Superwaterman

Peter made a great interview on a radio show that only talks about water and plays water music. It’s a great interview, and the podcast has a lot of interesting water music too. http://superwaterman.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=579124

Tired

I’m so glad it’s Friday. This week has been an emotional whirlwind.

We went back to IBESR yesterday and met with the Director. We weren’t sure what to expect when we got there. As soon as we got there I knew that if we hadn’t worked through our friends friend we would have gotten no where yesterday. People in authority here just send off a vibe. You either know you can work with them person to person, or you know there will be other issues that enter the picture. Because our friend had contacted the Director and her boss had talked to her she knew that they would know what happened after the meeting etc.

There was still funny business though. First, the guy that had given us problems the day before because he felt threatened when Chris insisted that our dossier was still there, even though they were in the numbers above ours, and that we were sent by the Embassy who has arranged the meeting. This guy was not willing to even talk to us. I tried to politely explain where we were coming from the day before and he kept shutting me out in front of about 10 other people. Because he was upset with us we anticipated that there would be problems with the dossier.

The only document missing was one that I had in my hand. The director explained to him what it was and that his job was to staple it inside the dossier and accept that. As we were wrapping up the meeting I kept looking across the desk ad the official document that would be signed for our dossier to move. I realized just before we were done that the childs name on it was not Olivia’s. I interrupted and said, “This is not her.” Everyone was all, “That’s not her?” I pointed out that the name on the folder (Olivia’s) and the dossier number on the folder were no where near similar. We got this, “Oh, they must have gotten mixed up…” etc. We know that it was intentional to block things and are so grateful that I caught it right there in front of them. This is the kind of stuff that goes on all. the. time. One document is “off” so things get held up for another three months etc. I’m sorry if people don’t want to hear this, but it’s the truth and everyone here knows it.

We are now waiting for the signature of the lawyer for IBESR to give judiciary authority to move the file and then the other three signatures can be put on it. We were told this would be done by Tuesday. If it is not we need to make a few phone calls so the right people can follow up on our behalf. I feel confident that stuff will move. It’s still going to take time, but there are too many people involved now and too much accountability for things to go too awry.

We spent the day with our police officer friend again yesterday. He’s the one that is helping us with our arson case, and now our adoption stuff. The guy is connected. And he’s really funny. Some of the stories he tells just leave us shaking our heads in disbelief. What we love is that he’s a Christian and has a deep desire to see corruption in Haiti end and wants to help people like us navigate through the system in a good way. We love him.

We’ve spent three days in the last week driving around Port. I’ve taken a few pictures. It’s emotional to drive around and yet I know that I’m seeing it weeks and weeks after the fact. There are no more bodies in the streets, but there are crumbled buildings everywhere. There were times over the last two days where I felt lost. I didn’t know where we were and it was simply because the landscape didn’t look the same. The familiar land markers are no longer there, and all open spaces are filled with tents. Those things are eerie and strange.

After we came home on Wednesday Chris and I were talking about what it was like being in town. I noticed that for the first time since I moved here there was no where that I felt unsafe. There wasn’t a place where I felt like we needed to really be watching our backs. In fact, as we were downtown I noticed that I felt more relaxed. People seem more friendly and receptive that I have ever noticed here before. There are a ton of foreigners in the country now between the missionaries, military, aide groups and reporters. I’m wondering if people are seeing that without outside intervention the situation would be unimaginable right now. Usually when people see us with Olivia we hear nasty comments, like “that baby’s not for you,” but we experienced the opposite. We would be driving and Olivia would wave and people would wave back and smile at us.

Last night we had a new friend over for dinner. He lives just down the road from us and just showed up here a couple of weeks ago and introduced himself to Chris. He’s 86 years old and a sweet, sweet man. I’m looking forward to getting to know him better.

Today is a ‘home’ day. No need to go anywhere or do anything ‘big’. I’m making banana bread to freeze because we have way more bananas than either house can eat. We try to give them away, but sometimes even that doesn’t solve the issue. So, banana bread it is. And maybe muffins. And whatever else we can put bananas in.

Gotcha Day

Our first family photo.

All packed up and ready to leave Heartline to head home for the first time.

Last month.

It was two years ago today that we brought Olivia home. I remember it was a Monday. After an emotional weekend we packed everything up and left the house at about 5 am. We were home by 9 am. In a period of four hours we went from being non-parents to parents. We had no idea what we were doing. She’s still alive though so I guess we figured it out pretty quickly.

Ugh.

Downtown Port au Prince and the harbour. USS Comfort and other ships sitting just off shore.

Okay, so we didn’t really get anywhere yesterday at the office that is called IBESR. Surprise, surprise. Through some other connections we supposedly have another meeting with the director at 1 pm today. She was out sick yesterday. We will be phoning the person who set up the interview before we leave the house. Because we are not going to waste three plus hours driving to go to and from only to not see her face to face. So freakin’ frustrating, but this is Haiti and this is how it goes. We are pretty confident that if we can get past this stage we can actually move forward, but we just need to get past this stage.

Last week the Toyota dealership gave us back the loaner truck that Chris had the day of the quake. We are being thankful for having some sort of passenger vehicle right now, though it’s an adventure. There are only seat belts in the front seat. The back right passenger door no longer unlocks. The back seat isn’t actually attached to the truck in any way. Sudden stops are a bit interesting if you’re in the back unless you can wedge something between the seat and the center console. I tried it, it works. We have also discovered that strapping Olivia in the front seat in her car seat results in severe car sickness, thus the multi-puking on the way the Embassy on Sunday. We thought we would give the car seat another go yesterday and got about halfway to town when the whining started. We pulled over for a little break, started again and the pre-vomit whining started again. We pulled over, threw the car seat in the back seat and she sat on my lap the rest of the way and was fine. We think it’s the combo of the shaking of the truck and not being able to see well over the dash. I figure it’s just one more way that we’re becoming Haitian. People always look at the car seat and wonder why a baby has her own seat. It’s kind of funny really.

I was scheduled to fly out of here next week. Got a call from American Airlines that that would no longer be happening. Talked to the people on the phone this morning and they were super friendly and accommodating, canceled my whole flight and gave me a full refund. And then thanked me for everything we’re doing down here. That was nice. We decided that with everything going on adoption wise, with the Craigs being new on the ground and just trying to manage stuff it was better for me to stay here and plan a trip home in April for my BROTHER’S WEDDING. Yes, my little brother is getting married! I’m so happy for him. I haven’t gotten to meet his fiance yet, but I’ve heard she’s fabulous.

Chris just walked in after being on the roof to water. He told me to open my mouth and close my eyes for a big surprise. Then I crunched down on part of a jalapeno pepper. While he laughed.

Have I ever told the story about when we were in Chicago visiting friends (Hi!) and we went out for Indian food? Yeah. There was a garnish on one of the plates and Chris said, “Hey, do you want to eat the bean?” (Because it looked like part of a green bean) I popped it in my mouth and chewed. Then started crying as my mouth went up in flames. And he laughed. He knew it was a pepper and thought I did too. All I heard for the rest of the meal was, “I thought you knew!”

Revenge, my friends, can take years to come around. Many, many years.

Time to move a mountain called IBESR

Today Chris went back to the Canadian Embassy to retrieve our dossier and got to speak to the woman there that I talked to on the phone yesterday. After explaining that he had 10 letters to the Prime Minister of Haiti in his hand and was looking for a way to deliver one and our dossier for his approval the woman at the Embassy made a call, to IBESR, which is open again!

She spoke with the director herself, the woman that is responsible for signing off on our file and explained our situation and basically told her that our kid needs to be able to travel sometime in the near future. She made arrangements for our family to go to IBESR tomorrow to meet with her in person. This is what we wanted way back in November! Having the Embassy behind us now just gives it more push.

Please pray for tomorrow. Our hope is that by meeting with the director in person we can talk and she will see that not only are we providing a loving environment for Olivia, but that we are helping Haiti and want to continue that for many years to come if we’re able. It’s our hope that by raising our children here they will learn to love others and to have a heart for people. By raising Olivia in her home culture she will learn about her country and be connected with her people. I hope that her Creole surpasses ours by the time she’s 5. I hope that she learns to sing and dance with the freedom that I see in so many kids here. I hope that she learns to love people of all races and class levels.

Please pray that the mountain that is IBESR will be moved tomorrow and that we will be able to move forward. We only want to be able to travel with our child.

On a totally different subject, I was chatting with Yonese today about what causes earthquakes etc. I guess there are a lot of people that are worried that another big one is going to hit but in a different part of the country. From there our conversation turned to people coming to God because of the earthquake. She told me that 3 bokos – witch doctors – in our community have converted to Christianity in the last few weeks. Just the other night one of them publicly burned all of his voodoo paraphernalia. Our community has had a lot of voodoo related issues in the past, and this could be a turning point.

Now it makes sense

As I was reading through the comments this morning there was one from Beth:

This probably won’t make you feel any better, but here in Nova Scotia the provincial adoption coordinator is stumped. We don’t know what the status of our adoption is either. The only thing we know is that Canada has given our kids a 1 year temporary visa and is paying for their healthcare. Immigration told us to apply for their Haitian passport through the Haitian embassy in Ottawa. Our province is telling us to hire a private lawyer because it looks like the kids are wards of the province and we are going to foster adopt them. It’s really confusing all the way around. I’m so thankful they are here with us and I know it will work out… we just don’t know what that will look like.

Thanks for commenting Beth. You gave us the answers to so many questions that no one else has been able to.

When we left the Embassy on Sunday we were in a complete state of limbo. We knew nothing, other than the fact that I was supposed to get on a plane on Wednesday and had no idea when we would be back. As I shared, we thought we should take the opportunity while we had it. What I didn’t share is how unsettled I felt about all of it. I was happy that something was moving, but something didn’t feel “right”. My heart was so conflicted that I was up in the night crying and my stomach was churning. When I got to the core of things it was breaking my heart that Olivia would have to be separated from her Dad for who knows how long, and that I would be leaving Haiti for an indefinite period of time. In the years that I have lived here there have been plenty of times where I have wanted to go home, but for the first time this was not one of them. Yes, I wanted to go and get things taken care of and I was excited about the thought that it was happening, but being there for the indefinite future and having our family separated was not sitting well at all.

When we got the call yesterday we were angry and the gross mis-communication because we/I had done everything to communicate exactly what our situation was. It was apparent that things were not being communicated to the right people within the system. The crazy thing is though, that I had this huge sense of peace wash over me when I knew that Olivia and I would not be leaving.

I see now why. It’s not God’s plan for our family to be sitting in two different countries and working through a process that doesn’t make sense to anyone right now. God wants our family together and he wants us here right now. Yes, it’s hard to be in that place of not knowing how we’re going to get Olivia’s adoption taken care of, but at some point it will be done. I feel that. It would have been worse to go through this whirlwind of getting out of the country only to find out that we were stuck in this process that wouldn’t work for us. Because we are adopting while living in Haiti there has been little involvement required from Canada.

We want to thank everyone for praying for us. We are not done yet. More than ever we need your prayers. We believe that God has it all figured out and has a plan, the right pieces just need to be set in motion and the right hearts need to be working in our favor.

There are three specific stages that we need to go through here in Haiti to have this DONE. Here’s how you can pray very specifically for the process:

1. IBESR. Haitian social services. It is their job to do the initial approval of the adoption. From what we understand now the Prime Minister now needs to sign off on adoptions. We are trying to work with the channels we have here (friends that know the President etc) to see if we can get our dossier before the PM so he can sign off on it. We are hoping and praying that not only will that be possible, but that he will see the value of completing it. We are hoping and praying that if we can get that signature that it will override IBESR and we will be done with that stage.

2. The court system. After IBESR/the Prime Minister signs off the dossier will need to go through the courts to have an adoption decree written up. Because Olivia is abandoned we are hoping this will be a simpler step. There will be no need to search records for birth parents etc. We are also hoping and praying that a friend of ours here might have connections to a judge that can expedite this process for us. Sometimes it’s all about who you know.

3. MOI – Minister of the Interior. Once the Adoption Decree is written the adoption is finished. From there Haitian Immigration needs to issue Olivia a passport. MOI IS open. It’s one of the few government buildings that didn’t fall. Again, our friend may know someone in MOI that could make the process go faster for us.

Once all three of those steps are done we are finished with the Haiti side of things. From there we can take our Adoption Decree and finished Dossier, along with the passport to the Canadian Embassy and submit Part 2 of our Citizenship paperwork. One good answer that I did get yesterday while talking to the Embassy was that it will take less than 3 months for her Citizenship to come through. We have already been assured by our contact at the Embassy that once the adoption is finalized they can issue a multi-entry visa for Olivia that would allow us to come and go as much as we need to until her citizenship is finished and we can get her passport. I had to renew my passport through the Embassy here and it took three weeks, not bad at all.

We are going to do whatever we can to push, push, push and get this DONE. Will you pray specifically for the stages above and that God would be opening doors in miraculous ways. Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could travel with our daughter this year?

~Leslie

It’s not over yet

We are not going home. Our adoption is not done.

We got a call from the Embassy today to tell us that because IBESR (Haitian social services) hadn’t signed the dossier out and we are adopting while living outside of Canada we won’t be going anywhere. We need to finish our adoption up here before the Embassy can issue anything. I was actually told that we need to get that signature from IBESR, which is not open and shows no sign of opening soon, then go through the court to get an adoption decree, and then go through MOI (Haitian Immigration) to get Olivia’s Haitian passport, then go through the Embassy to get her visa etc.

Um, for the record, this process is no different than the one we were doing to start with. Except that there are no government buildings to do it through.

Why did this happen. BIG mis-communication problems. I was very clear in my emails about the fact that we were still in IBESR, that our file was sitting on the desk waiting to be signed. We had no one actually contact us from CIC directly to clarify anything, ask any questions, let us know what the process was… nothing. Then we got a call from the Embassy telling us that we were set to fly Wednesday. Wow. About. That.

So now here we are no further ahead than we were on January 11th. We have no idea if we can even get this thing finished. We are trying to see if there is some way we can get the Prime Minister to sign off, but we’ll see. It feels impossible.

Please pray. This might be one of those mountains that can only be moved that way.

Wow, what a ride!

The events of the last 24 hours seem surreal to me. First, Peter and Sara got here with their boys. It was so good to see them pull in the yard and unload their mountain of luggage. We are SO grateful to everyone who made it possible to get them here. THANK YOU! The timing couldn’t have been more perfect.

Yesterday afternoon Olivia went down to play with the boys while they unpacked a bit and Chris and I went to read. No sooner did we get settled and my phone rang. Anonymous number. Expected a wrong number, but no, it was the Canadian Embassy.

People, we got THE call!

We just got back from a quick trip in to Port to go to the Embassy so they could take her picture for her visa. Her and I are scheduled to fly out on Wednesday.

We want to thank you for all of your prayers for our family, for the mission and for our adoption. We have received so many comments and emails full of encouragement and people just reaffirming what we had been feeling, that things were CLOSE. It was incredibly frustrating not knowing what was going on, but we now see that something was happening.

We still need your prayers. We have SO many questions about the process and how it’s going to affect our family and our life her in Haiti, and unfortunately the woman that could have answered those was not working today. It was her first day off in 20 days so we’re okay with that. We’re most concerned with knowing that Olivia’s adoption is in fact finalized, we’re worried the citizenship process might take a long time. Please pray over those specifics. We are supposed to be getting a call from the woman we need to talk to tomorrow, but it’s hard to sit in that place of worry and uncertainty. Basically, we don’t know how long it’s going to take to finish things up. It could take a couple of months or it might take another year. We got stuck in a road construction stop so it gave us time to talk through some things. Chris is worried that a prolonged absence for me will affect things at the mission. I can do most of my work from wherever I am because it’s all on my computer. What I can’t do I will hand off to Sara (see, there’s that timing thing!). We’re also concerned about how a long term separation might affect our family, but we came to the conclusion that Chris and I can both travel freely, Olivia cannot until her docs are done. The most important thing right now is getting her out of the country so we can start that process. If we were to stay here her adoption might not be completed for many more years. Chris can come visit us and still take normal holidays. I can fly to Haiti for a couple weeks at a time if needed and leave Olivia with my parents and their army of friends that would fight over baby sitting her if needed. We just need to get Olivia out. We are praying that it will be a shorter time at home and that we’ll be able to move on with life, but if it’s not we will degaje – work it out. God has it all figured out we just need to keep moving forward.

So, that’s our news. Sorry for not sharing yesterday, we just needed to sit in it for a bit and absorb it, process it and then go today to feel the reality of it.

Oh yeah – just to make things extra special Olivia threw up, twice, on the way to the Embassy. And since she’s become so low maintenance I only packed her diaper wallet and sippy cup. No extra  clothes. And she puked all over her car seat. And we had nothing to clean it up with. The car seat rode in the back of the truck on the way home and Olivia walked around the Embassy in a diaper and pink hoodie that I grabbed just in case she got cold from the A/C. Nice. That’s how we like to roll.

UNICEF sucks

*Late edits added below

Sorry peeps, this is going to be a venting post. Thought I should warn you right off the bat.

I feel like we’ve hit a non-information road block right now concerning our adoption. We’re trying every angle we can from here and thought we were getting somewhere, only to get to what feels like no where. The only responses I’ve gotten from CIC (Citizenship and Immigration Canada) have been what appears to be an auto-generated response that says “Someone is reviewing your file and should be in contact with you shortly. Thank you for your patience.” Shortly? By who’s definition? Because it’s been a week.

I tried contacting the Prime Minister’s office again and did hear a response that assured me my email was being forwarded to Jason Kenney, the minister of CIC. We’ll see.

What is even more infuriating is learning more about why adoption expediting has ground to a halt. You can thank the lovely people over at UNICEF. I would encourage you to read this blog post and the comments. UNICEF has been anti-adoption for a long time. I would strongly encourage you to read up on their policies before you support them if you are in favor of adoption on any level. Their biggest claim is they say they are working in the best interest of the child. As far as adoption goes, if a parent decides to put their child up for adoption, then I believe that needs to be respected by the government and other agencies, in the same way that it is in developed countries. To say that a child would be better off with another family member in the country etc is to override the wishes of the mother or parents, if they are living.

I know our orphanage is very thorough in the intake process and will not take a child unless a parent is absolutely sure that’s what they want. They would often send mothers away and have them return after having some time to thing about things. They were also very clear about what adoption is and that the mother was giving up her rights to the child, that she couldn’t come back for it later. They would not accept a child unless that understanding was there. And, if possible they would work with the mother to help her parent, if that’s what she wanted.

I want to be clear about my thoughts on what’s going on in Haiti right now. Things have, from what we’ve heard, ground to a halt for all adoptions being expedited. If this is true or not I don’t know because no one will contact me to verify that.

Personally, I am all in favor of there being a formal process for kids that seem to be orphaned from the earth quake. Absolutely. Just because there is no one with them right now does not mean there is no one. It could be that they have been separated etc. That research needs to be done. They need to be formally put into the system as being adoptable, whether it’s that they are true orphans or whether their families decide that’s the best option for them. I believe that needs to happen.

*Edit: I want to add that while I realize child trafficking is an issue, I believe that it’s not as much of an issue here in Haiti as people (ahem, government officials) are making it out to be. The bigger issues are corruption within the system. Nuf said about that.

I also want to mention that having organizations step in and override the choices of birth parents or families is insulting to those families. It’s saying that because they are poor they don’t know what’s best for their kids, or are not capable of making those decisions. Do these organizations not think that birth mothers/families haven’t already looked at all their options? Is it better to keep a child that no one can look after simply because you’re it’s family of origin, or is it more loving to put it up for adoption because you know it will have a better shot at life? There are a lot of parents here in Haiti that know before a child is even born that they cannot look after one more. Case in point – Yonese, the lady that works for us came to me the other day to ask me if I knew of any missionaries running orphanages that would be able to take a baby that was soon to be born. The mother had come to her to seek her help in placing the child. She has 5 other kids, lives on La Gonave where there is almost nothing, and KNOWS she cannot take care of #6. She is being pro-active and looking at her options before the baby arrives because she wants it taken care of. No one else in the family is willing or able to take the child, she has already asked. Her choice, as the mother, is to put #6 up for adoption. In that instance is it better to keep a child in their country of birth or let them be adopted internationally?

That said, that is an entirely different situation than having kids that were already in process. You are comparing apples and oranges. If a child has already been in the system, has documentation, was deemed adoptable and was matched with a family and the adoption was already started then it is an entirely different thing. There is no extra research that needs to be done, that has been done already in the screening process. There is no reason not to expedite those adoptions and finish them up. In fact, it would benefit those kids that are now orphans because of the quake since it would make room in orphanages that could take them, even if it was a transitional thing until they found their families or whatever UNICEF thinks is best (I hope you picked up on the sarcasm there).

In fact, if UNICEF really wanted to help kids in Haiti maybe they should direct their attention and energies at ending child slavery here through the Restavek system. THAT would be something wouldn’t it? But then again, they would need to change their policies of trying to keep kids with their families at all costs, because it’s those families that believe their kids are going to have more opportunities so they send them away to live with other family, or complete strangers. Those kids then end up being the slave in the family, doing the chores, not eating the same food, not sleeping in the same beds, and usually not going to school.

*Edit: Just so you know this is not me you should go to Livesays blog HERE and read about their experiences yesterday. Background is that they’re working with Heartline Ministries and World Wide Village to run a house hospital and some of their patients were the first on the USS Comfort.

Right now we’re just praying that we hear from someone. An actual person. I want someone to tell me that they need our file so they can finish things up. I just want some information.

Sir Patrick

Chris was just reading online and saw that Patrick Stewart just became Sir Patrick. Chris is wanting to know why he hasn’t gotten knighted. Apparently he thinks he deserves it.

Also news worthy, he just had to ask me what day Valentine’s Day was. I laughed at him. He’s 35. I would think that in the last thirty five years of his life, somewhere in there, he would have realized that it’s like Christmas – it’s the same date every year. But, apparently that was news to him. I told him that I had hoped he would have remembered what day it was because it was the day he proposed. His response? “I don’t know. I just know it was in February sometime.” And people wondered why we got married on Canada Day. It was so the fireworks would tip him off.

;)