Goodbye to Agnes

With our lawyer, Agnes on Tuesday night. She was leaving with her son for South Africa the next day...

Agnes is an amazing woman. She's a senator here and also sits on the Kigali Bar Association. Her schedule is frantic and we even had occasion to pass her on the road zooming around town! Her son is heading to NY University and you can tell she is so proud. Later, her son joined us for some appetizers and drinks - what a lovely young man!

Passport!

We have to admit that Monday & Tuesday are a blur already...We were given some incorrect info about paperwork needed by the passport office here (consider your worst DMV experience ever - and it might match up). Basically it came to needing a signed original of the Minister's adoption approval, but she was in a meeting with another Minister. During that time, the notarization office (our worst enemy) had closed - so there wouldn't be a copy of the adoption approval left for us. After 3 trips driving back and forth to the passport office, the Minister finished her meeting. She was EXTREMELY gracious, signed three originals for us to avoid notarizations and then invited us to stay and talk for almost 25 minutes! This is a VERY busy woman and we felt so honored to talk candidly about the adoption process in Rwanda and our personal experience. In the end she asked us to act as ambassadors for adoptions in Rwanda...to try to create an email network of children so that her office could send updated information and eventually create a post-adoptive survey system! WOW!!!

Civil Court & Notarization

All court rulings are done! Looks like it was easy, but Oh My Goodness! After two hours at the District Office, Ned managed to interrupt the Notary in a meeting with the Mayor of Kigali. She had disappeared without completing our paperwork even though we had paid (typical here we're finding). There is ONE notary in the entire Kigali district here. Can you imagine? There are lines of people waiting every day for notarizations and most sit and wait all day only to come back again the next day.

Kigali Civil Court Ruling

This is Ned at the Civil Court ruling in Kigali. The picture in the background is President Kagame (amazing man!). The lawyer (Jean-Pierre) next to Ned is a friend of our lawyer - he set his case aside to allow us to appear as the first case of the day. The graciousness of the Rwandese people is really humbling...Oh - they ruled in our favor!

cliff springer