Reflections on Our Trip to Ethiopia

 

It was the evening of April 6, 2008 with our flight leaving the next morning that it finally began to sink in that we were leaving to pick up Frances in Ethiopia.  We had been working all day getting all our suitcases packed, weighing them over and over with the bathroom scale, most of our baggage consisted of gifts for the orphanage in Ethiopia and we felt that we might as well get as close to the 50lb limit as we could.  The previous day we had sprayed our few outfits with permanent insect repellent.  The plan was to take a weekend trip out of the capital city of Addis Ababa to the town where Frances was found, and we expected to need to defend ourselves from the local bugs.  I can’t even remember what it was I was expecting.  I know I was excited to go to Africa – I’d always wanted to go, and I know that 30 hours of traveling sounded like a lot (but it couldn’t be worse than going to work, right?).

 

The next morning we left our house with Kristie’s dad leaving our two rambunctious boys with Kristie’s mom.  My mom was due to fly in a day later to help out (and also look for a house as she was planning to move to Colorado in May).  As usual, we had to coax hugs and kisses out of them as they were already fully engaged in the “fun week with Nana” that they had been promised.  At least the three big dogs (our two and Kristie’s parents’ one) were eager to send us off by pushing their way out into the front yard.  About an hour later our huge bags were checked and we were at the Terminal B Pour Le France restaurant having a bite to eat before the flight arrived.

 

Traveling without kids is really comparatively easy.  Next time you roll your eyes because of a crying baby on the plane just remember that the child’s parents are very likely fatigued to the point of delirium and take a moment to enjoy your tray table (really a great invention!).  Kristie and I both slept reasonably well, and watched a bunch of movies on the planes including: National Treasure 2 (love that Nick Cage), Elizabeth 2 (those outfits!), The Great Debaters (which was really pretty good), and Bella (an indie film).  Kristie also got a new book for the trip (American Gods) and I worked a lot on the Jungian parlor game that I have been developing with my brother.  My plan to drink lots of free red wine to help me sleep somewhat backfired when I woke up very nauseated, but that passed pretty quickly (at least on the scale of the whole trip).  Our route was Denver to DC (United Airlines), DC to Rome for refueling (Ethiopian Airlines), and Rome to Addis Ababa.  We did not have to get off the plane in Rome, but the plane was cleaned (very slightly) and the flight crew changed.  I was surprised that the geography around the Rome airport was more rural than I expected, and I was excited to see the Mediterranean Sea for the first time.  We were lucky that the Ethiopian Airlines flight was only about half full and the savvy Ethiopian travelers quickly snatched up available middle seat sections and laid down to sleep.  We were together in the two window side seats and were pretty comfortable – the Ethiopian Airlines legs generally had more leg room and better food (plus the free red wine that ended up being nauseating and good coffee).  During our short on-plane lounging time in Rome we met several Americans working with a relief agency to bring more medical care to Ethiopia – everyone was very excited about our adoption process and we didn’t get too much of the “Jesus says thank you” type responses from this group.  It struck me that people who start international non-profit organizations are a strange bunch, one part religious moralist (many retired ministers etc.) and one part money-hunting charlatan (kind of like me), making for an uneasy mixture that freely moves from discussing the world’s insensible cruelty to high-stakes lunch dates with millions of dollars on the line.

 

By the time we reached Addis Ababa we were tired of being on planes, but generally in good spirits and not too tired overall.  It was the evening of April 8 and after standing in lines for about an hour to get our visas and pass customs, we were heading out to the airport lobby.  Having had some experience with the lines and visa process in Kazakhstan, Addis Ababa was much less stressful.  If not super-efficient, the Ethiopian officials always seemed optimistic that everything could be worked out and generally helpful.  Compared to the dower, judgmental, soviet-inspired paper-stamping bureaucracy in Kazakhstan, Ethiopia seemed to take itself and it’s stamps a lot less seriously.

 

In the airport lobby we met our contact, the in-country lawyer for Dove adoptions, who was holding up a small sign with the word “White” on it.  This was Sinteau, a smallish, very affable and charismatic man with excellent English and good looks somewhat reminiscent of Harry Belefonte.  Throughout our stay, Sinteau would be the closest thing to an authority figure we would meet, and he would guide us through our final completion of documents and the embassy appointment.  After meeting up, we waited for another family to appear who were also adopting at the same time we were, and who were on the same flight.  In a few minutes the Burgers appeared, Tom and Jan.  I recognized them from the flight, and had made a mental note during our stop in Rome that they looked like they could be another adopting couple.  We quickly established that they were from Utah, in the rural area somewhere north of Salt Lake City.  In the coming week we lived in the same house, ate all our meals, and got to know our new children together, and so became pretty close with the Burgers; who turned out to be very down-to-earth and good, quality people.

 

We followed Sinteau out of the airport with our massive luggage teetering on (free!) baggage carts down to the paved parking lot outside the airport.  From the outside it was clear that the Addis Ababa airport was modern, but not large by American standards; maybe roughly equivalent to Norfolk, VA or Pensacola, FL.  Down a paved ramp and we were at the pick-up car, a 80’s or 90’s era Toyota microbus.  Immediately men were swarming around us, offering to help stow the luggage, and Sinteau seemed somewhat at odds with what to do with them all.  In the end the Burgers’ luggage went inside in the back row and our luggage went on the top rack and all the men began saying “Tip…tip for service…”  I fumbled about for my wallet, but hadn’t changed any money in the airport and determined that if the Burgers and Sinteau were not going to respond, I had better not either.  Once we were all in the car with the doors closed, the driver, whose name we later found out was Solomon, opened his window and worked out a tip with one man, making motions that it should be spread around.  It was not clear that the proposed distribution would ever happen, and Sinteau himself seemed a little distressed by the whole situation.  As time would show, Solomon turned out to be a very considerate and compassionate person, who always seemed to have an intention of helping those around him, even when the reality of the situation seemed unlikely to comply.  In conjunction with his shaved-bald, smallish round head and small round spectacles, there was something Gandhi-ish about Solomon and he became our favorite driver.

 

What followed was our first rapid night-tour of Addis Ababa as we drove from the airport to the Toukoul guest house.   It brought back strong memories of a similar late-night van ride through Almaty, Kazakhstan when we had just arrived there to adopt Serik.  At that time the crazy time shift, smoke filled air, and peculiar, militant street cleaning operations happening in the dead of night combined to a eerie and dream-like effect.  Perhaps in part because it was still early in the evening in Addis Ababa (around 9pm) the effect here was different.  The city seemed to be a hodgepodge mix of actual masonry buildings between two and six stories high, carpentry stalls that looked somewhat like magazine stands or kiosks in American cities, and rough shacks made of corrugated steel sheeting fastened to bamboo poles (actually these turned out to be eucalyptus) with stray bits of boards and blankets added as available.  The most remarkable element, though, was the number of people out walking through the city.  The sidewalks and roads were essentially packed with Ethiopians, many in pairs or small groups, holding hands or arms over each other’s shoulders, all dressed in long pants and generally long sleeves with fashions that looked like they came from the last-year bargain racks of a Marhsall’s or TJ Max or other slightly off-center department store, maybe in the mid 90’s.  But with their perfect posture and informal congeniality, generally the Ethiopian people made their clothes look good as they moved from door to door of lit commercial establishments occupying all kinds of structures from conventional to completely improvised.  Commercial signage was generally in both Amharic and English with names like “Denver Café” and “Coffee Place” jumping out at us.  The stylized Amharic alphabet, looking somewhere between Greek and Arabic, provided an ever-present exoticness, while the general feel of the crowd was something like that at an unimpressive county fair or the sidewalks near a city park walking home shortly after the fireworks on the 4^th of July.  It was a fascinating and somewhat intimidating mélange that made me simultaneously wish I was out milling around the strange shops and hangouts, and glad that we were locked in a van with people that spoke English.  Solomon navigated the van through the streets that varied between modern and gravel, with very few traffic lights or signs.  He used short taps on the horn almost constantly to move along people in the street or warn other cars that he was there.  At some point later in the trip Solomon mentioned that he had to “Drive like a fish” on the small roads, which was a very apt description.

 

After about 20 minutes, the van stopped in front of a windowless, eight foot gate and Solomon gave two comparatively long horn blasts.  An oldish man wearing a grey Gap hoodie opened the gate from inside and waved the van in; we were at the Toukoul guest house.  Five or six small reddish long haired dogs milled about in the yard and a single-story ranch-style stone house sat in the center of a small walled compound, maybe occupying a somewhat more than a half-acre.  Along the back wall was a garage, filled with articles other than cars and additional living quarters with four or five independent entrance doors.  When we stepped out of the van the dogs milled among us interestedly, but not excited or aggressive in any way.  Since we had been explicitly warned by our doctors in the U.S. to stay clear of animals due to the risk of rabies, Kristie turned to me and quietly, but firmly said, “DO NOT pet the dogs!”  I had already made up my mind not to, despite appearances that these were “good dogs” and no signs of caution or concern among our hosts.  Sinteau and Solomon helped us carry in our bags and we were shown one bedroom with a dedicated bathroom just across the hall.  The Burgers had another room and bathroom combination further down the hall.  There was a double futon-type bed in the middle of the room with a beautiful quilt and two end tables and a somewhat out-of-order lounge chair.  There were small lamps on each end table and a sixties-style wood light fixture hanging from the center of the ceiling (we would later find out that when all the lights were off the ceiling element had some glow-in-the-dark beads worked into it).  Sinteau told us that the guest house kitchen would be providing us a meal before we went to bed and, after making sure that we had everything we needed, he and Solomon left.  The meal was chicken, I think, probably with soup first and a basket of white bread.  The meals at the guest house were always good, if maybe geared towards an American or European palette (Toukoul is owned by a French organization) not ready for too much flavor, and also designed with mildness and digestability in mind (something I appreciated later when my stomach hurt on the flight home).  We chatted with the Burgers over dinner (plenty of bottled water, Coke, and a few beers provided) and were surprised to learn that they were not only adopting three children during this visit, but they had 8 biological children at home in Utah.  In comparison, our endeavor seemed pretty tame.  By 11pm we were in bed with the lights out admiring the glow-in-the-dark splendor above.

 

The next day (Wednesday) was remarkable for our first meeting with Frannie and our introduction to deep fried eggs.  Breakfast at the guest house was around 8am and always included freshly squeezed orange juice and sunny-side up eggs fried through in vegetable oil.  Actually this isn’t far from how my mom used to make eggs, and I kind of like them that way (with salt).  Later, one of Kristie’s first acts upon returning to the USA would be to cook herself an egg to remind her that they can have a more subtle texture than crispy.  After breakfast our second driver, Daniel, came to take us to our appointment at Sinteau’s office to complete the paperwork for our embassy appointment the next day.  Daniel was younger, maybe 30-ish, and tall.  He looked a little like an NBA forward and typically wore sports gear with a modest gold chain.  He often listened to Ethiopian pop music, which compared very favorably to the Kazakh/Russian renditions of American “soft rock” of the 70’s and 80’s.

 

We drove through Addis Ababa (though our drivers always just referred to the city as “Addis”) in the daytime and found that there was still lots (thousands in every eyeful) of pedestrians out, all apparently with somewhere to go and things to take care of.  In the daylight we could better appreciate that even in poverty the Ethiopian people were very handsome and seemed generally jolly.  One thing that was clearer in the daytime than at night was the number of cement buildings under construction.  Each looked to be about six stories tall and was cocooned in makeshift scaffolds made of long eucalyptus poles apparently lashed together.  On many buildings men scrambled around on the scaffolds adding to the masonry structures, but on many others no activity was seen for the entirety of our trip.  While the finished buildings we passed looked modern and well-made, the construction technique did not look safe or earthquake-proof (not that Addis has earthquakes).  At Sinteau’s office, we parked on the street, walked past a cow and entered a little gated courtyard.  As we headed into the building we could see the corrugated steel shack with just enough room for a bed and a radio which seemed to be the permanent residence for the guard.  I was amazed that he could look so neat, clean, and composed living there, thinking about how much energy and facilities I need to tame my bed head and keep my clothes wearable.  Inside Sinteau took first us, then the Burgers up to his small, neat office and helped us finish off the paperwork.  Interestingly, all the paperwork had the name of our child as “Fetiya Michael White”, which was the first time we saw that particular combination (we didn’t particularly like the ring of it, but didn’t say anything since we were going to change her name to Frances Fetiya White back in the states).  Sinteau also told us that our Embassy appointment would be on Thursday and that there was a good chance we would get our papers to travel home the next day, this suggested that we could potentially leave for the USA earlier than planned, a possibility that was eagerly anticipated by the Burgers, and us as well, as we missed our families.  However, an early departure would eliminate the possibility of traveling far outside Addis to the area where Frannie was found.

After our visit with Sinteau, we and Tom and Jan were driven to the Toukoul orphanage to meet our children for the first time.  The orphanage was inside a walled compound of between one and two acres with signs in both Amharic and French pointing to it from the main street and on the gravel side-streets that led to the gate.  Inside were several independent buildings, a narrow one-story office and visiting room, a broad one-story infant complex, a 4-story children’s dorm building, a thatched-roof hut playroom area, a one-story cafeteria/school room building, and a narrow two-story kitchen, laundry, and office building along the inside of the front wall.  Just inside the main gate was a blacktop driveway area which served as the recess yard and was the nexus between most of the buildings.  Extensive clothes lines were set up on the hilly area near the left wall and workers quarters and more laundry areas lined the left and back walls.  Compared to areas in the city, all the architecture looked proper and painted from a western point-of-view.  In the small office we met Melat, the “secretary” of the orphanage, which seemed to mean that she was in charge of all documentation and communications.  She was a slight, pretty woman in her mid 30’s with small rectangular glasses and excellent English.  After a few preliminary bureaucratic details, she told us to wait in the adjoining visiting room and our children would be brought to us.

 

The waiting room had several couches and easy chairs, was not very bright, and was full of French families – maybe three couples with additional friends and translators or drivers.  All were busy engaging infant babies, except some of the additional companions who were nodding off in the chairs.  All were very cordial and gave nods and smiles of greeting as we sat down.  Before long our children arrived, the Burger’s three: Ekram, Said, and Seade, followed by little Fetiya for us.  Her care-giver, wearing a white nurse’s smock handed her over to Kristie with a smile.  She looked bright-eyed and healthy and immediately recognizable from the pictures we had seen back in the USA.  Almost immediately she flashed her tongue-y gaping smile at us and we were in love.  Now psychological texts sometimes categorize three elements of a love relationship: 1) completion – the feeling that somehow the object of a loving relationship completes something in yourself, 2) timelessness – the feeling that you can hardly remember or visualize life before the relationship, and 3) need – the feeling that if the relationship somehow ended, life itself would end.  Without becoming overly emotional, suffice it to say:  Check, check, check.  We spent a few hours visiting with Frances before it was time for her next nap and her care takers carried her away.  Frannie was very happy with us, but seemed pretty much equally happy with everyone, so we were concerned with establishing a unique bond between us before embarking on the long plane flight home.

 

So began a rhythm of sorts with breakfast, lunch, and dinner at the guest house with the Burgers and visits to the orphanage in between with a few additional excursions.  Kristie often attempted to catch short naps after lunch at the guest house, and I typically walked around the garden, visited the three giant tortoises who prowled around the lawn there, and worked on my game idea a bit more.  On Thursday our appointment at the US embassy in Addis came.  We checked Frannie out of the orphanage and Sinteau met us there to assist.  The embassy was a blocky white cement building on a main street with several other embassies near Addis Ababa University.  It had tight security with metal detectors, x-rays, and manual bag searches.  We had to leave all phones and cameras in a safe at one of the front desks.  Once inside, the room for handling visa and immigration issues was very similar to the one we visited in Kazakhstan, and also very similar to a Department of Motor Vehicles office anywhere in the US.  There were about 50 chairs, five windows with attendants, and pictures of George W. Bush, Dick Chaney, and Condoleezza Rice on the wall above three of the windows as if sometimes you could expect them to be manning those positions.  Thank goodness we had more competent help.  There appeared to be at least one other adopting family from the US and several Ethiopian-looking people and at least one military service person, perhaps with his Ethiopian wife, but the room was mostly empty.  After a 30-minute wait (in which Frannie fell asleep in the baby Bjorn) we were called to one of the windows, our paper work was reviewed and we were asked to hold up our right hands and attest that everything was correct.  Our time at the window was maybe 5 minutes, the Burgers took slightly longer, but within an hour of arriving we were leaving American soil again having accomplished one of our primary goals in Ethiopia.  Sinteau shook our hands and waved at the babies as we piled back into the van, he said that he should have all our documentation for us the next day if all went well.

 

The evening after the embassy appointment, after we had returned Frannie to the orphanage, Solomon brought us to a fancy restaurant called Fastika, with an Ethiopian art and culture theme geared towards tourists.  Several of the French families we had seen at the orphanage were already there, and another French family with their grown children who were adopted from Ethiopia joined our table.  They all seemed very French.  We were already fans of Ethiopian cuisine, the classic dish being a variety of savory sauces and meats on sourdough pancakes called injera bread.  It is typically served “family style” to the whole table and eaten scooped up with the hands using the injera.  When the food arrived I was excited that I could definitively say that the best Ethiopian food I had ever had was in Ethiopia – though the non-carbonated honey wine Solomon foisted upon me was a little sour for my tastes, but I did my best to drink the whole small flask he ordered for me.  Kristie had the Ethiopian beer, “St. George – of the St. George who slew the dragon” and found it very good.  However, the high point of the evening was not the food but the continuous floor show that lasted for well over two hours.  A band sat on a low riser that consisted of traditional Ethiopian instruments and a not-so-traditional looking drum kit (only toms and no cymbals but played with western-type drum sticks) dressed up to look more “native” with a funny-looking fur covering (but it sounded great).  The most prominent instrument was a 10 to 12 stringed harp with metal strings and an electric-guitar style pick-up.  Many of the songs had a Reggae/Native American feel, but with faster tempo.  Several singers alternated singing traditional songs accompanied by the band and then dancers emerged from the service door – typically 2 men and 2 women performing traditional dances from each of the 12 prominent regions of Ethiopia.  Athletic jumping shoulder dances and Lenny Kravitz-esque hair whipping dances were the highlights of the dance numbers.  The show ended shortly before our bill arrived – I had over eaten (several rounds of injera bread were served) and each family paid the equivalent of about twenty dollars.

 

Following dinner Solomon took us on a spontaneous night-tour of Addis, and we saw government buildings and embassies.  Solomon parked the car at the Addis Sheraton, a five-star luxury hotel in the heard of Addis.  He told us that it was built with money from an Arab millionaire who married a woman from Addis, and was meant to be a ‘gift’ to the city complete with presidential mansions, extensive gardens, and fountains within its walled compound.  We walked around the grounds without any restrictions from the hotel staff.  The juxtaposition of ornate marble columns and manicured gardens with the status quo living conditions in Addis was jarringly Orwellian, but Solomon was always an enthusiastic proponent of Addis Ababa and the positive direction it was heading.  He freely admitted that the elections were rigged and that the police were brutal, but felt that modernity was arriving at the city and that it would be a great capital in the near future.  Between the optimism of the people, the very comfortable climate, and Solomon’s enthusiasm, we were captivated.  We envisioned what it would be like to live in Addis, what we could do to make a good environment for our family and also help the local economy.  On one trip with Solomon he pointed out a large compound being build near the orphanage with a three story colonial-style cement manor house with several supporting one-story buildings within a walled compound of about 2 acres.  Solomon mentioned that this would be a luxurious home for some individual – not a business or organization headquarters.  We asked if he knew how much it would cost for a home like that and he though for several seconds then said, “about one hundred thousand dollars.”  He paused for a short time and said, “Is that a lot?”  I felt at a loss to explain that the most opulent dwelling he could think of cost less than a typical starter-home for a blue-collar couple in the USA.  “No,” I said.  “That’s dollars,” he said, “Not Burr.”  One hundred thousand Burr, the Ethiopian currency, would be about ten thousand dollars.  “Yes,” I said, but just let it drop, as did Solomon, though I had the sense that he just thought I must be misunderstanding his explanation of the price.

 

 

One of the days that we were visiting Frannie at the orphanage it rained hard in the afternoon.  The rain fell in sheets of giant drops that impacted on the roofs and cars with hail-like pops and pings.  It rained almost as hard through the night and the roadway under construction outside the guest house was practically washed out, forcing us to take slower routes through back alleys to get between the guest house and the orphanage.  The drivers said that it looked like the rainy season was coming early.  That day Daniel left us at the orphanage and went to Sintaeu’s office to get the documents, but returned without them, saying that Sinteau needed to see us one more time.  We went again to his office and he handed us the sealed envelopes with instructions that we were not to open them until instructed to do so at the immigration desk in the US airport.  At that point we had everything we needed to leave with Frances.  With the opportunity to leave early, our missing our kids in the USA, Frannie starting to connect with us and therefore our reluctance to leave her for a weekend, and the potential of rains jeopardizing dependable travel, we finally decided not to plan a trip to Harar, where Frannie was found, and decided to head home early with the Burgers.  It was not an easy choice as we wanted to have pictures of the places from Frannie’s earliest life for her, just as we had gotten for Serik to put into his lifebook to give him as much a sense of identity as possible.  So we went to the Hilton in Addis, which was a luxury hotel, but not like the Sheraton (the most luxurious hotel we’d ever seen) but still a center of tourist commerce, and spent almost two hours at the Ethiopian airlines office to change our tickets.  We had checked Frances out of the orphanage and she behaved well for us at the guest house, embassy, and airline office, and we didn’t feel that staying longer was helping her bond to us as much as a routine schedule and medicine for her cold would.  It was hard too because we were enjoying the country so much, and despite our vows to return one day, our hectic lives back in the States made the claims ring untruly.

 

We returned the children to the orphanage later than they would have liked, and Frannie’s care-giver gave us a disapproving frown.  The Burgers had the care-givers explain over and over to their six-year-old daughter that we would return tomorrow to take them for good.  The next two nights we stayed with Frances at the guest house, and she slept through the night in a crib the guest house staff added to our room.  After two boys with an adversarial relationship with sleep that persists to this day, Frannie’s cheerful compliance was a dream-come-true.  The two nights before we left Tom came down with a stomach bug and we spent the days lazily.  We also met with our until-then unseen driver and guide Astor, who came to check on us and our kids in the guest house.  She was a fashionable, 40-ish Ethiopian woman with excellent English and fluent German and a personal mission to demonstrate the obedience of the Toukoul children even when intimidated into eating and having food stuffed into their mouths.  Her well-intentioned disconnect with the fact that the children she evaluated were now ours, and not hers, helped further justify our decision to leave early.  The Burgers’ older children were clearly cowed by the authoritative presence and Jan joked that they would have to keep a picture of her in the closet for when the kids were being naughty.

 

The day before we left Solomon took us on a sight-seeing trip out of Addis to a nearby lake – about an hour’s drive south east of the city.  As the shanty-town maze of Addis gave way to grassy plains and distant mountains we saw some of the heavy industry that supported the city – steel works, cement works, lumber yards.  Trucks lined the highway that led to Ethiopia’s closest friendly port in Djibouti. Further on from that the number of cars diminished and horse drawn carts built from the suspension of cars became a common site.  At the lake we had a picnic lunch (sandwiches prepared by the guest house staff) and watched some locals catch perch.  Solomon asked and they said they would try to sell them for 1 Burr each (about ten cents).  Solomon bought them all and distributed the sandwiches that we didn’t eat.  We passed pens and Cliff Bars out the car window to kids, as we also did in Addis, which often created a swarm of children too close to the car for safety.  Actually it was a standard occurrence for Solomon to be constantly tapping the horn to move on small children in the middle of the road in Addis.  The population we saw on the street was always very young with a mean age of maybe 25 years old when school was in session, and dropping to somewhere in the teens when school let out and streets were flooded with bright school uniforms of purple and yellow.

On our final evening at the guest house we asked for a light supper and soup was served.  Astor was supposed to visit again, but ran late.  We took some final photos of the guest house grounds and loaded our luggage onto the van.  It was a little lighter than when we arrived, but now packed with gift items we were bringing back.  Solomon had taken us to a market area to buy trinkets and there was a gift shop at the orphanage run by single mothers associated with it.  One of my few disappointments of the trip was not visiting Addis’ “Market” which was dubbed the “largest open air market in Africa”.  It seemed that the drivers were not confident of their ability to keep track of us and keep us out of trouble there, and it seemed clear that they took their responsibility for us seriously.  We left for the airport and almost immediately Solomon received a cell phone call saying that Astor wanted to catch up with us and say goodbye.  We weaved through the streets, by a man standing on the sidewalk offering a puppy for sale and pulled over.  Shortly thereafter Astor’s pulled around us and parked in front of us and jumped out for final farewells to us and the children, especially the Burgers’ wide eyed older children who recognized her immediately.  Luckily there were no food items immediately available.  As we pulled away towards the airport, Kristie mentioned, “Maybe Astor wants that puppy,” which Solomon thought was right on target.  As we cruised through Addis for the last time I thought about how it would feel to be driving from DIA home – seemed a million miles away (and the flight hadn’t even started yet).  I remembered seeing the men in the street cracking rocks apart using a hammer and a sharpened piece of rebar.  No gloves or shoes, one person against a boulder the size of a car tire for a daily wage of probably about fifty cents.  Tongue in cheek I said to Solomon, “Those guys should have eye protection!”  Solomon laughed like we were just starting to understand, and jubilantly said, “This is Africa!”

 

As a postscript, just let me say that the flight home was dreadful.  When you are only two hours into a 30 hour epic and you have a burning knot in your belly bad enough to start taking antibiotics and you turn around to see who is pinching your wife and see one of two hellspawn pre-schoolers puke all over his seat, it is hard to be optimistic.  It is important to note that my previous statement about screaming children in airplanes does not apply to demon children who run up and down the aisles screaming and putting their fingers in other people’s food while the parents continually bellow, “Come here and I am going to spank you.”  Frannie, of course, was an angel, and continues to be (thank God).  Driving home with Kristie’s Dad on E470, she passed out in the back seat, it was Addis that seemed a million miles away, and each time we stopped to pay the two dollar toll (which I instinctively converted in my head to about 200 Burr), it seemed strange there was a place that a man could break stones for four days to see that kind of money; with no eye protection.