The Story of our Trip Part 3- Tuesday/Wednesday

At Layla finding swimsuits

Tuesday, June 15, 2010
The kids were in the same class at Layla and we were able to sponsor a field trip for their group to the pool at the Hilton.  In addition to us and the 10 or so kids in their class, we were joined by their teacher, the American coordinator Jessica, an American volunteer named Kelsey, and the three other families staying with us at the guest house (three sainted moms traveling alone and six more kids!).  All of us staying at the guest house walked to Layla around 9am and the kids were getting ready to go.  They have a big tub of swimsuits that they break out for field trips and everyone just finds a suit to wear.  We all piled into 2 ancient, filthy, hideous diesel vans and off we went!  At the Hilton the kids were really well behaved and absolutely loved swimming.  None of them can really swim, so they all just played in the water and had tons of fun. 

At around 12:15, Jessica told everyone to get out, dry off, get a snack, and get ready to leave.  Everyone got out except Tinsaye.  She didn't want to go and figured since her parents were footing the bill she could just do whatever she wanted.  This was our first peek at the dark side of our precious princess.  Brian said to her (in his scary serious dad voice), "you had better be out of that pool by the time I count to 5 or I am coming in after you.  If that happens, you will have no snack and you will have other consequences at home this afternoon."  She made it to about 3 and flounced out of the pool and flung herself into a chair to pout, which we completely ignored.  Jessica watched the whole thing and said, "It happens almost every time.  The kids think their life in America is going to be Disneyland and then they discover that parents are a drag in every country."

We all piled back in the vans and were back at Layla in time for lunch.  Our family went back to the guest house and had spaghetti- mega yum!  We were starving and it tasted so good.  Tinsaye and Brian ate about a gallon combined!  Brian took the kids back to Layla to play after lunch while I took a nap.  It rained in the afternoon as it did every day we were there.  When they got back, the kids were thrilled to see me, like they'd been gone for weeks.  Dinner was injera and wat at the guest house for the kids and leftover pizza for Brian and I.  Kids crashed again around 8:30pm and we did too.  That night we woke up in the middle of the night to dogs barking and we heard some horrifying scream/yowl.  Probably a hyena.  I only slept a few hours.  Jet lag caught up to me and my body thought I should be awake.

Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Woke up (as we did every morning) to the call to prayer from the local mosque and a random rooster.  Morning in Addis Ababa is simply gorgeous and we were very excited this morning-  it was Embassy Day!  We had a big breakfast of scrambled eggs, bread, and ferfer (last night's injera soaked in last night's wat and heated up).   The best thing I packed on this trip was three boxes of those new instant Starbucks coffee packets.  I poured my bottled water in the little electric hot pot they had in the kitchen and in less than 2 minutes I had perfect American coffee.  Everyone in the guest house was going to the U. S. Embassy and Gail (the director of Layla) told us she'd be there to get us at 8am.  We were all scrambling around like mad trying to get everyone fed and clean and get all our paperwork in order.   Gail showed up at 8, but told us that they notified her that we were rescheduled to 10:30.  So we had to just sit around and not let the kids get dirty.  Brian found a baseball and bat and taught all the older kids to play.  When we were finally able to go, we crammed back into vans and took off.  Between anxiety, crazy traffic, and diesel fumes, I was getting motion sickness and felt pretty nauseous by the time we got to the embassy.  Then we had to drag the kids across a busy street, through tons of security and metal detectors, show our passports and documents, and I was so stressed out that when we made it through and I saw the photos of President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton on the wall inside, I started crying!   Then I was so embarrassed I quit, but that just shows you how overwhelmed I was.

Little did I know, the good times were just beginning.  There was nowhere for us to wait so we just had to stand around with the kids in this little walkway near the door and, remember, we weren't alone:  there were 5 families from our agency there with us in addition to Gail and Jessica.  That was eleven adults and eleven kids (ages 10 months to 13 years) standing in a tiny space, all stressed, bored, hungry, whining.  It was pretty desperate.  Plus most all the Americans had been sick and I was still feeling queasy and we were all wondering if we could make it out to the bushes to puke.  Our 10:30 appointment time was apparently just a suggestion because we waited nearly an hour.  They finally called for the Baert family and we walked up to a man behind a bullet-proof window.  He made us all swear that we were who we said we were and asked us a couple random questions and gave us a lecture about how they can't know for sure how old the kids are and we were lucky that our homestudy approved us for kids up to age 10 because they might be older.  We were properly grateful and we signed a couple more documents in his presence, got a big red envelope from the Ethiopian government full of court documents, and we were done.  After all the families finished, it was back through the metal detectors, security, traffic, diesel fumes to the guest house.  Whew!  The kids went back to Layla for lunch and Brian and I went out to a really nice Chinese restaurant.  It was just terrific to sit in a quiet, air conditioned place and relax.  I took another nap that afternoon during the rain and Brian and the kids played at Layla and then we all just hung out at the guest house.  Again, we crashed by 8:30.