We celebrated by getting Ledo's Pizza take-out and an ice cream cake from Dairy Queen. She had really wanted Chinese, but it didn't appear as if the Chinese restaurant was still open because of the coronavirus.
Things are definitely strange lately. Leaving the house for carryout was the big outing for the day! We had a makeshift family sing-along for her birthday cake via Zoom!
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| Zooming on the cell phone for her birthday cake! |
Poor Lily sprained her ankle really badly last Friday morning while practicing soccer! At first, we thought it may have been broken, it swelled up so badly, but after a few days she seemed to be able to limp around on it, so it is most likely just a bad sprain. The good thing is that no one is playing soccer right now anyway so she is forced to rest it!
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| Ouch sprained and very bruised ankle |
She started online schooling and that has been frustrating for her as the computer software the county uses keeps crashing because so many students are trying to access it. But again, it gives her now the freedom to sleep in longer in the morning and do the work later when there is not as much of a demand for the program.
We also got an interim update from the birthmother searcher. It is on hold right now until the lockdown in Guatemala due to Corona is lifted. I suspect it will be quite a while.
Interim Search Report for Kim
Gjerde
By Fidelina Chavajay
March 2020
Birth Mother: Lilian Bernardina Yac López
When I researched Lilian I found an address of: Lote 31, Mzn. B, Sector
9, Villa Hermosa 1, Zona 7, San Miguel Petapa, Guatemala.
On March 13, 2020, I traveled to this address and found that it is a
house with rooms for rent. I spoke with
the manager and some of the tenants but no one knew Lilian.
On March 14 I requested documents from RENAP (government ID office) and
asked my K’iché translator to ask around in Sector San Toñito, Santo Tomás la
Unión, Suchitepéquez, which was an address in the adoption documents. No one recognized the photo of Lilian or her
name.
In the information I received from RENAP I found information on Lilian’s
brother, Juan Adan Yac López , and his wife, Yanira del Carmen Ramirez Alvarado,
that showed an adderss of: 16 Avenida, Comunidad Esquipulas Segundo Callejón,
Lote 116, Guatemala. According to the
documents Lilian also lived at this address in 2018.
Unfortunately, this address is incomplete as it just says “Guatemala” and
does not indicate which Zone. Escuipulas
runs across several Zones. I went to the
transit police office in Guatemala City they could not give me any more
information than what I’d already discovered.
On March 15 I went to each of the Zones of Escuipulas but could find no
one who recognized her name or photo.
On March 16 I went to the Supreme Electoral and asked for help in
locating the address. They told me it
was in Zone 21, Nimajuyu.
When I arrived it was obviously a red zone (high crime area) but I was
able to find Juan Adan. He was very rude
and abusive. I showed him Lilian’s photo
and he confirmed she is his sister and said that the baby she was holding in
the photo is now grown. He said this
very aggressively, in my face, and using vulgarities. I told him I had come on behalf of a charity
organization and asked if he could help me locate Lilian. He replied, “Even if I knew where she was I
would not tell you because I don’t get along with that trash.”
I asked some neighbors and showed around her photo. Some of them told me that she was Juan Adan’s
sister and used to live with him and they had seen her but now she lived in a
settlement called El Barranco that was even more dangerous than where we
were. They told me it was late in the
day and was not advisable to walk there.
This is as far as I got with the search before the travel restrictions for
COVID-19 were put in place.
