Our Trip to Ethiopia--Part 4, Our Ethiopia Experience.....Court Day

Cont. from  Part 3....
As I was laying in bed after a long day....I was thinking about the little guy that had that great big sore on his leg.  All of us that were staying at Kings from AAI pretty much "adopted" this young lady.  Each time any of us passed by her we gave her a little something.....a few birr, a protein bar or some water.  All of a sudden it came to me.  We had a new tube of antibacterial cream that we brought with us.  I decided that I would put it in my bag and when we saw her the next morning, I would give it to her for her little guy.

Day 3 in Ethiopia.....

This was to be a very exciting day.....it was Court Day!  We didn't have to be dressed, at Layla and ready for court until 1:30 p.m. so we dressed in our "gonna be attacked by 15 toddlers" clothes.  The plan was to head back to the hotel at lunch time, eat, get dressed for court and then be back at Layla by 1:15 or so.

We headed out to go to Layla for the morning and I was really looking forward to getting that tube of "protection" to that Mother, but sadly, she was nowhere to be found.

We arrived at Layla and right away I asked about Tihun's Mother.  This was court day and I knew that the Families were due to arrive and then be transported to court by an AAI driver.  I was told that all of the families had already left for court, we missed our opportunity to meet T's Mom....or so I thought.

We went into the toddler room and had been there about an hour.  Everything was going well until I asked the head nanny if we could have Tihun's photo album that we sent to her after we accepted her referral.  The nanny nodded yes, scooped Tihun up in her arms and started heading out of the toddler compound.  We decided to follow along.  We rounded the corner and entered into the office area and as I looked up, the first thing I saw was a row of Ethiopian women all dressed up and sitting in the chairs that lined one side of the room.  Immediately I wondered what we were walking into.  Most of what happened next is pretty much a blur to me but basically what was going on was that Tihun's Mother had requested to see her one more time.  They were trying to get Tihun to go to her Mother, who she didn't know anymore.... and she didn't want to get anywhere near her.  Then they tried to get her to come to me, which she did momentarily, until she realized that her favorite nanny was trying to sneak away and go back to the toddler area.  By this time T was all out screaming and very upset and I turned around just in time to see T's Mother crying and leaving the room.  Obviously this whole scene was very upsetting to her Mom.  Tihun didn't know anyone that was in the room, except for Todd and I...and really, she didn't even know us very well at all.  I was in complete shock watching this whole thing play out.  We can speak and understand only a few words of Amharic so we didn't know what was being said.  Finally I couldn't take it anymore so I took off down the hallway to find someone to explain to me why they all felt it necessary to torture this child??  Finally I got an English speaking person who explained to me that the lady was T's Mom, which I pretty much figured out on my own, and that she wanted to have a visit with T.  I explained to him that this wasn't a good way of going about that, and that T was getting way too upset and so I asked if she could just go back to the toddler area?  He said yes and then they allowed T's Mom to come back there with us.

We got back to the toddler area and everyone was teary, Tihun, her Mother, Debritu...(T's favorite nanny) and me.  Whew!  It took Debritu a good 1/2 hour or so to get her calmed down.  Debritu is excellent at her job and soon she even had T going back and forth between me and her Mom.  T was happy and she even let her Mom hug and kiss her, and she reciprocated the affection.  We were also able to have a conversation with T's Mom through the social worker.  It was a great conversation.  I decided to keep things short and simple because of the emotional time we just went through, and also the fact that we were planning on making the trip to T's Mom's home when we go back to get T.  T's Mom told us that she was happy that T was going to have a good family and she was happy that she was going to live in America.  I asked her if it was alright if we came to visit her when we came back to Ethiopia and she said yes.  She very much enjoyed looking through the two photo albums that we brought with us that had pics of our family, our home etc. and Tihun.  We let her choose as many pictures as she wanted and told her that we would be putting together an album especially for her and that we would bring it with us when we come back.  We took a bunch of pictures of her and T and all of us together.  All in all what started out to be a disaster ended with lots of hugs and kisses and promises be back soon.

**Disclaimer--I don't blame AAI at all for what happened.  It was something that -just happened- it was unforeseen and was remedied as quickly as possible.  I'm pretty sure that they've taken notes on that one and have learned something.  The down side to what happened is that T became very leary of us.  For the rest of that day and part of the next day she mostly only wanted to watch us from a distance or would only be by us if Debritu was right there.  EVERY kid in the toddler room loved us EXCEPT Tihun  =(
That was hard, but we understood and backed off until she was ready.

Before we left for lunch we were told that our court time was pushed back to 2:30.  Great, we thought, that will give us a little more time.  We headed out and went to have lunch at ***, this is the restaurant above Kaldi's....the coffee shop that looks strikingly familiar to a very popular coffee shop here in the states.

Here are some of the views of Addis from the balcony
of the restaurant:

We ate lunch and then headed to the hotel so that we could freshen up before court.  We got ready and left in plenty of time to get back to Layla early.  Unexpectedly we came upon our sweet Mom and the little guy with a leg problem.  I quickly reached into my bag and grabbed my antibiotic cream before anyone else on the street could see what I was doing.  She was sitting down on the sidewalk so I knelt down and motioned for her to show me her son's leg.  I opened the cream and was trying to explain as I was putting it on him.  Thankfully, a very nice Ethiopian man stopped and asked if he could help us.  I had him tell her how important it was for her to keep putting the cream on his leg and I also had him explain to her that if she didn't put it on there he could get an infection and either have to go to the hospital or he could possibly die from it.  We thanked the man for helping us and we went on our way. I felt so relieved that we found her and that someone was actually there to translate for us so I knew she totally understood.

We arrived at Layla and found that hardly anyone was around.  We kind of expected to see a group of families waiting.  We walked into the office and Gail came rushing out to tell us that everyone had been looking for us because the court had called and they wanted everyone to come now.  The power had gone out earlier and that's why they pushed back the court times but the power came back on so they wanted everyone to come again at their scheduled time.  Gail said that from now on they weren't going to change plans because of what the court says, they were just going to continue to show up at their scheduled times!  TIA is something you hear a lot.....which means "This Is Africa".  Yep. The rest of the group had already left and we were to leave now with Abrahim.  Abrahim was great, as he was driving us through town he was telling us all about everything.  We learned so much during that drive.  

We arrived at the court house and went up a few flights of stairs.  We were ushered into a very plain room that had many couples sitting in chairs along every wall.  There were no chairs left so we sat down next to two couples, that were also from AAI, on some sort of wood platform that was very low to the floor.  It's a good thing that we arrived when we did because we were called in right away.  We went into a small room where the judge sat at one side and Yared, one of AAI's lawyers sat at the other.  We were asked to sit in two chairs that were right in the middle of the room.  The judge was very beautiful, soft spoken and graceful.  I knew instantly that I was going to like her.  She asked us questions like.....How many children do you have?......How do your children feel about you adding another child to the family?......Have you spent time with Tihun?.......How do you intend to keep T's Ethiopian culture alive for her?......What have you done to prepare for this adoption?.......Do you realize that problems could arise, and what would you do to remedy this?.....Do you realize that this is permanent and cannot be undone once decided?  We also talked about Hana and how she came to our family....how her first placement didn't work out very well and that she has been with us for almost a year now.  She asked how things were going and we told her they were going really well.  She looked up at us, smiled and and said "Wonderful."  I could tell that this made her very happy.......

Then she hit us with a bomb that we didn't expect.  She said that Tihun's file was missing a paper from the Oromo region and she would need that paper before a decision could be made.  She also noted that our file was expired.  Actually, we weren't expired because we got re-fingerprinted in July and turned in our updated homestudy to USCIS before our actual expiration date.  Normally adoption agencies don't re-do your dossier with all of your updated stuff, they usually just keep it on file, and usually the judge doesn't even look at the expiration date.  The updates are really for the U.S. embassy.  So unfortunately we didn't pass court and we didn't get to hear the judge say "She is yours"......oh how I wanted to hear her say that.  =(    

So the judge rescheduled us for November 26th.  Meaning AAI would come up with the needed papers and she would go over our file once more at that later date......we didn't have to reappear because we fulfilled our requirement, which was to prove that we were there and that we had spent time with T and still wanted her.

Most of the families didn't pass court that day....even families that were with other agencies.  Most of these other family's problems were because of missing MOWA approval letters though, only one other family that I know of was also told that they were expired.  (MOWA is short for "Ministry of Women's Affairs.")

Here are some scenes from around Addis Ababa:

This is Addis Ababa University

The Yekatit 12 Monument.  Dedicated to the thousands of 

innocent Ethiopians who were killed by the Italians in 1937.

Building with....WHAT?! .....wooden scaffolding?  

Where's OSHA when ya need em??!!

The van ride back to Layla was a somber one.  With not very many families passing court, things were pretty quiet.  On our way back we stopped at a really cool coffee bar that is extremely popular.  As we were getting out of the van we pretty much got mobbed by a whole bunch of peddlers trying to sell us anything and everything!  Somehow I managed to get by them on the way into the coffee store though.  I bought a whole bunch of coffee in a couple of different size bags and also a couple of really cool cloth bags that had the store logo etc. on them.   I was happy.  I walked out of the store and got mobbed by all of the peddlers again and I made the mistake of touching a necklace that caught my eye.  After that, the guy wouldn't let me pass.  I said "Ishy"... which means ok... "How much"?  He told me something ridiculous like 300 birr which is about 17 U.S. dollars.  I said slyly.... "For two"?  He looked at me with a kind of insulted look and said firmly  "No....one, one only." I said "200" he said "No, 250..250"  and I said "150"....then he got really mad.  By this time we were drawing a pretty large crowd, including everyone that was in our van.  I was getting tired of this and I really didn't want the necklace that bad anyway so I just gave him a "talk to the hand" kind of motion and started pushing past him.  He got frantic and said "Ishy....150!"  I said fine and then went to get out my money and realized that I had spent almost all of the birr that I had taken out of our bigger stash.  I turned around and said "Sorry....I don't have."  Then he said "100"!!  I said, a little firmer  "I don't have" and shook my head and held out my hands.  He kept saying "100, 100" and I finally said I only have 50.  He got mad and I started to leave again and in his desperation he caved!!  "ISHY"!  He said "50".  So I happily handed him the 50 birr, took my necklace, and turned to get in the van.  I looked up and everyone in the van was cheering.  I had forgotten how many people were watching this whole thing take place.  They were all amazed at my expert bartering abilities  =)  Because I am so nice I will divulge my "secret"......  All you have to do is act like you are interested and then act like you don't want it anymore.  It drives them crazy!  They will either lower the price on the item you were looking at or they will move on to trying to sell you a different item.  And walking away drives them even more crazy!

**Disclaimer #2---Something I noticed while there was that the bartering wasn't like what people had described to me.  People told us that the Ethiopians really enjoy a good bartering session but I think that maybe things have change a little bit.  The Ethiopian Birr has really depreciated and their economy is so bad over there that I really think that trying to get the lowest price out of them may not be so fair of us to do.  I mean, was 17 dollars so bad to pay for a sweet "guys" necklace?  I kept forgetting how much their Birr actually was in U.S. dollars.  The only reason I "talked" him down so far was 1) I decided that I really didn't care if I bought the necklace or not....and.....2) I really didn't have the amount of money he wanted.  I did end up feeling slightly guilty.  It's hard though, when they say 300 birr....to me it seemed like such a huge amount of money......but it's not really.

That night we went to dinner again with the volunteer group and were so surprised when none other than Ivy Dash shows up!  Ivy worked for AAI for around 3 years and did a wonderful job keeping the kids in line and being a much needed liaison between the parents and children or the parents and staff at Layla.  She doesn't currently work there right now and is greatly missed by children and staff.  We had a wonderful time with Ivy over dinner and then made plans with Ivy and Susan's group to do something special the next night.  =)  THAT will be for tomorrow's post.