******* Fast forward about a month through the mayhem of preparing my home to be motherless for 5 weeks and prepping all of the stuff for Trent's medical needs while still parenting and all that*****
So we were finally ready to go, early morning of Tuesday May 12th!
We arrived very sleepy to DC midday. We dropped our stuff at the hotel and hit the bus line to walk the mall in Washington, DC. When is the next time we will be childless in DC? Likely never!
We waived to the Presidential motorcaid and informed the president of the cutest new citizen on the way. Then we epic slept to prepare for the next big day of travel on the big bird. We got checked in to Ethiopian Air with no issues and settled in for our "spa in the sky". We watched movies and we read books and ate all of the food.
We got landed. We got some money changed. Ted made bff with some guys in the baggage claim since ours took a rather long while to come out.
We arrived safely to Yeka guest house and unloaded the junk. We tried really hard not to fall asleep, but we fell asleep. Then we woke up and figured we should probably do things to avoid sleeping. Sisay, our fearless driver for this tip, arrived late afternoon to take us out to see the Lucy museum as well as a fabulous restaurant on the side of a mountain.
It is now 4am, May 15th, here in Ethiopia!!!
I am currently in the clutches of slight jet lag. Ted is asleep. I am outside our little room at the Yeka Guest House here in Addis. I am on the ground floor, so no amazing views for me, but in the future I can enjoy my little patio without fear of Trent falling out of it either (perspective). It's too early for coffee service at the moment, and I have a few hours before we leave for Ben's birth village in the SNNPR region of Ethiopia.
I wasn't planning to actually post blogs while here as I did in Colombia, because I didn't believe I would have an internet connection that could handle it. At the moment, I have 5 bars. GO ME. So why not go ahead and get the first few days accounted for while we can. When I don't have internet, I'll type it into something and put it up when I can.
In more seriousness though, today is a big day. Today would not have been happening if Trent had not gotten stuck. I had planned to hire a private investigator to 1) fish out any fraud in his adoption to move forward in truth and 2) locate the birth family if at all possible. I hadn't planned to hire an investigator, though, until after we were home with Trent for a bunch of what seemed to be location reasons at the time (money, stress, dealing with adopting Trent etc). When Trent got stuck, I found myself with idle hands and a busy brain and decided why not work on this. We hired a well recommended private investigator with years of experience in the region of Ben's birth and the tribal language there. I made a "Best of Ben" photo book that I sent in January and didn't hear anything back. At the time, I didn't think much of it, because I was also under a major letter writing campaign to get Trent unstuck, and I also got those 2 little cuties from Kansas City that showed up for awhile. Then in March, I got an email from our private investigator that after a few attempts, he had located members of Ben's family with a lot of information. That was a big day on the couch for Ted and I making sense of our sons ACTUAL story.
When we finally cleared in early April and had some dates, I was then able to work with our private investigator and my guide to piece together a pilgrimage to where Ben began. His first family was willing to meet with us. Until they received my book, due to the nature of his adoption and the way they felt they had to process it, they never knew what happened to tiny baby Nigatu.. and now they have a book of this amazing child.
There will not be enough kleenex for this day that is years in the making and totally changes how I will be able to parent Ben moving forward. I can't wait to show Ben who Mommy found in a few days!!!
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