Lunch at Island Breeze
Lion Zoo
Transition Home
Packing
Leaving for home!
Today we stopped at the coffee factory to try again to buy some coffee and go on the tour. Success! We were able to get coffee gifts for friends and also to take the kids for the tour. It’s very interesting. This is one of the suppliers of Starbucks, but you can get a caramel macchiato there for less than a $1.50.
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| These ladies hand-sort and choose quality raw coffee beans. They remove the defective ones and leave the "good" ones. The belt moves every few minutes to deposit the good ones in a bin at the end of the row. |
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| Wyatt's expression after chewing a coffee bean. We were told that many people just chew the roasted beans, so all the big boys tried it. |
While I was shopping, the boys entertained themselves by trying to jump up on some of the raised sidewalks, etc. The market is on different levels, and there are many places with 2 or 3 steps to go up or down. The boys decided to try jumping flatfooted up to the other levels. All was going great until Eli missed the level and scraped the front of his leg on the concrete wall. I was talking to someone about ribbon and his fall caught their eye. I saw them cringe and look at me as if to say, “Isn’t that your kid?” I just looked around and said, “Yeah, he’s mine. He’ll be fine.” Job went and found some medicine and cotton and doctored Eli’s leg. (Thanks, Job!) I kept shopping…
Next was lunch at Island Breeze again. We had a great time visiting with Dawit and Job and eating the delicious food. The owner of the restaurant is originally from Ethiopia but lived in the US for a while. So glad we got to go there again before we left Addis.
We went to the Lion Zoo after lunch. It was very interesting. We’d heard that it didn’t take long to see it all, and that was correct. They had about a dozen lions, a couple of ducks, 6 or 7 monkeys, a tortoise, an twiching and jumping animal that was kept on a rope, and a few greater kudu. It was sort of like a cartoon zoo in that the animals were all kept in concrete-bottom cages with metal bars. We were not very far from the monkeys or lions at all. And we just walked right up to the greater kudu wire fencing. I had to tell a couple of the kids to get their hands out of there!
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| greater kudu |
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| duck |
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 Tortoise After the zoo, we took the kids back to the Transition Home to say goodbye to their friends and nannies. Again, they were so excited to go down that street again. It was bitter sweet for all of us. Glad ours now have a family and so happy that we ARE that family, but sad to know they may not see many of their good friends who have become like brothers and sisters to them again. We do plan to keep in contact and try to visit with all the ones we can. Their closest friends will (or already do) live in TX, IL, IN, and MO, so it will be difficult, but we will work hard to allow them to maintain any relationships they have from Ethiopia. It's the least we can do for kids who have already lost so much. We pray for all the kids who do not yet have families and for the families who are still waiting for the children God has planned for them.  |
| TJ and 3 of his friends (2 of the families have not yet passed court, so I can't show their faces.) |
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| Brielle and her friend who now lives in Indiana. |
Finally, I got it all to fit and then went to take a shower. However, there was NO hot water. The kids had had showers earlier, but Michael and I were waiting until last. Monday night there had been a power surge which apparently damaged the solar water heating system they had. Therefore, there was no hot water when it was dark. We hadn’t had showers that morning because there was no hot water, and we were in a hurry and just figured we’d get one in the evening before leaving. We HAD to have showers! We told the Guest House staff our dilemma, and they heated water for us and brought it to us in buckets. So, we had “bucket” showers. Whatever. At least we were clean and felt better!
By this time, we were running late on getting downstairs to load up all of our luggage and get to the airport. While on the way, our van got stopped by the police. He told Dawit that the luggage in the back was piled too high and took his license. The way it works in Ethiopia is that you can keep your license if you pay 150 birr ($9) to the officer on the spot, or you can have your license taken and pay 300 birr ($18) later on. Dawit chose to pay 300 later because most of the time when you pay the officer, they just pocket the money and never report it.
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No Facebook posts from today:
None... no time. :)
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