Thank you to the Walden family for sharing some thoughts from their recent trip to Ethiopia for court!
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Wow, what an amazing week we had in Ethiopia! The trip was a success all around! We met so many awesome families and fell in love with the country as a whole.
Our trip started with an early arrival arrival (7am) Ethiopian time. We were dropped off at our guest house and greeted with our first coffee ceremony!!! What a refreshing way to get off a 13 hour flight, not to mention how INCREDIBLE the coffee was. We were then shown the “ropes” by our fellow CWA families who were already there, one who had been there for a week and another who had been there for a few days. They showed us where to get lunch, the market, and filled us in on meeting their children and their successful court date! We then took a short nap and ventured out to eat lunch.
We have traveled a good bit, my husband has been to several places in Africa, and when we got out to see the city, we were pleasantly surprised. Addis is really great, the people are wonderful and we were really amazed at how much infrastructure Addis actually has. The roads are good, the traffic is managable, the streets are relatively clean without lots of trash, and there are not a lot of “homeless” along the roads. For those of you who have not travelled out of the states, don’t be alarmed by the cows, goats and donkeys walking and eating along the side of the road!!! Also, lots of the population speak English, so communication was somewhat “avaliable!”
The next day, we were picked up by CWA and taken out to Acacia Village. What an amazing place and were were so thankful for this facility that takes such great care of our children!!! The place is huge, new and clean. The children are joyful and the nannies are incredible. Helen, one of the directors, is as sweet as they come and all the kids light up when she comes in the room!!!! It is amazing how everyone works together there to take such great care of them all. We even got to go one afternoon and ALL of the older kids were sound asleep for naps!!! With Acacia Village being as great as it is, it made having to leave after court easier. They are so well taken care of, we knew that our son (and the others) were in good hands until we can return.
The trip was awesome and we are longing to return. Thank you CWA for what you are doing for the children (and for us) in Ethiopia!!!!
The Waldens
