Streets of Addis Ababa

And finally, here are some street shots of Addis Ababa. Water tanks are on the elevated platforms. We wish we'd gotten more shots of Addis. It was a fascinating mix of new and old, as well as wealth and poverty.

We encountered homeless people and beggars, including many children of all ages, everywhere in the city. Within blocks of the opulent imperial palace compound (built during Haile Selassie's reign from the 1920's-1974), uniformed street patrol officers used large canes to wave beggars away from the shops and the tourists, occasionally striking them. A sad reality of a proud country in the midst of severe and chronic economic hardship.

Without question, our trip to Ethiopia was an amazing experience, both humbling and highly enlightening.

Good-bye Ceremony

Here we are after the "Goodbye" ceremony. Berie is in a traditional Ethiopia dress. This was obviously a very emotional day, both for us and the nannies. The kids sang to us and each adopted child was individually honored. Here, after a wonderful tribute and some very touching exchanges, a couple of the nannies wave good-bye.

Wash ritual

This is our beautiful daughter insisting on her washing ritual. The bidet in our bathroom was her wash basin of choice since it was the perfect height. I tried to redirect her to the sink but she yelled something in Amharic at me and turned on the bidet water. I decided not to protest since it was my first day as her mother. It seemed clean and Americans don't use bidets anyway, right?

Here she is washing her hair, vigorously slapping water on her face and scrubbing many times, doing a quick "farmer blow" of the nose, and happily mugging for my camera. This is the basic washing ritual after a quick "ka-ka" on the toilet. I would have been happy with a simple hand washing, but who am I to say?

Our beautiful daughter

Berie is such a sweetheart and very strong willed! The language barrier is tough. She says “mommy?” all the time, and occasionally throws in a "daddy?" We say “yes?” and then she rattles off something in Amharic. We'd like to be able to communicate better, but we’re getting there.

Visiting with Berie at the guest house.

Here we are at the guest house with Bereket--also referred to by the nannies and by us as "Berie" (pronounced Berry). She was visiting us that day; what she was thinking at this point we have no idea. She was probably wondering who these strange white people were hugging her and following her around.

The staff at the guest house tried to help us understand what she was saying to us (in Amharic) but for the most part, body language was the only way we communicated with each other.

Berie joined us permanently after our official meeting at the U.S. embassy a few days later.

A visit to one of the Cooling Huts

Along the road to Hosanna we stopped to tour one of the huts. The local children immediately flocked to where we parked, wanting to observe us and have their picture taken. They would say "please" to ask to have their pictures taken, and then hurried to see the image on the screen of our digital camera. They were very excited to see photographs of themselves. The cooling huts had dirt floors with mats to sleep on, and where the animals' stable took up about half the space, while the family lived in the other half.

Along the road to Hosanna

The kids loved to have their picture taken. They clamored to have their picture taken and always said "thank you" afterward, one of just a few English words they knew. The also referred to us as "faranji" (foreigner). The yellow plastic jugs are the water jugs that were filled up each day. There hadn't been rain in many days, so water was scarce.

Our driver using the "toilet"

Our driver stopped the Land Cruiser to use the "toilet" in clear view. He actually said "toilet." I hope he didn't forget to flush. Dwain had to relieve himself a bit later, but he found a much more discreet bit of Ethiopian vegetation to provide some privacy.

The driver was a nice fellow who did his best to converse with us, but his English was limited. On the trip home he eventually turned up the radio and sang along, probably in order avoid answering any more of our questions.

Hosanna

We traveled south of Addis for about 3 hours through sparsely populated rural areas and small villages to the town of Hosanna, about 60,000 people and no paved roads. This trip was beyond words to describe. The trip started about an hour before sunrise. The scenery was breathtaking. Along the entire 150-mile stretch of recently built highway, people walked along the road carrying plastic jugs to get water; some had donkeys to help. We were constantly slowed by people and animals risking their lives by coming within inches of our car as it traveled up to 60 mph.

Most of the people in Ethiopia are farmers who grow only enough food to feed their families, if even that. Many live in circular cooling huts made of mud, dung, and sticks. Their livestock (cattle, goats, chickens, etc.) also live in these one-room structures in order to protect them from thieves and hyenas.

Beautiful Ethiopia

The contrasts in standard of living in Ethiopia are extreme. Here are more shots of the relatively rare wealthy segments of Ethiopia. These are in Addis Ababa from the rooftop of our guest house.

Market shopping

There are lots of smaller stores and markets. Here, Dwain is buying water one of the countless small markets. We were instructed not to eat any produce.

These blue and white taxis are everywhere. The streets and sidewalks seem to be crumbling where ever you walk. I almost fell off the sidewalk curb two feet down onto the street. Not exactly the sidewalk curbs I'm used to.

Mules (or is it donkeys?) and goats are everywhere is this bustling city living among the heavy diesel traffic and 3 million people. It is an interesting mix of modern life and life from centuries ago. The only consistently unpleasant aspect of moving around the city (aside from the death defying automobile rides) was the diesel engine smoke and fumes. At times it was suffocating.

Us at the coffee shop on our shopping outing. This was a fun day!

Buying coffee

The coffee in Ethiopia is VERY good and very cheap--about $4 per kilo. Here's Dwain and several members of our adoption group buying coffee in a local coffee shop. We literally bought out the entire stock of whole beans in the store, something like 40 kilos.

Construction

Constructing a building with wooden scaffolding.

There was constant digging along the sides of many streets. Addis seems to be in constant disrepair and development. Buildings under construction have scaffolding made of wood poles. Construction is apparently done manually with only small tools. We didn't see evidence of heavy machinery.

Ethiopia

We didn't know a lot about Ethiopia before we started this process. One thing we discovered is that it's very mountainous. The altitude of Addis Ababa is 7900 ft, the third highest capital in the world. It's also very beautiful. Since we traveled during the dry season, we had beautiful sunny days in the upper 70s and cool nights in the 50's.

This is a view from the rooftop of the guest house. All the houses we saw had 10-foot cement walls surrounding them with coils of barbed wire on top. Only the wealthy had homes like this--maybe 10 % of the population. Most homes were "constructed" of propped up corrugated metal and random scraps of plastic, wood, and metal. The streets seemed to be a free-for-all for cars, buses, pedestrian, and animal traffic. We saw many goat herders on busy urban streets allowing their goats to graze while waiting for people to purchase them to take them home for dinner.