When we left the US Embassy, we drove up to Entoto Mountain to see the women who carry 100 pounds of eucalyptus leaves on their backs, to sell at the Mercado in Addis. Here is a picture:
You may not be able to see clearly, but the women are in a line, heading down the hill. Solomon told us the story of an American woman who was in extremely good shape, and she wanted to see how heavy the bundle of leaves was. She asked an Entoto woman if she could carry the bundle, and the woman said no. Finally, the American convinced her to let go of her bundle, and she tried it on her own back. And she fell over.
On one hand, seeing the woman was an amazing site. On the other hand, they live an extremely difficult life, and by the time they are older ladies, their backs are permanently hunched. There is nothing glorious about their life and work. Their days are hard; their lives are hard.
We went down the mountain with heavy hearts, but we were also uplifted by the beauty of seeing the men and women gather outside of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church for noonday prayer. The Orthodox tradition is lovely and filled with rich tradition. We awoke each morning at 6:00 am to the call to worship led by an Orthodox priest, which had been preceded by the Muslim call to worship of an imam at 5:00 am. Muslims and Christians live together in peace in Ethiopia, and that is no surprise, given how peaceful and loving the Ethiopian people are.
We were heading back to Bejoe when Solomon's phone rang. Solomon hung up and said, "Birth family is here."
One of the treasures of Ethiopian adoption is that adoptive families typically meet the birth family. We consider that a tremendous blessing of the Ethiopian adoption process, and we were anxiously awaiting that meeting. However, we thought we were to meet Arri's birth family on Friday. We thought we had a little more time to prepare emotionally. We had written them a letter, and thank goodness we had done that ahead of time. And I happened to have the letter with us, in my backpack.
We headed to the Gladney office where the meeting took place. I will not share much about that gathering, because the circumstances around Arri's adoption are to be shared with her first, at the right time. I will say that our time together was very emotional. I looked over at one of the administrative assistants, and even she was crying. We already knew a good bit about Arri's birth family's reasons for placing her for adoption, but the family meeting enabled us to see with our own two eyes how very much her parents love her. When Arri begins to ask us questions about her birth parents, we will be able to assure her that she was loved beyond measure from the moment she was born. Through a translator, we were able to ask questions about how they chose her name, how they spend their time, what they like to do, and family history, and we were also able to take pictures of them with Arri.
Arri is from Tigray, an area of Ethiopia located way up north. The travel time to Addis is two days by car, so Gladney had arranged for Arri's birth family to be flown to Addis to meet us. That night, we had dinner with Belay, the head of the Ethiopia program, and he said that Gladney feels that meeting the birth family is such a precious gift, that Gladney does what it takes to make that introduction happen.
"Gratitude" is the word to characterize this day. We are grateful to Arri's birth family for their courage in letting her go, for their making the effort to travel to Addis, and to Gladney for recognizing how meaningful the meeting with the birth family is.
You may not be able to see clearly, but the women are in a line, heading down the hill. Solomon told us the story of an American woman who was in extremely good shape, and she wanted to see how heavy the bundle of leaves was. She asked an Entoto woman if she could carry the bundle, and the woman said no. Finally, the American convinced her to let go of her bundle, and she tried it on her own back. And she fell over.
On one hand, seeing the woman was an amazing site. On the other hand, they live an extremely difficult life, and by the time they are older ladies, their backs are permanently hunched. There is nothing glorious about their life and work. Their days are hard; their lives are hard.
We went down the mountain with heavy hearts, but we were also uplifted by the beauty of seeing the men and women gather outside of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church for noonday prayer. The Orthodox tradition is lovely and filled with rich tradition. We awoke each morning at 6:00 am to the call to worship led by an Orthodox priest, which had been preceded by the Muslim call to worship of an imam at 5:00 am. Muslims and Christians live together in peace in Ethiopia, and that is no surprise, given how peaceful and loving the Ethiopian people are.
We were heading back to Bejoe when Solomon's phone rang. Solomon hung up and said, "Birth family is here."
One of the treasures of Ethiopian adoption is that adoptive families typically meet the birth family. We consider that a tremendous blessing of the Ethiopian adoption process, and we were anxiously awaiting that meeting. However, we thought we were to meet Arri's birth family on Friday. We thought we had a little more time to prepare emotionally. We had written them a letter, and thank goodness we had done that ahead of time. And I happened to have the letter with us, in my backpack.
We headed to the Gladney office where the meeting took place. I will not share much about that gathering, because the circumstances around Arri's adoption are to be shared with her first, at the right time. I will say that our time together was very emotional. I looked over at one of the administrative assistants, and even she was crying. We already knew a good bit about Arri's birth family's reasons for placing her for adoption, but the family meeting enabled us to see with our own two eyes how very much her parents love her. When Arri begins to ask us questions about her birth parents, we will be able to assure her that she was loved beyond measure from the moment she was born. Through a translator, we were able to ask questions about how they chose her name, how they spend their time, what they like to do, and family history, and we were also able to take pictures of them with Arri.
Arri is from Tigray, an area of Ethiopia located way up north. The travel time to Addis is two days by car, so Gladney had arranged for Arri's birth family to be flown to Addis to meet us. That night, we had dinner with Belay, the head of the Ethiopia program, and he said that Gladney feels that meeting the birth family is such a precious gift, that Gladney does what it takes to make that introduction happen.
"Gratitude" is the word to characterize this day. We are grateful to Arri's birth family for their courage in letting her go, for their making the effort to travel to Addis, and to Gladney for recognizing how meaningful the meeting with the birth family is.
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