Tag Archives: ethiopia

Adoption

Run Fast for Ethiopia

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Another cool adoption story involves a boy adopted from Ethiopia who wanted to raise money for his homeland (there’s no public blogpost on this one, so I’ll leave off the names—though the identity will be obvious to the people who know). He organized a charity run, dubbed “Run Fast for Ethiopia,” and raised at least $170 for the Hossana region in Southern Ethiopia. The money will go to buy cows, chickens and plant a vegetable garden as part of the fundraiser for the Summer Mehaber, an annual picnic celebrating Ethiopian culture here in the Twin Cities.

I didn’t hear about the event until the day after, but I so would have been there.

The boy’s sister also did a fundraiser of her own, hosting a garden tea party for the ladies.

Adoption

Grandparents Parenting Again

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This is another cool Ethiopian adoption story.

Matthew and Amanda Johnson from Minnesota have two children, both adopted from Ethiopia: Samrawit, 7, and Teshome, 5. Amanda traveled to Ethiopia with her parents last year to bring Samrawit home. Amanda’s parents have talked about “finishing well” for a few years now, and had been dreaming about what that could be. They had been empty-nesters for a few years and loved it.

But that all changed.

While in Ethiopia they met two brothers: Berhane, 13, and Tsegaye, 11. And they decided to adopt them. As Amanda writes:

“And so the last few days of the trip involved a lot of soul-searching on the part of my parents.  They knew they couldn’t go into this for the wrong reasons.  “Saving a child” was simply not good enough.  They knew it meant a total life style change, almost starting over.  They knew it would be hard.  These kids have a lot of grief and trauma.  The kind of stuff you cannot just love away.  …  Then, as it goes, they started to get excited, thinking about all the new things they would get to experience with the boys.  They started to see the boys in a different way, looking at each of them for their strengths, their potential.

“They started the paperwork on the plane home.  Last week they finished their home study.  This week they start their dossier.  With any luck the boys should be home before summer.”

Amanda’s dad is in Ethiopia right now to bring these boys home. Amanda’s parents actually had a chance to meet with the boys last year and ask them if they wanted to be adopted. I can’t imagine making a decision that quickly or being able to jump through the appropriate hoops while in the country. That’s some impressive commitment on the part of these parents, the social workers and agency.

I also can’t help but think how incredible this is for the family. Samrawit and Teshone will have two Ethiopian uncles. Berhane and Tsegaye will have a niece and nephew from their country—and Samrawit was at the same care center. Amazing.

It’s definitely not the kind of thing every grandparent could do.

But as Amanda wrote, “I cannot think of a better way to finish.”

Adoption

$12.12 for Ethiopian Adoption

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I’ve been coming across a lot of cool adoption stories lately, especially as I poke around at blogs from other Ethiopian adoptive parents. I’ve been tweeting a few of them, but I think it’s worth sharing them here. Gives a little more room to the story and isn’t quite as ephemeral as Twitter.

Adam and Amber Stutzman from Oregon are waiting to bring home a baby girl from Ethiopia. Right now they’re waiting for a referral and have entered the single digits on the unofficial waiting list. I remember those days—you get pretty jumpy waiting for that phone call.

They’re diligently raising money—more than they originally planned since Ethiopia now requires two trips—and perhaps their best donation just came from a second grader in the form of $12.12:

I went to our kid’s school and one of the little girls that is in the 2nd grade came up and she gave me a pencil box with money in it. She had made bookmarks and had been selling them to family and friends and it was ALL for our baby—to help bring her home!

I love it when kids blow us away with their generosity and heart. That’s pretty cool.

Books, Writing

Keeping Book Sales in Perspective

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So my book, Addition by Adoption, officially released on Amazon last week. And so I began my fixation with Amazon’s sales rank, something I imagine most authors go through (whether or not they admit it).

Before the May 11 release date the book’s Amazon sales rank was in the 500,000 range. Not too shabby, considering the millions of books that are published, right? Then on Tuesday the popularity surge began. It zoomed into the top 100,000, eventually settling as high as 55,721. It did end up at #35 in the adoption category.

Whoa. I know, right?

I assumed my book must be selling like hotcakes. Wow. All my hard work trying to spread the word about this thing (i.e., being annoying) must be paying off.

Not quite. Turns out the Amazon sales rank doesn’t mean as much as you might think. Depending on what you read and who you believe, cracking the top 100,000 might mean you’ve sold a single copy lately. Cracking the top 10,000 might mean you’ve sold a dozen copies. The top 1,000 might mean 50 copies.

It’s all relative. It’s all fluctuating. It’s all meaningless.

Just as quickly as my book surged, it also flopped. Today we’re sitting at 483,172. Total monthly sales to date? Seven. I don’t know what ‘selling like hotcakes’ actually means, but I’m pretty sure it’s more than seven.

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Adoption

Why My Book Supports Water, Not Adoption

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We’re in the midst of pre-order week for my book Addition by Adoption: Kids Causes & 140 Characters (in case you somehow missed it). A portion of the proceeds from the book will go to build a well in Ethiopia with charity: water. It’s kind of a big, crazy goal—we need to raise $5,000 to build a well. Roughly $2 of each book sold with go to charity: water, so that’s a lot of books (though $4 of every pre-order copy will go to charity: water, so you know, pre-order now!).

Water is a huge deal. I’ve talked about the numbers before and they’re pretty staggering. But for me the personal connection is more important. People all over Ethiopia lack clean water—and it kills them. The jerry cans people use to gather water could be seen everywhere in Ethiopia, from the urban capital city to the rural countryside.

So my book about adoption supports water. A little weird, right?

Adoption is not a best case scenario. Ideally, adoption wouldn’t be necessary. There are many reasons that children need to be adopted, from poverty to abuse to social stigmas. Some of those can be prevented.

It’d be better if Ethiopia’s children didn’t become orphans and didn’t need to be adopted. I talk about this in the first chapter of the book. It’s part of why Ethiopia is near and dear to our hearts. We want the children of Ethiopia—Milo’s brothers and sisters—to be able to stay with their moms and dads. Providing clean water is one way to help make that happen. Another is development and education projects, like the ones our agency runs and supports in Ethiopia.

Adoption is one solution to a problem. And while I think it’s an incredible solution, it’s not the only one and it’s not necessarily the best one longterm. So my book focuses on another way to tackle that problem, addressing the underlying poverty and trying to improve the lives of all Ethiopians.

It’s not an easy or a quick solution, but hopefully it will make a difference.

And if you’d like to help beyond just buying a book, you can make an additional donation to charity: water to help us a build a well.

Introspection

The Difference Between Dreams & Reality is Hard Work

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If you go back to the very beginnings of this blog I write a lot of self-indulgent tripe about wanting to change the world and be different and throw off the status quo. You’ll have to forgive me–I was an idealistic 19-year-old at the time.

In some ways, I still agree with some of those sentiments. I don’t like the idea of working eight hours a day 40 hours a week for the man. I don’t like the idea of owning a big house in the suburbs with a big lawn and a big mortgage and spending my precious hours off mowning the lawn to an exact length. I don’t like the idea of owning a house full of possessions, just like all my neighbors. I don’t want my life to center on work, soccer games with the kids and watching TV as a family. There’s not necessarily anything wrong with those things, but sometimes I wonder how much right there is in those things. Kids are starving in the world and we’re too busy to care—there’s nothing right about that.

I work for myself and set my own hours so I can watch my kids instead of paying someone else to do it (though that’s more necessity than plan). I own a big house, but a tiny lawn which I mow as infrequently as possible with a reel mower. I try (and fail) to minimize my possessions. I dream of sharing with my neighbors. I like the idea of only needing one snowblower on the block (growing up, that was my Dad—he had a massive snowblower on the garden tractor and would snowblow our driveway and then every other driveway around us that hadn’t been cleared yet). And I hope from time to time my efforts and time are centered on more than TV and work and I’m doing something to stop those starving kids from starving.

Maybe I am still that annoying 19-year-old. Though I think my dreams were grander back then.

Continue reading The Difference Between Dreams & Reality is Hard Work →

Society

You Can Change the World: One Day Without Shoes

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One Day Without ShoesI went barefoot today as a part of Toms One Day Without Shoes. It’s a simple idea to raise awareness for the millions of people who go without shoes every day and face dire consequences. Not having shoes can lead to cuts and sores that can get infected and lead to serious medical problems. Some kids can’t even go to school unless they have shoes. And the fact that really grabbed me: Approximately one million people in Ethiopia suffer from a debilitating and disfiguring condition (podoconiosis) that’s completely preventable with shoes.

Something as simple as shoes (like water) can make a big difference. I never would have thought of shoes as being the difference between life and death before. But that’s the reality.

If you’re not familiar with them, Toms is a company that wants to put shoes on shoeless children. For every pair of shoes you buy, they’ll donate a pair to a child in need. It’s a cool concept (though I haven’t bought any of Toms shoes). Another way to help put kids in shoes is with the organization Soles4Souls (I mentioned them a while back).

I don’t know if I actually raised much awareness going barefoot (other than Twitter and this blog), but I do think it was valuable. Last fall I went homeless for a night and I remember someone made a comment (I don’t know if it was directed at me or not) that they didn’t understand what good it did to pretend to be homeless. I get that perspective. Pretending I don’t have shoes and going barefoot for a day doesn’t really help a child with no shoes. And going homeless for a night doesn’t directly help a real homeless person. But it’s not so much about directly helping them as it is about changing me.

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Society

You Can Change the World: Easter Well in Ethiopia

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Donkey carrying waterDuring our week in Ethiopia we couldn’t help but think about water. The water that flowed from the tap would make you sick. And it did. I spent a day sidelined by it. You couldn’t brush your teeth with it, you had to be careful not to drink it while showering, you had to be careful with dishes “washed” in it.

Everywhere we went, even in Addis Ababa, we’d see these yellow containers that looked like they carried gasoline. But they were for water. When we drove to Hossana we saw even more of them. People would be walking along the road carrying them. Donkeys would be loaded down with them. Whenever the road went over a bridge or a depression where there was some source of water we’d see people crowded around a muddy, brown patch of water filling up their jugs. This was their drinking water. At least what came out of the tap in our guesthouse looked clean, even though it wasn’t.

I’ve known all along that this is what happens in places like Ethiopia. People walk miles just to get water, and the water they do get can make them sick. But seeing it is something else. Getting sick from it yourself is a different experience altogether.

And that’s why I love what charity water is doing. Tomorrow they’re going to start drilling a well in Ethiopia with money raised from Twitter. They’re call it a Twestival.

Continue reading You Can Change the World: Easter Well in Ethiopia →

Politics

Barack Obama in Africa

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One of the most bizarre and amazing things I saw in Ethiopia was the plethora of Barack Obama T-shirts. The President of the United States was everywhere. This felt so jarring because we weren’t in the United States.

One member of our travel group was wearing his own Barack Obama shirt and was approached by a local about it. The two even tried to negotiate a trade. When we were walking up and down a row of shops one of the kids who continually begged for money was wearing a T-shirt showing the Obama family.

In one store I saw a blaze orange T-shirt with simple black letters that said “Obama” across the top in all caps, then “Yes We Can” in the middle, and then “Yes We Can” repeated at the bottom in Amharic. It was so simple. And, unfortunately, too small.

I understand the historic nature of Obama’s presidency and how much of Africa is understandably head over heals to have one of their sons in the White House. But you don’t quite grasp that until you see it for yourself. And I imagine it has nothing to do with Obama’s politics, but it’s especially jarring when you try to imagine children anywhere outside the U.S. proudly wearing George W. Bush T-shirts four years ago. But I suppose children wearing any U.S. president on a T-shirt would have seemed absurd. At least until Obama.

P.S.: If anybody can find that blaze orange Amharic Obama shirt, I wear a large.

Adoption

Reflecting on Adoption and Ethiopia

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Diaper-Changing MiloI said it before, but it’s still hard to believe that last week I was in Africa (especially since I woke up to snow on the ground today). It’s even harder to believe that after something like 19 long months, my son is finally lying on the floor of my office, sucking his thumb. Our long, expensive, wearying, sometimes overwhelming process to adopt is finally over. And now we’ve slipped into the practical urgency of life with a 5-month-old: Eat, poop, sleep. Life has been reduced to bodily functions.

I haven’t had much time to process all of this. Whether or not that’s surprising, I don’t know. But with my wife home from work for a few weeks and me doing minimal work, I should be busting with spare time. But, you know, that whole eat-poop-sleep thing.

I have a lot to process about both adoption and Ethiopia. I imagine I’ll be writing a lot of little posts as I try to process little moments here and there. Writing about the whole experience is just too overwhelming. I don’t know where to begin (nor do I have that much time to sit down and do it).

Continue reading Reflecting on Adoption and Ethiopia →