Adoption Status Day 2

Since I came to Uganda to hopefully meet the little boy we would adopt, I want to fill you in on our adoption proceedings.  The good and the bad.  It has been a long road - this figuring out international adoption.   As Ethiopia slowly closed its options down, we began to re-investigate Uganda.  I never could have come this far without the support of my extended "family" who lives here in Kampala.  Truly.  Since our agency, Wide Horizons, doesn't do Ugandan adoptions, and I had learned about it so much on my own, Steve and I are going forward here as an independant adoption.  But I am learning, Uganda has its own tricky systems.
Back in the States, I found and communicated with a lawyer here in Kampala who had a reputation of being very ethical and specialized.  I set up a meeting with V. before coming to Africa, but was nervous about her since she was very terse and not forthcoming in her emails.  However, she has been amazing.  Paul (my brother-in-law's cousin) has been my escort here, and brought me to her office.  First she learned that he knows a fellow back in the US who had adopted 3 special needs children with her, and she remembered those cases well.  Immediately she opened up to us!  Then, she found out I was from Ohio - and of all the places in the world, she has family in Cincinnati and has been to Springfield.  The world just shrunk a bit.  So the ice was broken and her trust in us seemed to have a foundation.  I was sure that once she read our homestudy (like a small book about Steve & my life and family) she would love us and feel confident we would be great to raise a Ugandan child.  Because we are so amazing...right? right?  :)  She also spoke of confidence in our contact J., a social worker who had recently moved from a long standing Babies' Home to a recently new one.   (I am keeping some details confidential since V. relayed to me that the reason she is so terse in emails is there is a lack of security and she winds up reading things other people say about her on blogs, etc...).  I will call the new Babies' Home CARE.  V. also had many dealings with the women who ran CARE and reccomended it highly.  So I left her meeting feeling very confident about our status, about the estimated schedule, and was so excited to meet the social worker and directors of CARE. 

We had an appointment set for the following day, but the offices were directly next to one another so we "popped over" as they say.  Well, this turned out to be not what I was hoping for.  The women welcomed us in, and were very direct and straight forward.  But almost immediately they told us that they do not do independent international adoptions, and prefer to use a specific agency in North Carolina that they are associated with.  This was EXACTLY the type of information I tried to find out before coming and EXACTLY what I feared upon arriving here.  That there would be some obvious blockade to which there was no surmounting.  They told us their reasoning - all of which made sense, and even in some way made me appreciate their ethics.  The safety of the children is their primary concern (as it should be) and without using an agency that they know, they fear that any social worker I may hire in the States could just be bought off.  The other big factor is the idea that without a faithful contact in the States, they can't be assured that I will do the required follow-up with the government about the health and well-being of the child.  I actually asked her to allow me to argue with her.  I told her that her reasoning was sound, but that I HAD gone through a reputable agency, and have done all the requirements any agency would ask of me.   I kept it together throughout the meeting and presented a reasonably strong arguement.  Anyway, we left that she would investigate a little further, and we would meet again the next morning as planned, with the social worker J.  I left deflated, in tears, and quite disappointed.  I tried to hear Steve's voice in my head - don't get ahead of yourself,  wait to see what tomorrow's meeting will bring, it's not a dead end yet.  But I was already ahead of myself, and had been envisioning a visit to the Babies' Home, and maybe even a meeting with our son, and it was crushing. 
And that was the end of that day.  :(