Yep, you read that right – we got Ella’s passport application turned in on Wednesday (11th)! So, our furlough does actually look in sight. There for a while I was starting to get worried. Really, it’s only 2.5 months away! Exciting but scary when you don’t have your kids passport, visa or tickets yet.
We had an appointment on Monday morning with an unnamed head of a particular ministry, whom you need to get a letter from in order to turn your child’s application in to Immigration. Same guy who’d I’d run into in November and was jerking my chain, and refused to give me a letter because I didn’t have a home study from Montana (an order from the High Court of Uganda to get the child a passport didn’t count?) and a bunch of other totally bogus things. Well, this time I had a lawyer and I said maybe ten words and we were out of there with the letter in perhaps a minute. Hmmm...
Things were looking up until my lawyer told me how much the fee would be to process the passport application. Holy crap! We’re talking about a third of the cost of the whole Legal Guardianship fee! Talking to one of my colleagues later, he mentioned that that probably included the price of the bribe the lawyers had to pay to get the letter though, and that could have been almost half of it. So if you look at it that way… I consider myself lucky however, that this is the first sign of obvious corruption that I’ve encountered, which isn’t bad at all.
We turned in the application on Wednesday and it should be done in ten days. Not sure if that’s ten “normal” days or ten "Ugandan" days but that’s what I have a lawyer for! So this morning I called the U.S Embassy to see how much a tourist visa application was, as well as emailed six different travel agents asking for prices for a round trip tickets to
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