Ethiopia Part II

April 4, 2009, 9:30 pm Ethiopia time

[in these brackets are things I added today, May 1st]

Here we are, less than one hour a way from landing.

My feet hurt (?!?!), my bum hurts, my knees hurt (thanks to Kayla [my exercise guru]! FYI, no lunges before sitting in a plane for 20 hours! Ha! And I’m tired.

But it’s all good.

We’re landing in Ethiopia soon.

I just got done watching a fairly corny movie, so I need to get my head around this again.

We’re landing in Ethiopia soon.

Let’s go back a bit to today. Which for us is really part of yesterday yet? And possibly tomorrow too? I don’t know. This 9 hour time change plus jet lag gets confusing!

On our flight from Minneapolis to Amsterdam, I mentioned Brandy and I were not sitting next to each other. Most of the 9 hour flight I kept to myself, with possible small talk here and there. I read. I watched a movie or two.

About breakfast time…yes they served us supper and then 5 hours later breakfast…see the confusion? I decided to strike up a conversation with the man on my left. I had been talking to the man on my right a little more. He was a student at Brookings SD, going back to India to see his parents whom he hadn’t seen in a year. We both flew out of Omaha to get to Minneapolis. He mentioned that he goes to Omaha on occasion because there is a temple there. I assumed Muslim or Buddhist, but didn’t ask.

Anyway, I mentioned I started chatting with the man on my left. His name was Ali. Started as small talk. I’m not into egg sandwiches on planes due to a really yucky one once when I was pregnant, and so now avoid them. I asked him how the sandwich was.

He must have thought I’d heard him ask the flight attendant about the sandwich (which I hadn’t). He said he had just wanted to know if there was sausage on it, because often they have sausage on them.

This gentleman looked like he could be Ethiopian, however I’m not a good judge of that sort of thing. But when he mentioned the sausage, it occurred to me that Orthodox Christians and Muslims generally don’t eat pork. And Ethiopia has many Christians and Muslims. So I asked him where he was from.

Turns out he was from Ethiopia. However he lives in the States and hadn’t gone back to see his mother in 15 years. We got off on the subject of adoption, but let me sidetrack to towards the end of the conversation where I found out a few more things about him. Because his father was being persecuted by the government, and eventually would have been killed, he left the country when Ali was around 2. His mother and father both remarried being they were in countries on the other side of the world. Also, ET is a male dominated society and it would seem his mom needed a husband.

Ali’s father sent for him when he was 17. He’s never been back. Ali is now married with 2.5 kids.

After I found out where Ali was from, he asked me where we were going. I told him to ET, and that we were adopting. For some reason (God-thing?) I had the courage to ask him what he thought of that as an Ethiopian. Especially after he hesitated (only slightly) after I said we were adopting. I told him I had heard mixed reports [on Ethiopians views].

Although he was a very opinionated man, he was also quite kind and polite. First he talked about the Christians and Muslims in ET. As he was elaborating on that I asked him if he was a Christian or a Muslim. He is a Muslim. From what he’s read and from his point of view, Muslims are taking care of each other better and doing more not to have to give up their kids.

I think he had a fairly [quite] slanted view. I can’t imagine many mothers giving up their kids would be an easy thing or an easy decision.

He asked me why not adopt from the US, there’s orphans there, too, right? I told him our reasoning…the US has a better program in place to take care of orphans than many other countries (even though it’s very flawed itself)…the fact that there are approximately 143 million orphans in the world…and selfishly that using the foster care system can be heartbreaking. Before I mentioned all that, I told him that I was a Christian, and we really feel like this is what God is calling us to do.

He was quite shocked at the large number of orphans in the world, and even mentioned that maybe he should be adopting. So I think I possibly changed his mind a little bit about adoption. We also (or he also) talked at length about the country and politics of ET. Very sad. Even though I believe he is on a very wrong track with his faith, he was quite a compassionate man.

[Sidenote...in line at the airport we also talked in length about his arranged marriage...very interesting!]

Well, back to the here and now. I find I can’t write much more because I’m falling asleep with my hands on the keyboard and my eyes are starting to blur.

I’m going to take a few minutes to talk to my Lord about what happens next, Gracious!

April 5, 2009

We arrived last night very tired. Waited in the wrong line at the Addis Ababa airport for about 10 minutes, then got in the back of the right line. By then a VERY long line for our Ethiopian Visa. Then onto a shorter line through customs that still took a long time. [At this point of writing on April 5th our computer battery ran out and we still hadn't figured out the converter! More on Part III...]