And more Ethiopia...

Things are going fantastic in WheelerWorld, but we have had to put SweetPea on allergy medication. She can't seem to hang with all of the GA pollen. Hopefully it will clear up soon.
The top picture is of SweetPea playing with Mee-tu. SweetPea has a really long attention span for her age and actually will play imaginatively by herself for hours. The bottom picture is of her play version of a coffee ceremony (this one I just love to play along with her!)




DAY FIVE, The trip to Asela:
I did not sleep well that night, mostly due to my ever-continuing Addis-Abeba-Belly, but also because we were to meet SweetPea's birth mother. It was really hard to turn those thoughts over in my head. I knew that we wanted to meet her; I knew that we needed to meet her; I knew it was one of the best things that we could do for SweetPea and for our own peace of mind, but I was really, really nervous to meet her. What if she met us and hated that we were going to be SweetPea's parents? What if she took one look at us and walked out of the door? What if meeting us made her life more difficult?
We woke up around 4:30 AM and got ready for the day. SweetPea mostly slept through me getting her ready, and was just barely awake enough to walk through the hotel when Abel came to get us at 5:30. SweetPea mostly slept on the way to the HOH, Abel and D chatted away, and I just took in the sites of Addis at that early hour. There were few people out except children. I saw many children playing soccer in the street. I can understand why; there are very few fields or open areas for these children to play their sport in Addis. So, the early morning provides them with a mostly empty street where they have very few interruptions to their play.
When we arrived at the HOH SweetPea immediately went to lie down with BT and D & I waited for the van to arrive.
Once the van arrived, we loaded up quickly and headed off. The city was waking up and it was interesting to see the shops begin to open and people start their day. On that drive we went through areas of the city that we had not seen previously. There were some areas that in themselves were contrasts. There were large beautiful compounds interwoven with expansive shantytowns that seemed to house hundreds, maybe thousands. The questions crossed my mind wondering how individuals could occupy these compounds and pass so many in need everyday. Does one become desensitized, or does the reality break ones heart daily? In seeing how large the city was, with so many millions living in such dire conditions, I also began to question if the problem that Addis (and Ethiopia as whole) faces is too large. Too big to ever really come to an acceptable solution with healthy, happy residents living productive lives. I still question this and hope to find a way to assist in bringing this to reality.
One of the other things that I noticed was the amount of litter that was present everywhere. Living in the US, we forget the days when littering was not against the law and people could toss whatever they pleased out of their car windows. The amount of trash on the sides of the road was overwhelming. We passed by the Ethiopian Airforce base and it was shocking to see that outside the gates, one could not see the ground because the entire area was filled with trash and litter (and decomposing animals.)
Another shocking thing noticed during the trip was substantial animal cruelty. Children whacking too-thin cattle with large sticks on their heads forcefully to herd them where necessary; Donkey's with their front feet tied together to keep them from walking away; Goats and sheep being forced to walk on their back legs to cross a street because an individual was dragging them by their front legs. I saw all of this, but I couldn't judge these people. You can't. These beautiful people have so little and are just barely eeking out an existence, so you can't look down upon them for not being neat with their trash or being too mean to animals. It would be cruel in many respects to expect them to even give a tinker's-damn about these things.
D and I had both expected the smog to clear once we were out of Addis, but it did not. In some of the areas that we passed it seemed much worse. We also expected there to be wide expanses of space where we saw no people, but that also did not happen. On the whole drive down to Asela, we always saw people hiking along side the road. All of those individuals with a very obvious purpose. Some were children heading to school in brightly colored school uniforms, others were farmers heading out to the fields, women with babies on their backs herding animals... It was all fascinating to see, and the one thing that both D and I noticed was that everyone looked happy, most even wore beautiful smiles.
We arrived in Asela by mid-morning and were escorted into Numan Orphanage Center. It was a small clean little compound with a nice little garden area. We met with the director, then were brought into a sitting room where about 12 children were sitting. They sat there very quiet and stared shyly at us. Finally, I began asking them their names (Semi-manno/Semi-manish?); most just answered with their names, but two older girls actually replied with "My name is ....". I was surprised, and obviously happy that these girls were getting an education. The children were all so beautiful, but most were very shy. The young children were getting fidgety, so we asked Abel to ask the nannies if the children could play. They got out a small bag of dolls and stuffed animals. It was cute, but shocking to see how few toys they had available. The two older girls began putting braids in the dolls hair, but they were clearly bored. I asked Abel to find out their ages (10 & 12), and the girls were very happy to give more information about themselves. I think about those girls often. I know there is little hope that either of them will find a home before they are forced to leave the orphanage.
We spoke with the children for a while before we met with SweetPea's birth mother. As much as I would love to share this with everyone, I really feel that it's SweetPea that needs to hear all of it first. I will say, however, that SweetPea's birth mother is a beautiful and very strong woman. I wish her all the best in her life and I thank her daily for this most precious gift.
When we left the orphanage, I looked back to wave to the children and I caught the eye of that beautiful 12-year-old girl. It was one of those moments that stick in your head. You know, the ones that are captured like a slow-moving video, the ones where you know every detail of everything happening around you at that moment in time. There was so much in that little girls eyes; whoever said that a soul is viewed through the eyes was so very right. I hope that we will be able to meet that little girl again one day.
Our drive leaving the orphanage was somber. Abel had the van driver take us to a local restaurant. I still was not feeling very well, but everyone else was hungry. I tried not to order anything, but that appeared to be a cultural feauxpas, so I order spaghetti. We ate and chatted for a while, but again I did a social no-no by not eating much of my food. I hated offending people, but I was seriously on the verge of ralphing and I thought that would probably go over even worse than the not eating. It took quite some time to get the bill, and it was hard not to be antsy because I really wanted to get back to SweetPea. When were finally able to pay, it was shocking how little we paid for the mounds of food they served us.
The drive from there was completely silent. D and I were both lost in thought and Abel went to sleep. The driver probably thought we were a really boring lot. When we were no far out of Addis, we stopped at the Dreamland Family Resort. It was interestingly on this little residential street overlooking a lake. It looked as if they served really good traditional food, but none of us were hungry and only got drinks. Again we were there for quite some time. This was one of the most difficult things for me while in Ethiopia. It was so hard to function on someone else's time clock. I am so accustomed to deciding when and where I do everything, it was tough to give up that control (yes, I am a control freak... I'm working on it.)
The drove back to the HOH was distance-wise very short, time-wise hours. There was substantial construction on the roads on the southside of Addis, and it made driving through very treacherous. We almost got stuck a couple of times and I was reeling with motion sickness by the time we pulled up to the HOH gate.
SweetPea greeted us with the famous Ethiopian 'piss-off' shoulder shrug and stink-eye; by this time we were so accustomed to it that it was almost a welcome greeting. We played for a short time with all of the children, then headed off to the hotel to have dinner.
SweetPea did her usual routine of throwing a tantrum through the hotel (the guards knew her by name this time and admonished her), but this one was different because she immediately stopped when we got to our room. It was a very appreciated change in her behavior.
D got us pizza from the hotel's pizzeria that night for dinner, and it was actually a very chilled-out evening. We played with SweetPea's toys and she went to sleep fairly easily that night.