I honestly don’t remember Mita doing this assignment last year, but I do remember Meg doing it. This makes me wonder if it was assigned to Mita and she didn’t make a big deal about it or if she kept the assignment on the down-low because it was a big deal to her.  Hmm. I must go through the projects I kept from last year and see if I can find it.

Back to yesterday.  I told Enu that I would have to get on the computer and order prints as we are a digital family and I rarely have extra prints hanging around.  We discussed what pictures she wanted and what her events on the time line were going to be:

1- Birth in Ethiopia – She wanted a baby picture of her and her dad that we have.

2- Mom dying when she was 3.

So when she mentioned this I gently said,”Honey, if you put this down people are going to ask you about it.”  She shrugged and said that it was fine.

3- Adoption and movie to the USA.

4- Disneyworld for the first time.

5- Being at 4th grader.

I am planning on supporting her wishes, but I am also going to have a back up picture in case she changes her mind at the last-minute. I will also let her teacher know what is coming so she isn’t put on the spot.

I applaud her for being truthful and authentic in her project. I admire her strength for acknowledging what she has done through. I am so worried that this may trigger something and she will have a bad experience at school.  I’m running this by Hubby to see what he thinks.

I think this will also be a lesson-learner for the other kids in the class.  Not everyone has an all-happy timeline to share, even 9 year olds.  That said I hate that my children seem to be the models for adoption and diversity at school as that is a lot of pressure on a kid.  If anyone out there has traveled this path I would love some advice!

Since we have brought the girls home, we have celebrated with an Ethiopian meal, Coca-Cola and a small gift for each girl.  I try and make the family meal the center of the celebration, not the gifts.

I bought the injera earlier in the week, but made the Dora Alechea (mild chicken stew), red lentils and yellow split peas on my own. I’m not one for cooking, but I enjoy making this for the family. I also try and burn traditional incense to make the kitchen smell a bit like an Ethiopian kitchen might. Mita and Enu love the smell and it has brought back memories for them.

Check out my pics of the food!

The other day Elle hung this up on her door:

Translation: Please put money for Ethiopia.

This makes my heart swell with pride. I love my girls and that they give and have a heart for giving is amazing for me!

I had put on a long skirt that day with a shirt with 3/4 length sleeves. The outfit was well-thought out as it is considered rude to expose your knees and your elbows in Ethiopia. Kids can get away with short sleeve shirts, but not women.  I didn’t want to shock my new kids with bad manners.

My new kids. It was finally time to meet Mita and Enu. Two years into the adoption process, three months from first seeing their photos and it was all coming down to right now. I was worried they would cry and beg not to be taken. I was worried they might be mean and aggressive in their fear.

We pull into the alley with our agency’s sign “AAI” hanging in front of large metal doors and I felt a wave of anxiety. The guard lets us through and we do into the office. The compound is what I expected, lots of dirt and metal familiar to us with our experiences in Peru. What was different was that this time we would be taking two of the child as our own, not just playing with them or helping them. They were to be ours.

The Canadian director took us to Mita and Enu’s class. She stepped inside for a moment. I was waiting for the music to start playing, this is the dramatic part right? No music. To little girls step out.  Smaller than I had imagined. They smiled bashfully and gave us a hug, immediately calling us mom and dad. I was pleased of course, but know that they were taught to do this. They had no idea that mom and dad were Enat and Abba.  So trusting, yet really they had no choice but to come with us.

Their grimy hands in mine, they took me to see their bunk.  One little bed without a pillow in a room with at least eight other bunks.  One small cubby held all of their belongings.  Enu looks at me with pride when she shows me her family photo album.  I cried behind my sunglasses.  Pictures. My heart broke and sang at the same time. More than I had asked for. I had prayed for one picture of their mom. I got so much more.

Hubby worked on paper work while we hung out in the office.  I couldn’t talk with them, nor could they will be. We all seemed content, just a bit awkward maybe.  Mita and Enu were not the names they went by, they were more family nic names and we weren’t the family that used them. My mind shifted to change the names I had dreamt about, talked about and written for several months.  Already a change in expectations and we were thirty minutes into our new lives.  That set the pace for the next few years.

I don’t look back on that day with music. I remember new love and timidness.   The adoption was over.  The rest of our lives were beginning.

Right now.

Every second.

Every minute.

30 thousand in three months.

30,000 people live in  Juneau, Alaska.

How would we react if  Juneau, Alaska’s population died of starvation?  Would it be different than how we reacted to the 30,000 children who died in the past three months in Somalia?  If 30,000 people died in England or Australia would we feel differently than we do the Horn of Africa?

I really want us to think about why we are ignoring Africa? Is it because most of the news we hear about Africa is bad?  Is it because the people are black? Do we think they deserve what they get? 

Being born in American does not give us more humanity or extra importance in the world.  Kids in America are malnourished and obese due to poor diets. There are problems here that need to be addressed for sure, I will not argue that.  The economy is bad.  Yet, when I go to Starbucks there is a line.  Going out to dinner I see the place is full. Our economic downturn means we tighten our belts and make hard decisions, but we are not losing thousands of our kids to starvation.

Please don’t  tell me that we need to feed America first, when mothers in Africa are choosing which child to carry to the hospital while leaving the other one to die.

No comparison. Don’t even try.

If you can give, give. If you cannot give: pray, make yourself and your children aware of what is going on.  Share that life is precious no matter what your geographic location is.

Places to give:

UNICEF

MercyCorps

OXFAM

Petition to Sign

Find an organization you trust and give. Give for aid now, so there will be children to education later and hopefully this will be the last time we see this atrocity.

#17 Traveling

A travel bug named Hubby bit me. 

 I had traveled as a kid somewhat. We moved from Ohio to California in a Ryder truck in 1985 when I was just about ten years old.  We saw a lot of things, from the cab of said truck.   Then in 1991 we moved back to Ohio. This time we were in a Chevy Blazer and I actually got to drive a bit, but not much site seeing happening.  I had however, lived in a different place for a while and been exposed to different cultures, languages and landscape.  This was a good thing for me, even though I didn’t realize it at the time. I was so mad at my parents for making me move at age sixteen, I couldn’t think straight!

So when I was seventeen I started dating Hubby. Of course back then he wasn’t Hubby, I’ll  call him Laup.  Well, Laup was already a world traveler having been to Venezuela our junior year.  In college he added trips to Mali (Africa) and Jordan (Middle East).  I  lived vicariously through him and his pictures. 

Luap-Hubby and I had several road trips, camping trips under our belts before I got my taste of international travel.  After college I got my first passport stamp (back then Mexico and Canada didn’t count!)  We moved to Peru (South America) and lived there for about fifteen months.  I loved it and hated it sometimes, but it taught me so much.  Being submerged in another culture teaches so much that I cannot even begin to express my feelings about it.  Let’s just say that the experience of living in  Peru made me respect other countries and cultures and let me step out  of my every day American life that is extremely easy and blessed compared to most people of the world.

The funny thing is that I didn’t realize how much I missed Peru and the feeling of being a traveler until we took a cruise in the Caribbean.  We didn’t enjoy it very much. Some parts were great, but it was so touristy, so clean, so structured.  At one point Hubby and I got off the bus from one of the resorts in Honduras and walked down a road to find an Internet cafe. It was not the touristy part of town.  We loved it, it felt real. We spoke in Spanish to people and tasted the dust while smelling trash….ahh the smell of the barrio!

We again smelled that smell in parts of Ethiopia.  This time we had my mom and two kids in tow and were not as adventurous as we normally are, but the feelings of excitement were there. I kept starting to speak in Spanish without thinking because it felt like what I was supposed to do.

Of course we spent a week in England before hitting Ethiopia and it was amazing to travel through the history and beauty of that country. It made me appreciate traveling in developed nations as well!

I guess you can say that I am very grateful to have had the opportunity to travel this much in my life time. I wish I could travel more and probably will someday. I also hope that my kids will love new places, cultures and languages.  One of my goals as a mom is to have my children travel to Africa and Europe before they are out of high school.  I think this makes a child understand our world better.  Meg went to England and Ethiopia at age eight so she remembers, but Elle was so little, three, that we just have to go back! Of course Mita and Enu lived in Ethiopia for their first years and hopefully we can go back someday when they are in high school.

Where is the farthest you have travelled and do you like new places or are you a stay at home kind person?  No wrong answers here!

Cookies by Simply Sweet

Last Friday made two years since I met my two middle daughters, Mita and Enu. April 16, 2008 was the day our family was made complete. Last year I gave all the girls little gifts to represent family and Ethiopia. We also went to Chuck E. Cheese and had some fun.

This year the girls wanted to be more low-key, so no special celebration, just some awesome sugar cookies and an extra hug. It is tough having pre-teens. They don’t want a big deal made of anything, unless they want to make a big deal about it!

At Elle's Classroom.

Elle, being only five, does still like “Big Deals” thankfully! I went to her  classroom and talked about Ethiopia with her four and five year old friends. The kids enjoyed holding the wood carvings, and playing with the scarves. I shared with them the following books: E is for Ethiopia and Phillip and the Ethiopian.  Elle also bragged about riding a camel in Ethiopia and showed pictures of her on our camel ride.

They also enjoyed the cookies I brought. I ordered two dozen sugar cookies from a new local baker, Simply Sweet, I learned about a couple weeks ago. The cookies were fabulous and I will be ordering again!

So even without a big celebration, I did treasure our two year anniversary no matter how quiet it was and I am very proud of our family!

Photo Credits:  Mandy W. 2010

(I received no compensation for any of the products I mentioned, I just really liked them!)

While we as a family recognize the seriousness of this date, we also have started celebrating September 11th as the Ethiopian New Year.  Enkutatash is celebrated as the new year for Ethiopia.  If you want to get all smart on the subject check this out.

Since Hubby has a crazy work week we celebrated last Wednesday with Ethiopian food cooked by ME, believe it or not! I made Doro Wat (spicy chicken) and red lentils with fresh injera (bread) that I picked up in Columbus for the occasion.

Today the girls took some Ethiopian activities and some Ethiopian sweet bread to share with their classmates.

Doro Wat in the pot cooking.

Look at me cooking!

Mita and Elle at our Ethiopian table setting (no utensils!)

Enu with our Ethiopian Saba doll we bought the girls.

Meg with the Saba book.

Hubby with a full mouth!

The kids loved the dinner and ate and ate and ate!  I love having an Ethiopian-American family.  The heritage and culture of Ethiopia are amazing to experience and I encourage all of you to try some Ethiopian food sometime!  Remember if you want it to not burn off your mouth order “alecha” not “wat”!

By request, here are links to the Ethiopian recipes I  used the other night.  If you try it, let me know how it turned out!  Some of the spices have to be bought in a specialty store, or Amazon!  Doro Wat ,  Mesir Wat (red lentils).

Going to the traditional dinner/dance.

Meg looking lovely!

Mita tasting some authentic Ethiopian coffee.

Elle had her hair braided.

Enu making smores.

We had a great time!