Conscious Mom

As other posts on this blog attest, Maia has been growing and thriving over the past year. We keep in touch with her birth family, sending them letters and photos letting them know how she is doing. We also sponsor her cousin to attend school. Adoption is an event of extremes: our joy was predicated on someone else's loss. I try never to forget that, never to forget her birth family and how had conditions been different, they would have been able to provide a loving home for her. So that fewer families ever have to experience the pain of loss and separation, there are many non-profits and NGO's working to improve conditions in Ethiopia and other countries so more ...

The coffee ceremony On Friday afternoon children from the big kids' house came over to the Guest House to say good bye to all the children who were leaving that weekend. A coffee ceremony is the traditional way of marking passages, honoring guests, or simply enjoy being together. During these ceremonies, someone roasts the coffee beans, then passes them around for everyone to enjoy their aroma; the the beans are ground and brewed into delicious coffee (actually, it was more like espresso, which is even better in my mind). I've hesitated to post pictures of other people here, but will make an exception to show the roasting and brewing of the coffee. While all this ...

On our last full day in Ethiopia we left Maia in the loving care of her nanny Frehiwot and took a day trip north of Addis. (I'm a little out of order, but I didn't want another day to go by without posting something about the trip and don't have time to write a long post.) Typical houses we saw The Blue Nile Gorge A Gelada Baboon Stained glass window in a church

Once we took custody of Maia our day began at about 5 AM. No one else's day started that early, so we hung around trying to be quiet until Sinidu, the cook, brought us coffee. Breakfast would be either oatmeal or scrambled eggs, with fruit and bread available, too. Sinidu or Eskedar, the house manager, would hold our kids while we ate. Sinidu was especially skilled at holding several babies at once with a combination of wraps and slings. Other families would then go play in the courtyard, but Maia seemed so small and fragile I hesitated taking her into the bright sunlight for too long. So we hung around inside, played on the bed, ...

I remember absolutely nothing about this day. I can say for sure that the distinction between night and day continued to be lost on Maia. Her schedule was much more like a newborn's than a 4 month old's. She did sleep a lot, but it was at random times throughout the day, and definitely not all night long. And I slept some, too. Some. Bodhi and I had talked about sightseeing when we were in Addis; in the weeks before we traveled we looked through our Lonely Planet guide, picking out things we wanted to see. But we ended up spending almost all of our time at Horizon House. Trying to take a day ...

March 19, 2007 was the day of our appointment to get an entry visa to bring Maia into the US. As Dr. Tsegaye, the director of Horizon House, told us, this was the last of twelve appointments to complete the adoption process. I'm still not sure what all 12 appointments entailed, I know there was a meeting with the Ministry of Women's Affairs, and the Ethiopian Court, and at one or both of those meetings Maia's eligibility for adoption and our suitability as parents was determined. Another appointment was with the the Ethiopian equivalent of the passport office, where she got her Ethiopian passport. Then she went to the US embassy to have an HIV ...

On March 18, 2007 we traveled back from Awassa to Addis. It was a much longer trip than yesterday's because we did a lot of sightseeing. Last fall I posted pictures and stories from this trip in the Wordless Wednesday meme, so if you click on that category, you will find a lot of details (and especially photos) from today (well, a year ago today). I'll just point out a few random things that struck me as interesting: Walking: Wherever we went there were people walking by the side of the road. Sometimes crowds of people, like in the villages, other times one or two individuals a dozen miles between towns. No, that wasn't a typo, ...

On March 17, 2007, we checked out of the Ghion early and took a taxi to Horizon House. From there we drove with Eric and Stacey to meet our children's birth families. Solomon was our driver; he managed the roads beautifully and I always felt safe. All the roads we were on were regular paved roads, except when we got very close to the families houses, then they changed to dirt roads. At times the roads were packed with people milling about, doing their shopping, selling their crafts and products. It was like driving through a street market. In fact, it was driving through a street market. I was amazed we didn't hit anyone. We first ...

March 16, 2007 was our first full day in Addis. Once again we walked from the Ghion to Horizon House. Memory is a funny thing; the journey on foot between the Ghion and Horizon House is as etched in my mind as though I had done it a hundred times, but I think we only made two full round trips. Months after I returned home I missed the vibrancy of street life as I drove through our empty neighborhood roads. On this trip a young man gave us a little tour of the area, pointing out historical sites and recommending restaurants to dine in. M had moved back into the room she shared ...

We landed in Addis Ababa on the morning of March 15. By the time we got to the airport I had been awake for about 24 hours straight (or maybe it was 36; lose too much sleep, cross too many time zones, and these things become impossible to figure out). Somehow we managed to figure out how to get a taxi to the Ghion hotel. Many, many people helped us carry our luggage to the car, one person lifting it onto the cart, another pushing the cart to the parking lot, and still another loading it into the taxi. We could have done all this ourselves, but this is how these men earn a living so it seemed ungenerous to ...