Our trip began, as you might expect, with a airplane flight…although not the one we expected. Our plane was delayed out of Cincinnati for maintenance issues. Although we were disappointed, it’s hard to be mad at them for finding something wrong with the plane you’re going to fly on. In any case, the several hour delay caused us to miss our connection out of Washington DC. Unfortunately, there’s just one per day from Dulles to Addis. So our choice was to either stay overnight in DC and take the same flight the following day, or connect through Amsterdam (Netherlands) to Addis in the early evening.
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| Flying in to Amsterdam |
We chose Amsterdam because it would still get us to Addis in just two days rather than three. Still, it was not without problems. When we were re-routed, they neglected to tell us the Amsterdam flight stopped in Khartoom. For us, that was 180 degrees from what we asked for. We said no unstable Middle Eastern or African countries (which would mean pretty much all of them). By the time we found out we were stopping in one of the most unstable countries on the map, it was too late. Fortunately, it was uneventful.
In DC, we ran into Jill Pitsch, who traveled with us for our court trip. Turns out she was delayed out of Minnesota due to a 14-inch snowstorm. It was nice to see her, we didn’t expect it. It was long, and not uncomplicated, but we made it to Addis Thursday (late, late). Jemimah (our hotel) sent two guys with a van. As it turns out, the airline lost Jill’s luggage, so after talking to like 50 people about it, we left for the hotel, expecting the luggage to follow us in a day or two. After getting settled, we crashed and awoke the next morning to familiar sights out our window. We met some new families and on the way to the Holt office, caught up with Amanda & Matthew Anderson from our first trip.
We did tons of paperwork, paid for our trip to Durame, and headed off to lunch at a very nice place on the top of a hill.
Then back on the road to the care center.
We spent a couple hours with Tommy, and the other families and their kids. It was a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon. He remembered us from the last trip and came to Jenny right away, big smile on his face. We had a couple toys and a watch for him, but like last time, the mountain spring water bottle seemed to be the biggest hit. We’re thrilled to show you these photos and for the very first time online, share our handsome new son with the world.
We played for about 4 hours then headed back to the hotel for the night. Early the next morning, we headed south for a town called Durame in the Southern Nationalities Nations and Peoples Region (SNNPR) of Ethiopia, about a 6 hour drive from Addis. We traveled by van, about 20 of us, at high speed, on some of the scariest roads I’ve ever ridden. The first 4 ½ hours was on modestly paved roads. There were hairpin turns, fast moving trucks and cars, mule-hauled carts full of hay, sticks and people, cattle crossings, motorbikes, bicycles, three-wheeled taxis, whole villages hauling water, mud huts just off the road, camels, monkeys and baboons, and just about a million people, mostly in small groups, walking from somewhere to somewhere else.
Along the way, we stopped at the Schinchito Health Center Holt runs near a little village about 4 hours from nowhere. Although they provide a variety of basic care for many people there, the primary goal is to improve womens’ and childrens’ health in an effort to help keep families together. This is some of the unsung work that Holt and others do in Africa and other countries. So much emphasis is placed on their efforts to support adoption (and rightly so), but they do so much to reduce the need for international adoptions by striving to improve the conditions for families in the countries where they work. Here, they’re building a 60-bed hospital (by hand) that will have actual doctors to treat pregnant and sick women and children. Sadly, real physicians and nurses are a luxury most regions (let alone villages) can not afford.
Finally, after about 100 km of unpaved road, we reached the village of Durame, a very modest sized and constructed village with a pretty big population, kind of like how Georgetown Ohio seems big if you live in Ripley.
In Durame, there is a care center where many of the children began their adoption journey. It’s a very nice place, spartan for sure, but safe and well-tended with kind and efficient nannies. First, we stopped at Holt’s facility there for a meeting with the birth families.
For some people, it may seem strange that we’re adopting children who are not true orphans. Most of our kids still have a living parent or grandparent. It's just that the situation for many of the Ethiopian people, especially the ones from rural villages, is so tenuous that few good options exist when one parent dies (and LOTS of them die). The government, especially the village government (called the Kebele) can't take care of all the indigent. For the surviving parent, relinquishing their child is an act of both desperation and charity. In some cases, they find themselves in the God-awful position of having to choose among their children; relinquishing some so they can focus their limited resources on the others.
So, children are put into the Ethiopian version of foster care in a kind of a group home, where they can at least eat and be safe, and many get access to their very first health check from trained medical staff. We visited one of the facilities where children in the south begin their adoption trek; it was both humbling and hopeful at the same time. The nannies are kind and efficient, balancing the needs of many children with love and faith.
There, we me Tommy's Ethiopian mother. It was a God-filled interaction. She was young and pretty, and dressed in the best clothes she had. She was quiet and shy, and clearly embarrased by her situation and choice to relinquish her sons. Jenny so wanted to bring her with us, and we both wanted desperately to giver her some money to ease the burden of her poverty a bit. But we were strickly enjoined from doing anything that might appear like a trade or an enticement to release her child to us. So, we made due with a photo book of Tommy and the rest of our family, and we told her we'd work hard to make sure he remembered his Ethiopian heritage and his Ethiopian family.
We asked her what she'd like us to tell Tommy, and she said (through two interpretors--Wolaytinga to Amharic to English and vice versa) that she had a rough life, then it was good. She felt blessed because of her husband and children. He was a strong man who worked very hard; a carpenter. When he died, she tried hard, but couldn't make it on her own. It was clear that she loved him, and them, a great deal, and her choice was heartbreaking. She said she was happy to know that Tommy has found a good family, and wants him to be raised "to know God, in God's house." We left feeling blessed by her heart and her words.
<THE REST OF OUR STORY TOMORROW>
