Ethiopian Itinerary

We leave for Ethiopia in less than 24 hours--my 16 year old son Thomas, Feleke (the 12 year old boy from rural Ethiopia who lives with us), and me. Feleke came to the United States in January for cancer treatment.  Before that he had been in and out of hospitals for over a year. We are taking him to Ethiopia to visit his family in the village of Dafe Jema.  He hasn't seen his mother and closest siblings in almost two years.  (If you haven't already read the back story, you can do that here.) 


What follows in this post is a rough outline of our itinerary.  Things could change on the ground, but this is the tentative plan as of now.


July 30:  Fly out of Detroit Metro airport on KLM airlines, changing planes in Amsterdam and probably again in Khartoum before landing finally in Addis Ababa on the evening of July 31.


July 31: Overnight at the Desalegn Hotel in Addis, which is down the street from the European Union building, and less than a block from Dr. Rick Hode's house.  (To read about Dr. Rick, go here.)


Aug 1:  We will probably sleep late to recover from the flight, but then we'll walk over to Dr.  Rick's house and visit his kids.  Rick himself will actually be in the US, in Ann Arbor in fact, when we get to Ethiopia.  We are like two ships passing int he night.  He will arrive in Ann Arbor tomorrow morning, shortly before we head to the airport.  He's planning to stop by our house to see Feleke and visit with my family before we leave.  Anyway, on Tuesday, we will visit his home in Addis, which is occupied by his adopted children, several of whom are adults now, as well as by a bunch of other kids who are former patients of his.  We have been told that his household runs remarkably well even when he is not around.  Thomas and I will store some our luggage at Rick's place when we go up north.  Also, I will be bringing a computer to give to one of Rick's sons, Million, who has started a new business.  He is a travel planner.  Indeed, he is the planner of our trip, and he has done an excellent job.  Anyway, I learned that he needed a laptop yesterday; I emailed the IT guy at the Law School (John Loyd) tonight; and he agreed, three hours ago, to donate one of his old laptops to the cause.  He just emailed me that he left the laptop on my desk at the office.   (Thanks, John.)  We are also taking a laptop for Feleke's brother Kabede.  Kabede is completing an IT trading program and needs a computer.  One of my very best friends, Michael Gill, found a great one for him at Costco and paid for most of it.  (Thanks, Michael.)  So Thomas will carry one laptop on the plan, and i will carry the other. We will also be handing Feleke off to Kabede, and maybe to Feleke's other brother Simee, who will be coming to Addis to pick him up.  We spend the night again at the Desalegn.


Aug 2:  We get up early and fly to Bahir Dar.  There we get to see the Blue Nile Falls, take a cruise on Lake Tana, and tour some ancient monasteries.


Aug 3:  Drive to Gondar, the ancient capital of Ethiopia, where we will see the ancient castles of the Gondarine Kings.  (Sounds like a line from Lord of the Rings.)


Aug 4:  Drive to the Semien Mountains.  It is the Grand Canyon of Africa, and the highest peak is 4500 meters above sea level.  (You do the math.)  There we will fraternize with the endemic Galeda baboons.  Or not.  We'll see how we feel about that when we get there.  (Will they be on leashes, for example?)


Aug 5:  Fly to Lalibela and see the 11th century rock hewn churches.  You can read the NYTimes profile of the area here.  They apparently do not have safety railings, a fact that prompted Ruth Ann to remind me roughly seven times not to let Thomas get too close to the edge.


Aug 6:   Fly back to Addis and relax.  Maybe see the city a bit.  


Aug 7:  We are supposed to get a tour of Addis on this day, either from  our tour guide, Million, or from one of Dr. Rick's assistants.  


Aug 8:  This is the day reserved for meeting with my former student and now professor of law at Addis Ababa University.  His name is Taddese Lencho.  Taddese and I will be meeting to discuss some research we are doing together on the Ethiopian tax system.  We will meet with some Ethiopian government officials to talk about the struggles the government faces in administering their tax system.  I will also be doing some research on the nature of property rights in Ethiopia.


Aug 9:  We drive to Adama, also called Nazret.  This is the first leg of the trip to Dafe Jema.  We needed a driver and translator, since none of Feleke's family speaks English (other than him now).  We were fortunate to find such a person.  He is the brother of a doctor at the University of Michigan hospital, who happens to be from Ethiopia, and he is a geo-physicist at Addis Ababa University.  He has volunteered to take two days out of his life to drive drive two Americans he has never met to remote village in Ethiopia so that we can visit a little boy's family.  (Thanks, Shimeless.)  We will probably spend the night of Aug 9 in Adama.


Aug 10:  Get up early and drive to Dafe Jema.  Well, drive as close to Dafe Jema as we can get.  The last leg of the trip will be on horseback.  Should be cool.  We plan to spend the night in the village with Feleke and his family.


Aug 11:  Say goodbye to the Biru Kumbis and bring Feleke back to Addis.


Aug 12:  Flight leaves Addis.


Aug 13:  We land in Michigan.


This will be my last post until we get to Ethiopia.  I'm not sure how much time, or Internet connectivity, I will have to post during the trip.  But I will try.  I will definitely write something up when I return.


Here is a shot of Feleke in the University of Michigan Law School library.

      

An amazing seven months

Feleke is a 12 old boy from from Dafe Jema, Ethiopia.  If you've been following this blog, you know that Feleke's life has changed dramatically in recent months.  (If you haven't, maybe you should start here.)  Indeed, it is difficult to imagine a bigger change in circumstances for one person in such a short time. This blog has documented his incredible summer.  He traveled to Alabama, where he had is first experience "tubing"  at Lake Martin.  He spent some time  "up north" on Lake Leelenau and Lake Michigan where he did some boating, biking, and golfing and even got to climb Sleeping Bear Dune.  


Oh, and earlier in the year he went to Chicago to see the skyscrapers.

 


 and the zoo to see the  polar bears .  And he's even been fishing.  He caught his first fish with our friend Paul.

And back in the winter, Feleke got to see a Michigan basketball game in person.  Former Michigan basketball player David Merritt arranged for Feleke to have seats up close and for him to meet some of the players after the game and to get a behind the scenes tour of the new basketball training facility at UM. Here are pictures from that.

Here is Feleke with Ruth Ann, waiting for the players to emerge from the locker room.

Tim Hardaway Jr. may be going to the NBA next year; this year he was posing for a photo with Feleke. The team had just lost to Purdue--the final game of the regular season.  And the players were not very happy.  Tim somehow managed to put on a fake smile for the camera.

Zack Novak had a little more difficulty getting over the loss.  He really, really hates to lose.

 Oh well.  We still appreciated the picture.  We later saw Zack in the locker room, and he was very nice.  He is one of the classiest, and most competitive, players Michigan has ever had.

This is Feleke chilling with CJ Lee, another former Michigan player, who was giving us the royal tour.  This is  the room where the players watch game film.  Below is a shot of Ruth Ann, me, Thomas, and Feleke, on the floor after the game.  The whole experience was a little surreal.

All of these experiences have been amazing.  But to understand how far Feleke has come, we need to go back to the beginning of the story.  Below is an excerpt from Dr. Hodes' initial post about Feleke on his website.  This is how we found out that Feleke needed a place to stay.  


***

  
Feleke’s parents noticed that he was sick at age 5. He had dental pain and received injections at a nearby clinic. When he was 7, his dad saw swelling in Feleke’s neck, and took him back to a clinic. Doctors could not identify the problem, thus Feleke remained untreated.

When he was 11, his parents noticed that his neck was growing larger and larger. They were worried because Feleke was looking worse and worse, and his classmates were making fun of the way his neck looked. He would come home from school and cry.

His father then brought him to Addis Ababa’s Black Lion University Hospital. They did 2 biopsies – 1 showed a malignant tumor, the other did not. The doctors said Feleke needed chemotherapy. His dad sold all of the family’s cattle to pay for the treatment. This is like cutting off one’s arm.

He had several cycles of a 4-drug regimen. After his 28,000 birr ran out – nearly $2,000 at the time, treatment was halted early. Visiting doctors made promises of treating him, but he never completed full chemotherapy. Nine months ago, someone at Black Lion told Feleke’s family about Dr. Rick. They went to the Catholic Mission and Dr. Rick took over his care. Dr. Rick ordered another biopsy and sent it to the University of Rochester for immunologic stains to better understand Feleke’s condition. They confirmed Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which appears localized to 1 side of his neck.

Feleke’s parents only dream about him becoming healthy. They feel ashamed that they do not have the resources or money to save his life. Feleke hopes that one day he will grow up to become a teacher, because: “being a teacher makes me happy.”

Now here’s where the luck of visitors comes in: Dr. Jeff Forman, a Detroit radiation oncologist, recently visited Addis Ababa with the Sherman Leadership Mission of the Detroit Jewish Federation. Rick introduced him to Feleke. After examining him and studying his records, Dr. Jeff agreed to provide free radiation therapy. This is a fantastic opportunity for Feleke – he has a very good chance of a normal life afterwards.


Feleke needs a flight to Detroit, housing for 4 or 5 weeks, and local transport to his 15 sessions of radiation therapy. If you or someone you know wishes to provide support for this extraordinary boy, please contact Dr. Hodes at ethiopianspines@gmail.com.




***

As it turned out, Dr. Forman decided that Feleke needed 23 radiation treatments, which took 5 weeks.  But the treatments seem to have worked.  Feleke is doing very well.  Which reminds me.  I haven't said much about the Dr. Forman.  In addition to Dr. Hodes, who discovered Feleke at the Mother Teresa Mission in Addis, Dr. Forman is the guy who is most responsible for saving Feleke's life.  Here he is.

He  practices medicine at  21st Century Oncology , which happens to have an office in Farmington Hills, Michigan.  You can read about his education and accomplishments here, but take my word for it:  Dr. Forman is one of the top radiation oncologists in the world. And he agreed to treat Feleke for free.  He also still sees Feleke periodically, to monitor the remission of his cancer.  Thanks, Dr. Forman, for all your help.

Living the good life

One of the many benefits of having Feleke in our lives is all of the new friends we have met. One of them is Betsy, a woman who lives in Ann Arbor and has helped in a number of ways. One thing she has done is to take Feleke with her one day a week during the school year for several hours to do fun stuff--swimming, golfing, tennis, even fishing.  And this week she agreed to take Feleke to her family's vacation home on Lake Leelenau in northern Michigan.

Here are some photos she sent back from his trip.  Feleke obviously had a great time.

Here he is at Sleeping Bear Dunes.  If you've never been there, you should go.  It is truly amazing.

 Which boat to choose?  Hmmm.

Working on this golf game.

Learning yet another game.

Feleke with Betsy on the shores of Lake Michigan.  The water is colder there than in Alabama.

Hunger Strike

To say that parenting is a challenge is to state the obvious. But it is also true. Every parent knows the exhaustion, frustration, and occasional despair that parenting can bring.  And that is true when the kids are your own, when they have been a part of your family since day one--brought up under your "system" and taught the house rules since before they could walk. Try throwing a newcomer into the mix. Oh, and make him a strong-willed, deeply sensitive, highly opinionated 12-year-old boy who doesn't speak English and is from a different country, different culture, and different religious tradition.  Now how is it?  

Feleke is an amazing kid.  He is very smart and uncannily resourceful. (He showed us how to cook corn in the coals of a campfire, pictured below.)  He is devoted to his family, both this African family and his new American family, and to his faith. (An example of the latter is his extreme fastidiousness about keeping the Ethiopian Orthodox dietary restrictions.)  He is also capable of heart-breaking acts of kindness and generosity, of the sort you don't often see in most American children his age.  In addition, he has a well-developed sense of honor and propriety.  (Without any prompting from us, he averts his eyes or changes the channel when anything even remotely inappropriate appears on the television.) And over the past several months, in the many ways that he has confronted his cancer and his epic journey to the United States for treatment, he has shown a level of courage and fortitude that has to be described as awe inspiring.  

But he can also be a handful. For example, here are two regular sources of conflict.  Every remotely fun-looking activity that any of his American siblings get to do Feleke, understandably, wants to do as well.  In that regard, he's like any kids with an older sibling.  My children are all  the same way.  Molly wanted to do what Hannah was doing; Thomas wanted to do what Caroline was doing; and so on through Caroline and Mary Claire, each child longing for the privileges of the closest older sibling.  Which, in Feleke's case, in America, would be Caroline, his 13 year old sister.  So when she gets to pilot the jet ski at the lake or gets to stay up late and watch a movie with her older sister or whatever, Feleke wants to do the same. Actually, it isn't just that he wants to do the same.  It's that our refusal to grant him this privilege, enjoyed by his sister, is an affront to justice.  And he can usually back up his position with arguments.

And frankly, sometimes he wins the argument.  Sometimes he is just right.  Sometimes it just doesn't matter that Caroline is more than one year older than him.  And we cave and let him do what he asked.  But not every time. Thirteen is different from 12.  What's more, there is the problem of maintaining the perception, among my other kids, that we are not unduly favoring the newcomer.  So, since Caroline (and all of her older siblings) were required to wait until they were 13 to do whatever it is Feleke now wants to do at 12, to make a special exception for him strikes them as unjust.  Even our 10 year old argues on occasion that Feleke should not be allowed a privilege that she has.  The argument?  She had to wait three years to do X  and Feleke has only been wanting for two months.  How is that fair?  When I reply that the how-long-you-have-consciously-been-pining-to-do-the-thing standard isn't fair either, since until 7 months ago he didn't know that X existed, Mary Claire did not seem to be fully persuaded.

All of this doesn't mean we don't ever make special exceptions for Feleke, just as we have made countless special exceptions to our established rules for the other kids.  In fact, my older children swear that we have made some many exceptions over the years, since when they were little, that our household has become almost unrecognizable.  (They also speculate that Ruth Ann's and my stricter approach to parenting "back in the day" may be partially responsible for their own superior work ethic, ability to take criticism and instruction, and general awesomeness.) 

To which the younger kids respond by saying, yeah, well, things are different now.  For one thing, you didn't grow up in a house where you had an older sibling who was getting to do fun stuff that you were not allowed to do--and right in front of you.  It was different then.  Ipods and cell phones hadn't been invented when you were little.  And so on.  Anyway, the point is that this issue comes up with our other kids all the time; so we have some experience with how to deal with it.  But the level of difficulty is a little higher when the complaining child doesn't speak much English.

Which brings us to the second problem.  When Feleke doesn't understand why he is being denied some privilege, he pouts. And I'm not talking about a little frown. I'm talking full-on sulking, with pursed lips, furrowed brow, folded arms, eyes narrowed to slits. Sometimes, if the pouting happens to overlap with a meal, he will up the ante by engaging in a classic "hunger strike."  This is the term my family uses when one of the kids, annoyed with the food selection at dinner or generally annoyed about something unrelated to dinner, says "no thank you, I'm not hungry," and just sits there, martyred, at the dinner table.  A hunger strike is a transparent ploy to send a message, usually to mom and dad, that there is something displeasing about the current situation.  Anyway, Feleke has done this to us more than once, and sometimes at embarrassing moments--such as when we are visiting family or friends.  When he first engaged in a hunger strike, he would refuse even to come to the table for dinner, saying he wasn't hungry and would prefer to play outside. Then I explained to him that, although he didn't have to eat with us, he did have to sit at the table with the family, since dinner time was we we all come together every day to talk and visit.  He found this baffling.  He insisted that, back home, if he wasn't hungry, he didn't have to come to dinner. His parents would just let him continue to play  while the rest of the family ate. I expressed skepticism at this notion (that his parents would allow this), but then made the point that I have made countless times now, and that he will probably someday repeat to his therapist:  however you did things in Ethiopia, this is how we do things here.

Sometimes Feleke's pouting and refusal to eat gets so bad that we have to impose some discipline.  Usually, we just let him live with the consequences, which is hunger, until he agrees to eat.  But sometimes that isn't  enough. For example, once, when we went out to eat at restaurant, he refused to eat because we hadn't picked his favorite restaurant.  Of course, we'd gone to his favorite restaurant the last three times we'd been out to eat, and the place we did go had several items on their menu that were the sort of thing that he normally loved to eat. And it wasn't that he had suddenly lost his appetite; he had just announced that he was very hungry. He was just displeased with the choice.  I said, okay, we obviously can't make you eat, but unless and until you eat something, you won't be allowed to go to the party at our friend's house this afternoon--the party where there will be lots of cupcakes and kids playing games and jumping on the trampoline.  He thought I was bluffing.  To deny him this benefit for such a small violation of the household code would, by his lights, be beyond the pale.  In retrospect, maybe he was right. Anyway,  he didn't think I was serious, up until the point that Ruth Ann drove away from the house with the other children in the car, headed to the party, leaving Feleke and me at home by ourselves. He retired to his bedroom and was gone for about five minutes before he came back into the dining room where I was working.  "Dad, are we going to the party?"  No, Feleke.  We're going to hang out here. I have work I can do, and you can just chill here with me.  Long pause.  Back to the bedroom he went.  The same thing happened at least once more.  He came down.  "Are we going."  No.  Long pause.  And then I said:  unless, of course, you want to eat some lunch, in which case, after you eat, we can drive over to the party and see what's going on.  

He went back to his room, this time for 10 minutes, and then came back down.  Stands next to me for maybe 30 seconds, saying nothing, then: "Dad, what do we have for lunch?"  Well now, we have sandwiches, fruit, lots of stuff.  What would you like?  I hopped up and made him some lunch; he ate two sandwiches and some carrots.  And we were soon on our way to the party, and he was back to his normal, friendly, accommodating self.  Which is always how it ends.  Either he comes around on his own, or he eventually accepts our explanation of things.  And he's getting better all the time.  the confrontations are increasingly rare. The explanations require less time.  And we almost never have to call in an Amharic/English interpreter to moderate between us, which we did several times early on.  I should also say that there have been more than a few times when we eventually decided, after being forced to explain a particular rule to Feleke, that the rule in question was in fact dumb.  At which point we abandon the rule.  In those instances, being a beneficiary of Feleke's victory, the other kids are less annoyed by Feleke's general litigiousness.


Here is Feleke cooking corn for us over the open fire.  This is how the do it back home in Dafe Jema, he said.  He uses the husks to clean the ashes off of the corn.  It was delicious.

Hyenas speak Amharic

Several nights a week now, Feleke will tell us a story from his life in rural Ethiopia, usually when we are putting him to bed.  It's sort of his way of unwinding, or maybe of putting off going to sleep. Kids will do that. But he didn't start telling such stories right away.  At first he was very quiet most of the time, out of necessity.  He simply didn't know a word of English.  And then even after he had learned some English, he probably didn't feel comfortable telling us about his life.  But eventually, after a few weeks, the stories came poring out.    


With his first few attempts at storytelling in English, it was a challenge for us to understand him. He would supplement his words with a fair amount of hand waving and pointing and pantomime. Meanwhile, I would flip through my dog-eared copy of the Ethiopian Amharic phrasebook, trying to find anything I could recognize in what he was saying. 

One of the first stories he told involved hyenas. We should have known, of course, that his daily life included encounters with and concerns about wild animals. Hyenas, leopards, wild boars, various types of monkeys, gorillas, and baboons, and any number of poisonous snakes are common in the rural parts of Ethiopia, including the area where Feleke's family lives. Yet when he first started talking about hyenas, we made him repeat it several times, and we asked him lots of questions to fill in the details.  Here is, I think, how the story goes.  As his English gets better, we may have to make revisions.

***

Feleke and his older brother Addisu were walking from their village to the town of Abomsa, which lies a few miles south of Dafe Jema.  (Google Maps says that it is unable to calculate the distance between the two, but it looks to be about 6 miles.)  It is a walk that Feleke has made many times, since Abomsa has the nearest marketplace to his village.  (It is also a trip that he once made, in the opposite direction, riding by himself in a flat out gallop on the back of his father's horse.  But that's a story for another day.)  On this walk to Abomsa, the two boys were also accompanied by their older cousin, the son of their father's brother, both of whom also live in Dafe Jema.  The purpose of the trip was to get some sugar from the Abomsa market, perhaps for the family's coffee.  Coffee is a big deal in Ethiopia.  At some point during the long walk, the boys noticed that they were being followed by a lone hyena. It was the first hyena that Feleke had ever seen up close. 


As mentioned, hyenas are common in this part of Ethiopia.  They loom as a constant, low-level menace.  They are just frightening enough to serve as a bogeyman for Ethiopian parents.  ("Eat your gomen or the hyenas will get you.")  But they are not so scary as to disrupt daily life. They generally stay away from the towns and villages during the day, except when they get very hungry, such as when there is a severe drought and their normal sources of food are scarce.  At these times of desperation, the hyenas will approach the villages in broad daylight, looking for the wayward chicken or stray goat.  When that happens, the hyenas can indeed be dangerous to humans as well, if a person happens upon them in the act of feeding.  But that is rare.  


What is not rare is the sound of hyenas at night, often many of them, just beyond the fences that surround the mud houses in which Feleke and his family live. Because there are no bathrooms in Dafe Jema, when a person has to relieve himself or herself in the middle of the night, he or she must go out of the house and walk to the edge of the compound, just inside the fence, and there take care of business.  At that time of night, the hyenas are close village, lying (in large numbers) a short distance from the outer fence, hiding in the weeds.  And if hyenas see a person walking around at night, they let loose a sort of mournful wail, one after another, and then together. Although the wailing resembles a musical performance, sort of an out-of-sync and out-of--tune choir, the purpose of the wailing probably is communication between each other and maybe intimidation of the pesky humans.  As you can imagine, hearing this chorus of howls from dozens of hyenas squatting only a few dozen feet away in the dark, especially if you are a little boy, is enough to make your skin crawl and your hair stand on end.  And it might well inhibit the process of emptying your bladders or bowels or whatever it was you went out there to do in the first place.   

Anyway, although Feleke had heard many hyenas near his home at night and had seen them in the distance during the day, this was his first closeup encounter in the day--on the way  to Abomsa with his brother and cousin. The beast must have been hungry, Feleke thought, because why else would it be following them in the daytime.  This fact alone was enough to worry Feleke.  And his brother seemed nervous too. For whatever reason, Feleke's cousin seemed calm.  It wasn't clear whether he was genuinely unconcerned or whether he was doing a better job of hiding his fear.  But he paid no attention to the hyena for a long time. Eventually, however, after the hyena had been following them for some time, either Feleke or his brother suggested the following grim possibility, which seemed plausible to them at the time:  Maybe he is stalking us for the pack, and, if that's true, maybe he will howl or, worse, "laugh" (as they sometimes do) and call the other hyenas to the hunt.  


At that suggestion, Feleke's cousin apparently decided that this was serious enough, at least in the minds of his companions, to warrant some action.  So he stopped walking, turned to the hyena, who also stopped walking. And he (the cousin) then spoke very sternly to the hyena:  Go away.  Then, this time almost in a shout, he said, go away, hyena.  And he spoke the commands in Amharic. This surprised Feleke.  His native tongue, and that of his family (including his cousin), is Oromic.  That is the language they speak to each other.  It is the language of their ancestors.  But they also grew up with the Amharic language.  Not so much speaking it, as being expected to learn it.  Amharic is the "official language" of Ethiopia and the language that the school children are taught to read and write. It is the language of the Ethiopian government, of the police and the tax collectors.  It is the language used in church for some of the songs. It is the language of the educated elite in Addis Ababa.  It is not the language of everyday speech in the Oromia region, including Dafe Jema. Indeed, they almost never speak Amharic to each other, except when they are showing off what they have learned in school. Still, somehow it worked.  The hyena ran away and didn't come back.  Nor did his friends.  Just like that.  The rest of the story ended uneventfully.  They went to Abomsa and back, and their lives went on.  


But the occasion made an impression on Feleke.  So much so that it was among the first stories from back home that he chose to tell us.  I wonder why.  The first time he told it, he seemed to be trying to make a point about the language of Amharic.  He literally said, "hyenas speak Amharic."  But what did that mean? Was he saying, look how powerful the language of Amharic is, it even works to scare away hyenas?  Or was he being more snide:  look, Amharic isn't so much the language of the elite as it is the language of the hyenas.  Probably neither of those.  More likely, he was just remembering this confrontation with the dreaded hyena, where the monster of his imagination proved to be no more than a nuisance, as part of his process of dealing with his new fears--of the cancer, of living in a strange place with people who speak a strange language, of being so far from his family.  Or most likely, maybe he just thought this was a remarkable tale, one that we would be impressed by.  He would have been right about that.  

Back from Alabama

We took Feleke to visit our family in Alabama.  These are now Feleke's (southern) American grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins.  His family has grown as much as ours has.

Here Feleke is pictured with Ruth Ann, our three younger kids (Thomas, Caroline, and Mary Claire), and Ruth Ann's parents.  Ruth Ann's father (far left) is from Piedmont, Alabama, was a decorated fighter pilot in the Korean war, and, as an engineer, designed things that went on early missions to the moon.  Ruth Ann's mom, seated, is from Greenville, Mississippi, raised five amazing kids, and is responsible for my willingness to eat squash.

And here the kids are with my parents.  The kids are wearing their new Auburn t-shirts in all of these.  My mom, in the middle, grew up on a farm near Coolidge, Georgia.  She learned to drive a truck when she was 13 and rode horses throughout her childhood. She also taught English in the Auburn City School system for years.  She still sometimes corrects my grammar.  My dad, peaking from behind Caroline, grew up in several small southern Alabama towns, including Bay Minette, Evergreen, and Pine Apple.  He was a professor of journalism at Auburn for 30 years and wrote for a newspaper before that.  He and my mom have taken my kids on many trips around the country and the world.

Here are a few pictures of Feleke at Lake Martin, in Electic, Alabama, on July 4th.  In the first, he's riding with me on the sea doo.

This was taken with one of his Alabama cousins.

Here he is paddling in a kayak, heading out for deep water.

We drove home in 12 hours.  The kids were exhausted when we arrived home, around 11pm.  As he was going to bed, Feleke went over all of the names of the new family he had met and how "awesome" they all were.  And he concluded this way:  "Alabama was awesome.  But I am so hoppy to be back home."

Sleep is coming

This is a blog about my family's experience with a little Ethiopian boy who came to the US to receive cancer treatment and ended up staying.  To learn the background story, click on the initial entry: "Going to Dafe Jema".


***


We are still visiting family in Alabama.  Ruth Ann and I both grew up in Auburn, and our parents' houses are roughly a mile apart. When we bring the kids down to visit, we bounce back and forth, spending time with both sets of grandparents.  All of the back-and-forth is tiring, but fun.

At the moment Ruth Ann is over at her parents' house, seeing them one last time before they go to bed, on this our last night in Auburn. I'm visiting with my parents.  Tomorrow we go to the lake for the Fourth, then back to Birmingham, then finally back to Ann Arbor.

I just put Mary Claire (my 10 year old daughter) and Feleke to bed in the basement in my old bedroom. Mary Claire is in my old bed, and Feleke is lying on a mattress on the floor.  A few old basketball trophies decorate the dresser, the smaller ones mine, the larger ones my brother's.  On the wall hangs an autographed photo of Julius "Dr. J" Erving.  He was my favorite NBA player when I was growing up.  Sitting on the desk next to my bed is an old electric typewriter.  It looks  like the one I used in college.

Today I took my son Thomas (15), my daughter Caroline (13), Mary Claire, and Feleke to walk around downtown Auburn.  We went to the famous Toomer's Drugstore.   Here is proof.

We also saw the Toomer's Corner tree that was  poisoned by the crazy Alabama fan who was angry about some perceived insult to Bear Bryant's honor allegedly perpetrated by some Auburn fans back when Cam Newton helped Auburn win the title.  You can read about it here. Heroic efforts were made to save the tree, but they aren't working.  I assume it will eventually be replaced. There has to be someplace to throw toilet paper after Auburn wins a game.

It's getting late.  My father, who stayed up late to chat (we don't visit very often), finally has gone to bed.  Thomas is watching TV.  Caroline is playing a game with my mom involving dominoes.  The rules seem to be evolving as they play. It reminds me of the many games my older daughters, Hannah and Molly, used to play with my parents over the years.  Hannah and Molly are both a thousand miles away now.

When I put Feleke and Mary Claire to bed just now, after I had prayed for them and turned off the light, Feleke said: "Dad?"  [Pronounced Dod.]  Yes, Feleke.   "Sleep is not coming."  You can't fall asleep?  "No, sleep is not coming."  Okay, I'll lie down and sing a song.  So I did.  I lay down on the floor between the the bed and the mattress, and I sang "Amazing Grace" then "Down in the River to Pray" then the Bill Withers song, "Lean on Me."  Then silence for a little while.  I notice again that it's hard to sing lying flat on your back, hard to fill the lungs.  More silence, then:  "Dad?"  Yes, Feleke?  "Sleep is coming now."  Okay.  Good night.  

Birmingham

We are visiting family in Alabama. We drove down on Thursday, leaving around lunch time and driving 12 hours straight, stopping only for gas or food or bathroom breaks.  It is a Logue tradition.  All of our extended family lives in the deep south, mostly Alabama, and we make a point to drive down from Ann Arbor at least once a year, sometimes more often if there is a special need--if there is a reunion or a wedding or whatever.  The kids, as a result, have become excellent travelers.  Very little complaining.  Almost no arguing.  They settle in for the trip, generally keeping themselves busy with books or computer games or naps or movies.  Like everyone who makes regular cross-country trips in a minivan with kids, we have a dvd player, and we make good use of it.  Because I am the one who does most of the driving on these trips, there is a long list of family-friendly movies that I have listened to, without watching.

This was Feleke's first drive to Alabama.  It has been a series of firsts for him.  His first cross-country drive.  His first Chick Fil A meal.  His first opportunity to use a bathroom in a rural Kentucky truck stop.  He has taken it all in stride, though he still expresses some worries about snakes.  Apparently, in our explanation for why he didn't need to fear any of the snakes in Michigan (because Michigan snakes tend not to be poisonous), we had drawn a contrast with Alabama, which has quite a few poisonous snakes.  That made an impression on Feleke.  Snakes are a serious risk in Ethiopia (I guess they sometimes drop on you from the trees), and he assumed the same must be true in Alabama.  We told him that, although there were some poisonous snakes in the swamps and woods of Alabama, he would not likely encounter one.  And they certainly will not be in the trees.  My kids have gone dozens of times and have never seen one.  Let's hope that continues.

We've been spending time with Ruth Ann's sisters and their families in the Birmingham area.  The kids have played games nonstop for the past two days.  Right now they are playing "sardines," which is a variation on "hide and seek" that I don't fully understand.  In any event, they seem to be having fun.  Tomorrow we head to Auburn, which is where Ruth Ann and I grew up and both sets of grandparents still live.  Feleke gets to see our ancestral home before we go to see his.