Back to Addis and Home, November 22-27

This is it.  The final post detailing our first trip to Ethiopia.  I have been thinking about Ethiopia and the kids all day today, so it seems like a good time to wrap up the court date trip posts.

After sharing coffee and dabo with Zerfu, we piled in a minibus headed to Sashamene.  The trip was quick and pretty uneventful.  We let our driver and his assistant know that we were looking to catch a minibus back to Addis and they dropped us off at a cafe on the main road.  For those of you that don't know, Sashamene is the Rastafarian capital of Ethiopia.  The connection between the Rastafarian religion and Ethiopia is a strange one to me even as an avid lover of reggae music, and I don't know if it is worth explaining in this post, but Sashamene has a small colony of Jamaican Rastafarians living in it.  It also has a larger drug culture than anywhere else in Ethiopia and is considered by many Ethiopians to be a bit on the seedy side.  I felt a little more on guard here than anywhere else we had been in Ethiopia; however, nothing in our short experience there confirmed my cautiousness.

A few minutes after we had gotten comfortable at the cafe, a couple of guys gestured that our bus had arrived and corralled us toward one of the nicest, newest minibusses I had seen in Ethiopia.  Brent was reluctant to let them put our bags on the top, as we had taken them inside with us on all the previous larger busses, but there was really no room inside the minibus so he relented.  I thought he was being over-cautious, but I guess he had the last laugh on that one because not 100 yards down the road his backpack flew off the top of the bus and landed in the middle of the road.  We got the driver to stop and recover his bag and we headed off again.  A few blocks later, my pack had the same fate.  This time Brent demanded to let him tie the bags to the top of the bus and I said nothing.

After a good hour or so driving around Sashamene to pick up more customers and load large amounts of rebar onto the top of the minibus, we were off.  Again, the trip was pretty uneventful.  I made sure not to move around too much for fear that someone might catch on to the fact that I hadn't showered in nearly a week.  When we arrived in Addis, we had another passenger that spoke English and could translate for us inform the driver where we were headed and he dropped us off at the closest spot on his route.  From their we caught a taxi back to the King's Hotel where we, believe it or not, got lunch before we finally took advantage of the hot shower.  It was later in the afternoon and all we had to eat all day was coffee and a piece of bread with Zerfu, so our stomachs insisted we put our shower plans on hold until we got some food.  We went to a nice Western style restaurant that we had eaten at before near the King's and I ordered a burger and fries.  It was delicious!

Our last few days in Addis were really tough for me.  We learned that the slight possibility of me being able to stay in Addis for a few weeks so we could bring the kids home in early December was no longer a possibility.  We also did not visit the kids out of fear of sending the wrong message to them.  When we had said good bye a few weeks ago, we told them that the next time we came back we would be bringing them back to America with us, so it was important that we kept that promise.  It was VERY hard not to walk right into Ashagre's class and scoop him up the few times that we needed to visit Layla House to discuss our adoption with AAI's adoption coordinator.  Instead, we snuck in the main gate when no kids were looking so as not to let Ashagre know we were around.  It pretty much sucked.

We did find out that we were legally Elsa and Ashagre's parents while we were back in Addis.  AAI's adoption coordinator had told us to call her in the afternoon of the 24th because that was our second court date.  Around 2, we gave her a call and she told us very quickly that both kids had passed court.  That was it.  We were legally their parents!  We spent 3 hours in the internet cafe that afternoon uploading 4 photos of us with the kids since we were now allowed to put pictures of them on the internet.  At night, we went out for a celebratory Thanksgiving dinner at an Indian restaurant with some fellow food-loving adoptive parents who also had reason to celebrate that day.  Below is the obligatory Thanksgiving feast photo.  Boy did we feast!  Brent and Charles made sure of it.

We spent the rest of our days in Addis sight-seeing and trying to learn a bit more about Elsa's past.  We visited the Ethnological Museum, which has pretty interesting displays on Ethiopia's culture from birth through death and the National Museum - home to Lucy, the evolutionary "missing link".  Both museums were very interesting and worth a visit.  I found them to be especially great after traveling around Ethiopia a bit and seeing some of the topics covered in the museum, like the stelae fields, first-hand.

One day we met back up with Yusef, our guide from the Bale Mountain Horse Trekking Trip.  With him we went up Entoto Mountain, one of the highest peaks just outside of Addis offering nice views of the city below.  At the top of the mountain we visited the Entoto Maryam Church and Emperor Menelik II's palace.  Emperor Menelik II was the ruler that defeated the Italians at Adwa in 1896, making Ethiopia the only country in Africa that was not colonized by the Europeans (something Ethiopians, rightly, are very proud of).  After defeating the Italians, Emperor Menelik II founded Addis Ababa as the country's new capital and started a period of modernization in Ethiopia in which electricity and telephones were introduced and bridges, roads, schools, hospitals, and a railway were built.

Yusef outside of Emperor Menelik's banquet hall.

Emperor Menelik's home.

In addition to sight-seeing, we also did some shopping while we were in Addis.  We stocked up on coffee, souvenirs, and Christmas gifts at some of the small shops on Churchill Road.  We also bought some spices at the Merkato (Africa's largest market).  Shopping was the only time in Addis that I got exhausted just being a farangi, as it felt like everyone wanted us to spend money in their shops and each of the shops had the same stuff.  I am not much of a shopper anyway, so as soon as we checked everything off of our list we called it a day.  The next day we realized we needed to buy a small suitcase back at the Merkato to bring our souvenirs home.  The Merkato is known for being a bit seedy - its a good idea to watch your belongings - but we hired a taxi driver, Henok, that lives behind King's Hotel to take us there.  He knows his way around the Merkato well, and was a good guide.  He even tried to help Brent with his bargaining, but Brent wasn't paying attention to his facial expressions, and he couldn't offer more assistance for fear of being beaten up by the shop owner.  When Brent left the shop feeling pretty proud of his bargaining skills, Henok quickly brought him down a notch by letting him know he easily paid 150-200 birr too much.

One day while we were out and about in Addis, we visited an Orthodox Christian church that has some significance to Elsa's story.  While I won't share any details here, I will share some of the pictures that Brent took.  It was a very peaceful place.

Road in the neighborhood near the church.  It had been raining off
and on in Addis.

Road leading away from the church.

Finally, our time in Ethiopia was up.  I'll admit that I was ready to go home, but only because staying in Addis and not spending time with the kids was killing me.  Our flight was out in the evening, so we spent our last day in Addis drinking coffee and avoiding the large downpours that appeared out of nowhere from time to time.  Henok had agreed to meet us at the King's Hotel at 5 pm to take us to the airport.  As we were walking back to the King's to meet him we spotted a rainbow, which you can very faintly make out in this picture.

On the way to the airport Henok was blaring a radio station that was playing Ethiopian reggae.  One of the songs was about Ethiopia.  It spelled out E-T-H-I-O-P-I-A as part of the chorus and was a great soundtrack to our last few minutes driving through Addis.  Brent and I tried to remember the musician because we wanted to track down the tune when we got home, but we forgot.  Maybe we'll hear it again when we return.

The flight home was smooth, long, tiring, and rather uneventful.  I spent the entire trip trying to place myself in Elsa and Ashagre's shoes when they make the journey with us next time.  It was a lot to process and left me a bit heavy-hearted as I tried and understand how overwhelmed and sad they might feel as they make that trip.  I know it will be a tough trip for me too.  While I will be overjoyed that they are finally joining our family for good, I will be very sad for all they are leaving behind in such a wonderful country.