After leaving Calgary late Tuesday afternoon, I arrive in Addis at 9 PM Wed. I am greeted by the nicest young man, who takes me to the Ethiopian Guesthouse (I recommend it - not the Hilton but you will taste the local flavour and meet some great people there) for some much needed rest, but first I arrange with the Adoption Agency's driver to pick me up very early the next morning.
After a breakfast made notable by rich, dark buna (coffee) and superb conversation with several American adoptive parents and their kids, I'm off to meet Embakom. The drive is bizarre - so this is Addis Ababba. It was dark when I arrived, so I didn't see the mountains, the huge size of the city, the traffic, or the people. People everywhere! So very crowded, and people so busy, even those with clearly nothing to do - roaming, scavenging, begging, always moving among the ever-honking cars.
And suddenly, here I am in a little room, and there he is. He's looking at me like he knows me, and is happy to see me although shy at first. He's clutching his every worldly possession - a backpack that we sent with a friend a few months back, and it's meagre contents of hot wheels, a ball, a stuffed monkey. He's anxious to show me the photos that were in the pack, pointing at us and saying Mommy, Daddy, Nootie. Luckily I have my own pack, full of toys, treats, bubbles to blow and other neat things, so we begin to play. He laughs a lot, and loves to make me laugh if he can think of something funny, like pretending to fall over or scolding his monkey for breaking bubbles. There is a coffee ceremony to mark our meeting, and I talk with the nurse and teacher to ask about what supplies are needed. This is a transition House, not an orphanage, and it houses only kids who are already legally adopted by Canadians and are waiting for travel visas. Nevertheless, this house is run by an agency that struggled through a bankruptcy just a year ago, and the need for donations to help the staff care for these kids is evident. These little ones spend from 4 - 7 months here, sometimes more, and they need so much medical care, and are so nutritionally deprived, that the staff need all the help they can get.
Before I know it, I am being rushed away, to travel to Woylaita to meet Embakom's family and to see his village. I hope he understands that I'll be back for him soon; I try to get the nurse to explain but I'm not sure he isn't upset by my leaving. But this trip is something I really wanted to do for him, so we have some pieces of his past to share with him when he starts to ask about his life in Ethiopia.
I can't describe the 8 hour drive. I'll just fail to impress upon you how crazy the roadway is. It's a tiny, two-way road with no shoulders to speak of that serves as a major travel route for an entire region. There are a million cars, trucks, buses and vans, all spewing thick black smog and honking non-stop. There are cattle, donkeys, horses, goats, dogs, hens and other animals all along the road, and people. Hundreds of people walk along the road, and so very many are children. I saw dozens of children without accompanying adults who couldn't have been more than 4 or 5 walking alone or in pairs along this busiest of roadways, most barefoot, some driving livestock with a stick, many yelling with excitement as this Ferengi passed. I had brought a big bag of balls and tiny wind-up toys to give to the orphanage in Sodo, and a ton of granola bars, and I passed many of these out the window to these kids whenever we slowed enough. I'm attaching a video clip I shot out the window, but there are others on youtube (try road to Sodo) that do the travel better justice than mine.
We arrive at dusk, and I settle in to what my driver explains is the only "best first-class" hotel in town. At about $12.00 a night, it is clean. The power goes out right away and the town is pitch black by 8 PM, so I sleep.
Our last day in Addis, and we spend most of it in play around the Guest House.
