Chapter 6 - The First Trip
It felt like we were waiting forever for the call that our adoption case was ready to go in front of the judge. Little did we know how much waiting we would truly do in this process.
We got the email that the judge would be ready to hear our case in 4 weeks. That meant that it was time for us to book our trip. Everything that we had read said that when you do an international adoption it is best to go over as a whole family. That will help with the bonding process for the older siblings. So we purchased 5 tickets to Uganda. Nervous wasn’t a strong enough word. I don't know if you've flown internationally, but that was a long trip.
We saddled up our little family of 5 and boarded the plane to Uganda. Honestly, it was a pretty fun trip flying out there. None of the kids were too young to control. It was a great bonding time. However, by the time the plane landed we were pretty tired. We had been in traveling via 3 different planes for right around 24 hours. Being a husband and dad made it really hard for me to sleep. I kept opening my eyes to make sure I could see everyone.
We landed and were supposed to be picked up by someone from the orphanage. They knew the time we were landing and we had checked to make sure everything was a go. The plane landed on the tarmac and we walked to the airport surrounded by camouflage dressed men with machine guns. That was a first for us. My young son thought it was really neat. The rest of us did not! We walked into the airport and went through customs. Then we grabbed our luggage and headed out to find our ride.
It’s not a very large airport. It would be around the same size as some of the regional airports we have in the United States. Quickly we found ourselves looking at the people standing there with placards for our name. We did not find one. We didn’t find one for quite a while. Everyone looked at me for guidance. I had no idea what to do. We had no way to contact the orphanage because our phones were not international and we had not yet grabbed a local one yet. I remember one piece of advice that a guy who had flown to Uganda many times had given me. He said, “Under no circumstance, should you get into a taxi with someone you don’t know.”
So I grabbed a taxi! Seriously, what was I supposed to do? We couldn’t stay there forever and walking seemed like a much riskier activity. Plus, we were all ridiculously tired, sweaty, and grouchy. I got a taxi and we all piled in with our luggage. I told him that we needed to find a hotel. He asked which one? I said take us to a nice one please. I wouldn’t recommend traveling like this to anyone, but God was really watching out for us on this trip. I had no idea what the charge would be and I didn’t have any Ugandan currency. We were in the car around an hour or so making the trip from the airport to the capital city of Kampala. At times, I was worried that he would take us somewhere and rob us. The other times, I was in awe of this beautiful country with it’s stark contrasts of natural beauty and extreme poverty.
People were walking everywhere. There was no place along the road where there weren't people walking and people sitting outside. It was much different than anything I’d ever seen stateside. It felt so much more social and community minded. I noticed that the men were mostly wearing dress shirts and dress pants. I wondered why that was. Later, I would be told that men would wear the best clothes that they had to give an impression of wealth and status. Seems like in the US we do the opposite. We pride ourselves in being able to wear whatever we want.
There were motorcycles everywhere! I mean everywhere! They were called boda-boda. You would see the most interesting things on these motorcycles. We saw them with 4 or 5 adult men on them. We saw them with a mom and 3 or 4 kids on them. We saw one hauling a goat. One had a queen-sized mattress on the back! They didn’t obey traffic rules either. (Kind of like bike riders here!)
We finally pulled into a hotel. The driver told me the price of the ride and I paid him in American currency. Later I found out that I paid him about a month’s wage. Whoops! We got into the hotel and they could not have been nicer. We made it up to the room with two double beds. The kids grabbed one and we grabbed the other. We all fell asleep in minutes. We didn’t even care about eating at that point. It was a deep sleep. It was hard to wake up. Waking up was pretty fun, because it felt like a dream that we were in this hotel in Uganda. We had wonderful cold showers (ha) and were able to freshen up and change clothes.
We made our way down to the restaurant in the hotel to grab a meal. The menu was in English but we didn’t recognize most of the dishes. I found something that sounded like hamburgers. So I ordered hamburgers and french fries, or chips as they were called there. The view out of the restaurant was incredible. There was a train track surrounded by the most lush vegetation I had ever seen. There were these huge birds that were walking around and plopping down loudly on the metal roofs below us.
The food took quite a while to come and when it did I knew that my kids were not going to eat it. The hamburgers were indeed ground beef, but they were the shape of a baseball. The bun was two slices of bread and they had no ketchup. American children won’t eat without ketchup and/or ranch. I asked if they had something like ketchup and they assured me that they do. So they brought back a wonderful bowl full of mashed up tomatoes. Needless to say, we all lost weight on that trip. I think I lost about 15 pounds that month. Our kids were so picky that we could count their ribs. My wife got to the point where we took her to see a doctor and we found out that her sodium was low and that’s why she was so sluggish. I had never heard of someone having too low of sodium. I bought her some knock off pringles and forced her to eat a few every hour. We got to the point with the kids that we were buying candy and making them eat it just so they would get some calories in them. This isn’t to say there wasn’t good food in Uganda. There certainly was, but our taste buds were very american fast food-ish at that point.
The next morning we were finally able to make contact with the orphanage. The brother of the orphanage director came out in a van, which they called a bus, to pick us up. We was very friendly and we hopped in to finally head to Jinja to meet the boy that we had been praying for for so long. It would be about an hour drive. We drove through the main road and saw shop after shop. The roads in the country are dotted with open air shops that are tiny store fronts. They are selling fruit, meat, clothing, etc. You could get whatever you needed from them. Many of them looked as though they were stocked from items donated from other countries.
OUr driver pulled over to the side of the road. He waved at a car that was going the other direction and that car pulled off the road as well. We had no idea what was happening. Two tiny people with huge smiles got out, pulled a baby from the backseat of the car, walked over to us and plopped that little baby into my wife’s arms and said, “Here is your baby.” I will never forget that phrase spoken in English with a beautiful Ugandan accent. “Here is your baby.” I have a picture of the moment that we met him that I keep at my desk. I’m holding him and my hand is the size of his torso. He has a confused look on his face as he looks at me. My youngest daughter is in the background smiling and holding him along with me. He has the tiniest of mohawks simply because that’s how his hair was growing in. He was the cutest thing any of us had ever seen. We loved him from the very first moment that we were with him.
Of course, they hadn’t legally handed him over to us. They simply let us start taking care of him at that point. The orphanage was completely full and it was a struggle for them to continue to care for each child. We were glad to oblige and take him immediately.
They drove us to the orphanage and we were able to meet everyone that worked there along with the director. They were wonderful people with smiles as bright as their hearts for Jesus. There were kids everywhere. They ran a tight ship, but there were so many kids! We got to see where they fed the children in shifts. The babies got milk and formula. The children ate mostly rice, beans, and matoke (a mashed banana-like food). For a treat we brought some suckers for the children and coca cola for the women taking care of the children.
They showed us the bedrooms full of cribs, bunk beds and mosquito nets. The children were all so happy! We were able to go outside and play soccer with the children. My wife showed them her camera. She let a few boys go around taking pictures with it. They were incredibly welcoming to our entire family. Our older daughter is the social butterfly and she was running around with the children. Our younger daughter was attached to mom’s hip. Our son was with me getting dominated at soccer! It was surreal.
Then it came time to take us to the place that we would be staying. Our driver brought us just a mile or so away and we made it to, what we would call, a bed and breakfast. It was very nice with a pool, marble floors, a separate restaurant area, and custom built furniture, internet, and huge TV. It was much nicer than we were expecting. It was also in the Nile river. I must have stated, “Moses was on that River” over one thousand times on that trip. We were dropped off and met the staff that worked there. The manager was a wonderful man that took great care of us. My kids were impressed with the chicken that was running around the grounds. They thought it was great.
They asked if we’d like to order dinner. It wasn’t a written menu. We would just ask for something and then they would tell us if that was possible or not. Breakfast wasn’t that way. Breakfast was a full english breakfast. I enjoyed that! For dinner that night we ordered chicken nuggets for this kids. Do you see where I am going with this? I didn’t. The cook asked if the kids would like to see him prepare the chicken nuggets. They had no idea what he was talking about. We distracted them and then sat down for dinner. They enjoyed their chicken nuggets and later asked what had happened to the chicken that was running around. I explained to them that the chicken probably just went for a walk.
Most days we would spend time with Silas, play on the grounds, and go into town to eat something. I rented a car, so we had the freedom to do what we wanted. If it wasn’t for the daily trips to hospitals and clinics, it may have felt more like a vacation than anything.
When we were handed Silas, we didn’t realize that he had malaria. The first night he was with us he was full of energy and smiling. The next few days he grew more and more cranky until it got to the point that he was sleeping a bunch. We didn’t really know what was going on so we asked the orphanage director and she casually stated, “He probably has malaria.”
We took him to the hospital. It was a shock for us. Most of it was outdoors and it certainly wasn’t what we were used to in terms of “patient-centered” service. We were ushered to a room where a nurse told showed us how to make sure that the IV was flowing right and what to do if it wasn’t. She asked if we would all be staying the night. My wife and I discussed it and I was picked to spend the night in the hospital with him while she took the kids back to the hotel. It was such a dreary place made of exposed cement, a small bed and a chair. I think there may have been a fan and an old TV in the room as well. After a day of the IV he was smiling again. It was scary, but everything worked out. That was the first one.
Every single one of us got food poisoning at some point. My youngest daughter busted her lip open. My oldest son broke his arm. These were some of the challenges.
However, we drank a ton of soda with real sugar in it! The kids and I would go to the tiki on the grounds and get glass bottles of soda for roughly 15 cents each. Upon reflection, that probably didn’t help the upset stomachs! We were able to see a beautiful country with beautiful weather. We were able to see people with amazing smiles. We were able to see another part of this incredible world that God has made. It’s a time that changed us all for the better.
After a few weeks, we were now just a couple of days before our court date to make this adoption official. I was told that I would need to wear a suit or I may be kicked out of court. So I went to the only suit store I could find in Jinja. I asked them for a suit in my size. They said that they normally custom make them but it would take a while. I asked what they had in my size. They had one suit that was, sort of, large enough for me. At the time I was 6 foot and 225 pounds. That made me a tad larger than most everyone else buying suits there. They had one. I tried it on. I could button everything up. It was black with sparkles sewn in. (I told you they only had one, right?) I bought it and we went back to the hotel.
The next morning we were told not to come to court that day because the judge wasn’t in. We were flying out in a few days, so we weren’t too worried. We asked when the judge would be back in. They told us that it would be a few months or so.
A few months or so.
Now what?
We made the decision that we felt called to make. We brought Silas back to the orphanage and boarded up our family of 5 and flew back to the United States. Why? I had to get back to work. It was incredible that they were letting me do this in the first place. The kids had already missed the first few weeks of school. We also didn’t have the funds to stay.
This book is written only from my perspective. So I’ll write this. It wasn’t that hard. Hear me out. Emotionally it was a little rough. But, it wasn’t hard because I was 100% sure that we would be going back soon to pick him up and bring him home forever. My faith never waivered. I knew that God had called us to do this and I knew that there is nothing that He can’t do. I’d like to pretend I had some doubt or something, but I had none. I didn’t see this as a big deal. Looking back on it, it wasn’t. Isn't life like that?
We flew home and within a couple of weeks, we received the call that the judge was back and we would have a new court date soon. So we decided that my wife would fly back to Uganda by herself. When I say “we” of course I mean it in the way that wives use the word. For husbands, that word is plural. Wives can use it singularly. She told me that we had made that decision and I knew that I should just go ahead and agree.
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