That Dreaded Phone Call

One day we got a phone call from Saka Solomon and all he said was, "Alicia's father is here. You need to come to Parakou and bring her." Oh my goodness! We were petrified! We had no guardianship papers, nothing giving us legal custody, etc. We thought for sure we would lose her! That her father wanted her back. He had every legal right to her that we understood.

That was the quietest trip we had ever made to Parakou. All I could think of was that I was going to lose my daughter.

As we walked in to our pastor's home, I heard, "Bake! Bake!" and her aunt took her from me. We came in and I thought, "I'll never see her again. This is it!" Then Saka Solomon said, "Did you bring your camera?" I knew then that all would be o.k. In the African culture you are expected to know what is going on and no one is going to tell you otherwise. Especially not as soon as you walk in the door. If you are told bad news it will be just before you leave to go home. I breathed a sigh of relief. Then the explanation came. The paperwork the father had signed had to be redone because it was the aunt and not the father who had signed with her thumbprint. The judge knew it was not a man's thumbprint and so had questioned it. The birth father came in to sign the papers and what better time to call us and have us meet for the first time!

So we took a few pictures of Alicia and her birth father and with her aunt.

When we talked to our pastor about what had happened he thought it strange that we thought her father would break his promise to us. He had given his word and when a Bariba man gives his word it is as good as gold! He will not go back on it. That was good to know.

So we reviewed what we still needed to do. We gave our paperwork that we had completed to the pastor and it was then given to the lawyer handling our case.