We’ve made it halfway home! The three of us are now sitting in our hotel in Amsterdam for the next 20 hours or so. We had a slight scare getting checked in because they had to try a few times to add Eden onto Meghan’s ticket. Eventually I think they just brought somebody over that was more competent and she got things done. We also had a scare trying to get into Holland. Apparently Kenyans need a visa to get in…so they wouldn’t let us out of the airport. Luckily theres a few hotels attached to AMS and one had vacancy. (Unfortunately the other room I booked via Priceline.com is non-refundable.)

Eden did very well on the plane. She was cranky for about 10 minutes before her nap, but then settled down and slept for 3 hours! The rest of the time she played with her toys, practiced her standing skills, or showed off for other passengers.

The flight was operated by Kenya Airways. I’ve never flown out of NBO in the morning and so never flown this leg on a KQ plane. The other times I’ve flown on KQ they’ve had amazing service…and this trip was no exception. The food was 100 times better than KLM’s, the attendants were nicer, and the plane was not as crowded. In fact, because the plane was so empty we were able to switch up to the bulkhead seats so Eden had some space to play and a bassinet to sleep in.

I took a quick video of Eden sitting nicely and eating her breakfast on the plane: http://blip.tv/file/2917189.

We flew into NBO this morning without any issues. Our driver picked us up and took us to Mayfield, then to a mall where I met with some new OpenMRS implementers who wanted some “professional” advice. We ate a very non-Kenyan lunch at a little coffee shop, then went for our two o’clock appointment at the embassy. The embassy trip really wasn’t all that exciting, apparently all the hard stuff really was last week. Meghan and I were halfway through security (unpacking liquids, metal, coins, etc) when she asked if we were just picking up a passport. Apparently there is a little window where you give your “passport pickup ticket” and they just give you the visa-stamped passport back! Yep, that easy!

So, in conclusion, we’re coming home! We look forward to seeing you all very soon. We might post an update from our hotel in Amsterdam, but that all depends on how much sleep we’re needing at that point!

We had a few hiccups getting the birth certificate and passport, but its all done now! The only step we have left is to get the visitor’s visa for her and then we can fly home!

First, the thorn in our side named Philip was in Ethiopia this week, so our lawyer (Were) was able to “convince” the registrar to let us have Eden’s birth certificate. We took this to the Eldoret passport office but they said that everyone mustmust have two names (her cert only said “Eden”). So we went back to the registrar the next day and had him change it to “Baby Eden”! (all the paperwork so far has said Baby Eden for whatever reason). The Eldoret passport office was happy now and authorized/filled out the rest of the passport papers. However, Kenya is so advanced that they are now printing the pictures right onto the passports and digitizing them for some sort of archiving purposes. This means that there are only 3 places in Kenya that do this: Nairobi, Mombasa, and Kisumu.

Kisumu is about the same size as Eldoret and is a 3 hour ($80) cab ride away. I would have borrowed Sam’s car and driven us there, but not having an international driver’s license made me nervous going longer distances. The chances of hitting a police roadblock out of town is about 1000 times higher than just around Eldoret where I have been driving.

I made one Hail Mary call to the director of the AMPATH drivers to see if anyone was going down near Kisumu on Thursday. Luckily, there was a doctor going there for his weekly visit to an AMPATH clinic thats only 20 mins outside of Kisumu! The benefit (and terrible thing) about going with them was that they were leaving at 5:30 AM! We were lucky because this meant Eden slept for 95% of the trip and that we got there even before they opened. We weren’t lucky because, well, its 5:30 in the morning!!

We sat in the lobby for 45 minutes before they let anyone in. We were the first ones in line and apparently had the magic word: “Mbakaya”. Our Eldoret passport office friend had just txted us to ask for her and she would make our lives easier. Sure enough, she was extremely helpful! She did what seemed like only a cursory look over the papers once she knew that Timothy in Eldoret had done them. She then said, “ok, everything is in order, come back at 3 to pick it up.” That was it, no staying overnight, no begging for faster processing, nothing!

So we toured Kisumu a little bit: rode to the Nakumat Mega (aka Walmart + mall) in a tuktuk, went to the Sunset Hotel to relax for a bit, had lunch with an OpenMRS implementer that I know, then went back to the passport office right at 3 o’clock. Unfortunately it wasn’t ready yet, so we had to wait around for another hour and a half. Unfortunately this squashed the time that we were going to use to go to see the lakeside and the impala park, but we were so happy to have the passport that we didn’t really care!

We are now trying to contact the US embassy to get an expedited visa appointment. However, everyone says that in the past they have just flown to NBO and waited in line (for most of the day) and had success.

Meghan neglected to include a few important points from the magistrate meeting.  First, we actually made a date to see her back here on Sept 2nd 2010.  Second, she said that at that time she will do everything she can to help us with the adoption and that no one will deny us an adoption of Eden!  We’ll still need to worry about getting her adopted in the US and/or getting an immigration visa for her…but as Meghan keeps saying: “one step at a time.”

We had our second ultrasound of Baby Andy yesterday.  We had the same bed-side ultrasound machine as last time, so I took our video camera and recorded the entire thing.   You can watch it here or find one of the HD versions over on the http://wolfes.blip.tv site.

Random things that Kenya got right:

• The ATM forces you to take your card back before giving you the cash
• Full service gas stations with zero expectation of tipping
• Grocery store baggers carry bags to your car with zero expectation of a tip
• Relaxed domestic airport security

Annoying things that Kenya needs to work on:

• Well Paved Roads that last more than a few years
• Any kind of traffic laws
• Corrupt police force
• Well documented international adoption procedure with zero expectation of tipping bribing