Our trip to Ethiopia was all about meeting our son. And it was an amazing moment. He is so sweet and smiley. An easy baby to fall in love with. In this regard we are very blessed as he is very engaging. This whole process is double-sided, there is much to be joyful about but our blessing is also a tragedy. I have cried more this year than any other year in my adult life - both for my son and his birth mother. Having said that, I am going to keep the rest of this post quite "Ethiopia-centric" and not adoption centric.
I hate flying. Seriously. It's amazing being above the clouds. I even watched a lightening storm at one point and it was a pretty awe-inspiring. But damn, it scares me (ya know, the whole huge metal thing in the sky thing).
A pretty little picture I took somewhere over Canada.
I love traveling. I love going somewhere that is so different from home. It made every day feel like three days (especially when it was the evening and you tried to review all that happened during the day). It was like we were lengthening our lives. (Of course, it helped that the Ethiopian Orthodox Church started prayers between 4:15 AM - 6:30 AM every morning for at least two hours too).
This was the culprit of my misery. This church was perched atop a hill just a few miles from where we were standing. Every morning the prayers would awaken me...I could never get back to sleep (headphones with music, earplugs, pretending it wasn't happening, etc.). I actually fantasized of how one could stop the prayers from happening. Some include shooting the speakers but never physical violence, well at least most of the time.
The thing about going to a developing country is the crowded, active, teeming streets. I experienced this in China, but it seemed to be even more active in Addis. People were everywhere: on the busy sidewalks, on the street and running in front of cars, hanging out of the over-crowded taxi-vans (attempting to get more passengers). Cars and trucks cut each off with no mercy -- making nearly impossibly close calls (no horns or hard feelings -- only a few friendly honks). Little market stalls selling fruits and vegetables, tiny butcher shops (notated to be Christian as they didn't serve halal meat), shoe-shiners, young women selling corn roasting over charcoal, boys and young men holding hands as friends, traditional head coverings for many women (Orthodox Christians and traditional Muslims), donkeys, horses, dogs walking the street with no owner in sight.
Once we saw several horses walking down the highway and we asked our driver who owned them. He shrugged and said everyone knew whose they were, so no big deal. Later we bought a goat for a nearby orphanage (yes, a live one) and our driver (Danny) helped load it on the top of our van's roof as if he was tying down some luggage.
As we traveled through the streets in cars, I never took my eyes off the street - I felt like I would miss something. So interesting and fun.
The bananas tasted different. Stronger, more distinct, sweeter even. The coffee was also fantastic. At the guest house that we stayed at, the ladies would make it very strong and serve it in these tiny little cups. The first day I asked for sugar and I got it very, very sweet. For the rest of our week, that's how I made my own coffee. Dark and very sweet.
The people of Addis Ababa were nice but not overly nice. Let me put it this way, most people didn't engage you, until you engaged them (not counting curious and friendly children). We were in a local supermarket in a non-tourist area of town and we weren't turning any heads. It's not that they were unfriendly (although I believe we had a bit of that), but they wanted to see how you were first. I always tried to say hello first, speaking in Amharic produced many smiles.
The food was great. Everywhere we went....there wasn't a bad experience. Lots of options and we never got sick....and I have a sensitive stomach. We attended a cultural dinner (with cultural dancers) one night and it was amazing - it was great that there were only two tourist groups there (counting our own as well) -- it felt more authentic, not some jazzed-up Disney-version given to foreigners.
The weather was also out-of-this-world (in particular coming from San Antonio in July helps). The average daytime temperature was about 65. It is the rainy season but it was exactly what I was hoping for...the rains would begin anywhere between 5:00-7:30 PM and at times it would be a downpour. It was a cool rain though and not humid at all. In the morning it would clear up, and most days became rather sunny by the late afternoon. We would leave doors and windows open all the time as Addis is located at a high altitude and there were little to no bugs to worry about. This was like a whole new world.
As you might imagine there was poverty. I was expecting this. The toughest scene was in a tourist market - a little boy about age 7 with a half-burned face that was begging for money. It was hard to know what to do with all the children surrounding us at that point. I could write a whole blog about it, and I might someday....until then, I still feel guilty and sad.
I loved drinking Coke from bottles. It just feels right that way and it's re-used....why don't we do this? It was fun.
One of my favorite memories was from an evening when we just walked down the street on the lookout for bananas (as the supermarket didn't have any). We bought some corn from one of the "corn-girls" as I called them. Every evening around 5:00 PM or so, young women would cook corn over a charcoal sitting on the sidewalk selling their corn for 5 birr or so (about 30 cents). I got to speak with one girl and had about as good a conversation as you can with not knowing someone's language. As we spoke a few young kids hung around listening to our halting conversation. Lots of smiles were exchanged as I showed her a picture of our daughters. She wanted a picture with my wife as well. It was a nice moment.
There are lots of little stories that, for now, will remain untold. The trip just went off without a hitch....a wonderful trip from start to finish. Trip # 2 should be in the next month and I expect many more memories....
Fragments of Trip #2 can be found here!
