September 16, 2009

I haven’t really told many of the details surrounding our trip here in Ethiopia , because of spotty internet, but I’m going to attempt to do so now. When we left Rwanda , we felt like the hardest part of the trip was behind us; our paperwork was done and all we had to do was medical tests and an interview at the US Embassy here in Addis. Wrong. When we flew into Ethiopia , we went to the visa office because we needed to buy visas on arrival. No problem for me and Justin; big problem for Moses and all the other kids. Ethiopia does not allow visas on arrival for Africans and Moses has a Rwandan passport. Somehow, we never got that memo; I really could play the ignorance card because I had never heard that before. We had a letter from the Ministry of Gender and Family Promotion of Rwanda stating that we were approved to adopt Moses and allowed to travel with him, but it still took a lot of waiting and talking to get Ethiopian customs to let him and the other 4 kids through. One customs officer told me that he wanted to send Moses back to Kigali , but he couldn’t because he was a baby. Our AWAA guide here in Ethiopia was very surprised when we told him what happened and said that’d never been an issue before.

The next hurdle we faced was getting our kids’ vaccination records translated. They are in Kinyarwardan, and none of the translators in Addis know that language. We even took them to the Rwandan Embassy and they wouldn’t touch it because it had the Ministry of Health’s seal on it. Miraculously, the doctor who is doing their medical exams figured out which vaccines they had by the series of shots and length of time between shots and signed the vaccination form for us. Our guide, T, said this was a big deal.

Now, we are being told by the Embassy that they may not let us do our interviews tomorrow. Only problem is that we are supposed to board our plane to come home tomorrow night. All the kids’ medical results will be at the Embassy by 1:00; please pray that they will see us for interviews sometime in the afternoon. We have seen impossible things happen on this trip and know that it can happen again.

Today we got to do a little shopping and then went to a traditional Ethiopian restaurant for dinner. There was traditional food, music, and Ethiopian dancing. So much fun! Moses loved it and was mesmerized by the music. I still can’t believe how easy-going he is; he eats anything we give him (except baby food, he is on strike against that! He hadn’t ever had table food at the orphanage, so I thought he may struggle eating regular food. Evidently not an issue!), and sleeps wonderfully.