An Embassy, an airline and pancakes

As you tell with our lack of recent posts (we are getting four up today, however), we’ve been a little busy. Both with trip things, but mostly with being rookie parents. The full bottle in the backpack was a good one. There went a full roll of soft-soft. Not being fully prepared for diaper . . . shall we say . . . overflow? . . . was a learning experience. We now have the appropriate cleaning supplies. Experience doesn’t hurt either.

The big news, or at least I, Kent, think, on the baby front is her eating. Today she ate well. She had most of a good sized pancake for breakfast topped off by some eggs, a nice lunch of doro wat (chicken in a pepper sauce) and injera, dinner another pancake and two bottles (sippy cups) of formula thrown in there for good measure. The dinner pancake was a great surprise. I had told Hirrot, the guesthouse cook, that we were worried about Ella’s eating and she was visibility concerned. Once she heard how Ella scarfed down a pancake this morning, she was more than happy. Before dinner, which is soup, she asked what Ella would be eating. I said we’d try the soup, but if it didn’t work we’d make some cereal or something. She said she’d make a pancake. Well, as you can see from the picture . . . she went more for the full stack. Hirrot’s pancakes are very good by the way and she is a very sweet, loving woman.

Let me back up to yesterday. We started a nice leisurely morning, for a change, with the exception of Ella’s non-breakfast. We did a little shopping in the neighborhood, picking up a few items, which will remain unknown at the moment. My personal score was a pair of the ubiquitous Ethiopian foam sandals. They are the same material as Crocs in the States. They have many different styles and a quite comfy. I won’t look at that display in Wal-Mart the same, now that I know you can pick them up for 10 Birr ($1.25). I paid 30 Birr; I couldn’t come to bargain with the shopkeeper. Our street is pretty run down, OK really a disaster compared to anything stateside, and knew she could use that extra 20. I also picked up three rolls of soft-soft or toilet paper. The Ethiopian version is pretty good, I must say, 2-ply and is softer than the stuff in public schools. We came back to lunch of fish and pineapple with rice (Ella –nada) and then dashed off to the US Embassy – our little slice of home – behind blast barriers and Concertina wire.

This is the day that George W and the gang would give all of us the “Mission Accomplished” and as far as the US is concerned, Ella was ours. Now you think this would be all smiles, but one couple here has been mired in a paperwork fiasco. I believe this is there third week in the guesthouse. Now the problem wasn’t from the US, but once you’ve been tangled in the burocracy, you tend to get gun shy. Just for that touch of home and a visit to a government office, we got to stand in line in a room with a temperature a bit over the melting point of sand. Now when I said it was all of us that includes all the adults and children, even the biological ones. Thank heavens we had a “handler” from CHSFS with us, who took care of the fee and corralling the paperwork. After a bit in the sauna, we were told to go to the lower waiting area. I felt sorry for the Ethiopian people who were stuck waiting for their number to come up that remained there. I actually thought that the wait wasn’t so long. However, kids fall down, some one cries, a diaper needs changed, some loses a makina (car), and one of the Moms became faint from both a lack of water and being slightly ill. As you can see it was no picnic, which was good because Ella wouldn’t have ate anyway. We were called up one-by-one, and had to answer some questions, pertaining to the our child’s health, situation, etc. Of course there was a coaching session earlier in the day, so it was pretty much 1-2-3. We will get the approved forms back Friday morning and be set to head home. And everyone made it though, so Mario and Emily can finally return home. It has been nice having another couple who has been here for a while, as they know all the nuances of the guest house.

From there we went to the Addis Hilton to confirm our tickets on Ethiopian (they don’t said Air, it is just Ethiopian). Here we are in the second best hotel in all of Addis, and we get stuck in the queue to end all queues. It’s not that it was long, it just did not move. Why do you have to confirm your flight? From what I can deduce, Ethiopian will overbook its flights a little because it has a notorious cancellation rate. You can see it from their perspective; they can’t afford to fly empty seats. Therefore, beginning 72 hours before the flight, you can confirm. This is a first-come, first-serve affair. I believe it took at least 10-20 minutes to serve each customer. Of course you have the occasional customer fit, babies needing what babies need and everyone exhausted and dehydrated from the embassy experience. The joy of Business Class came up again when I was done confirming in about five minutes and three of that was spent in chit-chat. So we are ready, at least logistically, to head out Friday night.

The best of the Hilton experience is Julia had heard it possessed the best pastry shop in all of Addis. She decided to reward us all for the long day by buying a lovely cake. It was quite tasty, I must say.

After we got back from that, we had just a few minutes to get ready before we drove all the way across Addis to go the Crown Hotel. A couple nights a week the Crown hosts Ethiopian folk dancing. Sounds like a nice way to wrap up a, if not stressful, tedious and hot day. Those of you with children, already know the answer to this question. It started out rough, especially for Julia. We had to rush out the door and as we were backing out of the compound, Ella had a blow out. Please, don’t ask me to explain. She decided to stay and I went along. After our driver waited about five minutes for her to return, we left for the Crown. The drive over was another night cruise through Addis, near head-ons, pedestrians scampering and realizing that the money spent on paint for the lanes should have been used one something else. The dancing at the Crown was very good. It is traditional featuring dances from the four main ethnic groups, Amhara, Orimo, Tangyra and Hidiya (Ella’s). I filmed all of the dancing because Julia couldn’t be there. The food was good and I had a pleasant Ethiopian white wine, Amharsh Cristal. One of the children got violently ill during the course of the evening. We got home around 10, having left at seven.

Now there is part of the story I left out, really it is the key to the story. When we got to the Crown I realized it, Julia when she got upstairs, I had the key to the room. So there she was without a key and a baby in desperate need of cleaning and new clothes and I’m in the van without a clue. I feel terrible about it. I’ll let here tell her part when she can, but I do thank her for letting me go. I hope she enjoys the video. We’ve talked about going Thursday night. We’ll see.

Ella did not have a good night. At five, she woke up with a major fit. Our first. Wow, I don’t know how loud it really was, but the girl has a set of lungs. She finally calmed down and we got a little more sleep. It was hard to see her in that great of distress. I think that is one of the difficulties of taking over the care of a little one at this age. If we’d been with her from the beginning we’d know what she needed a little bit easier. I’m sure the nannies have her figured out to some degree, but we’ll catch on.

I spend most of my time as “Baba” getting things. I’m not complaining, but I find if funny that I spend most of my time hunting and gathering. I don’t think we have progressed that much. On thing I am excited about when we get home is having the slight idea where something might actually be located. I don’t know how much time I spent looking today. This is in spite of the fact that we spent a good portion of yesterday reorganizing. It is just hard in a space that isn’t your own.

We have two more days left. In some ways it will be nice to be home, but in others, not so. It is a really interesting place and each day I feel that I know a little bit more, but also that there is more that I don’t know. That’s a little Rumfeildian, isn’t it.

Drat, still a day behind in the blog, but know we are doing well.