Today was a non-eventful and restful day. I got a great night sleep and felt much better in the morning. Mehandis woke up in the middle of the night when he knocked his head on the bed, so he cried for a bit. Michele took care of him, a good woman. He slept the rest of the night and the three of us got up around 6:30. We cleaned our room and moved out so new people could move in and it could be cleaned. We showered and got Mehandis ready for the day.
The lady who arrived the day before missed the infamous fifth step on the way down to breakfast and twisted her ankle. She was in a lot of pain but hopefully it would get better soon. We met a new couple who came during the night before who were from the United Arab Emirates where the guy worked for the state department.
After breakfast we hung out in the main room with the two other couples, watching Mehandis and talking. Eventually a car showed up and took the other two couples to the care center to meet their kids. Michele and I walked to the office to get our final paperwork for the trip home. We got ¾ of the way there and got a lift from CHSFS the rest of the way. We got our final paperwork, our U.S. visa info that we could not open until we got home and were given his life book and two DVD’s. We tried using the computer to e-mail but it was off, so we waited outside for a ride back to the guest house.
When we got back to the guesthouse, we got to see the new families who just arrived from Ethiopian Air getting into the vans to go to the office and meet their kids. It was fun to see them, very tired but getting a rise out of seeing Mehandis. Soon we had the house to ourselves. I sat around and played with Mehandis while watching soccer on TV. We relaxed in the main room most of the afternoon.
Soon the rest of the families started arriving back at the house, it was nice to meet them and hear their stories. There was one family from Evanston and another family was adopting three kids after adopting one child a year ago. We read and played with Mehandis, gave him a bath and did our routine to get ready for the trip. The day passed quickly and soon Massi called and it was time to head to the airport. We left at 5PM for a 10:30 flight.
The road out to the airport was the same type of driving in Addis, lots of cars, little space on the road, lots of debris on the side of the road, lots of road construction and some really bad roads (with some nice roads as well). On this drive, I was not overly sad to leave the city. We were ready to go home and start our lives with Mehandis.
At the airport you had to pay a toll to drop off passengers and then you had park and walk your baggage to the terminal, you could not park on the side of the road and unload like US airports. Then a security guy on the walk to the terminal asked us for our passports. We just showed the covers and that satisfied him and we went inside the airport.
When you walk into the terminal you immediately go through security. Mehandis was asleep on Michele in our carrier and stayed asleep during the process. Once through security, we found out that we were too early to check in for our flight, which started at 7PM and it was 6PM. A security guard noticed that we were looking for a place to sit and found us a couple of chairs. There were two girls next to us who took a big interest in Mehandis. When they left, a mom and son from Canada sat down next to us and started asking about Mehandis.
Soon it was 7PM and we got in line to check in. It took a bit to get through the line, but we had plenty of time. Then it was on to customs, and the nice lady looked at our paperwork, stamped our passports and we were through. We went to find a bathroom and while Michele used the bathroom, a maid talked to me about Mehandis and wanted to hold him but I denied her. She was not very happy about that. Then a national guard man walked by and asked me about Mehandis and I said he was mine. He did not believe this and asked where the mom was and I pointed to the bathroom and this satisfied him. Soon Michele returned and we were off to find food. We found a small café and had a simple dinner while watching English Premier League soccer on TV. I had a burger with fries and Michele had a good egg sandwich. I got some needed freshly squeezed orange juice.
After our dinner we found a bathroom for me to use. I went in and found squat toilets and what looked like a urinal trough (what you often find in stadiums in the United States for men). So I went there. However, while I was going, I was readying a sign that said “Not a urinal” with other writing on it in a different language. I read another sign that seemed to say that this was a devotional sink of some kind even though there were normal sinks behind me. I am glad no security guard or anyone else walked into the bathroom at that time because I could have been in some real trouble.
We waited outside our gate to board the plane and soon before we were to board, I went to a bathroom to change Mehandis’ diaper. I went to a men’s washroom but there was no changing table. There was a maid outside the restrooms and she could see my problem, so she took me into the women’s bathroom and she changed his diaper with me standing next to her. It went ok but she could not figure out how to re-snap his sleeper back together. I thanked her for her help and went back to the gate to get in line to go to through security again and to get our boarding pass.
We saw one other couple on our plane who was adopting a baby. But we did not end up talking with them until the end of the flight. We boarded the plane and Mehandis was doing ok. We had a bassinette seat, so that was great. A lady sat down next to me with her 22 month old daughter. She was told to put her daughter on her lap for takeoff since she was under two years old and that is when the screaming started. For some reason, this girl did not want to sit on her mother’s lap and her mom did little to stop this. Either because she thought it would go away or did not know how to comfort her child. Bottom line is that the girl screamed at the top of her lungs for a really, really, really long time. To compound matters, they backed up our airplane incorrectly, so we had to be pushed back in and had to wait for the traffic behind us to clear before we could be backed up again for takeoff.
During this time Mehandis was in Michele’s care and was doing so good, but finally he broke down to the screams and started himself. How can you blame him, it was 11PM, over 3 hours past his bedtime and someone was screaming extremely loudly next to him. I wanted to cry as well. So lets just say that the start to our trip home did not go so well.
Amazingly, and thank god, once the airplane started to roll down the runway, the kids immediately fell asleep and all of a sudden it was quiet on the plane. We got a bassinette set up for Mehandis and he slept most of the way to Sudan.
On the way down, he fussed a bit, but was not that bad. After our hour layover in Sudan, we were off to Germany. Mehandis did great on this leg of the flight until the end. It was now morning and after flying five hours, we did not think to give him a bottle before landing. He was probably really thirsty and his ears hurt because he screamed all the way down and even after the landing. We were embarrassed and felt bad for Mehandis who did not look very well. As soon as we could, we got him a bottle in the Germany airport and soon he was doing much better.
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