The Face of Hell

Now I may be the worst mother ever, on the sentimentality score card but I am NOT the worst parent. First, I am bad because today Boko went to his first birthday parties. And he had a lot of firsts. First on the big bouncy contraptions and slides. First time in a pool. First time on a climbing wall. First time seeing Spiderman, aka, creepy man with junk showing who one HAS to wonder- Why is this grown man traipsing around in this outfit only to be subjected to 4-10 year old bad behavior during his "act"? What exactly is his satisfaction?

To my defense, however, Boko DID drop my camera and put a big spider web crack on the preview screen. I'm telling you, Best Buy is totally losing on this warranty. Its like sending me to an all inclusive resort. Really, you WANT to give ME open bar. Good Luck!!!

Anyway, at the first party today a woman came to the party, late. Now I can't say , for sure that her name was Rosemary, but I have my suspicions. We were at Kangaroo Zoo, which is basically an indoor arena for big air inflated bouncy things..... Whatever. Anyway, you have to go in without shoes. I was back out to get something out of one of our bins and there she was, with her 2, 2.5 year old. So first of all I thought she can't be part of our group because this is a 5 year old birthday party. Then I see her talking to the mother and realize that she is a guest. This is when I really notice little Damian. That was not actually his name but we will use it to protect the innocent. And by innocent, I mean me. As we all know, demon spawn knows when you talk about them, especially negative, then the creepy music starts to play and you fall through the ice, or through the banister. So for my safety, let's keep this anonymous.

I see this child and he looks at me, and I swear to god, all of his teeth were pointed. They ALL came to a point. I'm really not kidding. And the light glinted off of them with the warning that if you came close enough he could bite off a limb like most kids would bite into a marshmallow bunny. We are talking horror movie, leprechaun, don't put your hand in there, oh my god how could a limb be severed like that - situation!! And his laugh! Oh his laugh. It was pure evil. Cliche I know but I was afraid. It was maniacal, like something you would expect in a Manson documentary. I mean really. This kid is a bad seed. It is obvious.

And the mother. She immediately checked out. Talking to other people. Socializing like everything is okay. Like her child isn't one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Keep telling yourself that sweetheart. And granted, she looked normal, but hey, doesn't the anti-christ usually choose someone who looks perfectly harmless?

I watched this kid interacting with the other kids. I had him down to 60 seconds flat to clean out a bouncy. He would go in swinging. Hitting every kid in site. And hard. One girl tried to tell on him and she paid.

In the party room, his mere presence sent other children into blood curdling screams. Parents would come running only to find out that Damien had inflicted his person into the personal space of their child.

Needless to say, I did not attempt to befriend this mother. Sorry, she is on her own and I expect to see the news of her untimely and curious death on the news any day now. I did see her correct him once.....

When Jack Russells Attack!

This happened shortly after Shelby and Sake started on their happy pills. Shelby had been accidentally locked in Boko's room and we heard her whining from downstairs. I was in the middle of a work phone call and Boko went running upstairs to let her out. I'm on the call trying to make an appointment with the company while trying to quietly stop Boko from opening the door - Why you might ask would I not want him to let her out.

Well, it is not letting her out that it is the problem, it is letting her out of the room with Sake standing right there. Because inevitably, Shelby will be pissed off that she was "locked up" while that bitch was left to roam with the rest of us???!!! I will kill you you interloper!!! Who do you think you are??? ATTACK!!!!

Which of course is exactly what happened. However, due to the effects of the drugs it was more of a slow motion attack. So, as I am still talking on the phone, I was able to grab Sake by the color and whip her up into my left arm. Right arm still holding phone. Then they go nuts screaming and yelling at each other. This is where I have to admit defeat on the phone front, explain that I am working at home today and someone is walking by the front window - lie lie - and can I call you back in five.

Sake by this time is in full let me at her I'll tear her apart, mode, and is pushing on my arm and scratching at me. I get her downstairs and to her kennel but have to wait until I can get Shelby far enough back with one foot to be able to get Sake into her kennel without Shelby latching on to her.

Crisis averted. Dogs don't have any marks on them, no blood letting. Woo hoo. But I can tell that I have a lot of scratches on my arm. Oh well. As the day goes by I start to notice that my arm is a bit sore. But I didn't really give it any thought. I had a long sleeved shirt on that didn't really pull up so I just let it go. When Cory got home that night, and I was changing for bed, that's when we saw it. Bruising that looked like I had gone through the window of a car, when you combined it with the scratches. And it looked nasty!!!! The pictures were taken a couple of days later and do NOT give it justice.

Nothing like going to the gym and having some one actually say that domestic abuse should be considered. Sure, go ahead, call the police on Sake. I would love to hear what they have to say. I mean I do consider her a child, so there may be some ground to stand on there!

Thanks for the Soccer Help!!

Thanks to replies, and specifically Jessica's, we are now registered for soccer. The thing is that it only lasts for one month though, the end of April to the end of May. That seemed kind of odd to me. But I can't really remember things perfectly from when I was that age.

Shan, thanks for the suggestion, but I think that is a bit too far for me!!! ;) The one I signed up for is somewhere over here on South Mountain. I will have to figure that out as I have never had a reason to go to any of these types of places before - little kid soccer fields, the public pool, etc......

And not at all on topic, some more pictures.



First day of school



Jenny and Boko hanging out.




Helping daddy shovel the driveway.




Happy Valentine's Day Boko!



Mom, look at the school clothes we bought today!

My Kingdom for a Soccer Team!!

Does anyone know of soccer teams in the south end of the valley here?? Seriously, how can it be this hard to find a soccer team for 4/5 year olds in breeding central? AHHH!!

And what everyone really wants, some pictures. As we all know I am a complete slacker when it comes to photos. And although we have been taking a lot since we've been home, none of the super recent ones are downloaded. So here are some others from earlier this year. And FYI, we have only been home for like two months, so its not like they're that old and technically they are new to all of you so =)~








These are all from the limited time that we had him at the hotel with us - remote controls and light switches - Like toddler crack with a side car of Patron!!! Boko's first glass of wine.... Come on, seriously? They poured the water in there. Come on people. Sleeping on the floor at the Minneapolis airport. Not an easy thing for mommy to allow to happen and finally, entertaining ourselves by doing laps around the luggage carousel while we waited for Cory to bring the car back. Oh yah honey, forgot that my phone died, so extra laps because he thought we would be watching for him in the dark, out there in that 3rd lane of pickup at the SL airport, or even more genius, waiting outside on the curb!! Yes Boko, welcome to the 8th level of hell (Isn't that the cold one or was it 9???)








Chillin' with the doggies followed by self portraits.

Immigration Appointment

So when you travel to pick up your child in Ethiopia, you will have an appointment where you go in and meet with immigration. You take your filled in I864 - which is basically for the purposes of proving that you can afford to bring an immigrant home with you and support them. You take copies of tax returns and W2's. They make this sound much more stressful than it actually is. They coach you leading up to it on what to say and what is expected. So you go in somewhat nervous, thinking that you could say the wrong thing and mess up the whole adoption.

After lunch time, they load the kids onto the bus, which they LOVE by the way, and drive from HH over to the guest house. Oh, WHFC has their appointments on Mondays. Always. They pick up all of the parents there and you ride to the embassy. The security isn't too bad, metal detectors, you can't take any electronic devices in with you. They will take them from you at the door and keep them up front, but we just left ours at the hotel. So limited pictures from that day.

Then you are led into a waiting room. We were immediately taken from this waiting room and led outside to another building where we sat in another waiting room. This one had a tv and play area for kids. We waited in here, with some American wrestling show on, WWF, or something. Great representation of the US! Woo hoo. While we waited, the other families who had been left waiting in the other room, came in. Eventually all of them were called upstairs. We were one of the last ones to be called up.

So, the whole time that we waited, Boko was great. Patient, quiet, really good. Then when it was time to walk upstairs he threw a fit. I had to pick him up and carry him up the stairs. At the top he kept trying to run back down. Eventually the guard did something that you get used to having happen in the US. He took him from us. Not in a mean way, but in a helpful way. It is perfectly okay for a stranger to take your child from you and comfort or play with them there. You just have to go with it or else its a big cultural faux pas and adds to some of the negative feedback that you hear about Ethiopians having toward American adoptive parents.

Anyway, we go up to the counter, the guys asks us the standard questions - is this the child you agreed to adopt, have you met the family, have you given them any money...? And that was about it. Really easy and kind of pointless in the overall scheme of things.

You go back downstairs, and wait for everyone else to be done, then you load back up on the bus, and go back to the guest house. We were able to spend most of the rest of the afternoon playing with Boko there, and the other parents actually took custody of their children that day, if they wanted to.

That night, the head of the orphanage over there takes you out to a local Ethiopian restaurant for a traditional meal and dinner show, of two men and two women performing dances. It was very interesting, even if one of our dinner partners totally ruined my meal by having no idea of how they eat in Ethiopia and giving the most disgusting display of dinner manners for any country that I have ever seen. I left hungry and totally pissed off. Someday I will have to go into more details if anyone is actually interested. The honey wine actually was not as sweet as I expected it to be and a few of those helped a lot. They serve it in these things that look like beakers from a lab and I thought that it was just a serving container, especially since they were fairly large, so me and the other person who had ordered it asked for glasses to pour it into. Oh well, we definitely were not the stupidest looking people at the table!!!!!!!

That's about it. Most of the rest of our trip consisted of going to museums, visiting the lions, and playing with Boko. I'll try to tell a bit more about all of it, but I am becoming the worst blogger and want to try and catch up on more recent events too.

Let me know if there is anything specific that you would like to know about. That is if anyone out there is still reading this.

Fuzzy

I'm trying to remember if we met Boko on Saturday or Sunday. And I am fairly sure that it was on Saturday afternoon. I'm sure now that I think about it.

So Sunday, we got up, had some breakfast and then went over to the kid's house as soon as we could. When you get there, the kids are all up, they've already had breakfast and they are figuring out what they will be doing for the day. Although we saw the nannies occasionally have a group get together and sing or something (usually with the younger kids) we never saw anything that resembled school in the time that we were there.

On this second day, we had more balloons, of course more candy (caramello but quiet on the r... Best way I can think to explain what it sounded like). We also brought beach balls with us. This is where Boko finally started playing with me and thinking that I might be okay. We would hit the balloon or the ball, whichever he had, back and forth, over and over and over again. He was amused though! Not that easily amused any more. He also started learning that he could knock things up onto the roof of their sleeping area. This was the best thing ever, especially since balloons and balls usually came back down. From the looks of that roof, they had gotten a kick out of throwing LOTS of things up there.

I hate to say it, but this is really as exciting as it gets. Playing with the kids, trying not to be completely covered in snot, or catch ringworm. There were a couple of adorable little boys who wanted to play and cuddle, but I noticed that their heads were covered in ringworm. I loved it when one of the parents said, Oh, don't worry about it, usually it only effects people who are susceptible. You'll be fine.
Well..... HAD it! BAD!! December through February of my freshman year in college. I had it in MY EYE!!! So as adorable as you little rugrats are, get the HELL off my lap. Where are the disinfecting wipes??? Which, by the way, I had on me at all times while we were there. I used packages of these things. Lots of them. Which leads me to another thought. Also glad that I had toilet paper here too, as the bathrooms in the second guest house never had any - could have just been the time that we were there.

For anyone who is interested, the Indian restaurant in the Sheraton is awesome. We really liked. This was the first day that we went in and had lunch there. Once again, did the nice relaxing bottle of wine and hung out for a while. Why not, we had HOURS while they were napping.









Yes, these are all from the same day. He likes his clothing changes!

Eating

For the record Jenny, there is more to the eating story to come..... don't get ready for you two bonding over food issues quite yet. He's taking after me!!!

4th Picture 4th Album

A few different blogs that I read had a general tag on for this one. Post the 4th picture from the 4th album on your computer.

So here you go...




Now, anyone else who hasn't done it is tagged!

Meeting Boko

Since we now knew that we could not meet Boko because it was nap time - kind of a trend when you are there, never really told in advance what the schedule/plan is. Just find out as you go, we went back to the hotel for a couple of hours to freshen up and grab some lunch.

Unfortunately, what I was afraid of happening has started to happen. I am losing some of the details from our days here. Nothing major, but maybe just can't remember exactly what we did each day. Where we had lunch, how long we waited to do certain things.... I'm going to have to start asking Cory, but I don't know if he'll remember any better than me.

Apparently he does, jogged my memory. We went back and ate out by the pool. We shared french fries, french onion soup, a pizza and a couple of St. George beers. We didn't have a lot of time so it wasn't a really long leisurely lunch. Plus we were maybe just a little bit antsy for it to be 4, so we could go back.

Our first time at Horizon House, we pulled up out front of two large metal garage doors at a building up the street from the guest house. It was very nondescript and the doors were the size and shape of a garage that you would see in New Orleans - where you pull into a court yard, and from the street, really have no idea what is back there. We pulled in and there is a teeny tiny grass area in front of a small house and enough parking space for a small bus and a couple of cars. You walk along side the house and the stone wall on the opposite side and in the back is another small building that looks kind of like mini barracks. The yard in front of them is all asphalt and concrete, and there are 3 or 4 doors facing the yard.

At one of the doors, was Boko. He was the first kid up from nap time - which would not be the case most of the days moving forward. The other parents who had now arrived were there as well. All but one set of parents who were part of our travel group, were there to pick up children in the 4-5 year range. Only one couple was there for an infant, so did not come over to the big kids house.

Honestly, he was smaller than I expected. We had measured things in his rooms, mirrors etc, to be around his height as we knew it. I'm sure that he was the size that they had told us, but for some reason, I just had bigger in my mind.

Let me tell you, it was immediately apparent that this kid is NOT a morning person. He looked annoyed for being up. Annoyed slightly that anyone wanted to talk to him. He was very tentative in coming near us. Especially me. It was also obvious pretty quickly that he was more attracted to Cory. I spoke with another mother who was there to pick up their 4 year old boy as well, later in the week, and she was having a similar experience. Their little boy wasn't too concerned with her, not compared to his dad. We figured that it must have had something to do with them being without a mother for so long. Boko at least had lost his a year and a half before. I can only imagine what he was thinking when Cory went up to him, and he had to get used to the idea of him being his dad, but who was this superfluous adult? A spare just in case?

Still though, it even took Cory a bit to get him to come to him. We of course came armed with mini candy canes and foo fuhs (sp???) aka balloons. We were quite the hit with all the kids. And for the most part, Boko was not too concerned if I just played with the other kids this first day.

We hung out and played with the kids, throwing around balls and handing out candy, until it was dinner time. The other parents were taken back to the guest house by a guard - I still don't understand this one - and we stayed while we waited for Mulat to come and take us back to the hotel (this would be one of the few days that Mulat drove for us, usually we were with Yonas). So we hung out with the kids.

There is a room, where they take the littler kids in during the day to play and sing songs and this is also their dining room. Snacks are had outside on a blanket, but dinner is in this room. There is one big round table where the older kids, at this time that was the 4-7 year olds. The smaller children sat on the floor and the nannies and the older girl who was there to help spent most of their time with these kids. Making sure that they ate.

A lot of the nights that we were there, the kids had injera with a bean wat. This was also the first time that Boko showed interest in me, when he tried to feed me his food. Okay, not exactly tried, since we were trying to bond, I of course took it when he handed it to me. As you may or may not know, they eat with their hands in Ethiopia too. I realize now though, that he did this more to get the food off of his plate than just to share. He was not a fan of this dish. At the time though, we were thinking that he was just a difficult eater, I mean come on. Injera? Its like the national food of Ethiopia. All the other kids down it, even the 2 year olds are just shoveling it in. Not our kid though.

This is one of the first times I was really happy about staying at the hotel. We realized that we could come and go as we pleased, while the other parents were on the schedule of the guest house. Where by the way, there was no wine, no cocktails, no mommy and daddy drink of any kind. ;)

When we left that night we went back to the room and were beat, so we ordered up some room service and this was the first time that we tried Ethiopian wine and found a lovely white wine, called Cristal (I think that was the spelling) and since it tasted good and was about $8 a bottle, of course we became fast friends.

And that is the end of another day. I will try and be a better blogger from now on and finish up with this.






I'm telling you, balloons will buy you love with these kids!!!!! Take LOTS of balloons with you. Beach balls are good too, but for a cheap way to bribe your child, you cannot beat the balloons!!!!

Back to Addis

Fitsum showed up shortly after we finished breakfast to haul us back to Addis. He had told us the day before that we could take our time on the way back and stop and see any sites that we wanted. It was more or less decided that we wanted to get back to Addis sooner rather than later. So we were not necessarily opposed to going a bit more slowly than we had on the way down, when we were on a tight schedule, but we did not necessarily want to take the day to tour one of the national parks and see the birds.

At dinner in Awassa, when we were talking to the adoptive father doing the film, Solomon, the driver with him from WHFC told us about a fish market, not far from the hotel, where there were monkeys. He said that we should definitely have Fitsum take us there the next day. When I mentioned it at breakfast, the other couple was fine with going.

Now, when he said fish market, I had men around counters, throwing fish to one another. Then I realized that I was not in Seattle, and my vision switched to something from Andrew Zimmern Bizarre Foods. Dirt floor, battered tarps, wooden stands, and people everywhere bartering and negotiating for fish.
Well, I was wrong on all points. We drove up to a set of gates with guard stands on either side, and into a national park. We drove over into a grove of trees and parked. On the way you could see small brown monkeys jumping out of the trees to get a closer look.

The grove was on the edge of a lake and the fisherman were all coming in with their small boats, and their small catches. Little kids were running all over the place, and when they saw that I was completely giddy over the blue balled monkeys they ran and go bread – kind of like English muffins or soda bread and sold Cory two pieces. This was so we could coax the monkeys over to us, and it certainly worked.
There was one monkey in particular that really liked me. I felt so bad for the little guy. I’m not sure if I have mentioned before that there are dogs wandering everywhere with no owner in particular. Well, as I was feeding this monkey I noticed that he had marks all over him, like big festering sores kind of marks…. I was a little concerned that I was going to get some sort of monkey leprosy. But he was smaller than some of the others and seemed Very hungry.

I asked Fitsum what was wrong with the monkey and he told me that it was the dogs – that they attacked the monkeys and the sores were actually the bit marks from the attack… Poor monkey!!!! So I kept feeding him, holding out the bread with him taking it out of my hand. The little ingrate tried to steal my ring. Yup, I had a cheeky, blue balled monkey try to steal my cheap ring from Mazatlan. So there I am yelling at a monkey at this “fish market” saying let go you bad monkey. Bad monkey. The monkey seriously put his head down and his hands between his legs, until I got over it and then he started taking the bread from me. He tried to steal one more time – the rest of the piece of bread, and he got yelled at again. “Endlessly, horribly bad monkey!! That is rude. Don’t do that”. Yes, I was serious. I forgot that there were other people around me. And no, it is not on video. Thank God Cory as sleeping on the job. This time the monkey kept his head and hands down for a really long time. Then when we walked away to explore more, he followed me. I think he liked the tough love.

There were also a lot of crazy looking pelican type birds here. The kids would go over to where the fishermen were cleaning the fish and take handfuls of the guts to throw at the birds so they would stand up and show their full bodies, so that us tourists could take photos. Then of course they expected payment.

The lake was gorgeous and the birds were interesting, but let’s face it, it was all about the monkeys for me. If I could have gotten a visa for one of those guys – well, let’s just say there’d be some poop flinging happening in this house right now.
So we left and headed back to Addis. On the way we took our time, stopping to take a photo here or there and having a cup of coffee at a little roadside hotel/café. Basically just relaxing and if I haven’t mentioned it before, let me now, or if I have, do it again. If you are in Ethiopia, bring your own toilet paper. I cannot tell you how invaluable those little rolls of travel Charmin are. And also, don’t forget hand sanitizing wipes of some sort too. Some of the toilets outside of Addis are holes in the ground with a place for your feet on either side. There is pee all over the floor, and I don’t want to know what kinds of spiders, and it smells like the outhouses at parks here in the US in the middle of the summer time. Although on the main road down, the hotels that you would stop at have normal toilets, rarely with TP. Or soap and water to wash with. Crazy for a country that eats with their hands and are so concerned with washing them before meals.

Of course on our way out of the park, we were required to pay for use of the park. I can't remember exactly what it was but when someone with a rifle tells you to pay, you just do it.

One last story about the way back to Addis – the Camels. As we were coming up the road, we saw a herd of camels coming down along the side. This was something new. So our driver stopped for us to take pictures. He told us that they were from the Oroma region and that they were leading their camels to water. That is one hell of a walk. We’re talking days. As were taking photos, it became painfully obvious that the kids herding them were not cool with that. One kid, and he was a kid, I would say 13 maybe, was coming toward us across the road, yelling and shaking a rock at us, ready to throw it at us. His cohort, a little older, maybe 16 or 17, stood in front of the car so we couldn’t leave. Everyone quit taking pictures, pusses, and waited to find out what was happening. (My camera was dead) Our driver had no idea what they were yelling at us. Apparently he did not speak that dialect and it had no similarity to anything that he did. A car going in the opposite direction stopped in the middle of the road and they spoke their language. They explained to our driver that the boys were upset because we were taking pictures without paying. Seriously!!!! I think that we ended up paying them 10 birr, a dollar, but it was still annoying. Violent little extortionist. After we left there was a second herd of camels, and this time we offered money up front – gave them 20 birr and they were nice enough to pose with the camels too.

Next stop Addis. I’ll talk about getting back and meeting B for the first time.













I think that the pics are fairly self explanatory and I'm too lazy to label each one. Let me know if you have any questions!!

Slacker

I know I am and I promise that I am working on the next post in our trip, but I just haven't seemed to have a moment where I can fully concentrate on it.

Been a little busy with Boko, my crappy job, regular things, and then of course Shelby and Sake have decided that one or the other must die. This has come about in the last two days and it is out of control. Even with muzzles on they try to beat each other into the floor. I have never seen anything like this and I'm hoping my vet is on the prozac/lithium boat because I am running out of ideas short of leaving them muzzled/kenneled forever. AHHHHHH!!!!

Birth Family Visit

Warning : Someone is obviously a little wordy!!! Read at your own risk.

It was surprisingly easy to get up and ready for our birth family visit. Compared to sleeping in the chair in the airport in Amsterdam or trying to sleep on a flight with greasy feet in front of me, I think that 3 hours in the bed probably felt like 8!
We got all of our stuff together, we were leaving to drive south and would not be back until the next day. When we went down to the lobby our driver Fitsum was waiting for us. He loaded us in and drove to the guest house, where we picked up the second couple, and I have to say, had some of the most heavenly bread ever. It is made fresh every morning by the cook at the guest house and it is absolutely to die for. So good. After Cory and the other couple were done eating, we loaded up in the Land Cruiser and took off.

Driving in Ethiopia is an adventure it itself. At almost no time is there not someone or something on the road with the cars. And it is fully expected and understood that the cars are sharing their space. Sharing it with people, donkeys, donkey cars, horses, horse carts, dogs – lots of dogs, goat herds, cows, camels, etc.. And as you’re traveling on this highway in and out of little towns, all along the way are these little make shift houses and huts on the side of the road. Imagine driving along I-80 and people have just started putting up tents, or cabins, or some other type of small housing along the side of the road. The interstate! And everywhere are little kids. Some dressed, some not. Older kids walking to school, older kids who obviously are not in school, probably because their parents cannot afford it. Younger children, playing and standing along the side of the road. Right up on the shoulder, where a donkey cart could come by or a car could veer to avoid a horse cart. And I mean barely just walking tiny. Just standing there, watching. And its constant. There are children EVERYWHERE in this country. And rarely with adult supervision, at least once they could walk.

We drove through the Rift Valley – you know the cradle of civilization, where they found Lucy. Its dry and I won’t say barren, but dry, definitely dry, and very large. There are a few large lakes that you drive by, and as I mentioned lots of little towns. Each one seemed to be in a war too. Coke vs. Pepsi. A town had signs for one or the other, not both. Way to go guys. Can’t imagine why I saw so many kids with their teeth rotting out!

We also saw a lot of green houses. Extremely large green houses. Way bigger than a football field. I had read before going that Ethiopia was getting into the floral business, exporting to other countries, and this was obviously the production area so to speak.

When we got to the WHFC office in Awassa, we picked up a couple of guys who were going to help with the birth family visits, then went and picked up another man who was more familiar with the area we were going to. I can’t remember the names of the two men from WHFC and feel so bad. They were not the regular social worker whose name I had memorized so I think that it through me off. We all loaded back up in the car and started to Arbegona.

In Arbegona, where by the way you cease to be on pavement, it is now all dirt roads, we met with the birth families of the children that the other couple was adopting. It was very interesting to see both of their houses and this was where we first started being stalked by children. Cameras are like catnip for these kids. They see one and they are all over you to get their picture taken and have you show it to them. They were following us up and down streets like we were the Piper and they were, well you know the rest.

I probably shouldn’t share too much about the other family visits, for privacy, but it was interesting to see the two different types of houses that the women lived in. One was a small house, wood framed, with no real floor covering and odd papers posted to the walls for decoration. The second house was a hut, dirt floor, dark on the inside. In a very small place was the seating area, an eating area, a small bed and then a partition where the fire was for cooking. A hole in the top of the hut. It took us a while to focus in the dark and never noticed until we went back out into the sun that Cory had black soot all over him from the “walls” of the hut. Actually the grass fringes that hung out and had collected, I would imagine, years of soot from the cooking.

From here, we walked back to the car and we were standing around, wondering what was next. Where we were going to meet B’s dad. Finally the WHFC employees from Awassa ( I feel SO bad that I cannot remember their names) said that he did not show up. The plan had been for him to walk from his village to Arbegona and meet us at the community center. Well, for some reason, he did not show. They had no idea why and gave us the option of driving to his house to meet with him. It crossed our minds that he may not WANT to meet us, but we really wanted to be able to give him the letter we had written and the pictures of B, plus, be able to tell B that we had, so we said sure. We asked how far it was, and they said that for the dad it would have been a 5 hour walk – and it was about 20km.

Finally I got to be in the front seat, so for once I wasn’t feeling like throwing up. The countryside was very pretty. Green, creeks, mountains and clean air – which I would really appreciate later in the week in Addis. And people EVERYWHERE. You know how when you are driving in the mountains, going camping or fishing and you really have to pee, so you just pull over and hop out behind a tree. Good luck doing that here. Every time I thought, here’s a spot where I could go, I would see one pair of eyes peak out through the bush, and then another, and possibly another. There were kids mostly. Just like on the road coming down, but this was a dirt road where cars rarely come.

I honestly can’t remember how long we drove for, maybe an hour. It probably wouldn’t have taken as long if the Land Cruiser had a transmission that wasn’t about to fall out and the driver knew how to use the four wheel drive. The road really was not as bad as he thought it was and would not have been a problem for my Jeep. Finally he was not willing to go any further, the road was getting more rutted, so they paid a kid to run down the road to his dad’s house and find him. We waited in that spot for about an hour and a half. Taking pictures of the massive group of kids who had accumulated and finding a tree to pee behind where I was finally not bothered by anyone but a nosey cow.

Finally there he was, B’s dad. It all happened really fast, and we walked back up the road a bit from where we had been hanging out to a building that I had not paid much attention to. It was behind a high fence and pretty nondescript. Come to find out though, it was a church. We went in and sat down on the lawn to talk to him. The interpreters closed the gates behind us to keep all of the other locals out of the meeting. Honestly, I am not sure at one point they all just came in but I do remember looking up at one point during the visit and realizing that we had a massive audience.

We found out that he never got the message that we were coming and that he needed to go to Arbegona. So yay! We had not hunted this poor man down and forced him into a situation that he did not want to be in. When he got there he looked a little red eyed, almost as if he had cried recently, but maybe he had just hurried from his house. He started off the whole conversation by thanking us for taking his son. He immediately explained why he had to do this, and how happy he was that his son would be taken care of. It made the whole thing so easy for us. We asked the questions that we had, and as expected, it was difficult for it to be translated exactly and we did not necessarily get the detail we would have hoped for. You can’t really get a family medical history and we were a little disappointed not to meet B’s siblings, he said that they were in school. He also couldn’t really tell us a lot about his mom. No details on them meeting – he said they met when he asked her to marry him – or their life together. Also, no stories that we will be able to pass on to B about his growing up. You know, nothing to explain the scars, or stories about him as a baby. Kind of sad. But not his dad’s fault.

The meeting was fairly short, maybe a half an hour. One thing that we noticed is that his father was very good looking. I’ve noticed that many people look much older than their actual age. His dad was one of the first people living out in the rural areas that actually looked younger than his recorded age. You could see Boko in him, but not through any specific traits, unless you count their hair. It’s difficult to explain but it was there.

- Side note: I’ve been going through pictures from the trip with Boko, and he does not seem to recognize him. In the pictures of us sitting with his dad, he only points at Cory as daddy and me as mommy. Nice for the recognition but kind of sad that the memory is already gone.

We got back in the car immediately after the meeting and started back to Awassa. WHFC had made reservations at a hotel there for us. One fun part was when we pulled over on the way out, because everyone had to use the restroom, and it was completely dark, so we are all wandering out into the bushes looking for a place to use the facilities as they were, and I of course stepped in a big fresh steaming pile of shit. Nice!! I assume it was cow, but who knows. Given the fear that Boko has of snakes I’m glad that no one warned me of anything like that either.

We got to the hotel, around 8 pm I think, checked into our rooms – 400 birr, about $40 a night., and then went down to the restaurant. We sat with the WHFC employees for a bit and talked to them about the day. We ordered beers – St. George which according to them is the first beer in Ethiopia. After they left we met another one of the adoptive parents who had come to Ethiopia early. He is a film maker and was donating his time to do film on the humanitarian work done by WHFC. It was really interesting to hear about what he had seen and what WHFC does outside of adoption. They definitely do not promote that side well enough on their website. Which is obviously where he came in. While we were waiting for our dinner, the power went out – pretty typical for most of Ethiopia and we ended up eating by candlelight. So romantic if I didn’t have remnants of unidentified poo on my shoe. I did have some awesome doro wat here though.

When we went up to get ready for bed we realized that we only had one towel. No phone in the room so Cory ran down to get one. They had to deliver it, and while Cory was in the bathroom they showed up. I have a point to this, I really don’t just go into this much detail for no good reason. I answered the door for the towel, and had just taken my shoes off. The man who brought the towel was very concerned that I had not put on the slippers, and came in, pulled them out from the night stand – they were very flimsy slippers – and put them on my feet for me, my stinky feet with dirty socks still on. It was just kind of bizarre that he was so concerned about this.
The room was clean and comfortable, and although no phone, there was a tv with a lot of English channels. Kind of surprised, Ethiopia has things like CNN and CBS instead of Sky TV. Only two issues with the room. 1.) Fred Flinstone is pissed because his bed is in that room. Seriously, I had to look under the sheet to be sure that I was not laying on a rock slab. If I hadn’t been soooo incredibly tired I think that it would have been more of a problem. However, since this was my first full nights sleep in like 4 days, I slept like a baby. 2.) Individual water heaters in the bathroom which need to be plugged in and turned on. Want to do that early not after you’ve finally drug your ass out of bed after hitting snooze five times!!

The breakfast buffet was included in the price of the room and it was really good. Crazy! FYI – no pork in Ethiopia. I did not see one pig with all of that livestock roaming around and your choices were typically turkey ham, chicken sausage, beef bacon or veal sausage. All of which were really good. Wish we had all those options here. Beef bacon is much better than turkey bacon, just not as greasy as pork.
Well, I think that this is already an insanely long post so I will wrap it up and try to do another one soon on the next day. And don’t feel bad if you can’t make it through the whole post. I’m not sure that I could!!

Oh one thing that I did forget though is the blanket type covering s that all the men were wearing in Sidama. While we were in Arbegona we tried to find one in the same colors as the one his dad was wearing but we could not find any that were close. So we got a very purple one with blue details. It is called a Fasha and I did not see them anywhere in Addis, so if you are going to Sidama, and want something from your child’s area it is something to consider. With negotiating I think that it ended up being $15 US.










Pictures on the drive toward the village and house where B is from and pictures of some of the random kids who came up to hang out with us while we waited for him. One other thing I forgot to mention - I know the mind reels that their could be more. While we were waiting, Cory took out the photo album we had for his dad, which included lots of pictures of B, and he was showing it to the kids - they were pointing at the pictures and saying Boko. They remembered him. And Boko has pointed out some of the kids in these pictures and said their names. Too bad I can't always understand his pronunciation well. I would love to try and write their names down for him later.

Found IT!!!!

I’m writing this post off line right now, I’ll have to cut and paste it in later, because our power is out. I just got someone to bed, folded some laundry and sat down with a piece of potica, all ready to do a post – a good one, and of course, the power goes out. Hope it comes back on soon, or it is going to be a very cold night.
Anyway, my thought was to try and document on a day by day basis, our trip to Ethiopia, but we’ll have to see how that works out, since a fair amount of time has passed. Also, there are some stories that I want to share, but only with certain people. I have to see if my blog template allows for password protected posts, I’m not sure, and obviously cannot check right now. Otherwise, I will have to do those by email or something. You know, protect the innocent, or not so innocent as the case may be.

So in my earlier posts, I think that I have covered up to about Amsterdam going over. Of course my cold was still bugging me the whole way over so I was not in the best of moods. Then in Amsterdam, Cory went to plug my laptop in for me and fried the adapter – the new one we had bought to replace the one that didn’t make it out of Prague alive. And here I thought it was just an Eastern block thing. Or maybe it was the converter. Anyway, I don’t claim to be proficient in the area of hardware. He had to go back out into the airport – we were in the KLM Crown room, and go to the massive electronics store to find something to replace it… Actually, looking back I’m pretty sure he fried both because he could only find one and not the other, but it all worked out in the end. I was in a Nyquil induced fog at the time. Give me a break. While he was off looking for this I was napping in the chair I was sitting in. Didn’t even care if anyone took our stuff. I wake up and Cory is up at this counter, which obviously had better outlets than the ones provided in the lamp bases by the chairs and he is charging up the computer. He comes over to tell me that he would like to go out into the airport to find something to eat. For those of you who know me, you will see how sick I was by my response – but I already ate here in the Crown Room. Yes, for our 4.5 hour layover I was perfectly willing to just have two pieces of turkey cold cuts and a small roll. As we’re discussing our dining options and old man goes over to the counter, which is obviously being used by people with their own laptops and starts trying to use mine. Cory had logged out so he couldn’t, but he kept trying to enter a password, even when Cory went over and explained it was our computer. The guys STILL kept trying to enter a password, probably the one they give you to access the internet. He just did not believe him! Nuts.

Well, wandered out, got a breakfast I was not wholly into, and then realized we had to reorganize all of our liquids again because Amsterdam is one of those awesome airports where you have to go through a separate screening to get to your gate. Can I just say how much I hate those? You have to get to the gate at least an hour before your flight, you can’t leave again to get anything, like a magazine or snack, because then you have to go through the ridiculous security again. It’s such a pain in the ass. Cory ran down to get our Ziploc bags, and of course, it was a one bag per person minimum and their required bags are smaller than the ones at the US airport. Nyquil wearing off, Stacy getting very cranky.

We get to the gate, go through security and before getting on the plane Cory goes up to the counter and asks the woman how much it would be to upgrade to business for this third leg of our trip. I can’t remember what she said exactly, but it was not horribly unreasonable and we were considering it before she said, “But the flight is not fully booked so you’ll have plenty of room in Coach. I wouldn’t do it”. Okay, thanks helpful flight attendant…. Actually you evil, evil, cruel woman. Maybe before you make a promise like this you should look at the seats the people are in. Walking through the first half of the plane we’re thinking yah, this flight isn’t full, it’ll be fine, until you get to the third part of the plane, the very back, which is so packed full of people already, that their combined body heat already makes the place feel like a sweat lodge. And I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be judgmental or cruel, but with this crew, I was looking for the chickens, seriously. The woman sitting in front of us had her shoes off, and she must have had them off for the last 3 years they were so black and it was so thick. Seriously, it looked like she was doing clean up for the Valdeez (sp?) with her shoes off. And she was just putting her feet all over the seat, all over everything. I spent the entire flight just making sure that they didn’t happen to come backwards under her seat and touch my purse. I HATE feet as it is. Even the clean feet that come out after a pedicure. Keep them the hell away from me. So now I am freaked out about every airline seat I come in contact with. God knows who’s feet have been on them. And her kids. Oh don’t even get me started. Loud, obnoxious, the person behind me kept kicking me, and that was an adult. A few other men were just so excited to be on a plane that they kept getting up and running back and forth to each other – maybe pinching themselves to make sure it was real. I don’t know, but I was in what I thought was the 6th circle of hell, little did I know there was a time later in the trip when I would look back on these moments with fondness.

This group and a lot of other people in our area got off in Sudan during our refueling stop. After they all gave a round of applause when the plane touched down on the ground. Not like the pilots could even hear them back in the ass end of the plane. I could still just slap that woman at the desk…..

The next group that got on in Sudan was better. Same situation in front of us, family with small kids but these kids were so well behaved and their mom did not concern me with her feet, but the poor thing had to sit on that seat that swamp thing had been in…. Makes me cringe.

Another hour and a half to Addis Ababa and we were done. Went through customs got our luggage and out into the main area. Mulat was waiting for us to tell us what time we had to be ready for the birth family visit the next day. I felt so bad that he had to come out there at that time of night – almost 11 pm by the time we got to where he was, just to tell what we pretty much already knew. No wonder it took him most of the rest of the time we were there to warm up to us. After talking to Mulat we went over to the Sheraton area to let them know we were ready for our shuttle. I went to the bathroom while waiting and had my first experience with no TP. So glad I brought those Charmin travel rolls. Went back to where we were waiting for the shuttle. I hurried because they said 10-15 minutes. First experience with EST – Ethiopian Standard Time. 10-15 is very fuzzy. Could be 10-15 from anything. Not necessarily that moment. For us it was 10-15 minutes from 20-25 minutes from now. It was odd though how the hotels all had little booths almost carved out for themselves. All looking nicer than the airport which is fairly sparse. But the Sheraton’s was the nicest. Wood paneling all enclosed in its own little space with a 6 foot Christmas tree decorated and their poor desk guy in a suit. Leather couches and a coffee table. Just a lot different than the others. We ended up on the shuttle with two idiots from Europe. One was German and the other was Dutch. They talked during the whole drive and they had just met each other. Each one was trying to outdo the other with how much he had to travel. I can’t remember all the details now, but it was just wonderful entertainment.

Next we get to the Sheraton and it is pretty impressive when you drive up. It is its own little oasis in the city. I have heard a lot of people refer to it as a compound, but it’s just a nice hotel in the middle of Addis, which is unfortunately pretty much synonymous with extreme poverty. And after hearing that there was a bombing a few years back at the Hilton, I am happy that both hotels now have guards out front with the little mirrors on rollers to check under the car and that they make drivers open their trunks before coming in. Didn’t bother me a bit. Neither did the scanner and metal detector going in the front door. Oh well, it was always quick and safety is not a bad thing.

Well, this place was decked out for Christmas. That is one thing I noticed, that we were totally mislead on, that the kids there will have no concept of Christmas. That is total BS. There are Christmas decorations everywhere, EVERYWHERE and there is even a section of the Mercato dedicated to Christmas decorations. The Sheraton was decorated like you would expect most nice hotels. Big tree in the lobby, lights all over the grounds, Santas everywhere. Difference was, all the Santas were saxophone playing Santas, except for the ones climbing up ladders on the building, which gave me the creepy feeling of an elf invasion. Every Santa we saw in this country had a saxophone in his hands. And the ones out front around the fountain, had their legs removed so they were just torsos, heads,, arms and saxophones. Different. Every day up to Christmas they also had a real Santa in the main lobby that people would bring their kids to see. Kind of like the mall here.

Anyway, this is our introduction to Addis. We checked in, they had us in the wrong room. I pointed this out because the reservation sheet he gave me said 217, and he tried to put us in 1 something. When I asked if it was non-smoking he needed a few minutes to get us a different room. Guess which one that was, 217. The room was nice. The bed was a little uncomfortable, but overall it was good, with a huge patio. I mean the patio was at least the size of our room, although we really didn’t spend much time out there. Looking back on things, I wish that we would have spent a bit more time at the hotel. I don’t think that Boko would have been scarred for life if mommy and daddy had taken an afternoon to lie around the pool. But at the time we just thought we should keep going to see him as much as possible. Probably guilt over the fact that we were the only parents who could not take custody at any point because we were staying at a hotel…..

Sorry on a tangent. We got to bed around 12:30, probably a little closer to 1 and sent our alarms for 4. We had to be up and ready to go at 5 am the next day to be picked up by our driver and then go to the guest house to pick up the other couple that we would be traveling with.. And that is the end of our first night I guess in Ethiopia. I realize that it is painfully detailed, but hey, the power is out and I have nothing else to do right now. Brrrrr. It’s starting to get cold in here too.


The back of the hotel.



Still trying to organize all the pictures. I don't have Cory's on here either.