Travelogue - Day Four

We woke up bright and early to get on the road. We traveled to Durame, the location of the care center where all the children are taken into Holt's care. This is where the boys lived from January to November 2009.

We drove through the city and within an hour, we hit the beautiful countryside. I'm not sure what I expected but the contrast between the congestion of the big city and the serene fields was striking.


Our driver would point of specific locations or facts about people, occupations, cities, etc.

Those living and working in the countryside are considered rich. They own land, which in Ethiopia is the measure of wealth. It's meager living - usually a thatch-roofed hut with blankets on the dirt floor and a couple cooking utensils, and hard work. We don't see any machinery or farm equipment. All the work is done by animals or human hands.

We're traveling on a Sunday so it's difficult to tell if what we're seeing is normal activity. The small towns we drive through are full of people and animals. We stopped half-way into our trip for a snack and bathroom break. There aren't a lot of cars but several donkey/horse-drawn carts. There seem to be normal businesses, a bank, a market, a restaurant, a tailor, etc. Most are roadside stands though.

Our driver, who has been hired by our agency to be with us during the week, has been working with Holt since the work in Ethiopia began. We enjoyed getting to know him. He shared with us that two weeks ago he had been hired as the driver for Mr. and Mrs. Pitt (the famous people - I'm not saying their names to avoid the google searches). As you may or may not know, they adopted a little girl from Ethiopia and are building a hospital there in her honor. They were in the country to work on details. Our driver pulls out his video camera, and sure enough, there they were (with their entourage).

We arrive in a small town just outside of Durame to see the hospital that was recently built by our agency. It's the only health care for 200 miles and was just opened in the last year. They have a small inpatient unit (one small room with several hospital beds). They have labor and delivery (two rooms - one for deliver, one for recovery). The outpatient unit was closed on a Sunday but they told us they see several hundred patients a day for acute care and for preventative care (family planning, hygiene, etc.)

A woman had arrived earlier that morning on this donkey-pulled cart to deliver her baby. She was recovering for a few hours and would return home on this cart later that day.





This is the kind of work that our agency spends most of it's resources on throughout the world. Adoption is just a small part (and a last resort) of their work. They have family preservation programs to help children stay with their biological family by providing vocational training to women (often children are brought into care because the father is unable to work) and basic necessities for families.

We head across the street for lunch before going to a Christmas Celebration at a church nearby. Holt has a child sponsorship program and the sponsored children in the area have put together a Christmas Celebration for us. The sponsorship of each child allows them to go to school and receive medical care when needed.

After the celebration, we go to check into our hotel. It was interesting. They had described it to us as "indoor camping". Electricity and running water were a possibility but not likely. It wasn't awful but it wasn't luxurious either. Malaria is common in this area and most of our rooms were not airtight (gaps around windows - some windows missing).





After getting settled into our hotel it was time to make our way to the Holt office to meet the birth mother. Because travel is so difficult in this area, none of us were guaranteed a visit. The anxiety was high as we made our way to the office. It had already been an emotional week and this was likely to be the most emotional event of all. And it was. All birth mothers were there and each family got to sit down with her to ask questions and share their hopes and dreams for their kids. We've decided not to share the details of this visit, even with our family. There are no scandalous details of the story - but we don't think it's our story to tell. The story belongs to the boys. We wrote the conversation down word-for-word and when the time comes, we'll share it with them. It's important to us that they hear it first and decide what they want others to know.

I'm grateful that Holt provides this opportunities to families. It was so hard but I think the benefit to everyone involved is worth it.

The Care Center is just down the street and was the next stop for this whirlwind day. None of us were ready to see it yet. Most were still reeling from the birth mother visits. It ended up being the perfect medicine for our broken hearts. The staff at the care center were so loving and kind. I mentioned the encounter with the sister (head nurse) in an earlier post but will insert a picture here.




We could not take pictures inside The Care Center to protect the privacy of the children now housed there. So many children have been taken into care in the last year. At it's highest census there were 75 children at this facility.

After a quick tour it was time to head back to our hotel. We met for dinner in the hotel restaurant. As you can see, it was an exhausting day.


We all headed to our rooms for some much needed sleep. Because of the malaria risk (we heard the malaria-mosquitoes come out at night) and our "open-air" accommodations, I wouldn't let John turn any lights on in our room so the mosquitoes would congregate somewhere else. We got ready for bed in the dark and wore long-sleeves and long pants with socks to bed. We're pretty sure this prevented any mosquito bites but did not prevent Kim from getting bit by bed bugs. Oh yes! The evidence wasn't discovered until a couple of days later but the damage had been done. I came home with half my clothes in air-tight plastic bags and my legs still bare the signs.

Coming up on Day 5 - Becoming full-time parents.