Ethiopia Travel Journal - Part 4 - Lalibela

Even when I got back from Ethiopia and began posting about my trip, this day in Lalibela was difficult to write about.  The ancient churches carved straight from the ground are too wondrous to put into words.  I knew there was no way I could do them justice.  But I do want them included in this journal so here goes...two years later...

July 25, 2010
Considering my girls are from the south and Lalibela is in the north, it was definitely an out of the way trip for my mom and I. But Lalibela is thought of as the unofficial 8th wonder of the world and is probably the most famous thing to see in Ethiopia. (Personally, I think someone should make it an official wonder of the world. It's that amazing!)

Our morning flight from Addis was short but unfortunately delayed. And then there was some waiting for our ride to depart for the hotel. And the town of Lalibela is rather isolated and quite a distance from the airport. Soooooo, by the time we got to our hotel, Tukul Village, I was frantic to see the famous churches because we were leaving early the next morning. I was forced to settle down because the churches were closed for 2 hours during lunchtime. Luckily, we were able to see everything we wanted to in our one afternoon in Lalibela so all my stress was for naught.

The view on the drive to town from the airport.

Our room at Tukul Village Hotel

Tukul Village Hotel

It is believed that the rock-hewn churches of Lalibela were carved in the 12th century AD.  I say carved and not built because individual stones were not used to construct these buildings.  Instead, workers carved down into volcanic rock to make the outside shape of the walls.  Then they carved windows and kept carving and crawling in to hollow out the interior.  Of course, all of this was done with out modern tools.  Each structure is made from one single piece of rock...from the floor to the ceiling, exterior and interior walls, stairs and second floors, decorative columns and details, doors and windows...one single piece of rock.  

This area is an UNESCO World Heritage site and is being preserved by these hideously huge structures covering them. Luckily I was able to get most of my photos without them but here you can see how big and deep the churches are (and how ugly the UNESCO roof is).




Here are a few photos of the amazing churches of Lalibela:

Ancient crypts carved into the ground

The famous gold Lalibela Cross

A painting of the story of the Queen of Sheba

The most well-known church, Bet Giyorgis (St. George)

This church was carved out of a cave and has had to be restored using individual blocks

Pathways carved from rock

Lalibela is something to be seen in person and even then it is still not to be believed.   Such a magical and beautiful and tranquil place...  I can't wait to take the whole family there one day.

The End of a Very Long Chapter

We started the adoption roller-coaster ride the summer of 2007, almost five years ago. After months of research, we picked a country and agency. Then we spent 9 long months putting together our dossier. When our paperwork finally made it to China we feared that we might be waiting 8 years before we met our daughter. We certainly hoped it would be sooner, much sooner, but we wanted to be realistic.  We spent our wait time reading books and watching TV specials about China.  We bought books for the boys about China and enrolled them in a Mandarin language class.  We took trips to Chinatown and soaked in the sights, sounds and smells.

After a year and a half of officially waiting, we knew that that we shouldn't wait much longer.  Waiting took a toll on Scott and I...reading adoption rumors, keeping track of others' referrals, reading official Chinese adoption news, trying to determine when it would be our time for a referral.  The longer we waited, our possible referral date managed to get further away.  How was it that our wait was actually getting longer as time passed?  We knew that it would be years and years...in fact, though the officials in China won't say how long a wait it would be, there are mathematical calculations that say we wouldn't see our daughter's face until 2018.

So, Scott and I did some soul-searching and some more adoption and cultural research.  We realized that though we had invested a lot of time and a lot of emotion and some money into adopting from China, that was not where our daughter was from.  We turned our attention and hearts to Ethiopia and added two beautiful daughters to our family.

And now it's officially time to close our dossier in China.  Waiting for a child that is years from even being conceived felt more and more ridiculous as time has gone on.  It is bittersweet though.  For years I imagined what our family would look like...Scott and I, Jack and Logan and a daughter of Chinese heritage.

Do I regret getting in line for China?  Absolutely not.  It was the first of many steps that led us to Ethiopia and our two amazing daughters.

Ethiopia Travel Journal - Part 3 - Yirgalem to Addis

July 24, 2010
After my amazing time in Yirgalem, I was a little sad to leave. However, everyday brought me closer to the day that I would meet Des and Bri. We had a long day of driving ahead of us, from Yiralem to Addis. I tried to capture a few photos from the window of our car as we left the Sidama area.


To break up the long drive, we stopped at Lake Langano for lunch. The lake is a brownish-pink color which was a pretty contrast with the green trees and blueish horizon.
Though it was a long day, it was rather uneventful. Once we finally made it to Addis Ababa, we checked in at our guesthouse and reorganized our stuff for our overnight trip to Lalibela the next day.

Ethiopia Travel Journal - Part 2 - Awassa to Yirgalem

July 23, 2010
From Awassa, we continued south to Yirgalem. Without going into too many specifics (because it is Des and Bri's story to tell one day and not mine), Yirgalem was the closest my mom and I were going to be traveling to where the girls are from. I'm not sure, but that may be the reason that I absolutely loved the area south of Awassa and around Yirgalem. Though I hadn't met Bri and Des yet, I could imagine them being born and living here.


We stayed at Aregash Lodge which I highly recommend and plan on taking the whole family to in 10 years or so. The rooms are individual bamboo thatched 'huts' for lack of a better term and are arranged in the style of a traditional Sidamo village. Of course, they are completely modernized with very nice bathrooms and comfortable beds. The walls are beautifully woven and the high ceilings have a calming pattern of concentric circles. During our night stay, it rained and the sound on the woven roof was amazing.
While at Aregash Lodge, we took a walk through the surrounding 'neighborhood' with a lodge employee. This, by far, was the most rewarding part of my whole time in Ethiopia before meeting my daughters. Once the mud road ended, we followed little paths between many homes. I was amazed to see so many varieties of fruits and vegetables growing. And lots of coffee (much sold to *bucks).

At one point, with our guide in front, my mom in the middle and I bringing up the rear I turned around while walking on a narrow path to find a handful of kids quietly following us. Awhile later, I turned back around and to my surprise the silent group had doubled. The kids giggled and smiled and continued to quietly follow us.


I think from my photos it is easy to tell how lush and even tropical this area is. It definitely helps to erase all the pictures etched in our minds of the parched and dusty land of Ethiopia from the mid-1980s.

Our guide asked a teenage girl to show us how the locals harvest, process and cook enset (also known as false banana). The girl took us in the enset forest and began to chop at the root of an enset plant using the shoulder blade bone of a cow. This pulp was in a container of enset leaves on the forest floor. There was also a shallow hole lined with enset leaves where the pulp was stored under a layer of water. I think this was used to make porridge after being left for a month. The girl eventually began scraping the leaves with a long metal comb to make more pulp.


Thank goodness that I had seen a Travel Channel show showing the different ways to process enset so that I had some idea what she was doing. The girl then graciously invited us into her home to show us how they use part of the pulp of the enset plant to make a flat bread. Sitting on a wooden bench in her home we watched the teenage girl (the youngest of her family and the only child still living with her parents) start a fire. Using a huge wooden bowl, the girl wrung out the wet pulp and manipulated it until it somehow turned into flour. Using a basket, she then sifted it over the wooden bowl. She patted the flour directly on to a pan on the fire until it turned into a very dry flatbread. The end result was not something like I've ever tasted before and certainly not the highlight of the experience. Instead, seeing how this girl spent her days and seeing her house and family was a wonderful opportunity.

The guide, my mom and I made our way back to Aregash Lodge. There we witnessed an Ethiopian coffee ceremony. I'm not a coffee drinker (don't even like coffee ice cream) but I thought "when in Rome Ethiopia, do as the Ethiopians do." And the Ethiopians are serious about their coffee. And anything served with popcorn sprinkled with sugar is good with me.

After a nice dinner, we retired for the night to our 'hut.' In some ways, I wanted to spend so much more time in Sidama. But I knew that leaving meant I was closer to meeting my beautiful daughters.