Ethiopia 2 – Mission to Misan Tefari

Trip 1

A 10 day 3000 km driving tour

Addis to Jimma to Misan Tefari to Jimma to Sodo

Sodo to Arber Minch – Jinka, Turmi and the Omo valley, Lake Langano and then Adama and then back to Addis

Mark’s colleagues at the Amref Health Africa offices in Addis have helped to coordinate the first leg of our journey. They help us to hire a 4×4 with a driver and a guide – it might seem a bit over the top on staff, but in the end crucial as while our driver Amdi was brilliant and patient at steering our car through cattle / children and goats on the roads, pot-holes and rivers…  but couldn’t speak good English, our fabulous guide Bek entertains the children, becomes Gabriel’s best friend in the absence of Alec, and more importantly Bek was fun, intelligent, thoughtful and a good companion – and in the end also acted as our translator when we went to visit Millie’s family.

We’ve failed to get hold of Millie’s family to ask them whether it is OK to visit, which seems fairly crucial. The local orphanage director in Misan Tefari has left and the current one doesn’t know anything about Millie (Yeabtsega). So much for her organised papers etc. OH NO, what to do? Shall we just go anyway? No-one has mobile phones or telephones or even electricity. We must try… lets take the gamble, it’s a big gamble… and go anyway.

The last time we did the journey to Misan Tefari in 2011 was to meet Millie’s family and check that Millie’s adoption was all above board, that no-one had been coerced into the adoption, that it was the family’s choice and to let them know that she would end up living in the UK and not speak their local dialect or even Amharic. The  last time we did this journey it took 2 days there and two days back, on unpaved roads resembling a river bed and we broke down twice. However, since  then the Chinese have miraculously tarmacked all but 50 Kms of that road – the difference is staggering, making Misan Tefari, which is the last town in the far Southwest of Ethiopia (not many people would go out of their way to go to this region, unless you are heading to Sudan) seem much less remote. More people are wearing shoes, less people were interested in us and the spanky new road provides smooth access for everyone to drive their animals to market. And our journey is now almost halved – Allelujah! Now that’s progress (though of course the locals say that the roads are rubbish and badly paved with potholes already occurring, and  that the Chinese lack the same morals and ethics as the devoutly religious Orthodox Christians).

To get to MIsan Tefari you drive through the coffee regions of Ethiopia, Kaffa – (for some bizarre reason the Ethiopians call coffee buna??? How did that happen when the rest of world called it cafe / coffee etc). Arabica Coffee originated here, and was used as currency to trade.  Today, coffee is the second biggest world-wide commodity, so the Ethiopians are understandable very  proud of this fact. This area is known as the Lungs Of Ethiopia , it is easy to see why, incredibly beautiful and mountainous, lush and green

Then Misan Tefari where the earth is a rich red and fertile, mango trees dripping with fruit – eucalyptus trees, paw paw trees and luscious, every inch of ground is growing something or other.

Now we need to find Millie’s family house —can we remember where it was?  There are no road signs, it’s just the road to Gambela, but how far along the road is it? Did we drive this far, and wasn’t there a river we had to cross? And then a curve in the road, followed by a few huts, a mango tree and there it was – THE GREEN HOUSE – exactly the same, just where we left it. We parked the car out of sight and Bek went down to the house to see if it would be alright if we returned the following day to pay them a visit…. They were so excited they wanted to see us immediately… within minutes, we were ushered into the house amidst hugs and excitement, about 100 people. The experience was quite overwhelming. Millie was passed from one grandmother / aunt / cousin once, twice, thrice removed to the next along the lines and I had to hold on to her hand reassuringly throughout this, not wanting her to think for a minute that we might be leaving her in this smelly hut – it really was all quite overwhelming…. animals, mainly goats usually, share the home space too so the earthen floor, the darkness, within, and smelly …. quite suffocating really… still, we were only there for about an hour and a half  and had to have tea with them too – at least we were spared the local Tela brew which is hard liqueur and quite disgusting.

Her grandparents were delighted to see us again and they couldn’t believe that we had brought her back again so soon. We also discovered she has a half brother and sister which was quite odd  to discover this 3 and a half years later. I think the half-ness for various reasons was something which they didn’t want to admit to probably .

What all this will mean to Millie we will never know, whether she remembers the visit, whether it just becomes part of the tapestry of her life. At least we hope she will have memories, vague or clear, which will help her to  understand how difficult lives are here and the numerous social / domestic reasons why a young woman has to give up her child, but there is no doubt that she knows that her family really loved her and took her to the orphanage in Misan Tefari because they wanted her to have a better life somewhere. The family told us they were so pleased to have gained an English family!!!