Dispatches from the Congo – A Journey of Love (Part 5)
~Andrew and Rev. Bashaka
By Erin Pohland
It’s night in Kinshasa. I know I live in Alaska, so I’m not a good judge of darkness, but it gets dark so early here! By 5:30, it seems to be pretty dark. It doesn’t help that there aren’t any street lights or very many buildings with electricity, I suppose.
Andrew is napping — we had a BIG day again today! I was pleasantly surprised to learn that he sleeps through the night. He actually napped for 4.5 hours yesterday afternoon, until 8:30 p.m., got up and ate (a vanilla yogurt, which he LOVED), took a bath (which he HATED) and then went to bed at 10 and slept through until 5:30 a.m. I gave him a bottle and he went right back to sleep until 7 a.m. It might just be his body getting used to all of this change — and all of these calories! This boy is an eater. He’s in 6 month clothes right now (at 18 months), but I suspect that he’s going to be up to size in no time!!
The day started out early, with a man knocking on my door at 8 a.m. to tell me that there was a man for me downstairs. I halfway thought that it’d be the suit guy from the street yesterday, but it was Bashaka and Timothee. Apparently, when we set a time of 10 a.m. to meet, he decided that 8 a.m. would be even better. It was for the best, though — we had a long, LONG day.
The two items on the agenda seemed pretty simple: drop off all of Andrew’s visa paperwork at the U.S. Embassy and take him to the doctor for his medical examination for the visa. Seemed is the key word; nothing is ever as simple as it seems in the Congo.
I went through the visa paperwork before Andrew got up this morning and noted that Bashaka had gotten an “Attestation of Naissence” instead of an “Acte of Naissence,” the latter of which is required by the embassy. He also didn’t have the English translations or a copy — both of which are required by the embassy. Some of you know that I had a bit of a throw-down with my agency the first week of June after learning that they didn’t have all of the documentation that they said that they had for the visa (which they had been saying they had since January!). After several heated calls and emails between the agency staff, me and my dad, they quickly got on Bashaka to get this all done. Apparently, their methods of persuasion aren’t as good as they think! The real problem, it seems, is that Bashaka doesn’t speak very good English and he’s a preacher. No offense to preachers, but I don’t think that attention to detail and being good at assembling documents are high on the list of qualifications. Funny how different my reaction was this time, though. Just two weeks ago, I got hysterical when they said they didn’t have the paperwork, then boiling mad. Threats of a lawsuit may have been tossed out once or twice… But now, with Andrew here, I just calmly accepted it and figured that it would work out. And you know what? I think that it will.
So, Andrew and I got ready in a rush and met Bashaka outside with our driver for the day. Thankfully, he had an old SUV instead of a tiny old mazda station wagon like our driver from Tuesday, so the roads didn’t seem as crazy with the bumps. No A/C, though, and it was HOT. Andrew and I were soaked through by the time that we were done with our first stop (making photocopies). My baby is going to fit in Alaska, I think — he seems to hate this heat as much as I do!! The driver was really nice, though — he went over to a street vendor and bought a pack of tissues and gently mopped Andrew’s face. Andrew, by the way, was wearing a super fly blue & white striped terry cloth jumper with red accents. He needed to look patriotic for his first day at the embassy!
After the photocopies were made, we headed out into the insane traffic to go to the US Embassy. The traffic seems slightly better in the day — amazing what removing the total darkness does for safety!! We pulled around the side of the embassy, where trash was heaped along the concrete walls topped with barbed wire. Street vendors sat along the wall. There was a line of Congolese people waiting to try to get into the embassy, but seeing me, the guards (all Congolese) waved me forward, looked at my passport, and sent me inside. Once in, we were supposed to go through a metal detector and get our bags searched. Apparently, these people have never heard of John Walker Lindh, because I was exempt from having my bags searched. Either that, or this particular guard doesn’t enforce the rules for white people; he searched Bashaka, but not me. Bashaka had to turn over his phone, but I didn’t. What makes this kind of funny, though, is that the guard at the American embassy who apparently doesn’t apply security rules to white people speaks little to no English. So I took Andrew over to a little play area while Bashaka talked to the guard about my appointment.
Now, Reverend Bashaka is a very nice man, and I’m sure that he’s an excellent preacher. But as an adoption agency employee, he is awful. He must have talked to this man for 20 minutes while I sat and played with Andrew (who had figured out the snack thing full of cheerios and was going to town on them!). After all of this back and forth, Bashaka came back to me and said, “He say you not have appointment. We leave.” I whipped out the copy of the email from the embassy setting the appointment. I told Bashaka to watch the baby, marched over to the guard and told him that if he didn’t get me to see someone, then I needed to talk to his supervisor. I expect this sort of ridiculousness from the Congolese government, but I generally hope that the American government is a bit better at these sorts of things. All of a sudden, the guard decided to look in the appointment book, and what do you know — I have an appointment! Funny how that works. It apparently wasn’t until the afternoon sometime, so we left to head to the hospital. I told Bashaka that from now on, I do the talking when it comes to the U.S. Embassy.
Andrew fell asleep on me during the short (less than 5 minute) ride to the hospital. And when I say hospital, let me emphasize that I use that term very, VERY loosely. It is technically a hospital, I suppose, but let’s just say that I might take my chances with a raging infection rather than be treated there. We went in through what appeared to be the main entrance. A man who seemed to work there came over once he saw me (only white person in the place — go figure!) and in a flurry of French, insisted that we walk around outside, across some rubble, up a ramp, and enter the second floor. We got up to the second floor, where they insisted that I should be at the first floor. From what I can gather, the second floor is where they send the foreigners, since it’s slightly nicer (if you ignore the rubble you cross to get to the ramp) and at least looks like a hospital. However, because I was having the baby examined, not me, we were sent back downstairs. Andrew slept through all off this — my baby is a deep sleeper.
So after a lot of rigamarole, none of which included paperwork (seriously, his chart says “Yefuta,” and that was it. No last name, no date of birth, nothing. It’s record-keeping like this that makes me glad that the U.S. Embassy is so insistent on extensive documentation.), we were sent to a small waiting room for pediatrics. The room had molded plastic lawn chairs, and if there weren’t enough, you could always grab some more from the stack by the door! At the back of the room there were the patient files — and by files, I mean boxes with random charts. Not a computer in sight, not that I would expect one. When a patient was to be seen, the nurse would go back to these boxes and search for 15 minutes to pull out a chart. They’re not big on labeling here, it seems.
So, after maybe 40 minutes, we were sent to a small room with a counter with 3 spaces to place your baby to undress him or her. I did that for Andrew, and he was weighed and had his temperature taken. My little guy is funny — he didn’t want that thermometer in his armpit, and kept trying to pull it out. I ended up having to hold his arms so they could get his temp. Side note: while it’s less accurate, I’m glad that they used an armpit thermometer since they use the same one for every child and don’t even wipe it down or dip it in water in between. We were sent back to the waiting room, where we waited and waited and waited….
2 hours later, I had concluded that my son is a genuis. He clearly is, as he was pointing at his wipes in my bag, and when I’d give him one, he’d wipe down his face and mine, then clean his legs and arms and even his feet. He did the best he could with me — getting my legs and my hands. He’d pull out my hand so he could high five me (I didn’t teach him that) and would pull my hair over my face for me to play peek-a-boo (which got me his first laugh earlier that morning). He also was big on mimicking me, and he’s very big on figuring out how things work — caps on water bottles, his sippy cup, his snack container of cheerios. He was great the entire time, despite the two of us basically melting together on the stupid hard, straight-backed bench that was along the side wall.
I will say that the Congolese are kind of impressive with how they dress. Most of the women wear traditional garb (I plan to buy some to wear at home…it’s just that awesome), and they wear it with high heels, a full face of make up and tons of jewelry. Many men wear suits. And what was even more impressive to me was that they had on at least 80% more clothing than I did, and none of them were sweating. Their kids were dressed in winter outfits!! I guess it’s the Congolese version of Alaskan kids going swimming as soon as the ice melts…it’s all relative to your normal temperature.
We finally went back to see a doctor, and he and Bashaka exchanged a flurry of French where it seemed to be determined that this doctor couldn’t do the exams. I made Bashaka take out the embassy letter to the doctors — which he had apparently never read before that moment — and we finally got the doctor to agree to do it. He did a cursory examination of Andrew, which Andrew did NOT like, and declared him to be fit to emigrate to the U.S. I pointed out that an x-ray for TB is required, along with other things, and he said, “No, it’s OK, he doesn’t have TB.” This was clearly the single biggest waste of time and money in the world.
It got better, though. After my questions in pidgin French (i.e., I take an English word and try to make it sound like something a French person would say), he made a few calls and wrote a note for us instructing us to go up to the 4th floor where another doctor would fill out the forms. We head back to the elevator, where Bashaka, Andrew and I promptly get stuck — the elevators in Kinshasa are ancient and about the size of a toilet stall. Horrible. So we walk up to the 4th floor, where Bashaka spends 20 more minutes talking to another guy about what we want. They start talking vaccinations, which is where I perked up. The U.S. embassy specifically gives adoptive parents the option of waiving in-country vaccinations; normally, immigrants are required to be vaccinated against specific things as a condition of immigration, but they understand that parents might not want to have their kids vaccinated in their home countries. Apparently, the hospital didn’t get the memo, because we then had a 10 minute argument which was basically me pantomiming a shot and saying “NO! NO!” This was NOT happening — there was feces on the exam table when Andrew was examined by the doctor, workers were disassembling machines in the hallway, and you’d pass by rooms that were literally filled with rubble (bricks, cement, etc). No way in hell was a needle from that “hospital” going into my baby’s leg. I finally got my way, and then we were sent back down to the first floor to pay. After I paid ($85), we were sent back up to the 4th floor to have the exam done. The guy there walked us back down to the original pediatric waiting room. At this point, it was nearly 3 o’clock. I hadn’t eaten all day, I was soaked in sweat, and parched. I wanted to be an ugly American and demand to be seen, but I knew that wasn’t really an option (or else I might have done it. I certainly wouldn’t have waited 4+ hours for a 10 minute exam in a U.S. hospital!). They took us back into the room where Andrew was weighed, and then after 20 minutes, the guy came back and told me to come back tomorrow at 10 a.m. So, basically, I sat around this hot, dirty, crowded hospital for 5 hours for no damn reason. And I have to go back tomorrow….
After all of this, we still had to go to the Embassy. I was once again waved to the front of the line and immediately let in. The guard didn’t make it a secret that he was afraid of me; he said, “You go sit with baby. I talk to him.” Once again, I wasn’t searched and Bashaka was. Good thing that the most lethal item I had on me was some diaper cream. I sat down in a crowded room full of hopeful Congolese, who all wanted to talk to the American in the room. The celebrity thing was wearing a bit thin at that point, so I was grateful when Andrew fell asleep on me — I was able to politely shush them. The guard came back and told me that I was bumped to the front of the line, and I was so grateful to be an American at that point. 5 minutes later, and I’m before a consulate officer! It was simple — hand everything over, sign a few documents and answer a few questions. He didn’t bring up the translation issue, but apparently Bashaka also didn’t get a certifiction of abandonment, so we were told that he needed to have that plus the correct birth certificate ASAP. My interview is on Monday — wish me luck!!
So, we left and drove home…where we got stopped by a Congolese police officer. I had a moment of terror, wondering what we had done. My driver had just swerved into oncoming traffic, but there didn’t seem to be a law against that in Kinshasa. But there was no need to worry….my blonde hair is like a beacon to Congolese who want to talk to an American, and he stopped our car because he saw me and wanted to say hi. Seriously. This place couldn’t get any weirder if it tried. Well, actually….it can, because as we drove on, the car (we were back to the station wagon — the SUV driver couldn’t wait around the whole day while we were in the hospital) got stuck on a giant crater in the road, and a mob of people surround us instantly to push us out. I’m assuming that it happens a lot!! Then we drove down that road and had to stop because — and I can’t make this up — the street was blocked by trash, and there were men IN THE TRASH with shovels, putting it into carts to be hauled away. The trash must have been ten feet deep, and it blocked the entire two way street. The smell….horrific. Absolutely awful. So we backed up, managed to miraculously miss the giant pothole, and got to the hotel — but not before the same police officer waved and winked and yelled, “Hello, American lady!”
The hotel never looked so good. I actually got completely scammed by the front desk on my way in — they had sent a driver to the airport to get me on Tuesday, supposedly, but I never saw the guy even though he claimed to have had a sign — and they asked me for his gas money. I agreed, because we’re talking about desperately poor people and that is the most hellish drive in the world, but I didn’t realize that the charge would be $50. I’m pretty sure that my white skin is the world’s biggest “I’m a Sucker” billboard in this country.
Quiet night in — Andrew had his first mac & cheese, which he loved and scarfed down — and he called me Mama (when I was trying to nap and he wanted me to wake up — he touched my closed eyes and yelled “Mama! Mama!”). He’s napping now, and then we’re going to get him fed and right back to bed after we wash the day’s dirt from him. It’s another hospital day tomorrow….so I’m packing for a long weekend!!
I am SO enjoying this story AND sharing it with many 🙂 IT is such a nice positive read given all the crap that we seem to be bombarded with for so many fronts.
Thanks for making my weekends just a tad brighter!!
Thank you Erin for sharing this–makes the world seem a better place!
Erin, it sounds like you are doing a good job of being your childs advocate. That is one part of being a parent I enjoy. When Andrew needs injections, try using The Alaska Department of Public Health.They have well child clinics, that way you aren’t taking him into a clinic where the patrons are ill. They take time with each child and a person does’nt feel rushed. Also, this might be a good time to do a little sign language with Andrew. A person would be surprised how basic some of the signs are. I liked reading your account of the day.The pigin talk is “sweet”. Best to all.
I’m with merrycricket about the heat…
and knowing there is a happy ending.
I never skip to the back of a book to peek at the ending,
but in this case, knowing that there’s a happy ending in Alaska
(and that it doesn’t involve any of Todd Palin’s family)
makes the journey easier to read about.
Vicarious heat and frustration are real enough.
Vicarious joy is delightful.
thatcrowwoman
Erin, I don’t know how you managed those long days in that heat. But you did and look at that beautiful boy! I’m glad I know there is a happy ending.
Wow Erin, what an excellent read! Can’t wait for the next installment!!! Thank you
I was delighted to see the latest installment today, but I had something come up that made me have to leave my computer for a few hours before I could read all of today’s segment. Bummer!
I’m so pleased to return here and see the rest of the post now. Erin, I admire you for your persistence and stamina and care in getting all the “t”s crossed and the “i”s dotted to turn you and your little guy into a family unit of your very own.
I look forward to the next post.
(After reading these adventures, I’m reminded of “Auntie Em, there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home…”)
What a lovely child. He’s already doing Alaska proud!
it’s a page turner. i’m ready for the next installment.
Okay, now I’m confused. I thought you and Andrew were already back home in Alaska. What am I missing? Anyway, I lift my hat to you for your courage in travelling etc. ‘all by yourself’ in an unknown country, and repeat my wish for a growing relationship between you and Andrew, and the rest of your extended family.
vyccan — Yes, they are both home. Erin kept a diary of her journey to The Congo, her impressions of the people and country, the frustrations and joys she encountered in adopting Mighty Man Andrew, and her new Mamahood. The ‘chapters’ are being published here on the ‘flats (each Sunday, if I’m not mistaken…oh, how time flies!) so we can all travel right along with her on what has proven to be a Most Excellent Adventure. beth.
That’s correct! These are the daily emails that I sent while in-country. I wasn’t willing to have anything posted while I was there, on the chance that it would be found and mess up my process and keep me there.
So yes, Andrew and I are safely in the US!
Thanks for the clarification, Beth and Erin. There are times these days when my mind doesn’t always behave as it should, so having previously read a Part 4 (and pts1-3 too), I was a wee bit ‘lost’. Appreciate it. 😉
Heart! I swear, I just sat by you in the vehicle, dug through the file to find the appointment email, etc. Thank you for sharing your story. Can’t wait for the next installment!