Addis Ababa - Wednesday, June 22, 2011

After a whopping 3 1/2 hours of sleep, I awoke at 4am, watched a movie on my iPad, and then decided to get ready for the day. This is where the fun begins...

I took a long shower and came out to get dressed. Apparently one of the engineers who created the rooms for the Hilton thought it would be a great idea to put the smoke detector right outside the door to the bathroom, which is fine if you hadn't just taken a long hot shower and left the bathroom door open as you were getting dressed, thus setting off the smoke detector for the next 20 min, yep, that was me! So, at 7am I had a smoke alarm going off in my room, a couple of front desk people trying to reset it and finally telling me to just open the window and it will have to clear itself. Which it finally did, but I am sure my neighbors hated me at this point, luckily dan, Larry and Cindy were all way down the hall and didn't even hear it. Whew! Made for a good story at breakfast though...

A new little friend I met...

Today we toured care centers in Addis and the new holt office as they have moved from their previous location. We toured two care centers run by holt and 2 centers run by another organization that holt is trying to help out. All in all, we saw about 100 kids today of all age ranges, most were going to families, but some still waiting. I loved today. Just playing with the kids and being around them filled a void that has been there for me since I have left Miles and Lauryn at home. We got to hold babies, which I haven't done in a while and forgot how wonderful that experience can be.





Holt office - Addis Ababa

 We then went to the holt office and met with dr Fikru and his staff. The office is quite larger than the old office and they have room to spread out and great storage for the care centers. We had coffee and listened to dr Fikru discuss their accomplishments in ethiopia, setbacks, and future goals for care. He is an amazing man. His passion and love for his country and the people is apparent in everything he does. He has accomplished so much in the past 4 years that holt has been in Ethiopia, most of which doesn't focus on adoption. Their family preservation program here is amazing, where families from around the world sponsor kids who have either lost a parent or may be with their parent but have no means of finding food, shelter, education, etc. Since it's inception 3 years ago, holt has about 1500 kids and families that are now thriving because of the sponsorship program. What this means is that the kids are getting educations, the families are taught how to build a house and cultivate the land to grow crops and in a lot of cases holt is able to buy the families a cow and cart in order for the families to sell their crops at market. This in turn, provides income for needed items like clothing, tools, etc. Which has an end result of keeping the families together. When people think of holt, they primarily think of adoption, but in listening to Fikru, adoption is a very small part of what they do here and used as a last resort when needed. Most of what he does revolves around family preservation at the most basic of levels.

After our meeting we then moved hotels to the Hotel Kaleb, which was in a developing area of Addis. It was a very nice hotel, nicer than the Hilton, and even had wifi so I actually got to face time with holly and the kids, show them some of addis and see their faces. Technology is amazing when you can have your family with you and you are half a world away! For dinner we went to the Beer Garden Inn, a hotel built by Germans and had soup and beer. It was close to Hotel Kaleb, and we were all tired from the day and just wanted a quick bite then bed. It was an end to a very fulfilling day. I absolutely love this country.

Tomorrow we take the 6 hour journey to Durame...