Trip to Hosana & meeting the newbie's birthmother

Guestblogging for Stacey....received this email this afternoon.

Sunday--

Today was the trip south to meet the newbie’s birthmother. I was a little worried about the morning since we needed to report to the bus at 6 am, and we went out last night for Ethiopian food and dancing. Compared to the restaurant we went to the last time, this one was a cheesy Ethiopian Appleby’s or TGI Fridays. When I ordered a glass of tej (honey wine) last night, they brought me a bottle & Dan and I could not let it go to waste. Needless to say, we have some great pictures of the evening. The group now thinks I’m a lush. One good thing about the tej, though, it doesn’t seem to give you a hangover.

The drive to Hosanna was 3.5 hours, give or take, with no bathroom breaks. I have some good pictures and some really fuzzy ones. I missed the camels (asleep) and the baboons (couldn’t see them in the trees). We did see some Ethiopian runners training, though.

The road was paved, but we had several close calls with goats, cows and people crossing the road It was pretty bumpy at times, but the temperature was pleasant with the windows open.

I did make one wrong move--I waited to apply the insect repellant after we stopped, so all the dust stuck to my damp legs. T, if you are reading, we wore the water soluble deet on our arms and legs and necks, and I sprayed the 98% deet a bit on my skirt. No worries.

All I will say about meeting the newbie’s birth mother is that she is a very strong and brave woman. The rest is the newbie’s story to tell when she is older.

We had an emotional entrustment ceremony with all the birthmothers and families from our group and a traditional coffee ceremony as well. On the way back, we stopped at a school our agency is sponsoring and a traditional hut. Then it was 3.5 hours back to the guest houses.

We took a brief trip to the supermarket --kind of like a rustic 7-11-- for coffee and baby cereal. The place is very interesting. They have a deep freezer filled with whole frozen fish near the Cheerios.

For dinner we went to Metro pizza again. I never expected to see a brick oven in Ethiopia, but here we are.

Today I was grateful for the support of our travel group. We were really lucky to end up with a truly wonderful group of people. We all get along and everyone has been very supportive.

Tomorrow, we have a good-bye ceremony and we take the children into our care. That should be very interesting. Back to diapers for us tomorrow. Oh, and sleeping with the newbie in between us on the double bed that we can’t move or it collapses.