This will be
our last “visit”!!!
Next time we
get to bring Verlande home!
First a warning.. this is long.. and it is perfectly fine to not read.. it is a write up of our whole trip, things that happened, our worries, experiences, joys, fears, laughter, pictures.. It is because i want to write in one place everything that comes to my mind (and clearly that is how I write!)... yep, it is long..
This trip
started off on Saturday and we landed in PaP airport at NOON! We got luggage easily, then walked down the
scary.. to me… corridor outside that is fenced in and leads to us being dumped
out among many Haitians who would love to “help us”…. And make some money..
We couldn’t
find Franck, our driver… We just kept saying “non mesi” to the offers of
help/transportation.. but I really did not like being in a sea of maybe 100
very close people, with our suitcase, bags, and I just did not feel safe. Ryan was pretending I think to call someone
on the phone…. We don’t have Franck’s number, nor could Franck really talk to
us if we did since he doesn’t speak English… we could try some Creole, BUT… as
crazy as it sounds.. this is just what we have to expect in Haiti- that somehow
our driver will just “be there”!!! and he wasn’t… I wanted to go back into the
fenced in segment, but Ryan didn’t yet.. and finally some guy came up to us
saying he had the phone from Franck.. so Franck was on the other end, and this
guy said he was going to bring us to Franck… we know nothing better so we are
off to follow. (on top of 100 degrees
outside, I was in quite a sweat).. We started following through this parking lot…
which of course is not a parking lot at all, but just an area of cars parked in
various directions, very closely, etc.. basically all sorts of messed up cars,
and maybe 10 people slightly following us asking us repeatedly if we have our
passports. So we said yes. HOWEVER, why should they care if we have
passports, we are not in the airport, so I was even MORE scared now.. I was.. I
was actually terrified, people on all sides of us, we are following a stranger
through now like a junkyard, makes us sound kind of stupid right? Well, we turn the corner and see Franck’s
van, WITH Verlande in it! Wooo hoooo!! I just wanted IN to hug Verlande, as
well as I couldn’t be happier to get out of the open junkyard… We hugged Verlande in the car, she sat on my
lap and hugged hugged, she loves hugging and cuddling… she hugged Ryan, she was
so happy, we were so happy… What a long wait it has been…..It was great.
We went back
right away to Bresma Guest house- we stayed in the same room we have been in
each time now… The place is so nice, coffee is always on… and it is just
heavenly coffee… I would love to someday have a coffee plantation in Haiti..
yum…. Plus would love to work in the fields.. BUT… that is another dream..:)
We played
with Verlande, showed her a few things we brought (it is always hard packing
the suitcase because I bring new clothes for her, new books, new shampoo, etc,
new toys… but I don’t want to give them all at once, so I try to keep them
separated in bags like “day 1 toys,” etc… but it is hard because I know she
wants to look through our suitcase,, and I feel bad being secretive about
it. Anyway. She loved this ball we brought and I think
her and Ryan that day played ball for nearly 2 hours! She loved it, and they counted each time they
caught it and got up to over 100…. We read her some new books… We had dinner
together.. played more, she took a shower,
which she is seriously the cleanest girl maybe in the world.. that girl still
loves loves loves her shower/bath time…. It is a shower that she takes, but she
also loves to sit down and splash right under the water. She is very good about only having water on
when she is rinsing… always aware that water is not easy to come by.
That night
was probably one of our first eye openings of some of the inner turmoil that
Verlande has tucked inside her. She
wanted to sleep in our bed. She had her
own bed in the room and we didn’t want to start off a precedent of her sleeping
in our bed, so we said no, but that we would read as long to her as she wanted,
and then we would be on our bed right next to her. So this sent her into a tizzy… She was angry,
mad, sad, screaming, crying… she has
done this before with us, but this definitely was maybe one of the harder times, she went on and on and there was
nothing we could do it seemed to help. She loves Ryan holding her, and I think
Ryan ended up holding her and walking her to sleep outside on the balcony (there were no other families
there this first night)… We knew we
didn’t want to always hold her until she slept, since then she wouldn’t ever
learn to fall asleep on her own….. but we had to calm her down… Once she slept, she was like all over the
place in her bed, hitting thewalls, I
couldn’t believe she could stay asleep being this restless…. In the middle of the night,, she did wake up,
and of course was very upset, she wouldn’t speak to us what really was making
her cry, my guess was that she was alone in her bed? (although she sleeps alone at Eliette’s house
and Eliette has said she doesn’t cry at night anymore there)… but she wouldn’t
speak to us… her crying in the middle of the night alternated between this high
pitched whimper, and after a few minutes of that, (I was half sleeping), I’d
realized that she wasn’t crying, she had started singing… then it turned to
cry, and again sing… I still do not even know if she was awake or not.. but I
knew this wasn’t really very good news…
The next
day, 3 other families came with their younger children that they are
adopting. They were all at the same
point as we were in the process, (actually two were, and one family had just
gotten referral)…I met in real my friend
Johnelle, who I have become friends with on facebook, and who has been a TREMENDOUS
source of inspiration, love, friendship, persistece… I have just always felt
comfortable being able to msg Johnelle, and have prayed for her adoption, and I
know she has prayed for me many times… It was wonderful to meet her and her
husband and her precious little boy….ohhh these kids so need to come home!
It ws great
to see the kids playing together, to see Verlande trying to help at times the
younger kids, or trying to talk to them… She played ball with some of them, and
they ended up playing “chase” around the little area in front of the guest
house that was walled in.. Plus, it was nice for her to have some time just
with KIDS…. I know she doesn’t get enough time with kids… She was so happy.
Earlier that
day, we had planned to take her swimming if logistics worked out and we could
get a driver to take us to a place that had been recommended to us for a local
hotel w/pool… She was excited to go and
also excited about her new watermelon swimsuit that I had bought for her. Of course she has never had a swim suit on
before, or been to a swimming pool, and didn’t quite understand. She kept going to get her shampoo and bar of
soap and said, “ I am going to take a bath”.. and we kept saying, no no no,
you’ll swim and play in the water and splash around. She continued to think it was a big bath we
were bringing her to. We went to a crazy
awesome resort called La Karibe, I
couldn’t believe it was in the middle of PaP… it was crazy beautiful, nice, the
lobby was like heaven. We walked back to
the pool after we registered, and Verlande stopped and looked at us with her
hands palm up and a questioning look and said, “All these people here to take a
bath?” We laughed so much! We each had one of her hands getting into the
pool going down the steps, and ALL EYES were on her.. every step she took into
the water emitted squeals of pure joy, delight, whatever sensation it must have
felt like on her body after not ever being in a pool.. she just was over the
moon. I will never forget this. She loved to splash, we were holding her, and
she was literally just creating a big shower of humongous splashes, I don’t
quite even know how she was doing it because when I was holding her I had to
close my eyes, it was like I was underwater.
I was happy we were there because I had read that it is good for bonding
to hold the child in the water, and to pass from parent to parent.. and that is
just naturally what we did. She loved
it. She loved watching me swim, and
tried to do the same with us holding her.
Later, we had swimmies to put on her arms and she was fearless, just
started swimming a bit, but staying close to us, it was great. She met a little girl, aged 3 at the pool,
and it was so happy to see Verlande get a chance to interact with another
child. She went up to the girl and said, “Hello, my
name is Verlande, and you?” so funny,
because she answers our questions on skype with, “I’m fine and you”… just so funny to hear
from a kid… The girls became little buddies at the pool, and it was fun…
When we went to leave, I got an indication of
what was a little bit to come.. I took Verlande to the locker room, and ryan
was in the men’s locker room changing before our driver came. 1 minute into being in there, I could sense her
slight panic, “Where’s Daddy”… I told her he was in the men’s, he couldn’t come
in with girls, etc… and she wanted to know if “I was sure.” I said yes, he is meeting us out at the pool,
although she kept asking where Daddy was.
We finished and quickly went to the pool to settle her and … of course
ryan was not there (we have some issues with finding each other).. So I calmly
said that he must be back in the locker room still, and we went back and I
calmly yelled in for Ryan.. no answer… OK now she is grabbing on me and very
upset… And I am totally realizing, “NO we cannot do this anymore, we have to
always be able to find each other”! We
go back to pool and don’t see him, but I said, he must be up here looking at
some of the trees, etc.. we found him of ocurse, but by this time, she was in tears. And it took probably an hour after that for
her to become settled again…. So it kind of opened my eyes a bit…
My eyes were
opened a bit further that night.. She DEFINITELY was adamant and MAD this night at sleeping by
herself and not in our bed… and this gave way to another night of terrible
crying and screaming. We had tried to
anticipate this and we did an extended and relaxed bedtime, we read to her for
probably an hour, thinking maybe she would just drift off into dreamland….. ha
ha…… this was not the case, and long story short, there were now babies in the
guest house, I was worried about waking them, so I took her out of the room
(yes, she was kicking and fighting so I felt horrible) but also thought maybe
the fresh air would help her be calm/ like a change of environment… So we went out in the parking area/ it is
walled in so I knew we were ok even though it was dark, and she was still
screaming and I was trying to settle her, I was down low on the ground with
her/her height and I knew someone walked up to us and it looked like a pole in
the dark that was on the ground.. nope.
Apparently there are security guards with guns at night.. fantastic… but
I also did not want this guy thinking I was DOING something mean to Verlande to make her cry like
that!!! The crying didn’t really stop at
first, he started talking to her in creole, I understood “pa kriye” (don’t
cry), and a few other things… long story, eventually we got it under control,
but it was not easy, not short, and I was beginning (as was Ryan) to really
worry about what we were in for……What had we done…. Would Verlande be ok, could
we even help her, etc.
It was
something Ryan said to me later that night that helped remind me of what I
needed to be pulling back up from my brain.
After she was sleeping, he said, “it is as if she reverts back to being
2”… and it made me think of the books that said that often the children will
stop social development at the age of their trauma. Well, what happened when Verlande
was 2? Her mom left her. This also goes in line with the realization
that when she is upset, whe will SHUT down completely and not say a single
word. She will not even say to us “pick
me up” or a word …. Even yes / no, is
something hurting, etc – this makes sense since she had not many words at age two/
couldn’t express these feelings. The
good news is that many of Verlande’s behaviors are CLASSIC. It seems to
me that one of these books could have been written specifically about
her.
Monday: we went to court with Verlande and another
family. We weren’t sure what to expect
here and it definitely was intimidating.
You go in this building with two main waiting room areas, just filled to
the brim with people. Then the lawyer
who took us goes in to I think try to get us a good spot to go to the judge..
While we are waiting of course everyone is staring at us as we are like
fluorescently white and stand out, and have a Haitian child with us. I have to wonder what the other people are
all doing. What could be all of the
legal things that those people need to be in the building to wait for a judge
for? I have no idea… but it wasn’t the
AC.. (there was none!) We went in to
talk to the judge. It looked like he was
getting up to leave after the last people left and our lawyer, a woman, who
would also be translating for us, tried to get his attention to go back to take
our case. So she motions to us (ryan,
myself and Verlande) to sit in these two chairs in front of his desk. So this is like a “little house on the
prairie” type of schoolhouse room with just a teachers desk and two chairs in
front. So he sits down and directs all
of his questions to Ryan. The lawyer interpreted, Ryan answered and she
interpreted back. It was clear that we
were in a society that definitely doesn’t look at women as equals. The questions asked were, “Do you know the
name of the child’s father,” “Do you plan to have contact with the orphanage
after you adopt the child,” “How will you treat the child”, and so on….. after
Ryan answered all the questions, the lawyer said (which was translated to us),
“I hope that what you say is true, that you will treat her well, and someday
bring her back to Haiti.” Then, he shook
Ryans hand, and he did shake my hand as well. Verlande, luckily, sat well and
calm on my lap the entire time. I have
no idea what she thought of this.
Tuesday: we had a 7:30AM Embassy appointment. We were ready to leave at 7 as we were told,
we left probably more like 7:10ish. (this
is not a problem to be up in Haiti and ready to go at this time.. the roosters
are up and squaking at 2am). Verlande
went with us again, as did Margarette, who is the owner of the guest house,
orphanage, etc. I was very glad to have
her go with us. The ride there was
CRAZY. Crazy beautiful, but also crazy
scary, meaning that I wasn’t sure that the car would make it up some of the
roads that we had to go on!!! It was
definitely “country”ish… huge mountains, totally bumpy, unkept roads… twisty turny, also saw houses
that were like HUMONGOUS.. like “who lives in those” seriously? Up on these beautiful hills (maybe not easy
roads to get to).. but just beautiful land.
This country just has something about it that I love.. it draws you in,
it is really gorgeous.. I love it. I
really do sometimes want to just get out and WALK up some of those beautiful
hills, just across the land… So we get to the embassy, walk through a few
security things… and into the waiting place.
This was maybe 3 different times of an hour wait, we initially had to
talk to someone at a counter, then another hour wait, (verlande went to the
bathroom here like 4x…. I think it was her first experience with automatic
flush toilets because she jumped OUT of her skin!! It was funny)… We had an
interview at the desk with an embassy person.
The questions here were: How did
you meet Verlande… did you come to the country with the intention of adoption
(HECK NO!!) one question she had was, “have you bonded with the child” but at
that time, Verlande was starting to get very frustrated/clingy with Ryan and
she would NOT let him put her down, so the worker asking us said, “I guess that
is obvious that you have bonded” so she
went on.. easy questions, but of course
we were nervous for this.. I mean what if they were looking for a specific
answer and we said something WRONG! But it was all ok. We got the date for Verlande’s dad to go in
with verlande because he has to sign off at the US embassy also (even though he
has already done so on the Haitian side, the US side needs it also… this date
is 10/30 and the lawyer will accompany him. (yikes, please God have him be
there… I have actually all trust in her dad that he will be there to do this
for her. He has done every single thing for her along the way… he is a good
good man.. I do feel this in me that we will have no problems here, and I feel
happy to have that level of trust and feel so positive about her birth
father. He loves her completely).
Our last
appointment was Thursday, which ended up being ALL DAY. We were told that we wouldn’t leave until
10:30-11, so we woke up, ate breakfast, we were playing, jumping rope,
exercising, then went up casually to take a (freezing cold) shower, until there
was a knock on the door and the lawyer saying, we are going to go early, so we
left at 9AM!!! Good thing I had packed
for the airport well over the days before.. I do this kind of gradually because
I don’t want Verlande to see it too obvious in front of her, but I also do want
her to see it, and we prepare her so that she isn’t blindsighted by us leaving…
Anyway, it was quick getting ready and Verlande wanted to wear this ruffly
dress that we had brought for her, but it was too like “frilly” looking to me
to wear to a court.. I didn’t want us to stand out even more.. maybe it would
have been okay, but I told her no, to quick put on the one she had already left
unpacked to wear.. and of course she had a terror fit… so we are getting suitcases, everything we
brought for her into her suitcase downstairs, and us OUT with all of our
documents, airport stuff ready and available, and verlande would not put her
clothes on.. Unfortunately I had to
literally stuff her last minute into the dress because all of the other families
were waiting and there she was naked, having a meltdown on the bed. I didn’t want to do this, but it was what it
ws.. (thanks to Phoebe I have some practice at stuffing children into their
clothing)… She was literally then trying to rip it off, so I had to really try
to keep it doubletied on her at the
straps, and try to keep her hands down.. so yes, now I am literally in a sweat,
carrying her down (she is heavy also)… and it was not good. But it was what it was. So 3 families , a driver, lawyer stuffed into
this truck to drive around Port au Prince for about an hour and a half to get
to our location, then, yes: we sat in a
room from 10:30-2:30… men in shirt and ties, babies and kids just having not
too much to do.. luckily we brought a game for verlande- she loves the “spot
it” game.. so that helped. But it could only have helped so much,
rright!! For the last 30 min, Verlande
lost it. Ryan was sweating all over, and
she was trying to hang on him without telling him what she needed and he said
“NO” that she must use words… and she lost it, so I took her down this hall to
a corner so we weren’t in the middle of the room of maybe 30 people. Well, I
was in for quite the shock. Verlande is
crying, trying to push me away. So here
I am.. this white woman, trying to keep Verlande in this one spot so she will
calm down.. Well a Haitian woman walked up, I was not sure at all where this
was going… and took a deep breath in.. AND…. REAMED OUT Verlande. I have no idea what she was saying in
Creole.. BUT. SHE. WAS. MAD. Her finger
was pointing and waving at Verlande.. and every once in awhile I would hear
“Maman” and she would point to me…. And Verlande just looked bug eyed at her,
still crying, but not the same intensity… The woman took a break.. kind of
glanced at me.. and I said a soft “mesi” (thank you in creole) to her as it was
clear she was trying to take care of me.. man was she my angel that day.. thank
you woman wherever you are, whatever you said for not judging me badly as
someone of a different color, different nationality… thank you for helping me…
She started up a second “round” which was shorter, but no less intense, then
swung around and marched away… WHEW.
Immediately out of… I have no idea where these two women even came
from…. Came a second gentler woman.. younger, more like maybe 25-30ish?? She
stood with us also for maybe 10 minutes, trying to get Verlande to take my
hand, which she wouldn’t do… to stop crying.
Again, I have no idea what she was saying, but she was speaking much
gentler to Verlande. It didn’t seem to
help, and I knew she couldn’t stay forever.
Somheow, finally Verlande stopped her crying and we went back to the
room we were supposed to be waiting in.
After 4 hours, we never saw the judge, BUT the lawyer said that she did
“something special” so that it got signed off even though none of the 3
families saw him there. (Yes, I am
choosing to trust this as we haven’t heard differently… and some things I will
just have to trust).
To wrap up:
Some of the
highlights of PLAYING were:
*endless
games of spot it! She is awesome at all
of these games and loves to repeatedly play and play and play!
*she loved
going through her books. She could read
entire books by herself, but often wanted them read to her, but it was great to
know she can actually read the entire books herself for when we are not there!
*I am so
glad I sent her the yoga dvd’s- she has clearly used them TONS as she has them
mostly memorized. I am so glad that yoga
may become part of her life as I Think it will sometime possibly be very
helpful for her in many ways.
*She loves
playing with all sorts of balls.
*she just
adores Ryan, and of course Ryan also is just so in love with her. He is so great with kids, they always seem to
gravitate naturally towards him… whereas I have to work really hard at it, but
I love it!
*She loved
her new clothes that I brought her and he new sandals, shoes, everything. She was very appreciative.
*She is a
picky eater. She wouldn’t eat eggs,
hardly any fruit and vegetables. Mostly
loves carbs: bread with pb, pasta, and rice.
Also chicken and beans… We need
to get some veggies in that girl, but it will be tough.. oh yea, and she likes
cakeJ (I told her that we don’t have cake everyday
like they made for us at the guest house, I didn’t want her to think this
was normal for Americans!)
*she loves
TV. This was a problem, however.. but…
yes.. she loves TV. She does not love
that we were not letting her watch it except when she was getting her hair
done.
*She loved
it when we would swing her, each holding her hand.
*she loved
singing little songs.
Ohhhhh, I
miss her already…
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