Go Away - Come Back

In Kigali, people carry an amazing amount and variety of things on their heads. I know this because we drove around Kigali a tremendous amount today. And why is that you ask? Well, it’s because of the Rwandan Go Away – Come Back bureaucratic shuffle.

Today it seemed no matter what we tried, it wasn’t quite right. It started me setting the alarm clock incorrectly and only having 15 minutes to get ready before our driver arrived. Sigh….

From there, it went down-hill quickly. First literally, then figuratively. The literal down-hill was to the Orphanage to pick up the Epimaque and Teresita (Chad and Shawna’s little girl). The road to the orphanage is scary with 5 big adults packed into a Corrolla. The ruts on the dirt road are large enough to loose a cow – Corrolla’s are not much larger. But, we got there and got to be with our kids – so the figurative down-hill ended with a great time. Epimaque is more comfortable with us and knows we are his mama and papa and he smiles more often. This is wonderful.

The figurative down-hills were all related to the bureaucratic shuffle. We started by going to the Minister of Gender and Family promotion. Although the court has declared these children as ours, the Minister must given final consent for us to travel. So we get there hoping to get this signature, but they tell us we need some papers notarized – we have notarized so many papers over the time, it is amazing they want more, but they do – Go Away and Come Back. So we go to a notary, but they don’t like some of the papers, we need a different stamp from the Ministry of Justice – Go Away and Come Back. We go to the ministry of Justice, and they don’t like a couple documents because they don’t like the translator, we need to get them retranslated – Go Away and Come Back. We find the translator they recommend but they are in meetings and can’t do it until tomorrow morning – Go Away and Come Back. Mores sighs….

Tomorrow morning we hope we have everything for them and can get the final signature. Until then, we cannot take the children permanently – even though the court says they are ours. But, on the bright side, I might not have seen a guy carry a table and four-chairs on his head if it weren’t for all the running around we had to do!

-dale