Our Trip to Ethiopia--Part 2, Our Ethiopia Experience

We woke up the first morning at about 6 a.m. because we didn't know when Gail, AAI's director at their care center in Ethiopia, would be coming to get us.  We wanted to be ready to go when she came because this would be the day that we would finally get to meet our daughter and we...(ok, I)  wanted everything to be perfect.  But I mean, really, would YOU be able to sleep if you just traveled half way around the world to meet the little one you had been waiting for two years to meet??!!  I didn't think so!

I got up and showered...very carefully... and walked out onto our balcony to take in my first view of the city.  People were already going about their daily business, the hustle and bustle had begun and it was barely daylight.

I am going to back up here and just say that we stayed at the King's Hotel and it was definitely not at the Hilton or Sheraton's level of niceness......think low budget hotel, like an older Super 8 etc.  The hotel lobby was beautiful and the hotel itself has character.  The rooms were nice enough but I wouldn't set anything nice on the carpet....scary!  The bed was pretty comfortable but a bit too soft for me, a few days into our stay I started having back aches.  I don't think they washed the comforter very often so that creeped me out too.  I'm pretty sure that they didn't have an exhaust system for their plumbing because our bathroom pretty much always smelled like ....you know what.  This is the same odor that you smell every so often while you are walking down the streets.  Just so you know that I'm not bashing King's, I will state that would stay there again... because of the location and because it really wasn't that bad.  I've stayed at worse places here in the U.S......plus they had a breakfast buffet and two macchiatos included with your nightly stay.  The breakfast wasn't stupendous but they always had plenty of things to choose from... including eggs, sausage, potatoes, breads and fruit.  An extra bonus was that our macchiato maker was a complete sweetie and we just loved her....we were hoping to fit her into our suitcase so we could bring her home with us!  lol...

Me and Manahilosh, our macchiato maker extraordinaire =)

Now.... about taking a shower....taking a shower was a process.  First I put my flip flops on and went into our sewer, I mean bathroom....oops!  =(   Anyway, I first washed my face with a disposable wash cloth and bottled water.  Then when I got into the shower...with flips flops...I didn't let the water anywhere near my face!  I have to tell you that while we were still home I practiced over and over how to take a shower without getting water in my mouth....every time I failed.  I couldn't do it.  So I figured that if the water didn't get on my face at all I was good to go.  If a drop of water did get on my face I quickly dried it off with the towel and then as soon as I got out I would either sanitize my face or at least rinse it off with the jumbo bottle of water that we had stationed at the sink.  You can call me insane, but getting sick was the LAST thing I wanted....I was there to spend time with our girl and to enjoy Ethiopia....there was no time for getting sick!

Ok...so back to our first morning.  We showered and loaded up my purse/bag with things we would need for the day and then we just sat and looked at each other.  Hmmm....where's Gail?  She didn't call.  What should we do?  If we leave the room, how would Gail get a hold of us??  We were getting hungry so we went downstairs to partake in breakfast.  We finished breakfast and decided to call Gail.  She told us that an AAI volunteer group was also staying at King's too and that we should get a hold of the group coordinator and plan to walk to Layla, our agency's care center, with them.  So we did.  I was very much looking forward to meeting Susan PD and I have to say that she's great....we just love her!  We had a really great time with her and her group while we were there.

As we walked out of the front door of King's it was like entering another world....you have to remember that we arrived to Addis VERY tired, and it was dark out, because it was after 10:00 p.m. so we didn't really see much while we were driving through the city to the hotel.  The doormen greeted us with a "Selam"...which means hello, and a nod.  As we turned out of the gates at King's this is what we saw:

We walked this road many times, back and forth to Layla.  There is much going on up and down this street and each day you are bound to see something different.  There will be many beggars, including crippled or no legged men, young boys and women with babies....we even saw guys taking a leak wherever they so pleased.  One time, there was a totally naked man squatting by the side of the road...thank goodness he was facing the other way!  We were told, that often, the people suffering with mental illness will do this kind of thing.  

There are also many people trying to earn money by selling various products like candy, books, tissues, fruit and other produce.  There are also many people just going about their day.  

People will just lay a blanket on the ground and then arrange the items that they want to sell on it.

This is a good view of the street filled with cars and exhaust.  There are very few street names or street lights in Addis and you really have to be there to totally understand their driving system.  The drivers just pull out in front of other drivers and change lanes at whim....but the kicker is, no one gets mad.  All of the drivers honk...a lot....to signal to other drivers they are coming through.  We had an ongoing joke about the honks, whether or not they were American honks or Ethiopian honks.  Only a couple times while we were there did I feel like a honk was an American type honk.  They are all pretty patient drivers and they stay very calm....even in traffic jams, and believe me, there are a lot of traffic jams!  Their driving system would never work here in the states, that's for sure!

The stretch of road from our hotel to Layla didn't have any animals wandering it, besides the dogs, but on streets very near to this you might see big horned cows/bulls....

like this:

Or herds of goats...like this:

There were "wild" dogs everywhere.  I asked one of our drivers and he said that people just toss out female dogs because they don't want a dog that would "create" more dogs.  I asked him if they had places in Addis to take dogs to get fixed so that wouldn't happen and he just kind of looked at me sideways and said "No, not really."  It was very said to see so many dogs wandering around.  But that wouldn't be the saddest thing we would see during our 5 days there.

This is a picture of Kaldi's, the local coffee shop.  Look familiar? Hmmm....

There was also a great restaurant above Kaldi's that we ate at a couple of times.

These are taxi type busses.  The guy you see standing there will stick his head out the window of the sliding door while the bus is zooming down the road and he will yell out at people on the street, announcing where the bus is going.  People just give a wave and the bus will stop to let people get on.  The fare is pretty cheap.  Sometimes the bus looked so jam packed full of people and someone told me that if you were to get on one of the buses you could either end up having someone sitting on your lap or you would have to sit on a lap!  Yes, that's how full the bus could get!  If they can fit a body, they will pick you up!  Yipes!  Guess that's why the fare is so cheap.

So we walked with Susan and her group and turned down a side road where Layla was located.  My stomach was pretty much in knots by now, knowing that in a few short minutes we would be face to face with our little girl, although taking in all of the sights and smells really helped to take my mind off of where I was actually walking to! 

This is the street that Layla is on, unfortunately we didn't get a shot of the famous blue door.

We walked into Layla and we were greeted by this:

We were then escorted into Gail's office, she greeted us and we talked with her for a few minutes and then she finally said the words we had been waiting to hear...."Let's go meet your little one."  We walked into the toddler area which looks like this:

....but the toddlers were no where to be found.  We turned around to go and look for them in another area of the compound and they started filing in one by one.  Tihun was about the fourth child that came in and as she was walking toward us I knelt down to greet her.....but she totally ignored me!  She walked right past us and into the building.  Tihun turned around, yelled something in Amharic and took the belt that she was holding and smacked it down....hard.  Yipes!  We are in for trouble, I thought!  The head nanny, Debritu came walking up and Gail introduced her to us and Debritu picked up Tihun and told her who we were.  I held out my hands and she came right to me.  I couldn't believe it.  We were prepared for her to be standoffish and scared.  She is very attached to her nannies, especially Debritu, and she is wary of strangers.  But she did fine and I got to give her a few kisses before she decided that she had had enough.  She wouldn't go to Todd right away but that is probably normal since there are not a lot of men around the Layla compound that interact with the littles.

She warmed up to us quickly, especially after we pulled out the fun stuff, like the photo album we brought her.  ALL the kids wanted to get their hands on it and I'm pretty sure that we created mass chaos over that one!  Thank goodness we just bought one of those small $2.00 albums because the album cover ended up being ripped completely off eventually, from all the grabbing that was going on.  Every so often one of the kids would take the album away from Tihun and she would turn around and either sock em one or she would pull out a "grab and pinch" maneuver!  There is much more violence going on there than I even imagined. We chalked it up to survival mode.  It's only natural in an orphanage type setting.....sad, but that's the reality of it.

Soon after we got there, it was time for the kids to go sit on their potty seats, which they call po-po's ....not to be confused with poo-poo's!  lol  I had seen pics of the kids all lined up sitting there but nothing had prepared me for what I was about to witness that day.  The nannies sat them all down on the po-po's around the room, but as soon as they had been sat down....they all started moving around!  Yep...they are "mobile" po-po's.....just like little bumper cars!!  It was hilarious...they were scooting all over the room!  We have a short video of it, but wish we would have been able to get more because it was so funny!

Our first day at in Ethiopia, at Layla and with our little T couldn't have been more perfect.  We got to spend a lot of time with her and also with a lot of the other kids there.  They are all so sweet and I miss them all so much!