It is with great anticipation that we wait for news of our Rwandan baby girl. We keep hearing we’re next, but in an adoption process that is ever changing, we have no idea what that means. All we can be sure of is that we don’t know what to expect, and there really isn’t anyone who can tell us right now! We have a backup name picked out, a nursery ready, and a little girl who speaks of her mei mei all the time. We have reread all of the adoption and baby books, researched the culture, watched all of the movies, educated ourselves on the recent and tragic genocide, and kept a mental log of all of the activities that we’ll do with her once she comes home. We know it’s not enough; that once she is in our arms we will kick ourselves for not doing something, but our primary goal right now is just to get her in our arms. We will deal with everything else when it happens.
We do not yet know exactly how our travel and immigration will work. When you ask the experts they have no idea and wish us luck! Our best laid plan is that we will travel to Rwanda from Hong Kong. We will meet our baby girl and go through all of the required Rwanda steps for guardianship. Then we will go to Kenya to do the US portion. The current rumor of how long we will be in Africa is four weeks give or take a week. The girls and I will then travel to the US (Charlie will head back to Hong Kong for work) to apply for adoption finalization. The experts we’ve polled tell us Florida is our best bet. Anybody got a spare room? Once we do that, then we can send our daughter’s Rwanda passport in for a temporary Hong Kong dependent visa (along with some prayers and some tears hoping that they will grant her one) so that she is allowed into HK. After we get the visa the Brown girls should be able to travel to Hong Kong. This will allow Makena to get back to her normal routine and get back into school. We might have to head back to the US at least one more time for additional court dates, and once the finalization is completed on US soil, we can apply for her US citizenship and subsequently get her US passport. This process could take up to a year, but once she has her US passport we will not have the immigration worries that we have when she has a Rwandan passport and a US green card! Who would ever have thought this is what would have used up all of my brain cells!
