Days Go By

The next day we went back to the Gladney home to say goodbye to the caretakers and to have a special coffee ceremony to celebrate the new families.

The "special mothers" as the children's special nannies were called, dressed the children in traditional Ethiopian dress - Ellie's is in the style of the northern region where she was born.

The nannies love these children SO MUCH. The parents were warned that the nannies would take the children from us and carry them around the home to say goodbye for the last time. I have no doubt about the kind of care Ellie received after seeing how enthusiastic and emotional everyone was.

Every time I grumble about doing laundry I think of this and say a silent prayer for Tide and Kenmore.



Then we headed to the garden to take pictures with the kids and their special mothers. What you don't see in this photo is that I'm apparently standing in an ant hill, which I will discover 15 minutes later in the cab on the way to the restaurant with the rest of the families for lunch. I made a beeline to the bathroom at the restaurant and shook over a dozen ants out of my pants including some that had giant pinchers and looked like something out of a Discovery Channel special.

The rest of the week was an emotional roller coaster - Ellie got more and more unpredictable as the week went on, and my facade of calm got weaker and weaker. We skipped several outings planned for the Gladney families because coming back after leaving Ellie with a sitter seemed to exacerbate her distress. Suzanne and I did take one morning to get out and do some shopping and to get a coffee at Kaldi's (Ethiopia's version of Starbucks.)
One of the brightest highlights of the week was the lovely family sharing our guesthouse. Marcel and Cornelia and their daughter Lili-Cai were in Ethiopia to pick up their daughter Sena. They were supportive and encouraging and gracious with their time, toys and advice all week long. Some of the happiest moments of that week for Ellie were play time with Lili-Cai. As things got harder, I was so grateful for their presence!

Lili-Cai and Ellie blowing bubbles (yeah, Ellie's in pajama pants, because that's what she chose out of the suitcase and I was not about to argue...):

We had the privilege of getting to meet Ellie's uncle and two of his cousins, which was an overwhelming experience that I think I'll keep private for Ellie when she's older. On Friday, our flight was scheduled to leave at 1:30 in the morning, so we packed up after dinner and headed to the airport. Poor Suzanne was sick and fighting nausea, and I was fighting back an anxiety attack thinking about what behavior Ellie might unleash on us during the wait and the flight itself. After many delays (missing flight crew, missing plane, power failure at the airport...) we boarded with the same surly crew we'd had on our way there. Ellie turned out to be a champion traveler - a few breakdowns toward the end but at the end of a trip that long who could blame her? The best part was that all the sadness and mourning she'd been wrestling with all week seemed to lift once we got to the airport, and we had the chance to see some of the sparky personality of the little girl I love.


I know this has been a long post, but I can't wrap up the retelling of this part of our adventure without thanking Suzanne, my dear cousin and friend and very favorite travel companion! She was truly my hero that week - ready to entertain, crack a joke, to console, to transcribe Amharric so we could communicate, to run errands so I wouldn't have to leave Ellie, to haul ALL OF OUR BAGS through customs when Ellie lost it in the airport and refused to walk (damn you Lufthansa and your stroller-gate-checking-fail!) I couldn't have asked for a better sidekick on this trip, and am so glad that Ellie got to spend her first week as a part of my family with her Aunt Suzanne!