Birth Certificate Collection (Monday 1st June)

We decided that it was my turn to experience part of the Ethiopian process today, so when our driver arrived it was me that left with him, much to Little Prince's disgust!!  We drove for about an hour in the heat to get to the Registry Office as the traffic was so bad.  When we arrived at the Offices both me and the driver had to get out of the car, he got searched but I didn't, although they did search my bag and took my camera from me and gave me a reclaim ticket.  We parked the car, and the driver took me to somewhere to wait, he even found me a chair and dusted it off for me!!  We only waited about 10 minutes for Assistant to arrive, and she was all out of breath when she did arrive!!  She took me over to one of the buildings, and she told me to wait at one side of the narrow courtyard in the shade while she went to sort things out at one of the four numbered windows on the other side of the courtyard.  There were many people clustered around the windows and I don't know how they worked out where everyone was in the queue, but it seemed amicable enough and there did seem to be some sort of recognised order to who was served when.  Once Assistant had done what she had to do at one window, she moved to a different window and waited again.  Eventually she came back over to me, and she HAD BABY'S BIRTH CERTIFICATE :-)  She said that the office shouldn't have given the certificate to her and she should have needed me to go over and collect it, but they had given it to her without needing me :-)  She also had two other children's birth certificates who are going to be adopted soon (Umm R - Baby F is one of them :-) ).  Assistant had me read through the information on the certificate and check it was all correct and spelled correctly, and once that was confirmed we went back over to the car.  Assistant came back to the orphanage in the car with us, so I'm not sure how she travelled to the Registry Office!!  I picked up my camera on the way out, I had been panicking that I would forget lol. 

 

Once we had dropped Assistant back off at the orphanage the driver took me over to our Guest House, we had already arranged that he would return at 1.30pm to pick up Mr Messy and new baby to go and apply for her Ethiopian Passport.  We packed up supplies for Mr Messy to look after new baby for goodness knows how long!!  They went over to the orphanage to pick up Assistant, however, she was busy with the other UK families who are currently in Addis, so a different member of staff accompanied Mr Messy to the Passport Office.  He was taken to three or four different buildings where New Assistant would march straight to the front of the queue to be dealt with quickly and efficiently.  Mr Messy's only contribution to the whole process was to sign one form when requested.  The whole thing took about an hour, and he ws told that he could pick the completed Passport on Wednesday at 3pm.  It would have been the next day, but there was a planned power cut so it would not be possible to issue it tomorrow unfortunately. 

 

During the afternoon and evening Guest House Manager once again wound up Little Prince to such a pitch that when I put him to bed, he just wouldn't settle.  Thinking that he was eventually settling down I left him in our room.  Unfortunately he didn't settle, he raided his sister's room got hold of her DS and played on it.  He got frustrated that he couldn't manage one of her games and unfortunatly used the DS stylus to stab a hole in his blow up bed!!!  By the time this was discovered the Guest House Owner and Manager had both gone to bed, so we had to put Little Prince to sleep on our room's chair cushions for the night.

 

As well as our excitement in getting new baby's Birth Certificate, we also got to witness the first meeting of the American family's Mum and their new child (older child adoption).  The Dad and their oldest child had gone off with their agency driver in the morning, and returned in the afternoon with their new child.  It was very touching seeing the child run to their new mother and give her a huge hug :-)  The Mum had still been too ill to go to with the rest of her family in the morning so she had to wait at the Guest House for them to return before she could meet her newest child.