Manic Monday

Ashe woke up at 7 a.m. again Monday morning. We slept a little better. I was up at 5, me from 1-2. We got ready quickly when Ashe woke up and went to the other house as were supposed to be picked up at 9. We fed Ashe his beloved cereal and then he fell asleep right at 9. This kid falls asleep anywhere (that all changed once we got home). He slept until 11, and still no one had picked us up. I. talked much with the Danish couple and I slept some. What a boring morning though just waiting to get picked up. I. finally called Robel and found out we wouldn't be picked up until 11:30. So our driver finally came to get us for the two appointments we were not aware of until we picked up Ashe on Saturday.

We went with the other CWA couple to the orphanage and met with the CWA counselor. She didn't speak English very well. Her job was to discuss their history with us and then see if we needed anything else. She started with Ashe but as they don't know too much, we were done pretty quickly. We did ask about the strange mark on his tummy. At first they didn't really know what to say or what to do. They finally got in touch with the doctor that had treated him and we found out he had had ringworm. They had treated it twice and now it was just on the mend. I was a little nervous that it might be contagious, luckily we know now it wasn't.

We were very frustrated that they hadn't told us about these appointments until we got to Addis. We had already arranged to meet our sponsored child from Compassion that day. By the time we found out, it was the weekend and we tried to reach our Compassion contact but just had to leave a message. We knew our sponsored child would be picked up very early on Monday morning. They called Monday morning while we were waiting to be picked up for our appointments and said they were in town and they would be there soon. We had to explain what happened and ask if they could come later, though we weren't sure when we would be back. They finally relented but were not very happy about it. There was nothing we could do.

Everything there was so uncertain and out of our control. It was very frustrating. By the way, I wrote this journal entry by candlelight. We had no power two full days while we were there. Apparently, they just don't have power two days of the week so that other cities can have power. They all alternate. There was one other day that we were without power most of the day for some other reason. We also lost water a couple of times. It felt very 1800's to write by candlelight. They never replenished our two small candles so by the end of the trip, we were down to almost nothing.

We went straight from counseling to the head office where we filled out our immigration forms with help. It was nervewracking because I just happened to have that paperwork with us. I didn't know we would be filling it out at that time. Also, we didn't have our 2007 tax forms and we thought we were going to need to get them sent or something, but they let us just take everything back a year. The whole process took another 40 minutes and we got back to the guesthouse at 2:00.

M, her project worker, and the Compassion coordinator came at about 3:30. He, the coordinator and our contact, gave us a huge guilt trip for rescheduling and he wasn't a very helpful translator. It was very awkward. M was precious and her project worker as well. They ate while there. I think they stayed about 3 hours. We kept waiting for them to leave. It was awesome to see M but very difficult to communicate, the guesthouse was crazy busy and Ashe was hard to watch. Just thirty minutes after M came, Jonathan came in with his three cousins and 2 friends. It was a madhoue. I felt so bad. Then Ashe had a nasty diaper and it went everywhere. We had to deal with all that while trying to visit. It was a crazy evening but we were blessed to see M. She loved her gifts, especially the doll. Her and I both had tears when we said goodbye.

As soon as she left, we all went to bed. It was a an exhausting day.