Totally Unauthorized

I wrote two brilliant posts last night, and they seem to have disappeared into the ether.  I’ll keep trying to find them.

This is the post I wrote late Friday night.  This afternoon we’re holing up in the Sheraton so I can get some really good internet, so I can post a couple of things.

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Still waking up at 2 am.  Either it’s jet lag, or the bright light outside my room, or a compulsion to blog.  Right now, I’m blogging for an audience of one since I haven’t been able to post, and tomorrow doesn’t look any more likely.  So I’m just writing this on the laptop, and will post when I can get to an internet connection.

On Friday, we went to Adoption Advocates International, which is a pretty well known adoption agency.  They have a nice facility in a good part of town—we drove through embassy row, noticing the armed guards sitting indolently in their chairs by the gates.

The first workshop we gave was for the younger kids, 7-10.  These things follow a pattern—the first worksheet asks their name, and has them draw anything they want in a large square.  It’s just a warm-up, because in the second exercise they do a collage.  We set up simple still lifes of fruit, and get them to make very plain line drawings in pencil, which they then go over in black marker.  Next, they cut/tear colored tissue paper to roughly fit each of the outlined areas, and glue them onto the page.  When they are finished, they end up with a textured still life in many colors of different tissue paper. You’ve got kids, glue, paper, colors, what could be better?

Now that their creative juices are flowing at kid-speed, we swing into the big finish.  On heavy painting paper, they drew a house, car or flower in pencil, then colored it in making sure to cover the entire page with crayon in one color or another.  Then we painted over the entire page with india ink.  Now the amazing part—they got to scratch off the ink, just like a lottery ticket, revealing their image underneath.  The process leaves ink in the crevices of the paper, and makes some magnificent images.

The orphanage fed us along with the students—standard Ethiopian fare, injera, and two different kinds of shiro, the same chick pea stew we had in the restaurant the first night, and some kind of greens which were way too hot for this California sissy.

The second group we worked with was older, 11—15 or so.  Eric demonstrated how to draw a pencil portrait and then paint it with acrylic paints.  They learned a bit about drawing, and a lot about mixing a few primary colors to get whatever part of the rainbow they wanted.  As always, there were a few really talented kids who made great portraits.

The kids love this.  They all have a good time, learn something new, and follow us around.  I have a couple of silly sight gags that will keep 4 to 8 year old kids amused for ages and they want to see them over and over.  The staff at this place, though, was as inhospitable as can be.  Erik has gone there for 6 years, and they act like they’ve never seen him.  They have a new director who is just a classic piece of work.  A little, mouthy, bossy, shrewish, controlling, self-important New Jersey woman who thinks she’s God’s gift to the world, who not only couldn’t be bothered to express the tiniest shred of gratitude but reamed Eric out for not making an appointment 4 to 6 weeks in advance.  He makes his appointments the day he gets here, and that works fine for everyone else.  That’s the way it works in this country.  Ivy thinks the world marches to her drum beat and she needs to be in charge of every detail.  There are hundreds of orphanages here, we’ll be back to this one in 20 years or so.

The tin-god martinet of AAI

The rainy season is truly upon us: another afternoon of thunderstorms and biblical rain.  Then it cleared up and the evening was fine, if quite cool.  Since it was still raining when we left we decided not to go shopping and returned to Mr. Martins Cozy Cabins.  I had our driver take me to the airport, which is only 8 minutes away, to look for my luggage.

But it wasn’t there.  My luggage is waiting patiently in Cairo for Iberia to walk it across the hall to Ethiopian Air.  Or for ETA to walk across the hall to Iberia.  When will this impasse break?  The standard Africa answer: tomorrow.

Tonight we had dinner at the home of one of Erik’s friends, John.  He was a Peace Corps volunteer who stayed, although he took time to go home and get a Masters in International Development.  Then he spent a few years running his own projects in the south of the country, but now that he is married and has a beautiful 13 month old, he needs a steadier paycheck and is working for USAID.

It was just a standard meal—you guessed it, injera and shiro and some stir fried meat and onions. The menu here isn’t any more varied than it was in Cuba, but the food sure tastes better.