier and carrying the diaper bag which was mostly empty except for the extremely heavy binder I have dubbed "the brick" which contains 4-8 copies of every document we have, and we had to dash across a busy road. Miraculously, the place was almost empty, unlike our previous visit where we waited several hours in a standing room only waiting room, so we went right in (after the security checks) and were able to see the woman immediately. Unfortunately, our good luck ended there. We turned in our court orders to the embassy, as well as the official birth certificates, which we didn't have when we turned in the rest of the paperwork several weeks ago. We have emailed and phoned the embassy staff person asking her if she needed us to deliver the birth certificates sooner and she said no--don't waste a trip. Today, however, she said the official orphan investigation doesn't begin until they receive the birth certificates! She said it is usually 2 weeks from the day they get the birth certificate to the day they issue the visa. So that means the 2 week clock starts now! Could be sooner but no guarantees.
Due to this, Daryl is considering flying home today. He needs to get back to work, and some of our kids are having a hard time really missing us. I don't want him to leave and neither of us really knows what to do at this point.
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