Obsession

I am officially obssessed with Williams and Scott getting home. In 17 hours they will be in New York, on American soil. (They have to spend the night there.) In 30 hours their flight will leave from JFK. In 34 1/2 hours they will be here. I constantly count ahead 5 hours to figure out what they might be doing. I wake up several times a night and I can think of nothing else.

This is where they'll be in 3 hours:

This is the bathroom they may use in 4 hours:

Kind of creepy, isn't it?!

This is the sweet pea Scott will have in tow:

And, hopefully, sweet pea will be doing a lot of this on the plane:

Bathroom Central

After meeting Williams on my first night in Ghana, I returned to the guest house where I had a wonderful American, AAI (my adoption agency) family waiting for me. We sat in their room and chatted until much too late, but it was so nice to have them there. I can't quite imagine what it would have been like to be there all by myself.

Edward, my driver from the airport and the guy who booked my room, told me on the way there that a family that was supposed to have checked out, didn't. What that meant to me was that I couldn't get a room with it's own bathroom. Edmund at the guest house (a whole lot of "E" names, there was also and Emmanuel) showed me the bathroom right next door to my room and said that I would just have to share it with another AAI mom who would be arriving in a few days. I thought that sounded great, especially because it had a regular toilet and toilet paper.

As we were shutting down for the night, Heather, the other mom, was in my room and I heard the shower running in "my" bathroom. I said as much and she agreed. We waited for the door to open and she backed into the hall to see who it was, as if we'd know them. She came back and said it was some guy in his underwear. Alrighty, then! A little surprising but I could deal with that.

Heather said goodnight and went to her room. As I was getting my things together to go take a long awaited shower, I was just sure I heard the shower again! I went into the hall and the door to the bathroom wasn't quite shut. I knocked and heard some kind of an answer. I went back to my room and sat on the bed waiting to take a shower in "my" bathroom. When I heard the door scratch open I went into the hall and out came a woman in jeans without a top...I mean nothing. I said "hi". I hope that was the appropriate greeting for when you pass a topless woman in the hall.

Right then and there I thought I was going to sit down in the hall and cry. What a big baby I was! This all was just not clicking with this American's expectations of normal. If it hadn't been for the Americans in close proximity at that moment. I would have found some way to move somewhere else, ANYWHERE else, regardless of the fact that it was probably 11:30pm or midnight.

I managed to make it into the bathroom, LOCK THE DOOR, and take my cold shower. There was no hot water at this guest house. At least I DID expect that. Looking back, I just laugh at myself, because this quickly became the norm and didn't bother me at all. I still have no idea who all the other people who used the bathroom were, but they were there the whole time I was because it was a very busy place. Just to let you know, I did jump at the chance to switch rooms later in the week when my American friends left to go home. I would have continued to share my bathroom with the rest of Ghana though, to have had my friends there for the rest of my trip!

Our First Meeting

Preparing for my trip was probably one of the most stressful things I have experienced in a long time, probably ever. I think it was the idea that I was traveling so far away, forgotten items wouldn't be easy to get, and there were folder after folder of paperwork that needed to come along with me. The main purpose of this trip was to file our I600 form at the US embassy in Accra. The bonus was that I was going to meet and spend a week with Williams! It took me several hours on the plane to kind of decompress from all the getting ready.

The flights were long but fairly uneventful. The biggest problem was that I realized I'd forgotten all of my lipstick and I didn't know if I could survive that. I even called my adoption coordinator, way too late in the evening, to find out if I could get lipstick in Ghana. Her answer was, "Not anything you'd want to put on your lips." That was a kind of scary answer so I found the duty free lipstick store, (yes, there is one) and searched, with no luck, for just the right "Amy in Africa" color. I was just going to have to go to Africa lipstickless. Little did I know that this would be the biggest non-issue I could possibly imagine.

For 11 hours I did the "countdown to Williams". I watched the little map on the screen in front of me showing me inch closer and closer to Ghana and it just didn't seem real. My flight was about 1 1/2 hours late arriving. The airport was nothing like I was expecting. I was picturing the Puerta Vallarta airport which was just chaos, but Accra's was orderly, clean, and quite nice. There were no men grabbing at my bags to "help" me as I imagined. Edward, the poor driver who had arrived at the airport at 5:45pm to pick me up, sat wearily just where I was told he would be waiting. It was about 8:00pm. Besides the "wild airport" fear, I also had the "no one there to pick me up" fear. So far, so good!

On the drive to Teshie, the area where Eban House and my guest house is located, I asked about going to Eban House. Edward said it was too late and all the kids would be asleep. I was devastated! I thought that I was going to be able to go, no matter what time it was, and they would wake him up to meet me. I tried not to act like he had just punched me in the gut, but that's what I felt like. Once again, in rode my adoption coordinator, on her white horse. She called Edward on his cell phone, from Tulsa, to see if I'd made it. We talked and she said of course I could go to Eban House to meet Williams tonight!

When I arrived at Eban House, Auntie Esther was there to greet me. It seemed so appropriate since that is my mom's name. She went and got Williams and there he was, standing in front of me. After all the pictures and dreams , he was right there. I asked him if it was ok for me to hug him and he did his little "Ghana nod" which is one, small nod, and it's easy to miss. He smelled so good!!!! He was a little shy at first, but he warmed up quickly. I only sat with him for 5 minutes or so. It was hard to not just want to sit there and stare at him without talking, like I'd done with his pictures for the last 3 months, but I didn't want him to know yet how weird I am, so I kept it short. It's hard to carry on much of a conversation with a 5 year old boy, who speaks limited English, has just been woken up from a dead sleep, and told his new obruni (white) mother is waiting to to meet him in the other room. The fact that he came out at all seemed like a good deal to me. I'm not sure I would have, had I been him!

I decided to keep him. Oh, yeah, I had to! He was already my son. It's funny how similar it was to meeting your biological baby right after delivery. He didn't talk, he let me look at his fingers and toes (they were all there!), and I got to kiss him repeatedly on the head. He didn't run away from me, so I deemed the whole experience a success.

While I've Been Away...

My posting has ground to a halt since returning from Ghana. Part of it is lack of time. Part of it is being so tired. Part of it is so much to say I don't know where to start.

I think I will steal the format that my friend Heather is using and just go through my trip day by day. But, before I go into that, I have to tell of a sad, sad incident that took place at Eban House 5 nights after I left.

Sunday night, four armed men broke into Eban House wanting to know where the valuables were kept. There were 3 house moms (Aunties) on duty. Esther is the one who the men came upon. Esther, in an attempt to keep the men from getting the items and to keep the children safe, would not tell them. The men repeatedly assaulted her. They then proceeded to break into the office, steal the money they found there, laptop computers, and what other valuables they could find. Took make a bad situation worse, 4 of the older girls woke up and witnessed part of the violence, but, thankfully, not the part involving Esther. The girls then prayed during the rest of the ordeal. Can you believe that these girls, the oldest being probably 8, had the spiritual and emotional maturity to instantly begin praying? Not only praying, but praying for the men to leave, praying FOR the attackers, and praying for forgiveness for the men.

This has left me feeling as if it were my own home that was invaded. I am sickened that such an act would happen in a small home full of 30 sleeping children and the 3 women caring for them. The only bright side of the story is that the girls recognized the men as hired men who had been at Eban House the previous week painting. The girls went to the police station and, hopefully, will be able to help with these men being caught.

This whole episode just further erodes my already fragile sense of trust that I have of people in general. On one hand, a part of me wants so badly to believe that most people have good intentions. On the other hand, it just seems a rare occasion that I don't have a part of me that cannot completely trust anyone except for a small handful. It makes you really evaluate how you should function in this world. Unfortunately, it seems that a healthy dose of distrust is the only way to keep yourself, and your family, safe.

My knee-jerk response when I first was told of this horrible crime was to think, "Why Eban House? They have nothing!" Then I started thinking of it from a different perspective. On a regular basis, "rich" Americans walk to and from Eban House. Often times they are carrying large bags of donations, the actual content of which is probably much more valuable in a bystanders imagination. But in reality, there are many things donated, or purchased through donated funds, that are quite valuable, especially in a society so stricken by poverty. It is amazing to me that these children have gone from being mainly the most needy of a society, to now being a worthy target for scumbags of the world.

I can do nothing on this end but pray for God to heal all that needs healed at Eban House. Thankfully, Williams was in no way hurt, nor did he even wake up, as far as anyone knows. I would ask everyone who reads this to please pray for this also, especially for Esther, and the 4 daughters of my 3 different friends who now have yet more trauma in their short little lives to deal with.

New and Improved Travel Plan

My brain is in a continuous loop that it can't get off. How can my husband fall asleep while I'm talking to him when I can't stop THINKING?!!! Today I got the great news that Williams passport has been received which is one of the highly variable time frames when it comes to documentation. All we need now is the adoption decree and it's time to go file the I600 in Ghana.

This is where my brain is stuck. I think I've come up with a new and improved travel plan. Up until now Scott was planning on taking the first trip to Ghana to file the I600 and spend the week with Williams while I would be the one to return shortly after that to whisk Williams home to the US. The hitch in the plan is that the adoption decree should be to us around July 4. Well, Mr. Scott has a softball tournament with Hannah's team on the weekend of July 11. He's thinking that going the 14th would be great and I find that TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE!!!! :-) (I give it a smiley face, but it's still UNACCEPTABLE.)

So, anyway, here's the new plan which, by the way, is highly acceptable. :-) (That's a real smiley face.) I will travel to Ghana on July 7 to file the I600. It is perfect because I do not have to be back in the event that I get held up by paperwork. It's also perfect because Holly and Hannah are going to church camp that whole week so I would only have to arrange a schedule for Adam. Oh yeah, and Scott can be at the darned tournament, sheesh!

In early to mid August, when there is no softball, no soccer, no baseball, no basketball, no bobsledding etc, Scott can go to Ghana and bring the Wills home. Another bonus is that this way every dish in the whole house wont be dirty when Williams arrives since I'm the only one who can load a dishwasher or wash a dish, you know.

Excellent plan, I think! If Scott could stay awake when I'm talking to him, I'm sure he would agree!