February 13th Update – An Epic Adoption Story
On Friday I went to see a dear friend, Jimmy. Jimmy was arrested last February on charges of murder just prior to an Adopt Uganda team’s departure. It seems that he was arrested on the sole fact that he was in possession of a brown jacket. It is not clear if the police were trying to obtain some bribe money from the Mzungus, or if was just a simple mistake.
In any case he has now been in prison for a crime he did not commit for a year. He is in the Torroro Prison Farm. I was happy that his wife was able to join us for the trip. She had not been able to visit since December 6th.
While Jimmy was happy to see us it was obvious that he was also somewhat discouraged. It now seems that another person has been arrested for the same crime, but Jimmy is still in prison. A hearing is scheduled for March in Mbale, and it is now our hope that bail is set and met so he can enjoy freedom again.
February 12th Update – An Epic Adoption Story
Well, we’ve spent Tuesday through today in Busia. Some has change, but much has remained the same. The gas station in front of The Cool Palace was just having its foundation dug when I was here in 2007, and now it is doing business. The church has begun a school and has 320 students enrolled. Most of them cannot afford school fees. I got tours of a fish farm, the new orphanage building, the tree, pineapple, and coffee farms, and of course the school.
On Thursday I went with Lucas, Francis, and Kelvin to a village deep into the Bugiri District in the village of Bukatu to do some fundraising. It was a long trip over some pretty difficult terrain (about five hours round trip). We had a worship service first and then went into a fundraising effort where goods like eggs, casaba, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, detergent, soap and maize were brought as offerings. These offerings were then auctioned off to the highest bidder. A Ugandan auction requires the whole congregation to participate. Instead of hearing the auctioneer call, “Going once, going twice…” he repeats the bid in concert with the congregation and on the third repeat if someone calls out a higher bid then it begins all over again. There was a lot of showmanship and storytelling that went into each item in order to coax people into bidding.
As the auctioned carried on I went outside to be with the children eventually coaxing them to sing some songs thanks to Samuel’s leadership. He’s the one with the soda on the far right. He’ll be hard to spot, but the Mzungu should be easy. I tried to win some friends by sharing a Cliff bar, and belive it or not I was able to split it in about fifty parts. Lunch was Mzungu rice (the most expensive because it is stone free), chicken, broth, bread and a coke. I found myself even more appreciative of Lucas’ work here.
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February 11th Update – An Epic Adoption Story
So, medical screening went as hoped for everyone. No major issues. Lucas’ TB test was a concern so we had to drive to an imaging clinic to get chest x-rays. We waited an hour and had to do one x-ray twice, and it made Monday a long day. We called on Tuesday at 2:00 pm for results after having a celebratory pizza for lunch at Nandos.
On the way back to our Kampala residence we stopped for soft serve ice cream, and then walked back to our Kampala residence. We packed for a trip to Busia and in the midst of doing so the power went out. So, we decided to put everyone to bed, and just as we got settled the power came back on. Kristi was up by 4:00 am trying to make sure we had everything we needed for our trip.
The majority of soda pop is sold in returnable glass bottles. We had a number of them to return, and I left Tuesday morning in order to get some laundry detergent and to return the bottles. The little grocery refused to take back bottles that they no longer carried, even though we purchased them there. I’m not sure why, but I had to rent a boda boda to go to a grocery store downtown in order to make the returns.
We loaded up with the Thompsons and made our way to get their ruling. They also received positive rulings on both children, and have now gotten their written ruling and passports while we are still waiting even though we received our ruling first. So, now five children have officially received placement in homes from Noah’s Ark Orphanage through Promise Kids a Future. It seems like we’re going to continue this back and forth thing until we finally get home. The Thompsons have already scheduled an Embassy interview for Monday. We hope to schedule ours on Monday for Wednesday, but we need passports and the rulings to be ready Monday morning.