One year ago today we were in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. We had flown over night through Uganda to land at the airport where we first touched down in Africa almost 2 weeks ago. Things were so very different. We had those 11 beautiful children this time, praise the Lord, and we were worn out and missing home. But we were also so hopeful, we were one flight closer to home and to our families back home. We were missing our older kids so much.
The airport looked so different this time, we were obviously in a very different building then our previous connection to Rwanda. This was a much larger building. We all went through the process to receive our visas to stay in Ethiopia, a little difficult as we tried to show the correct documents to the officials from the backpacks full of documents we were carrying by this point.
Then we were able to freshen up and round up all our luggage. We had to go through security (again) to leave the building, but on the other side of this we saw the sign held up by our guides in Ethiopia. They had us quickly out to the numerous vans, our luggage loaded up, all 32 of our travel group plus the guides loaded up in the vans and off we went to the guest house.
The drive through Addis Ababa was much different than Kigali. It is a very large city. The driving is still crazy compared to America, but very different than in Rwanda. There was a lot more noise and honking, people everywhere. We saw a lot of different areas during the drive and tried to take it all in, but we were also so tired from being up all night. We finally drove down an alleyway, through the opened gates and into the courtyard of our guest house. It is a lovely building. Just an oasis in the city. I vowed at the moment not to step out of the gates until we had to, it was all so overwhelming, but of course I got more comfortable and enjoyed getting to see more of the city. It was never Rwanda though.
We had just enough time to check in to our rooms, watch the very impressive strength of the women carry our bags up to our rooms and get everything settled inside before we left. The guest house does not have an elevator and so we began the often repeated process of hiking the 4 flights of stairs to our room on the top floor. The rooms were great. Most of us had a similar set up. We entered a common room from the hall, with a seating area, a small kitchen and a patio. Off of this room were 2 bedrooms with a bathroom each. We had the wonderful opportunity to share our "apartment" with the McLennans, and it was a lovely week staying there, not as much for Tim after he sprained his ankle and still had the stairs to deal with :(
After the few minutes to see the rooms we were off for our first appointment in Ethiopia. We were headed to the medical appointments. Each child needed to be evaluated by a doctor so we could have a clearance for their visas to enter the US. It was very different traveling in several smaller vans around town instead of our 1 large van for the whole group we had enjoyed in Rwanda, but it did allow us lots of opportunities to choose different outings that week. We drove to the medical office and waited our turns. It really wasn't too long considering how many kids we had, but it felt longer as we were all nervous about this going well since we didn't want a problem getting the visas.
When it was our turn we took Isaac into the first room where they weighed him, then into another to measure his height and head circumference, Isaac hated this, he screamed through the entire thing, they were only measuring him, it was so different from how he had been and we have no idea why this bothered him so, unless it was just his lack of sleep. Finally we were called into the doctor's office for the actual appointment. She asked us many questions about what we had observed since we met Isaac and she examined him a bit. We were very happy to hear he looked so well, she had absolutely no concerns about him at all. But it was during this appointment that we found a problem with our paperwork. Remember I mentioned we hadn't looked closely enough at the documents we left Rwanda with, well we were missing Isaac's vaccination records and a couple other documents, there were a few families who found they were missing those or some other document. We spent the afternoon and Sunday trying to get ahold of someone in Rwanda about getting the needed items. So, some stress, mostly we had felt like our group was all in the same place in the process finally and now we felt behind again as we didn't have something we needed and we didn't know how much it might hold us up.
The medical appointment was the only thing on the agenda for the day so we returned to the guest house after all the children had finished their appointments. I went with the McLennans on a taxi ride to a local grocery. We picked up some snacks to help out over the week. We had been spoiled with a very close store in Rwanda so we wanted to have what we needed while in Ethiopia. Then we all enjoyed a nice long nap before the lovely dinner prepared by the chef at the guest house. Pizza! We really enjoyed the set up at the guest house, the dinner for the day was always posted in the morning, you only had to let the front desk know how many plates you would like and they would be ready at dinner time and your room charged for the meal. We had this option as well as walking to any nearby resturant that week.
We were able to just rest up and get settled that evening, the time was much appreciated. We ended the day by waiting until 1am to skype with the big kids when they were home from school, then collapsed in bed, waking up to insert earplugs-Addis is much louder!!
Sheri
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