90 Day Fiance (Part 1)

Someone asked me the other day if our experience was like "90 Day Fiance" the TV show. I wasn't sure how to answer, mostly cause I had never seen the show. I mean, yes, we did have 90 days on a K-1 visa, but not sure how much else was accurate.

So, to better understand in case I got asked that question again, hubby and I decided to watch the show (and because we don't always agree on shows but we kinda like reality/documentary types...)

I couldn't help thinking throughout the whole season (we got through Season 1 already) that I kinda wished we could tell our story like that. It was so easy to see the similarities and GLARING differences in the stories.

So for lack of a better intro than that, this is part of our "90 Day Fiance" story:

I had been in love with Uganda since I first traveled there back in 2008, but frankly I wasn't thinking about any other kind of love when I walked into The Sound Cup in Garden City Mall, Kampala, Uganda in early 2015. I had been volunteering with a hospital in the Kampala suburbs and was redesigning charts for them. The Sound Cup had relatively fast wifi and good coffee, so I was fixing to get some work done.

Apparently he took one look and was sold. Moses was working as a waiter in the little cafe. When I arrived he made sure that the other waiters knew that was HIS table and then promptly forgot my order as soon as he took it. This necessitated several extra trips back to my table to make sure that he had actually gotten my order right. He saw my lips moving, but he didn't hear a word I said.

He fell in love at first sight, but I took my time. Through a little careful finagling he finally convinced me to go on a date with him, and then to start hanging out regularly. Long walks, shared meals, dancing, live music, movie nights, and talking late into the night. He made life so fun and was so easy to talk to. I found myself falling a little more every time we were together.

Things went fast. In August we found out we were pregnant. Two weeks later Moses lost his job. Another week later we found out that the hospital I had been working at was not going to help me renew my visa like I had thought they would. I was already scheduled to come back to the US for my brother's wedding so we made plans for me to travel now and hopefully come back in a year's time. It was hard to say goodbye, especially not really knowing how everything would go, or really even how our relationship would weather the separation.

In the meantime, Moses and I tried to soak up what little time and energy life had given us. We went to the hospital for a sonogram and took a close and precious first look at our little baby, affectionately called "Blueberry" at that point. I was convinced it was a girl and Moses firmly believed it was a boy. This is one disagreement I'm glad he won.

We took many long walks up to the market after work to get the baby's favorite snack: popcorn. We looked up baby names together. We squeezed drops out of every day going to live music and music festivals together. We planned days out, just the two of us to go to the movies or swimming/picnicking. And we tried hard to not talk about the fact that we wouldn't be together too much longer.

In October Moses escorted me to the airport with the clothes and belongings that I might need in the next year. He was to pack up and move the rest of my things out of my apartment by the end of the month. He would keep them in his apartment and store them until I could come back. He was so quiet in the back of the car in the wee hours of the morning as we sped towards Entebbe airport. I didn't really know what to say to him either.

When we reached the gate all I could hope for was a quick goodbye without a lot of gushing. Instead he got down on one knee and asked me to make him the happiest man in the world. Let's just say that waterworks were definitely in the picture (I can blame it on pregnancy hormones right?)

The whole plane ride I sat in a state of shock and looked at this strange new shiny thing on my finger. I couldn't help but feel like my whole entire world was changing and strangely enough, for someone who had sold all her household goods to move internationally, I feel so scared that I was sick to my stomach. (And that, I cannot blame on pregnancy hormones.)

It takes a tremendous amount of courage to open your heart to another person and commit to spending the rest of your life with them. And I was scared because I was at the airport not knowing when I'd be back or even see him again, pregnant with his baby, and needed to catch my plane. I didn't even feel like I was able to say "no", even had I wanted to. It would have been so cruel to him for me to say "no" with no time to talk about it, and then just get on a plane and leave.
But by the same measure, we had no time to talk about what my "yes" meant either. We didn't have a good plan of how to even see each other again, let alone raise our child together. To top it off... I had a massive UTI setting in.

And you have never experienced UTIs until you have experienced a pregnancy UTI... during a 48 hour international plane trek... through countries you've never flown through... running to the bathroom every 5 seconds but still feeling like you are constantly about to have an accident... while the airline attendant is telling you that you need to pay an additional fee for your checked bag because British airlines is stingier than any other airline and only allows one checked bag for international travel.
In my very least exasperated voice I informed her that she could have free reign of the $10 that was on my card, but I had no other currency and had no way to get any. (By that point I was in South Africa.) If she insisted in removing one of my bags then to please be kind enough to let me tell her which one to remove or to let me repack things into my carry on bag. (At this point I realized that it was already loaded on the plane and she had no intention of giving someone the task of finding and removing it from said plane. A task that was probably nearly impossible seeing as it was a double decker Boeing 747.) After several unsuccessful attempts on her part to make me "cough up" the extra cash, she did print my boarding passes with a ominous, "I'm probably going to get in a lot of trouble for doing this."

Unfortunately, but this point it was too late. I made it into the stall, but that was all the farther I got before what we most fear to happen during a UTI, did indeed happen. Stupidly, I had packed only shirts to change into during my flight, not pants, so the only other thing I had in my carry on was my bridesmaid dress for my brother's wedding. On it went and I stepped off the plane in Kansas, much to my brother and sister-in-law's surprise, all ready for the big event that wasn't for another week.

Finally safely back in Kansas I had to deal with an even bigger issue. Telling my family and friends that I was not only engaged (to a man that they had never met), but also pregnant.