If you have not been warned yet, driving in Ethiopia is an exciting (to say the least) experience. Because of my height, I was assigned to the front seat everywhere we drove. I felt very sorry for those who we were traveling with us because they were not all that much shorter than me and were jammed like sardines in the back of a Land Cruiser because the minivan was broken down. There were many times on the five hour trip to Awassa that I found myself grabbing for the dashboard as our driver had to slam on the brakes to keep from hitting livestock, people, other cars and trucks, and donkey carts being driven by young children that wondered out into the road in front of us. We passed at least three bad wrecks on the side of the road with tarps pulled over the driver compartments of the vehicles.
As we drove along our journey, I was amazed by the beauty of the countryside and the people that call it home. These are some of the most beautiful people that we have ever seen. I remember thinking to myself after our vehicle was approached by one woman holding a child asking for money or food, that they were so beautiful they could be pulled off of these streets and be made into the next big supermodels. We could just not get over the beauty of the people we encountered everywhere on our journey especially as they greeted us with huge smiles, waves followed with a thumbs up, and often yelled out Go Obama! (At one point we were even asked if Obama had sent a message as if we must know him because we were from the U.S.) I also found myself amazed at the responsibility given to the small children of the countryside. The children that were selling goods, driving horse or donkey carts with water or goods were often very young. The children were also often playing or sitting very close to the edge of the road as traffic sped by.
Just before we stopped for our first macchiato of the trip our host pointed out that our children’s orphanage was just a little ways down that street. This was a tough moment where I just longed to hold them in my arms. Even as we stopped for the macchiato at a beautiful hotel, we were still so close and I wanted so much to go back and be able to lay my eyes on them for real.
We stopped again a couple hours later for another macchiato (I should note that at the previous stop Colleen and I only had a pop because we are not coffee drinkers but tried one this time and liked it very much.) The trip was spent gazing out the window at the beautiful scenery and trying to take pictures at 100 km/h. Some of the pictures turned out but the vast majority were a blur. So I just tried to take as many pictures as possible in the hopes that we would get a few good ones.
When we got to Awassa, we checked into our rooms and ate lunch there at the hotel. Towards the end of lunch our host got a phone call and informed us that our children’s aunt was waiting at the orphanage and we had to get going. This caused some panic as we had talked about questions but had hoped to have some time in our room to write them down and come up with more. By the time we got to the orphanage, we had jotted a bunch down as we drove. As we piled out of the Land Cruiser at Evado, we were given hugs by a lot of people who we thought were workers but it turned out that one of them was our children’s aunt and we were whisked away into an office to talk to her. This moment was more emotional than we were prepared for and though we had a fairly long list of questions their answers were often short. After going through our list, it felt like we had only talked for a few minutes and the emotions of the moment made it very difficult to think of more questions. Of course, there were also problems with the video camera that seemed to make this precious time go by all too fast. As I look back I can not really think of any more pressing questions that I wished we had asked but just feel like the time spent was too brief.
After meeting with their aunt, we got to take a short tour through the orphanage and spend some time with some of the children there. After that we left and went down to the lake to partake in the boat ride out to see the hippos. This was quite a long ride as the hippos were all the way at one end of the lake. It was a great experience though and it was amazing to be so close to these creatures. The lake was beautiful and on the ride back the driver engaged us in conversation about Michael Phelps (he pronounced it Pheleps), David Beckham, and other famous sports figures.
Once we got back to the landing, we had to rush back to the orphanage as the family members of the children being adopted by the other families we were traveling with had arrived at the orphanage. This allowed us to spend a lot of time with some of the children at the orphanage. I truly enjoyed this time with these children. They really opened up as we spent more time with them and it really gave me a lot of confidence that things would go well when we picked up our children.
This was an emotional day but it was not over yet. We went to a restaurant where they were butchering goat meet and cooking it over a fire in a huge skillet. At times the grease from the skillet was used to coax the flames to life. The butcher was incredibly fast and did not leave a single morsel of meet on any of the bones. After enjoying the show we went to a local brewery for an Ethiopian Micro Brew around a camp fire. On any other night we would have probably enjoyed a few beers but we were overwhelmed by the emotions of the day and opted to go back to the hotel to get some rest. However, our room was the only one without a mosquito net and we found ourselves being buzzed by mosquitoes all night. So fears of malaria and the fact that this mattress was even harder than the one at the Sadula Lodge in Addis did not allow us much needed rest.
