So now that I finally got my Sentencia document in hand on Friday, we are able to progress with moving through the hoops to get back to the United States. Just like Ethiopia, this involves all of the documents to submit to the US Embassy, but the US Embassy here has a lot more time on their hands with far fewer children leaving the country per year (like, less than 10% of Ethiopia numbers).
Sam's journey to Fana was different than many other children, and he was not born or affiliated with Fana in any way until he was released from foster care into their care. He was born in a much different part of town on the far south side, that involves much more than a quick trip to the Notary like many of our friends and my last adoption here.
Maria Teresa Perez, my driver for adoption needs, and henceforth to be referred to as "MTP" arrived at 8:30am along with Alecia my helper to stay with the kids. Sam was not a fan of this idea. I was instructed to pull my hair up. No purses. No money. Look boring. Nothing but passport tucked into my clothing in a "I will very much notice if you go for this" place. We walked about a mile down to the Auto Sur interestate to catch a few busses. I think MTP and I bonded a bit while we both ran for our intended bus. She is such a tiny woman she can sneak away from you if you aren't careful. Our bus ride was uneventful other than when we sorta broke the door at one point, but they got that fixed. The busses also make no effort to avoid potholes, and there is no cushion so I might have some rear-end-bone bruising from that. An hour and a half later, we jumped off the bus in Sam's birth families neighborhood.
A word about this neighborhood. Neighborhoods are hard to describe because I have a lot of countries to compare them to. If you've traveled with me, I'd say it was a cross between Milagro Ecuador and Danli Honduras. Not Port au Prince (not enough trash, buildings in too good a condition) but not at all my part of Bogota either. People appeared to be mostly healthy, but would seem very materially poor to standards of most. I definitely stood out, although I had tried not to. Although I wish I could capture images of Sam's birth neighborhood, I would have felt like a jerk taking photographs. This is their life, not my private tour site.
We walked to what I can best describe as the "people" version of a DMV here at home. You go to the area Registar to register your baby you just had, with an official letter from the doctor who delivered it. You go to the Registar to get your drivers license, and your ID card. I was there with MTP in line behind about 10 other women/couples with itty bitty babies they were there to register, or add on the father's birth rights. There were so many other young pregnant women around that I thought maybe you had to register your pregnancy? MTP thought most of these young ladies were nearing 18 and wanted to get solid ID cards made before they went into labor.
Before we got there, we chatted about how you don't tip or bribe here, but it doesn't hurt to be extra sweet.. as if the particular Registar didn't feel like it, they could hold us up for as long as they felt like since my case is more complicated and takes a lot more of their time than a birth registry does. If it was a man, smile at him, and smile a lot. If it was a lady, we would head out and buy her chocolate. So there you have it folks, the way to a Colombian man is batting your eyelashes.. they way to a lady is chocolate. There is a life lesson in there someplace right?! :-) In this case, we had a lady, and she was actually quite pleasant. She referred to us as "mi amor" a lot.. which is a bit odd but whatever makes your day go better right? It took us quite a few minutes of double checking everybody's names and passport numbers in multiple places, which ended having to be done twice due to a name missing. Sam's story is also different than most, so she had to call Bienstar/ICBF to make sure that one of his major documents allowing him to be adopted was there in the file, besides everything else that we had given her. It was there, so all was good. We then found out it would take 2 hours to make 10 copies (no biggie, just unexpected).. so then MTP and I set out to kill 2 hours with absolutely nothing to do. We wandered.. we ate bread.. we got juice boxes.. I had the first yogurt I would not repeat.. and then we wandered some more and sat on a bench for 45 minutes and watched big male pigeons try to get with the lady pigeons.. and my skin burned a bit more. We set out to find chocolate as a thank you for our Registrar lady, but could only find drugstores with condoms.. which we joked would make a great present for Registar lady.. but then we digressed and found actual chocolate. We got back to the Registar and waited a bit more, where she then came back with our 10 copies in hand, and was very excited about her chocolate.
At this point, we knew that we were quite close to Sam's birth hospital, which I really wanted to visit. After all of the bus hopping and seeing the traffic, I didn't trust myself to be able to get myself back there well with the children, and the fee for a driver to get there would have been wicked. MTP was so sweet to let me walk over there and take a few pictures with her phone for me. Although the area surrounded the hospital gave my heart a turn given Sam's specific story, the hospital itself seemed very similar to Lucas'. They were still triaging at the door so we didn't even try to get in.
Pictures to come once I get them from MTP :-)
We hopped back on our busses and bounced all the way back to Calle 116 and walked back. By this time, it was 3:30p and definitely the longest I have ever been away from Sam while he was awake. He was happy to see me, but the major freak out didn't come until later when I was holding Ben on my lap. THAT was the deal breaker and sent us into a situation for the rest of the afternoon. Speaking of situations, I think Ben worked it with the ladies when it came to his carb alotment for the afternoon. I also noted that the entire top half of the new box of cereal I bought was ripped off completely, to which he responded "yeah Mommy, I couldn't get that open.." YA THINK? Yeesh child.
Sam seems to be pleased that I'm back now and both are asleep. Tomorrow morning MTP and I set out for the Colombian passport office to get him all legit for the plane, and to be submitted to the US Embassy perhaps later this week.
Good times tomorrow!!
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