What to say…wow. That’s a start. Yikes…
Ok so our day was interesting to say the least. There was no power in the entire town all day yesterday as I said. We spoke to a girl right nearby who has a print shop where you can bring a jump drive and get things printed out. She said she’d be there at 7am today and if there was power we could get all the forms we needed printed out. We got up around 6:30 because we had an 8am appointment with the probation officer and the guardians to get all the corrected and edited (by me by the way) documents signed so we can have our petition filed in court with documents that are not full of errors. That was our plan. It helps to have a plan even when it deteriorates into a rough outline and then a hope. At least you knew what you were shooting for when you miss. So let’s say we had an outline of our day that looked something like this.
Before 8 am – wake, take boys to bathroom (or “pit loo” as our hostess called it), dress and feed them and ourselves, pack the backpack full of snacks, water and lots of distracting things for the boys. Have everything we need for the official paperwork stuff for the day set to go.
8AM – meet with probation officer at his office. A very short walk from here to his office. This should be quick. Have he and the guardians sign all the necessary forms.
By 9am – have all the forms signed and filled out. Bring the forms to the town office to be signed and then be off to the lawyer’s office by 10
10am – our driver will bring us to our lawyer’s office in Kampala as we arranged yesterday
11am – arrive in Kampala with everything the lawyer asked us for and be filled with a sense of accomplishment
WHAT REALLY HAPPENED
6:30 –up and at ‘em
7:30 – completely ready to go with everything we needed for the day we left the compound and walked around the corner to the print/copy shop. She wasn’t there. Hummm. What a shock. The shopkeeper next to her stall was there and he said there was another place not far.
7:36 --So we walked down to the main road and in the first set of shops was a print and copy shop that was still locked up. A man walked out from the back and we asked him about getting something printed. He said he’d ask the owner and disappeared inside. A few minutes later we heard the shop being unlocked from the inside. Unfortunately that was a junk shop next to the shop we needed and we were informed that the print shop owner wasn’t coming today.
7:46 – walk back to the original shop (which is in the direction we are to be heading for our meeting) still locked up.
7:50 --I go just a bit further to our friend’s house who is supposed to be walking us to the office for our meeting. Her maid says she’s home and tries to get her for me. No one comes out. After several minutes I go back out of her compound and see that the print shop girl is opening her shop.
8am –(our meeting should be starting now and I have no papers to sign and no one to walk me to the meeting) we tell the girl what we need copied. She seems confused. I help her get the file I need off of the jump drive. She starts printing it out and the copier gets a jam. While she is fixing that some men come over and she starts working on their stuff even though ours isn’t done.
8:05 – my friend calls and says there’s no rush because she got a call from the probation officer and he won’t be at his office for another hour. One would think that would give us plenty of time to get 4 copies of 2 documents and 2 copies for 4 letters done…one would think.
8:45 – she printed out the document but the formatting had all moved bc her program must have been different then the one I edited on so the heading for the next pg was on the end of the last etc. So I edited that all but we hit print before we hit save and it printed wrong again. While I was editing it a 3rd time and the power went out. I nearly assaulted the woman verbally or physically at that point. I wanted to cry scream or injure someone or maybe all of the above. Norm just waked away looking like he wanted to do the same… how can this be? How can it be this bad? How can it be this hard to do something that would take me 15mins in my own kitchen at home? Can this really be how hard this is going to be everyday?
8:50 – after paying for the pile of messed up crappy documents that would not serve my needs I walked to my friend’s house in despair. Norm and I were very near tears and our day was still very young. We had a lot that NEEDED to be done and now power was out again maybe for the entire day!
9:00 – we walk with our friend to another print shop but there wasn’t any power. Our friend flags down a boda boda (motorbike taxi) and explains to take Norm to a place with a generator and a printer!! He is about to lose it but gets on the bike because; it is try that or have nothing. The look on his face as he drives off tells me to pray HARD!!
9:05 -- My friend, the boys and I start to walk to the office to wait for our appointment. I am thankful that Benny walks so slowly so that I can cry with out her seeing me.
9:10 --We get there and the social worker/probation officer has still not arrived. I’m praying hard for Norman
9:20 – one of the guardians arrives (we had given them both taxi money the day before so they’d be on time. They were asked to be there at 8:30) still praying for Norm and trying not to cry on front of everyone
9:30 – we’re told we can wait in the probation officer’s office -he’ll be here any minute
9:45 – the 2nd guardian arrives and the probation officer/P.O. and Norman just with in a few minutes of eachother.
9:50 – we’re all in his office now. Norm hands the whole giant still-warm un-collated stack (19pgs x 4) to the officer because he is so flustered. I take it back and pull out a report and hand it to him to read over so he can see the changes I made. While he is reading I have to collate and staple all the individual documents within the stack –around 12 docs. Norm explains that the 1st place he went didn’t have power so he was taken to the post office which has a generator and he had to pay a decent amount but he did get it all done correctly. There are also affidavits that the guardians need to sign. The guardians can’t read very well and not in English barely at all so I am thinking that the P.O. can help them and then they’ll sign. He looks at the docs and says no they must be signed in front of a lawyer. You’ll have to bring these women to the lawyer’s office with you. We all groaned in disbelief. That was not a happy thought for any of us. So we left there with at least the forms signed by the P.O. sadly we though we’d be heading out of town by now.
10:20-- The driver arrives to pick us up. 5 adults and 2 boys pile into a sedan and we’re off.
10:30 – arrive at town office with docs we were told were necessary to get a signature. We are told they can’t help us because we need the local district chairman to fill out the forms and sign and stamp them. We try to push them and they say that is the only way it can be done. I call the lawyer with the last of my phone credits (most phones here are like a track phone). He is in court and unavailable his aide says.
10:31 - I think about what good it would do to throw the fit that is happening on the inside of me. I decide against it.
10:35- arrive at the chairman’s office (be aware that we have been to his office twice already for the same purpose and had him fill out other forms and wrote letters that we were told was ALL WE NEEDED last week and yesterday) he isn’t there either. He’s come and he’ll be here soon they tell us. 5mins. We ask what that really means. They say maybe 30mins or so. We give the boys a lollypop and get out their art stuff. They sit on the floor and color. I ask the chairman’s assistant (who we saw yesterday and who speaks very good English and whom we talked with quite a lot about America.) if he would please translate and explain the irrevocable release forms to the guardians so they could sign them in good faith. He was happy to help. That was a great blessing and a good use of time. They both were nodding and “uh huh” ing their approval as he read off and translated each bullet point for them and he helped them sign and date them. They needed help spelling the month in English etc. That killed some time and then since the chairman was still not there, I started filling out the forms he needed to sign and stamp for us. I had to get all the info from the ladies which was a bit of a challenge with the language barrier, but we managed…hey we had time to repeat ourselves if nothing else! During this hour I also bough more phone time and called the lawyer’s office back and spoke with his assistant and also our lawyer once he got out of court. I expressed our extreme frustration in that this was NOT what he originally told us we needed to do but was a LOT more involved. All of this is jeopardizing our visa application appointment tomorrow because we need to have death certificates of the parents in order to get the visas and we need these forms to get the death certificates.
11:30 -- the chairman arrives… smiling. We are thrilled to see him and he genuinely wants to help us. He is good man just a busy one. He looks the forms over help us fill in the last blanks
12:00 noon --, stamps them and sends us all on our way.
12:05 – our driver (who has a 1:30 appointment and so we are also trying to think about how we can get ourselves to the lawyers office while all this other stress mess is happening) takes us (7 people) back to the town office.
12:10 – Norm is distracting the boys with snacks while their guardians leave. Some how we manage to avoid the usual meltdown that separation causes. Our driver is dropping them home and then coming back for us. We have the papers and we’re told they are filled out incorrectly. But the office worker there just tells me to cross them out and tells me what to write to make it correct. It all set now but the town clerk is STILL NOT AT WORK!!
12:15 – we’re told where to sit and wait for him indefinitely. I again consider the tantrum.
12:16 – As I walk out to the porch were we can wait, I see an angel shaking Norm’s hand. I do a double take. What is HE doing here?? It is our lawyer. He works an hour away. He looks up at my surprised face and says, “didn’t you get my text? I said I was coming.” I grabbed my phone, still stunned, and he said “there’s no reason to retrieve it now, I’m here. What do you have completed?” I felt the realization hit me that his presence where we were meant we didn’t have to drive to his office. A wave of relief hit us both. We showed him everything. It all looked great to him. We tell him his showing up is a miracle.
1pm --He went in and ruffled some feathers to get the guy we needed to actually show up in this lifetime. We’re told “5mins”
2pm – the town clerk arrives
2:15 – we have the papers we need in hand. The lawyer offers to drop us home.
2:30 – we are “home” not having eaten since breakfast at 7:15. Norm nearly passes out.
2:35 -- Our host peaks in our doorway and says “have you eaten? come and have lunch.” I almost kiss her.
3pm – we’ve all eaten well and Norm is in bed…where he still is at 4:30as I write this. The boys are playing with the maid’s son, Deyo, who is about 6yrs old.
Conclusion: all documents are complete. Our petition will be filed with the court by tomorrow. Our court date will be confirmed at that time. We will stop by his office early in the morning to get a few things we need for the US Embassy appointment tomorrow AM. We feel as if we have been in a physical hand to hand battle just to get the smallest things done. These boys must be pretty important, because someone doesn’t want them to leave.
