Just to cheer you all up after my last post, I uploaded two more videos of Eden today to http://wolfes.blip.tv. Sorry about the lighting on this first one. The power went out right before I got the camera. For the second one we were smart enough to realize we could open the curtains to let in more light! 🙂

Power outages here are actually rare. Pamela says that that was the first one in the year she has been there. Apparently they were repairing a transformer on a main power line that was coming out of town. Not sure why they chose a Sunday night to do that…

We’re all doing well now with Eden home. She sleeps through most of the night now…mainly because we’re letting her stay in our bed. We’ve switched to a room in the new house that has two double beds pushed together, so there’s plenty of room!

Just a reminder that our road ahead is long and laborious. The adoption process in Kenya is quite difficult. For international adoptions you 1) contact and agency in the home country 2) The agency picks out a child 3) You travel to Kenya and start living with the baby for three months (aka obtain guardianship) and then 4) After 3 months you must have three visits to the High Court to get approval. You can then get a US visa for the child and finalize things in the US. Unfortunately, the High Court is always booked 3 months in advance…so that fourth point above takes 9-12 months. :-/

For domestic adoptions you 1) obtain guardianship 2) live with the child for 3 months (maybe less) and then 3) see the high court once for the adoption. Unfortunately, the US won’t grant visas for children adopted this way. However, the US does grant visas if you can prove you have been taking care of the child for 2 years.

Due to this announcement about Kenya not really following all the Hague Convention rules, that first method isn’t really an option. At least it isn’t for the forseeable future. The goal right now is to get a temporary visa for Eden to come home with us while baby Andy is born and come back next summer/fall. If we can do that, we only need to stay in Kenya for about a year before hitting that 2 year mark (“only”!). The US embassy in Nairobi has yet to respond to my emails or answer any phone calls, so its hard to say how likely getting her a temporary visa is. It looks like a group interested in OpenMRS is going to fly me to NBO on Friday, so I’ll take that opportunity to just stop by the consulate and ask whats up. 🙂

With that out of the way, check out our video of cute little Eden from last week feeding herself. FYI: I re-encoded all of the videos on our wolfes.blip.tv video site, so now they should be faster, cleaner, and skip less. (“New and Improved! Now with less skipping!”)

I also posted a few other videos from Cape Town South Africa and the 20 min walk from the IU House to the edge of downtown Eldoret.

There are also some more pictures on the photos page, but you can probably tell that from the little box in the upper left.

Meghan and I decided to try out a local church here on Sunday. We forgot to arrange going with anyone, so we went to the big church near the hospital that had posted their times out front. They had three services: 8am English, ?? English (Main), and 11:00 Swahili. Since we couldn’t remember the main english service time, we were forced to go to the early service (early service!?! :-(). I can’t remember the last time I went to an early service in the States, but its probably a lot like this was! This was a big pretty big church (see picture of it on our photos page), but there were maybe only 10 people in there when we sat down!

We had been hoping that the English service would have at least a few white folks: we were right, Meghan and me! So that was a little odd, but we got a program, sat down and waited. The service started on time (not on Kenyan time, ON time!) with about 20 people.

After a few hymns there were about 30 people and it happened. Its what every new church goer dreads: we were called out. The pastor said, “We would like to welcome all of our visitors (bam! 60 eyes on us) to Assembly and we invite them all to stand up (bam! 62 eyes on us as the pastor looks at us). Meghan and I debated for about 2 seconds faking like we were regular attendees, but for some reason I don’t think that would have fooled anyone. So we had to stand, people clapped, the assistant pastor shook our hands, blah blah blah, we’re going to the 9:00 AM service next week!

After church we walked back by the Sally Test center and spent some time with Eden and the other equally cute babies (you wouldn’t know it from how Meghan talks about the STC though!). Meghan had packed a sandwich for herself, but I just bought some corn on the side of the road for 14 cents (picture on photos page). It tasted like a 14 cent piece of corn too! The corn here is more like field corn, not as tender as in the US…and just grilling the corn doesn’t help it any!

That afternoon I went with some of the AMPATH guys to play soccer. Its the first time I can remember playing an outdoor pickup game, on a mostly uncut field, with a bunch of Kenyans, and just some posts for goals! It was quite fun. The altitude (7000 feet) was killing me, but I managed to score. Even though we ended up losing 5-3, I went home satisfied!

For dinner we finally cooked the frozen whole chicken we bought last week. Our Kenyan roommate (Pamela) helped us cut it and then saute/boil it. It turned out to be pretty good, but Meghan was thoroughly grossed out by the whole cleaning, gutting, carving procedure. I’m pretty sure we’ll just be buying the chicken breasts from now on!

I’m up and watching the Colts beat up on the Cardinals at 3:30 AM. Our neighbor has a 42 inch TV and a satellite: this is a very nice taste of home!

We had an ultrasound today over at the Riley Mother and Baby Hospital. Sierra was able to see the baby’s head, arms, heart beating, ribs, and legs. It was being a little difficult so it took her a few minutes to get the wand in the right position. Meghan turned a little bit and … Click to continue »

Meghan mentioned in a previous post that we were able to look up from our computers for about 30 minutes last week and take a walk along the beach. I just uploaded those recordings to a great video sharing site called blip.tv .

You can see the three videos here:
http://wolfes.blip.tv

(I also took some video when we went over the the Indian Ocean side, I’ll let you know when I am able to upload those)