You’ve been waiting to bring your child home for what seems like eons–and you’ve quite possibly been dreaming of a trip to Africa much longer. But should you try to cram a trip around Ethiopia into your adoption travel?
If you’re asking my opinion, then YES. Like many of you, we knew very little about our daughter, so this trip was very important–we needed to learn as much about her as we could, and we wanted to share our Ethiopia experiences with her someday–and I really didn’t want our “Ethiopia experience” confined to a hotel and the orphanage in Addis. As our trip drew near and we told everyone of our plans to travel around the country–with and without our daughter–everyone told us we were crazy. Crazy to leave our daughter we’d just met. Crazy to think we’d be able to leave her after waiting so long. Crazy to travel in a Third World country with an infant we’d just met.
At the end of the day, was it hard to leave her? Absolutely. But was it hard for her to have us gone? Not so much. We barely knew one another (we’d spent one full day together before we left on our trip) and although our meeting had went very well and she squealed when she saw us the next morning as we stopped to say goodbye (I know! We melted..), her nanny’s at Toukoul were her “family” and she was happy to stay back with them and her little friends.
We worked with an absolutely amazing Ethiopia-based and Ethiopian-woman owned tour company called Village Ethiopia to design our trip. They were so wonderful to work with–they not only crafted a custom tour for us based on our needs and desires, but the price was very reasonable and the service impeccable.
We left from Addis with our guide and driver in a brand new Land Cruiser and drove to Awash National Park, where we went on safari. Ethiopia isn’t the best African country for a safari, but I’d wanted to go on safari since I was a little kid and I wasn’t passing up the opportunity–we saw lots of cool animals and bouncing around the savannah in a Land Cruiser was reason enough to go!
After we left Awash NP, we headed to a lodge owned by Village Ethiopia and staffed by members of the Afari tribe. We stayed in a traditional Afari grass hut and ate fresh wild boar. In the evening we were invited to the Afari village by the head of the tribe–the experience was nothing short of amazing. They gave us a tour of their village, baked us bread in a hole in the ground, then invited us into their homes to eat it. We purchased jewelry and a machete from them and headed back to our hut. In the morning they were waiting for us–with a camel. They don’t ride their camels–they milk and eat them–but they’d crafted a saddle out of a blanket, some sticks and a shoelace (I’m not kidding), and invited us back to the village. We brought photos of our daughter (who is Oromo) and they were so excited–they asked for them to decorate their huts.
From Awash, we drove to Harar, where our daughter is from. Along the way we stopped at various small Oromo markets and took lots of photos. In Harar, we visited the walled city and had traditional Oromo (colorful!) dresses made for our daughter. We even saw the Hyena Man! He was feeding the wild hyenas raw meat off of a stick hanging out of his mouth! He asked if we wanted to try and we said, “um, no thanks.”
From Harar we drove to Dire Dawa, then flew back to Addis (our guide and driver drove back) because we needed to get back for our embassy appointment. After the appointment, we checked our daughter out of the orphanage for good and spent the rest of the day and the following day touring around Addis. Our final day in Ethiopia was spent visiting the gelatta babboons and the Blue Nile Gorge–this time with our daughter.
It was a really amazing experience and crazy or not, we wouldn’t trade it for the world. Our daughter watches the movie we made of our trip all the time, and we have the photos all over our house.
Did you travel on your adoption trip? Why or why not? Where did you go? What tour company did you work with?
–Danielle
