Re-Memory

(Photo was taken about a month and a half after she left the orphanage)

I actually had wanted to respost this 2 weeks ago, but unfortunately, my old blog was down (and I thought dead for good), but so glad it wasn't.

Funny, I had already forgotten some of this detail.


So, about Ethiopia...

Part 1: The first Few Days and Picking Up My Girl

It's been a while since I have written a real post. Not sure I can do it now. I'm tired, and impressions have become melded together with time, but I will try to remember all I can of those 9 1/2 weeks in Ethiopia, especially b/c I did not keep an intended journal while I was there, and I need to write things down for Malía about that time. So, here goes nothing! Early March 13th, I got the news- the court date had cleared, Malía was MINE! I boarded at Pearson in Toronto on the 14th, with a happier heart than I had, had in months.

After a loooong, but uneventful flight on KLM where I watched 2 Brad Pitt movies (and never having seen what most see in the infamous "Bra-" of Brangelina fame, I fell in love. Yes, by the end of Babel, I was ready to have the man's children, or die trying. lol) , was fed every 2 hours like a newborn (most of which I stashed for my BF- ), and getting to see Sudan in a sand storm, I landed in Addis Ababa, March 15th at 9:55pm. The first person I saw was my BF, who had arrived 16 hrs before, waving his arms like a crazy man. The second I saw was our POA,(call him "S") someone I would come to know as a dignified, patient and steady man to have on my side, holding a welcome bouquet. The Damu Hotel (overpriced, under serviced, and a rip off) held another surprise- white and pink roses and a beautiful card from my BF, welcoming me to the land where I was about to become a mother. And, yeah, that when it hit me... this was REAL. Malía was IN this city. I would see her tomorrow. A combo of jet lag, anticipation, a mattress about as soft as prison floor, and weird sounds outside kept me up all night, but I was still ready to rock when S came for us the next morning.

We have been to Haiti many times, we know the zealousness of orphan children with new visitors, otherwise both my BF and I would have been overwhelmed with about 20 of the ambulant little ones, ranging in ages from about 24 months to 12 years literally rushing us as we came through the gate. Bf's fuzzy face was a big hit with the cuddlers, my red sunglasses a bigger hit with just about everybody else. We had kids hanging on our arms, our shoulders, and our legs. :)

I had thought I was going to be led right in to see my baby, but ritual abounds, I guess- I had to wait until she was newly bathed, and powdered. Babies kept being brought out into the court yard for one reason, or another, so after a while I stopped popping up eagerly, thinking each was Malía, so it was a good 30 seconds before I realized that the little one a house mom was now holding, patiently waiting for my response was, indeed, my Malía!

Once I looked, I knew her immediately- she was just like her pictures, only much smaller and no rash around her mouth anymore! But, yup, there were the "Mr. T" hair, and the long graceful fingers. I didn't cry, as I know some moms have, and I was a little surprised at myself, but I think I was just too stunned. This was my daughter. I would be getting to take her WITH ME in a couple of days... take her with me forever.

I don't remember much more about that day as I held her, except that there was a coffee ceremony, and meeting the orphanage director... oh, and tears... tears over Kaia when the orphanage director realized who I was and we talked of my first lovely girl, my angel... but then just more holding my daughter, letting her suck my finger, and then getting to change her diaper and see her perfect baby body in all its tiny glory.

When I put her into her crib, nestled in among about 6 others just like it, she smiled that mischievous smile, I now see every morning, first thing. I don't recall too much else of the next couple of days except switching from the Damu to a Guest House, throwing up from the combo of high altitude, incense being burned at another coffee (buna)ceremony (they use charcoal IN the house!) and good old jet lag, and taking Malía for her birth certificate pics, but suddenly, it was the 19th of March, St Joseph's Day, Patron Saint of Adopted Children, and the day I would bring Malía "home" with me!

Ethiopians fast for 55 days during Lent. Okay, so I thought the 40 we Catholics do could be rough, but let me tell you, the Christian Orthodox , there, do it no nonsense: no butter, no meat, no dairy, no fish, no NADA!! So, what do I and my BF do? Bring cake for our special day and also his one-day-early b-day bash :) We weren't being disprespectful; we just didn't know any better yet. The orphanage director says, "Is it fasting cake?" Here we are with 36 pieces of the stuff, so of course we said YES!! She looked at it in all it's Black Forest yummy-ness, scowled and said, "Like no fasting cake I have ever seen", but allowed us to share it out. She even had Bf hold a candle and be sung to in Amharic before that!

The kids were so cute- each came, politely, and I ripped a piece of cake box cardboard to use as a "plate", placed the cake on it, and each child went and sat along the wall on a ledge to indulge. The orphanage director would not break her fast, but that didn't stop the majority of the house moms from a piece, and later two! lol And, all this while, my baby girl is being passed from arms to arms and kissed and coddled... everyone knew she was leaving and it was hard for them, even the kids- maybe especially the kids... I knew I wanted to leave right then... no third cup of coffee (caffeine tradition- yikes!) for me, just give me my girl and let me scat.

Well, the scat was more a slow crawl to the gate, as everyone continued to hang on, but finally there we were, in a cab, dodging other blue and white cabs, and transit buses, and goats in the street. In a heartbeat, the orphanage was no longer home, and she was no longer baby Kalkidan, she was now Malía, only- Malía Dilana Danièl.

The rest of that day is a bit of a blur, and I would recall little, except that, Kim, another single mom to be, staying at the same GH, took a zillion pics of the first bath, first diaper change, first bottle feeding, first everything, so I know we at least washed and fed her before putting her to bed between us. That moment when she closed her eyes on that day, marked the end of restful sleep for me, and the end of "just me". I now had my daughter. I now had a an indentity beyond teacher, friend, cousin... I was MOTHER.

Entry #120 Posted: Wed May 30, 2007 @ 18:55 (MDT) 4 Comments 0 Trackbacks
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So about Ethiopia: Part 2 (nutshell version)

(Edited to add today, April 3rd, 2 years later... I wish I had appreciated our time there much more b/c now I miss it sooo!)

Basically, here it is- if I had gone to Ethiopia for vacation, or to do volunteer work, I am SURE I would have enjoyed it more. If I had gotten out of Addis Ababa for good, I know I would have enjoyed it more. If my timeline had been anywhere near what my agency quoted me for our stay, I would have enjoyed it more. AND, if I could speak Amharic, then for certain, all else aside, I would have been crazy for it! :) But, as it is, it was "okay". Scale of 1 to 10, puts it at about a 6 to 7. And, truth is, I never really felt I was in Africa, weird as that may sound. So, why not an 10, or at least a 9, an 8? Well, for all the above reasons, and also b/c I just felt really isolated. Yes, I had Malía and was so grateful for her, but at 5 months, she wasn't carrying on any conversations, or helping make any decisions. :) I later had another single mom from Canada to talk to, vent with, hang with, and that helped, but the feeling of "alone" didn't ever really go away.

I wasn't so bad for the 1st 3 weeks my BF was with me, but after he left and I had moved into a more afforable (read: low rent!) hotel, I just really felt "removed". The hotel was called the Yonas and if I was travelling without a baby, then it would've been ideal- big bed, a shower, a tv, little outer room, internet downstairs and a stone balcony. Sounds nice, and it was (and the staff was sooo nice)however it was on a very noisy (goats, vendors, nearby main road etc) dirt road and the room, itself, though cleaned daily, just never seemed it, you know? I had nowhere to put Malía down for a while, and as a result, she took a header off the bed one day when I turned my head to pick up the phone. The balcony was safe in terms of falling OFF, but not in terms of falling DOWN. She was sitting there one day, still in her "Weavels wobble" stage, and the next thing I know, though I was right with her, she'd fall into the stone floor. Thankfully, though, it just scared her a bit. I was dying to move into somewhere a little more upscale, somewhere with a fridge, with a tub, but with the 4 to 6 weeks I had been quoted, now into week 8, I was terrified finances would run out. In the end, I was at a much better hotel for a week, and suddenly having a really CLEAN place to be, being able to put Malía safely on the floor to play, having GREEN around us in the form of trees and flowers and GRASS when Addis is basically high rises and conrete... Heaven!

Another thing about this hotel was the location. I usually love being in a traditional setting when I travel, but after a while, while at the Yonas and in a very Ethio-cultured neighbourhood, I just craved a place to go and have a meal without battling to be understood, and where meat was cooked through! The pollution really got to me, too. You know how in Canada, or the States, you can look down a road and sometimes there is not a single car, or person, in sight? Not so, in Addis. Besides commercial trucks, domestic cars and gov't vehicles, it is a sea of public transportation, either blue and white for the taxis and minivans, or orange/red for the "poor man's" buses. Trying to cross the road, on foot, is like trying to dodge bullets in a shooting gallery. I perfected a technique, though, where I simply stuck out my hand and COMMANDED a stop and they did! lol But, pedestrian hazards, aside, it was the air in Addis b/c of these vehicles, many, many spewing black exhaust as they drove. Or worse yet, when they were stopped. Here's a rule for taking a cab in Addis: do not do so btwn the hours of 9am and 11am and then again between 3 and 5 b/c you will spend 1/2 the ride moving at about 10 km an hour, or not at all! You think Toronto has traffic jams? You have GOT to experience one in Addis, sitting in the back of a cab, trying NOT to breathe in the putrid air and keeping your daughter's face as covered as possible without suffocating her, politely fending off persistent beggars and little children selling packs of "David Beckham" tissues, while wishing you had enough spare cash to buy their whole stock. Geesh!

So, whenever we could, we walked. I kept Malía in a sling the whole 9 1/2 weeks, and she was a great little traveller, and no trouble at all, even when I was on foot. The only disadvantage to this was that I was a prime target for people wanting something, especially men wanting to be "my friend". I had one guy, about 25, maybe 26, great Rasta look to him, very cute, basically stalk me to the point where I stopped going to Bole Road, period. And, someone else had a young guy unexpectedly give her a kiss in an outdoor café and squirt beer into her mouth in the process! The people are wonderful and soooo sweet and helpful, but the young men? At least to Western women? Aggressive and rather annoying, and not afraid to use the babies we were carrying as a means to get close to us! I told one guy, who had met my BF that he was actually my boyfriend to get him to back off and you know what he said? "Boyfriend is a relative term"!! Double Geesh!

Walking also put us much closer to things I would rather not have seen, like the mass goat/sheep abbatoire-fest on Easter Saturday and then their skins piled high on ever corner!

Now, for what I did like. See, ya knew it had to be coming, right?

I liked the people. I liked their friendliness and the variety of peoples, and dress. So cool to see Christian and Muslim together, at peace. I liked feeling safe. (Yes, despite the Lonely Planet books and the warnings, I ALWAYS felt safe, even when at the famed Merkato) I liked the architecture of churches and older buildings, and in looking it up, once home, found a book (too expensive at $50 + to buy) about Portuguese influence on Ethiopian design. Too cool! I liked quite a bit of the food. I won't eat chicken when away, unless I can trully identify it as such (baaad experience in Haiti lol), but the Shiro (spicy chick pea sauce), burger patties, and tuna salads etc were awesome. I wanted to like the Injera (the "bread" made of teff used as a untensil and sustenance) but it didn't like me b/c it always gave me major heartburn, so I had to leave it alone. I liked how helpful the cabbies were (once you told them that no way, no how, were you paying their asking prices!! lol)and adored "my" taxi driver, Alias, who called me "Miss Malía's Mama" and only charged me 30 birr an hour regardless of where I wanted to go. :) I liked/loved the countryside with it's quaint mud homes, horse drawn "buggies", camels (as you go South), reservoirs, gorgeous birds (I saw one the was turquoise on the bottom and orange on the top- too cool!), fields, blue skies.

Ethiopia is land bound, so water is very much appreciated and respected. We went to a lake area called Debra Zeit, a place that here would be taken for granted, even overlooked with it's muddy shore and small, dark waters, but there, it was jam packed with people, mostly youth, relaxing, swimming (right near shore and with water-wings! lol), eating "chat" (cocoa leaf that has a hallucinigenic effect, smoking the bong (I kept looking around for Cheech!)eating peanuts and drinking coca-cola. It was the "place to be". I liked making friends at places I frequented a lot, and having people take Malía for a moment in an interent café, or restaurant so that I could type/eat a little more comfortably. I liked the beautiful big cats at the Lion Park (but hated that they were in this little round cement comound, instead of fenced onto the lovely green grounds!) I liked the 2 country reps for our agency that were so helpful and sweet, even when the agency left us hanging when things got tough (but you can keep the new "Manager" that came on board 2 weeks before we left- talk about an arrogant SOB!) I liked learning new words (man, Amaharic is HARD!) and getting to use them. I liked bartering for souvenirs and making the vendors laugh. I liked St. George on draft! And, really there is so much more that will come to me, later, I am sure, but mostly, I just liked...no.. loved... being there with my daughter, learning about her country, bonding with my precious girl a little more each day (and that is a story, in itself, for another time!)

Entry #124 Posted: Sun Jun 3, 2007 @ 08:18 (MDT) 1 Comments 0 Trackbacks
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