How is it possible to both hate and love the Kenyan court system at the same time?!!

I met our lawyer (Daniel Were — pronounced “Wear-ay”) at the lower courts at 9am this morning. We were seeing a new magistrate because our previous one was transferred to Nakuru back in the spring. The new magistrate’s office was all business and very quiet. There were 3 other lawyers in the room and about 12 clients like myself. There was a very small amount of Swahili spoken back and forth before Were started things off by announcing our case, etc. After some shuffling of papers Were stepped out and beckoned me to follow. (Uh oh, not good!) He tells me we somehow fell off the docket! The problem with that is our official file is off in another building and not in the magistrate’s chambers! Some disorganization with the changeover of magistrates must have caused it…so frustrating! Argh!!! Kenyan courts drive me crazy!!

Because I leave on Monday and because I was not able to stay in the courts all day we had to be seen this morning if I was to attend. …and now Were thinks its very important that I be there because “Baby Eden” is not. So Were started to work his magic: He called an assistant to go and fetch the papers and bring them to us at the building ASAP. Only 15 minutes later we go back to the chambers and see everyone waiting outside because the magistrate received an important (and private) phone call. Were chatted with some of the other lawyers there in Swahili but otherwise everyone is perfectly quiet while we wait in the tiny crowded hallway. We’re let back in a few minutes later and I found out that Were was getting himself pushed back to the front of the queue! So he just reads off what the magistrate should say while she hand writes it out for our file. She doesn’t even bat an eye at any of it! Were suggested April, she said mid-April was fine, and we’re done! I love the Kenyan courts!

We slip out and now I’m back at the training I’m giving this week with an hour to spare! I had arranged for several other guys to give all the talks this morning so I had plenty of time to type up this prompt update for you all!

Our unofficial “backup lawyer”, Milkah, was one of the other lawyers in the room because she had other business with the same magistrate this morning. So if Were had not been able to convince the magistrate I am sure Milkah could have!

On Thursday, Sept. 2 Ben goes to court with our lawyer for the next step in the adoption process. This is the court date that we set in November 09 when we were granted our travel order for Eden. We were supposed to present Eden to the magistrate at this court appointment. Ben is taking documentation to show that we have complied with the stipulations of the travel order and that Eden is still in our care and thriving, but that she has latent TB and should not travel until the treatment is done. Hopefully, the magistrate will grant us an extension until March. Our lawyer seems to feel confident that this will happen, but we would appreciate prayer.

The magistrate has the power to do anything from put Ben in jail (obviously that would be VERY drastic and is unlikely) to sending Ben on to the high courts to apply for the adoption (the other extreme). Please pray that the magistrate accepts our documentation and at the very least grants our request for an extension. God has done awesome things in our adoption process on the Kenyan side and we know that with God, all things are possible. We appreciate your prayer and support!

On another note, both kids are sick.  We went to the doctor yesterday and Eden had to do a breathing treatment.  She now has an inhaler that she uses every 4 hours.  It hasn’t moved to Andy’s chest yet and we are hoping that it doesn’t!

Ben will post an update after he goes to court!

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 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.

YEA!!  Yesterday morning we went to see the magistrate (for the 3rd time this week) and it was a success!  We were granted our travel order and the magistrate decided she needed to sleep on the birth certificate order.  The lawyer went back today and the magistrate said said that we didn’t need a birth certificate to bring Eden home.  She says we just need the travel order and the custody order.  We will go on Monday morning to apply for the passport and then as soon as we get her passport number we will head on to Nairobi for the embassy.  We are very excited that things have gone so well (even though there have been delays it has been nothing compared to what other families have gone through trying to adopt) and we’re also very anxious about our time constraints.  We are scheduled to leave December 1 and it would be best if we could all go at that time.  We appreciate your continued prayers for speedy processing of the paperwork!