Take a chance on me…

The car arrived to collect us on time – however, apparently our driver guide had been involved in an accident and was still assisting the police with with their enquiries. As a result we ended op with separate driver (Amdi) and guide (Bek). This turned out to be the best thing that could have happened; Bek is a fantastic guide and Gabriel’s new hero – Gabriel spent the next several days in the back of the Landcruiser chatting to, playing with and sleeping on his new found friend!

The first part of the trip to the south was to try to find Millie’s birth family.  We had tried to get the local orphanage in Mizan Tefari to check whether the family were: a) still alive, b) still in the same place, c) happy for us to visit. I’d been pushing and pushing the people at the Addis foster home to follow up and get this information before we left. Unfortunately, we found out 20 minutes into our journey that all the Mizan Tefari orphanage staff who had helped us 3 years ago have now left, so there was no one who knew where she was from. Therefore, we were faced with a choice: drive for 2 days, hope that we would be able to find the village and the house, and that the family were there and willing to see us; or give up on ever seeing her birth family again. So we took the chance – I was sure that if we could remember the right road out of Mizan Tefari then we’d be able to find the house.  Sure enough, we found it. Bek went ahead to check if anyone was there and whether they would be happy to see us – her grandfather and grandmother were home and while completed shocked, were delighted to see us there and then.

Needless to say, we were real novelties in the village, half of whom seemed to be in the main room in the house (bedroom / living room) within minutes of our arrival! Talking to her grand parents with Bek as our translator, we were completely taken aback to discover that two of the children there were Millie’s half brother (12) and half sister (15). We’d had no suggestion that she had any siblings when’s we were here 3 years ago. We told Gabriel it was the closest he was going to get to having a brother – it was clear that for him, this was certainly better than nothing!

Millie coped really well with it all – it was obviously quite intimidating being the centre of attention and showered with kisses from complete strangers, but she was happy enough to go to people, including being held for quite some time by her new big sister

So after a rather emotional farewell, we left Millie’s village with all the children in the village running after the car for as long as they could! It all felt very satisfying that we’d taken what felt like quite a big punt and it worked out as it did. Although somewhat overwhelming for Millie, we feel that overall it was a really positive experience for her to see her Ethiopian family home and grandparents in the flesh and how they obviously care for her – it’s another piece in her personal jigsaw puzzle fitted into place.