Born Abroad

When you have a baby in America, everything with registering the birth is very straightforward. A nurse comes to your room later in the day after the baby is born or the next day. They take down your information – Parent’s full names and birth places, and that sort of thing. They give you a paper on how to get a Social Security Number. There is no running around, no trying to figure out if you have all the right papers, very simple, very easy.

Having a baby in another country is something else altogether. We discovered that the last few weeks as we tried to register Brennah’s birth. The first step was to contact the American Embassy. James did this just a day or two after Brennah was born. A lady there sent James a list of paperwork that was needed. Here are the steps to register her birth:

• Obtain a short form birth certificate from the town of birth.
• Obtain a long form birth certificate
• Turn in these along with the form for the Consular Report of Birth at the American Embassy

We were to obtain a short form Birth Certificate from here in Mbarara. Thinking this might take a couple weeks, James called the hospital. They were happy to help and he went there and filled out the paper, which was signed by the Dr. We had it only a couple days later! We were thrilled! Things normally aren’t that easy in Africa.

Then James got an appointment at the Embassy in Kampala. You have to apply in person for all the paperwork and an appointment is required. Sometimes it is hard to get an appointment. The only available times were early in the morning. Since we were already going to be in Kampala for the field conference for our mission board we made the appointment during that trip.

We’ve been trying for months to get our work permit paperwork through but things often move very slowly here. About a week before we were to drive up to Kampala James went up on the bus to turn in the short form birth certificate and get the long form one. He also had to check on the work permits so it was a trip with multiple purposes. When he got there he found out that the birth certificate we’d gotten from the hospital wasn’t the right one. We needed one from the Town Council. He called me on his way back and we sent our language helper, Osbert, to get that process started.

In order to get a birth certificate from the town council you have to first buy the paper that is the certificate itself. Osbert did this and the next day brought it to us. James carefully filled it out. The next thing you have to do is get all three LCs to sign it. You have to pay a fee to the first LC and he stamps it, then the other two just sign it. This is where the fun began. The first LC signed it and then Osbert went looking for #2. The second LC took one look at the birth certificate and told Osbert it wasn’t filled out correctly. The first LC could have told us that but didn’t. Instead, he just took the money and signed it, knowing we’d have to come back later and do it again and pay him the second time. So Osbert came back, we got a second paper and James filled that out correctly. Then Osbert went back for the signatures only to find the first LC had left on a trip to Kampala.

The worst part about all this is that we now only had 2 days until we left for our trip to Kampala with our embassy appointment that is hard to get and one of those days was Saturday when they don’t work. We started praying hard about this. That LC really needed to come back! Thankfully, he came back the next day. Osbert was able to pay him for his stamp and signature again (but not before the LC asked for huge bribe!) and then was able to get the other two signatures very quickly. God worked it out so we had our short form birth certificate in time for our trip!

Sunday we traveled to Kampala after finishing at the refugee camp. Monday morning James got up early and went to get the long form birth certificate. The lady that was helping him with that had told him the week before that she’d have the paper filled out in readiness for seeing the short form birth certificate. All that would be needed was the signature at the bottom. But she forgot. She felt terrible about it. But our appointment was in 45 minutes! What would we do? She took pity on James and dropped everything she was doing and filled it out right there for him. He got back to pick Brennah and me up just in time for us to make it to our embassy appointment. God worked it out so we had both our long and short form certificate.

Thankfully, the appointment at the embassy went well. We were able to get all the forms turned in and should have our Consular Report of Birth very soon. We’ll have her passport and SS# soon after that. There was a little issue with the passport photo. We had to go get another one taken and that took a very long time to get done. It took longer to get the passport photo right than it did at the appointment!

Now Brennah is a citizen of both America and Uganda. When she turns 18 she’ll have to choose with the American government which country she’ll be a citizen of permanently. (Uganda recognizes dual citizenship but America doesn’t. She’ll always be a Ugandan citizen.) Until then, we have a true African-American living in our house and all the Africans we introduce her to remind us that she is one of them. 😀