Omo Diaries

Jumping Ship

2010-11-30T05:52:00.001-08:00

I'm moving the blog. To view the new blog, the new link is
www.theswarts.wordpress.com.

Don't get left behind.

Right Now

2010-11-09T06:51:00.000-08:00

Right now, I'm on a caffeine buzz and can't sleep. Granted, it's only 9:25 pm, but hey, we live in the boonies and pull an early bedtime, so I've already been laying in bed next to my sleeping husband for quite some time. I think the situation is exacerbated because it's also a guilt-infused buzz. You see, I sneaked the Pepsi off of which I am feeling the caffeine effects. We usually only have Pepsi on Fridays..pizza and 'coco-lala' (the three year old's interpretation) night. It's Thursday and I stashed one in the freezer and sipped it from a child's cup while giving Daisy her bath. Thankfully, Caleb doesn't read this or I'd be sunk.

Right now, Ezra's temperature is 97.7. Given that yesterday afternoon, it was 105.1, I am breathing easier and giving thanks. Somehow over the past four months, I've become something of an alarmist. A fever doesn't seem like a fever to me anymore. A fever seems to be hiding a catastrophe beneath the hot forehead and the creeping numbers on the thermometer. I feel like I lost my immunity when Daisy had her seizure. So, right now, I'm working on "Do not be anxious about anything..."

Right now, Elsa has passed the 'misbehaving' baton on to Ezra. Given that she had it firmly in hand for the past 2 months, it's about time she let someone else carry the torch for her. Ezra has taken up the slack with gusto and is quite the pill. Here's a typical conversation we have multiple times a day:
Me: "Ezra, please pick up your cars."
Ezra: "No, I won't do it."
Me: "Oh. Do you want to rethink that response or would you like some stool time to help you?"
Ezra: "No, I don't WANT to sit on the stool!" (tosses a car for good measure)
Me: "Okay. I can help you onto the stool or you can climb up there yourself. You have until my fingers get to five to decide."
Ezra: "I don't LIKE this house! I don't like it forever!"
Me: "Hmm. Well, you can go live at the workshop. I'm sure Lochama will share his mosquito net with you. But you have to take off your favorite blue pocket shirt. That stays in my house."
Ezra: "Okay. I DO like this house. But I won't be happy!"
Good thing the boy has been sick the last two days. Otherwise. Otherwise. Okay, I don't actually have an otherwise. It's all hour by hour around here.

Right now, I'm reading the "Mitford" books by Jan Karon. I'm almost embarrassed but can't be because the things are just so darn well-written. Since I'm writing about 'right now' and this is what I'm reading, I can't substitute something more scholarly and smart-sounding. But there you have it. I LOVE FATHER TIM.

Right now, I have a box full of homeschooling books sitting in my pantry. Last week, I received one of two boxes of my Sonlight kindergarten curriculum. I put off opening it as long as possible but finally summoned my courage last night. Silly me. For someone who loves books, I should have known that handling all of those beautiful, brand-new books would have been enough to light the fire. I have "The Wizard of OZ" and Richard Scarrey's "Please and Thank You Book" and "The Boxcar Children" and about 30 other titles in my care that I now get to share with my kiddos. What was so daunting about this homeschooling stuff anyhow? (I'm sure it will all come slamming back, but please, let me have my little honeymoon here.)

Right now, I can't get enough of The Fray and Coldplay. I'm new to hop the Coldplay bandwagon, I never really went for the whole "it was all yellow" craze. But I like music that makes me feel something. And they do. I tried to go for that Owl City smorgasbord of ping-y sound, but to be honest, it makes me want to throw the ipod across the room. Too...happy.

Right now, my heart aches for our friends Nanuk and Marta. A few days ago we sent Marta to the closest hospital (about 6 hrs away) because at 4 1/2 months pregnant, she was losing the baby, but the presentation of the miscarriage was off and needed surgical intervention. We've not heard exactly how she's doing, only received a message that she lost a lot of blood and needed a family member to come to donate blood to the hospital's bloodbank to 'repay' the blood given to Marta. Right now, I'm again trying to learn the lesson of "do not be anxious about anything..." Marta and Nanuk have a 2 year old, Aster. I can really only get out "Lord, have mercy" before I stumble on what to say next.

Right now, the youngest child has Daddy all wrapped up around her tiny finger. Caleb is smitten with Daisy. He'd be embarrassed for me to tell you how many times a day he tells me "she's so cute." So I won't. But it's upwards of what you can count on two hands. He likes to take her in the evenings...after she's eaten and bathed and the top of her head smells like a new morning...and they walk around and look at the chickens and inspect the garden and check the overflow from the water tank to the sudan trees. Sometimes I have to go hunt her down to put her to bed before she conks on his shoulder. He has a hard time giving her up in the evenings.

Right now, my favorite thing the kids say is something they've picked up from Ezra's favorite movie "Cars". There is a part where Lightning McQueen has been dumped by Mack and is chasing another 18 wheeler thinking that he is chasing Mack. He catches up to the other truck and gets blasted--"I'm not a Mack, I'm a Peterbilt, for dang's sake! Turn on your lights, you moron!" (Yes, I did do all of that from memory. Just let me know if you'd like another selection from a wide range of Disney films.) Well, the kids are a little confused. They like to call each other "Boron". I have no intention of correcting them.

Right now, I'm consumed by questions regarding Africa and her problems. I wonder why the so-called answers only raise more questions. And right now, I fight a cynical heart. No, rather, I confess a cynical heart. And try to remember that for right now, the most important thing is more simple than all of the project proposals and aid dollars and dismaying displays of wasted money and the whys and why nots...it's simply, light a candle. Right now.

Right now, I'm tired. My caffeine is wearing off and I know that Daisy is going to be waking me up way too early. So, for right now, good-night.

Daisy at 8 months

2010-10-08T11:38:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure what it is about chronicling a baby's first year in such detail, maybe because right before your eyes you watch a whole person come into being. The wonder of that can never really be quelled and begs to be shared. So here we go.
Daisy is a very rewarding little girl. It's like every part of her is saying "Thanks so much for bringing me into this world. I'm really enjoying myself here." For example, she eats like there is no tomorrow. I have yet to find a food that she doesn't like. The only time I have ever seen her spit something out was when she had her first taste of injera, which I can't really blame her. Until injera gets into your soul, it is not unlike how Paul Theroux describes it--'a damp old bathmat'--in his book, Dark Star Safari. No airplane buzzing to cajole her into opening her mouth necessary, she's like a little machine. And she smiles. A lot. She just likes looking at people, and positively lights up when Elsa or Ezra comes around. Plus, (my personal favorite), she says "mama." Yes, I realize it is just the sound right now. But Elsa and Ezra were stingy with their 'mama' sounds. They started out with 'dada' (terribly unfair, in my opinion) and went straight to 'papa'. I think 'mama' finally made an appearance sometime after they each turned one. But Daisy. She's discovered that
satisfying 'mmm' sound and is going to town. I've never heard it said with such enthusiasm. I love it.

She adores Elsa and Ezra, like I said before. She smiles with her whole body, the way only a baby can, when one of them comes into her field of vision. Elsa fully embraces her role as 'big sister' and is one hundred
percent forgiving and tolerant of the fact that Daisy is in fact, a baby, and not simply a smaller version of herself, as Ezra seems to think. As soon as Daisy started to go on the offensive and get into his things, Ezra
decided she was fair game and he was clearly justifiable in pushing heraway, picking her up to relocate her, or bestow on her the full extent of his annoyance at her baby-ness. Elsa doesn't like to hear her cry, and once
we started letting Daisy work out some sleep issues on her own, Elsa would howl from bed, "Mama!! Get Daisy!"

Daisy's favorite activities are splashing in the sink, watching Bauer swim, and sitting in Grandma's swing and watching the pigeons strut and flutter. She also has a thing about poles, so I'm thinking either a future in birds
(I'm blanking on the right word for someone who studies birds--where is Google when I need it?) or as a pole dancer. The jury is still out but I'm confident when the time comes that she'll make the right choice.
Papa calls her DeeDee. The way he says it I know will stick with her for all of her life. She'll be 24, 45, 72, and still recall "My Papa used to call me DeeDee. He's the only one." She smiles when she hears his voice calling hername.

Yesterday morning she officially started to crawl. She's been doing the whole scooting backward-rocking back and forth-going from knees to backside-thing for a couple of weeks now, and yesterday morning she finally put it all together. She saw something she wanted and went and got it. Look out, world. One day shy of 8 months, she's a full month younger than Elsa was when she crawled, and a full 2 1/2 months younger than Ezra (he carried some serious girth with him to maneuver, poor kid). This proclivity to grow up fast is something I'm going to need to have a talk with her about. I don't think I'll be able to stand for that.
Happy 8 months, little girl.

I'm not a crafty person

2010-10-08T11:33:00.000-07:00

Yet, both of my kids are. In their own ways.

Elsa eats up anything that has to do with paper, glue, scissors and crayons.
The girl is seriously creative. Thankfully, she doesn't seem to hold it
against me (not yet, at least) that I don't share her aptitude for taking an
old sock and turning it into an elephant. But today I decided I should throw
her a bone and dig out The Collosal Craft Kit. That's its name. Which seemed
entirely promising to me, surely I could pull together some beautiful and
interesting craft project from The Collosal Craft Kit. (On a side note, I
did not purchase The Collosal Craft Kit. My non-crafty eyes would have slid
right over that particular object in Target. My mother did, and I wouldn't
be at all surprised if one of her 5 love languages is actually crafts.) It's
all there...pipe cleaners, stickers, foam sheets, scissors, a tiny tube of
glue (don't they know that preschoolers love glue?), balls of fluff, googly
eyes, sequins. I pulled all of the items out and was sitting in my own
little personal craft hell. But I straightened my shoulders, certainly a
little butterfly wouldn't get the best of me, right?

Oh, no. The little eyes don't stick, the balls of fluff meant to be its body
only want to stick to MY body, because I'm half covered in glue, and there
are sequins stuck all over my table and pink fluff adhered to my fingertips
and the antenna won't stick on its darn head (which looks like it went
through some ill-advised genetic mutation). I thought I was nearly
done...Elsa was happy with her butterfly and was contemplating a whole
butterfly family (Lord, help), when Ezra comes inside and sees all the
hullabaloo and decides he, too, wants to make a craft. So we whip out a
little dragonfly meant to be a magnet, but really it looks more like
what's-that-little-green-guy's-name?--GUMBY. And the magnet curls up and
Ezra doesn't care a bit because he actually doesn't care a wit about crafts.
Thankfully.

I'm saved because it starts raining. (Raining!) Big drops, each spaced about
1 foot and a half apart, but enough for Elsa and Ezra to grab their umbrella
and go gallavanting off into the rain. They like the rain. So I get to sit
at the table and pick glue off of my fingers (the best part of the whole
project) and contemplate never ever doing another craft in my entire life.
I'll ask Grandma to do craft time when it comes time to homeschool.

Elsa comes home to begin work on her butterfly family...the auntie and the
daddy and the baby to go with the already-finished mama...and I realize Ezra
is quiet and I don't know where he is. Daisy and I set out toward Grandma's
house when I discover my other crafty child. HIS idea of crafty is holing up
under the umbrella with toes sticking out, chugging syrup straight from the
bottle that he swiped from Grandma's pantry.

What on earth, child?

It is a Sixth Sense

2010-10-01T05:45:00.000-07:00

A few nights ago Elsa was sent to bed early for some infraction that I no longer remember the details of. I'd given her a choice of consequences--either she could 'pay' me with her dessert at dinnertime, or she could choose an early bed time. Smart girl that she is, she decided on the early bedtime. Although once bedtime rolled around and the consequence came to call, she conveniently forgot that she had been given a choice and became very upset at the injustice of going to bed without a bedtime story while Ezra was allowed to stay up and hear a story. When Caleb went upstairs to give her an extra hug and tell her goodnight, he asked her why she was so upset. Elsa's response made me realize I am fully a mother in every sense of the word:

"Because everytime I do something bad, Mama always finds me!

Good girl. Now if only she'd remember that BEFORE the next time she decides to shove her brother in the dirt and sit on his head.

Do You Know What Your Kids are Doing?

2010-09-29T07:13:00.000-07:00

It's an ominous question. The resulting answer can never be anything good.
Three examples:
A few days ago I made a lemon meringue pie because we had guests coming and the lemons are exploding off of the trees and there is no better dessert at Omo than a lemon pie. It was a gorgeous pie. The meringue was perfect--light golden peaks, white valleys, the meringue thick but light. It was chilling in the refrigerator for the afternoon, I was sitting on the floor with Daisy in the living room. I noticed that the refrigerator door was swinging open, and got up to go close it. When I reached the door, I realized the reason that the door was open was because a certain three year old was standing in the fridge. Eating the meringue off of my pie by fingerfuls. I looked over at Caleb's mom, sitting in the living room, "Do you know what this child is doing?

We've recently acquired my kind of pet: Yertle the Turtle. He's tiny. He comes out once every morning to munch on a lettuce leaf, leave a tiny pile of poo for me to clean up, and then disappears for the rest of the day. I love him. His morning excursion is right at breakfast time. So a couple of mornings ago, I had placed Daisy on the kitchen floor to wait for me to finish getting her breakfast together and then went into the bathroom for a minute. Caleb comes in from letting out the chickens and calls me from thekitchen, "Joanna. Do you know what Daisy is doing in here?" I enter the kitchen to see Daisy, Yertle in hand, gnawing on his shell. Quite likely, she is the only child to ever have done her teething on a live turtle.

I had a bad night last night. Daisy was up for hours and I didn't sleep much. So this morning, when Elsa and Ezra were out of the house for a long period of time, I really didn't pay much attention to it, I was more focused on enjoying the quiet house than peering through my hazy fog of tiredness to really wonder what they were up to for so long. Close to lunchtime, Caleb yelled over from near the workshop, "Joanna! Do you know what the kids are doing?" Uh oh. I walked over toward the shop and down to the water's edge. The Omo has flooded in the past two weeks and we have floodwater much closer to our house right now than the usual river's edge that is down a strip of grass and outside our fence. Elsa and Ezra were sitting in the canoe that we use to pole across the floodwater, fishing. Somehow they had gathered everything necessary--my broom to make a fishing pole, a long string for line, one of Caleb's major hooks that he uses for his perch line, and a frog. Which Elsa had baited on the hook by herself. (The child is fearless) Resourceful, aren't they? I meant to get a picture of the two of them with their makeshift fishing pole, but Caleb swiped their hooks before someone lost an eye.

Sick Baby

2010-09-13T06:46:00.001-07:00

Let's start with the good news first: Daisy is fine. On the mend, getting better, looking good, fine. But we had some scares over the last week. We returned home from Addis last Friday. On Sunday night, Daisy woke up about an hour after putting her to bed and when I went to put her pacifier back in her mouth, I felt her head and she was hot. Her fever was 104.2. I got her up, we draped her with cold wash clothes, dosed her with Tylenol, and put her back to bed. I was pretty sure this was the start of malaria--she was 10 days post-exposure to being bitten in a high-malaria area where we stay the night on our travels in and out of Addis, and although she sleeps under a net, I don't have her on an anti-malarial. I started her on a treatment dose of malarone and she was basically fever-free all day Monday, until late Monday evening when her fever started to go back up. I was sitting by her on the couch as she slept, feeling the heat radiating off of her small head, when she went into a seizure. I yelled for Caleb and he came running from the workshop, Caleb's mom came running from her house, and none of us knew what to do. Any kind of head knowledge goes out the window when it's your own kid lying there. She stopped seizing after about 2 1/2 mintues and Caleb scooped her up, completely non-responsive. I know the term 'post-ictal non-responsiveness', but that does nothing to describe how it feels to look at your child and see all the life drained out of her. Come back. Come back to me. She revived after about 90 seconds, and Caleb took her to the bath tub and soaked her with cold water. At that point, it was about 6:15 pm, and we had to decide what to do. All I knew is that I could not be at home again if she had another seizure.

We decided to take her to the hospital. That is like deciding, if you live in Seattle, to take your kid to Northern California to get to a doctor. We left our house, got in our boat, drove upriver 25 minutes to where our car is parked, loaded our car, and started to drive through the night to get to the hospital. We arrived in the town where we usually spend the night around 2:30 am, and since Daisy was keeping her fevers down, we decided to rest for a couple of hours. We woke up at 5 am and continued on to the hospital, another 3 hours away. We got to the hospital in Soddo, a private hospital that has a number of foreign doctors and is home to friends of ours that we could crash with. We took Daisy to get lab work done, came back with a negative malaria smear and her CBC all over the place. In consulting with our organization's doctor in Addis, she becomes most concerned about Daisy's bloodwork being all out of whack, and suggests getting a repeat CBC done. It is common for malaria smears to be negative, but that doesn't necessarily mean that she didn't have malaria. We find out that the lab at the hospital is actually not all that trustworthy because of under-trained lab technicians, and so decide to leave the next day to drive a further 4 hours to Awassa, a town where hopefully we'll be able to get some accurate labs drawn. We both found it impossible to return home with the question hanging that something else might be going on with Daisy.

Wednesday afternoon we had a repeat CBC done on Daisy and it came back all clear. Her fevers were abating after finishing her malarone treatment and we decided to head home on Thursday, another 11 hour day to reach our house from Awassa. So this is how we take care of our sick children--when they are at their worst, we pack them in the car to endure 30 hours over bumpy roads. Good.

Despite the bloodwork scare, we are quite certain that Daisy just has malaria. The malarone treatment hasn't quite taken care of the malaria completely, and so two days ago her fevers returned and we started her on coartem. Her fevers have been lower though--running only 100 to 101 rather than the panic-inducing 104.

We're thankful for a lot of things in the midst of this scare. We're thankful that we could leave Elsa and Ezra with Caleb's parents. We're thankful for the NUMEROUS concerned doctors who gave us advice and help. We're so thankful for the friends who let us stay with them, in Soddo and in Awassa. And we are SO thankful for all of the prayers offered up on our behalf. We are incredibly blessed.

I have hated this experience. It has accentuated the extreme hopelessness I feel in the midst of one of the kids being sick, and how much I dislike being the one responsible for making the right call when it comes to their health. But here is what I hold to. On Monday night, when we were getting our car out of the shipping container where we park it, I walked over to wait at the house of the Icealandic couple who live on that compound. I told them what had happened, trying not to lose it, and Kalli walked over to a little box and pulled out a little index card. The card had written on it a verse in Icealandic, and Kalli read it to me and then got his English Bible and read it to me in English. It said, "The Lord is close to all who call on him, yes, to all who call on him sincerely." Psalm 145:18.

I tucked it in my pocket and carried that verse I could not read but knew in my heart for the rest of the journey.

School

2010-08-24T06:42:00.000-07:00

Much like a lot of things I do in this life I lead, I never thought I'd be a homeschooling mom. And let's throw a disclaimer out right from the start: I'm not a homeschooling mom. Not yet at least. I'm claiming 'play' as the goal of the day for as long as possible. But this week Elsa and I have the chance to take a stab at being grown-ups--Elsa gets to go to school for three days, and I get to attend a homeschooling conference. Bingham Academy in Addis has a great homeschooling program, with homeschooling resources, access to the school library, and the invitation for homeschool students to attend school for 10 days each semester. At the beginning of the school year, they hold a three day homeschooling conference and invite the kids to take part in the first week of school.

Big day for us, people. My first born is picking out her clothes, she's loading up her backpack with a snack and a water bottle, she's slinging the near-empty pack on her little shoulders. She's posing for a picture, she's asking when the bus is going to come get her. (Sorry, baby, no big yellow school bus here.) She's walking into the classroom, saying hello to her teacher, slipping off her shoes and taking her place among the seemingly million other little four year-olds claiming space in the preschool classroom. She's turning to look at me, only after I call her name, she's waving bravely to me and looking with a little dismay at the child in hysterics standing next to her. I huddle with the other mothers crowding the door for a moment, and then turn to go. Did I really just put Elsa in school?

Now it is my turn. To face my own new beginnings and take my place in the cramped homeschooling room and declare myself...a HOMESCHOOLER.

I know, I'm lending myself to the dramatics. But the idea of taking on my kids' schooling IS dramatic to me. I'm not the one suited for this. Seriously, I'm not. You should see me trying to explain Candy Land. (No you CAN'T just jump to all the candy spaces!) I mean, really. My greatest defining characteristic is a propensity to procrastinate. Surely that can't be good when trying to set up a school room. I spent some time while in the states on different homeschooling websites and blogs. At times, it scared me to death, to be confronted with the level of organization and creativity that was demonstrated. Other times, I'd read something and think, 'yeah, I can do that. That seems doable.' And it was the same way in the homeschooling conference. I'd sit and listen to parents who have homeschooled for years and sink a little lower in my seat. And nod gratefully when others would admit that if it weren't for the life situation they were in, they wouldn't be homeschooling their children at all. There were a lot of us who have fallen into homeschooling by default--there's simply just no other option. So it was good to hear that and have my own feelings of inadequacy in being responsible for my children's education validated. Thankfully, I'm not feeling any great push (hmm, thanks, procrastination) to start anything formal yet. Elsa is only four. And very smart. We mostly wanted to enroll in the homeschooling program at this stage so that she could get into the classroom whenever we were in town.

Ah. The classroom. I thought that Elsa would adore school. It wasn't really the case. At the end of the first day, it took a lot of convincing for her to be willing to back for the second day. I would check in on her at tea time and watch her for awhile, playing outside. She was mostly just wandering around by herself, wearing too-big rubber boots. Very un-Elsa like. And heartbreaking. I still haven't really figured out what it is...maybe just the sheer number of other unfamiliar kids. She told me at night, 'I don't want to be lonely because I don't know anybody's name. I know they are all my friends, but I just don't know their names.' But I suppose this is growing up. Facing fears and uncertainties and coming back for more.

Even if we don't know what we are doing.

Smile

2010-08-08T06:46:00.000-07:00

Today, in honor of her 6 month birthday, Daisy decided to try out a new

smile for herself.

I think she's happy with it.

Today

2010-08-06T06:36:00.000-07:00

Today there were two beginnings. Today there was one end.

Frantic, Caleb says, the father was when he showed up at the workshop. Frantic and hard to understand. Only pleadings to come out to the road because his wife was delivering his child out there, out there in the midday sun on our windy airstrip. Difficult to comprehend why they were bringing her to us in the first place, rather than calling for Donna as they usually do. Enough words traded in time to find out that she was only 7 months along, sent over by the local midwife across the river, perhaps in hopesthat Donna could stop labor. Too late for stopping, life is in motion. Donna reaches her as one baby slides out, the mother crouching in the dirt, shaded with a cloth held over her. But that isn't the end. Her belly held not onlythe girl, but her brother as well. Dick is sent back to the house to get thestretcher and to pick me up, telling me on the way, "It's twins, if there's time enough, we'll bring her back to the house before the second one comes."

We hit the end of the airstrip and Donna is holding an impossibly small bundle. She hands the girl to me and they move the mother onto the stretcherand into the back of the truck. I cradle three pounds of life in my hands and don't know what to do, except tell her over and over that she can, in fact, do this. Come into this world with the sun blazing down and live to walk in it. She can't quit on me because I know in my heart that I cannot be the one to be holding her if she decides that sticking around isn't something she's willing to do.

We get back and within 10 minutes her smaller brother makes his debut with his feet first. I fumble with the bulb syringe, knowing that this is the only thing I can offer him--to suction out his too small, too early mouth.There's no warm bed to place him in, there's no tube to slide down his throat to help him breathe, there's no artificial surfactant to coat his underdeveloped lungs. I hold him gently and watch his intercostal spaces retracting with each breath, hear his grunts with each rise and fall of his chest. This one. This one will not make it.

And I cannot hold him either. I curl him up next to his sister and will someof her strength into his body. What little we can do is not enough. Not for one too small and too early.

Caleb's mom is amazing. Her ability to think and act when all I can do is stare at the little faces and think of all I cannot do.

What is it like? To be un-twinned at the same moment you are born a twin?Will she carry him with her throughout her life? Will her mom tell her that she shared her space and traded her first kicks with a tiny boy? What is it like? To have two brought forth from your body and take only one home withyou? These questions, I don't know. I never will know.

They went home at 5 this evening, carrying their tiny daughter and a bag with a medicine dropper and formula. Hopefully this--this small thing--isenough. Enough to see her through so that she can walk upright in the sun that burned heavy on the day she was born.

The Dust of My Life

2010-07-11T17:42:00.000-07:00

What's a girl to do on a quiet Sunday afternoon with the older kids fishing
with Daddy and the little one swinging with Grandma and Papa? Sweep, of
course. You can tell a lot about a person's life by what she sweeps up. Here
is what was in my dust pan today:

*6 dead crickets. Elsa and Ezra got a magnifying bug trapper from Grandma
Donna and have been loving stuffing it full of crickets lately.

*7 jumping spiders. Although I don't think it counts because they all jumped
away to take up residence somewhere else in my house. They always win.

*1 jumping spider carrying a small dead cricket. (I hit the jackpot today)

*1 tag sticker price that says '35 birr'. I swept it up in the bathroom and
I believe it came off of my new toilet bowl brush. A new one was needed
because before we left for the states Ezra decided to see if his blue car
would float in the toilet. It didn't. The toilet subsequently was jammed
with toilet paper, which I (ignorantly, impatiently) tried to de-jam with my
toilet bowl brush, which only served to get nasty toilet paper bits stuck
to my brush. Hence, new toilet bowl brush.

*1 baby scorpion. Thankfully I did not kick at it, like I first intended to,
but instead saw what it was and smashed it deader than dead. My policy with
undesirable creatures is to keep hitting until it's no longer clear what it
is I am hitting.

*Roughly 18 inches worth of unraveled blue thread and elastic. Ezra's new
Lightning McQueen underwear are unraveling at the waist. But, the fact that
he is WEARING Lighthing Mcqueen underwear is a small miracle. My nearly
completely potty-trained son decided to UN-potty train himself the first
week we were in the US. And then decided to RE-potty train himself the first
week we were back in Ethiopia. Good boy.

*1 JC Penney tag that says $6.99. Elsa has discovered all of her
'to-grow-into' clothing on a high shelf and commandeered two new dresses.
This is the tag off of a pink and white gingham that my mom brought when
they visited last summer.

*1 small silver screw. A more curious or careful person would have fished the screw out and set it aside for when its use may become known, but I can't really claim to be either in a significant way, so out it went.

*About one dust pan's worth full of redish-brown dust. We don't have the
really red, red dirt here found in other parts of Africa, just a fine,
powdery brown dust. Since I haven't swept since yesterday evening, this is a
good day.

Welcome to my life. It's exciting in here.

Learning to Ride

2010-07-06T17:35:00.000-07:00

While in the states Caleb bought training wheels for the little XR50 that he brought over for the kids to learn to ride. After giving a little tutorial on the throttle, brake, and how to steer, both kids got a chance to show off their stuff.

Elsa said 'wee!' and posed for a picture.

Ezra promptly ran into a bush.

Ezra, though, shows a lot of promise. He definitely gets the idea of steering and using the throttle smoothly to keep the bike moving. His main problem is that he likes to look behind him so that he can watch himself 'make dust'. Elsa, I think, will be a lot like me--riding because it's something to do with Daddy and she doesn't want to be left out.

I am mentally kicking the pants off our thief who stole the video camera out of our bag for making me miss getting this all on film.

Settling In

2010-07-03T17:30:00.000-07:00

I warned about disappearing for weeks at a time and it didn't take long to
prove true. I beg extenuating circumstances...saying good-bye, packing,
flying, staying a week in Addis to re-supply and get some things done,
>driving two days home and arriving to find the radio (our main mode of
communication) broken. Thankfully Papa Swart is fixer-extraordinaire and was
able to figure out the problem and fix it. Back online...well, as online as
we get down here.

Settling in has been interesting. It feels good to be in our own space,
dirty as it may be...part of settling in is readjusting expectations of what
being clean means. I received a major gift from Caleb's parents--they
insisted that they make the trip from Addis down to Omo one day before us,
so that they could clean out the houses and put the boat back in the river
before we got here. I really can't quite imagine what it would have been
like to arrive here with Daisy and try to get everything cleaned up. It's a
heck of a job, and Caleb's parents did it all for us. It was such a relief
to come home to a cleaned up house and a cold fridge and a cooked meal.

Daisy is a hit here. Everyone loves her. She's pretty much the first white
baby the Daasanech have ever seen. Settling in with Daisy has been fun in
that regard but kind of miserable otherwise. She's hot. And she won't sleep.
And she misses her swaddler. But she's too hot to swaddle. So she's
requiring a lot more attention than usual, at a time when I have a lot more
things to do every day. Poor baby. We'll figure it out.

Ezra is happy. This is pretty much boy heaven so he's having a ball. He's
been helping Caleb and running around outside and learning to ride the 50.
He's good.

Elsa misses her cousins. She's slightly out of sorts. I think she is happy
to be home, but it's been harder for her to adjust to the different pace of
this life. She really thrived on having people to see and places to go
everyday and we don't really offer that here. Again--so thankful for
Grandma. She's giving Elsa lots of special love.

It was really a strange feeling, driving home. It almost felt like we'd just
been gone on a normal supply trip and only been away a week or two. I had to
continually remind myself how much time has passed. Arriving home was
beautiful. Our area had a lot of much rain while we were
away--uncharacteristic amounts. So the tiny little flame and neem trees that
we'd planted around our house had exploded with growth in our absence and
now I have these beautiful trees outside my windows. Our workers did an
amazing job keeping up our compound while we were away and everything looks
beautiful.

So we've been home a week and I'm sure it'll still take time to settle in
completely--find our routines once again. It'll help once Daisy starts
sleeping more than 35 minutes at a stretch. We went out to church this
morning and she nearly caused a riot with everyone wanting to see her and
touch her. It was sweet to see all of the familiar faces of our friends and
neighbors.

35 minutes are up. Gotta go get the babe.

Limbo Week

2010-06-25T17:27:00.000-07:00

So we're here in Addis for about a week before we head on home. It's strange--to be home, but not home. It's kind of compounded this sense of feeling very far from anywhere I want to be. The kids' jet lag has been atrocious, something I've never really experienced with them before, so I'm sure the sleep-deprivation is contributing to my feeling slightly adrift and more than a little weepy. My parents called me yesterday morning and I barely said hello before bursting into tears. Thankfully I got a lot more sleep last night and so tonight when I talked to them I was able to carry on a comprehendable conversation.

We'll finish re-supplying and some business and then head on home. Home sweet home.

The Trip

2010-06-22T17:23:00.000-07:00

I really can't be all that pleasant about the trip over. I'm still trying to recover from the sheer exhaustion and chaos of it. Looking back on the two days of air travel, nothing distinctively went horribly wrong--it just all had this overwhelming feeling of being too much.
Our first flight left Seattle around 1 pm and we landed in Amsterdam around 7:30 am. The kids did great the whole way, although I don't know what Delta is thinking in assuming that one kids movie is sufficient for a 10 hour flight. Ezra saw enough Toy Story for the mutant spiky-haired doll-spider to work its way into his dreams for two nights in a row. Elsa and Ezra slept for only about an hour and a half of that first flight, and so we all arrived in Amsterdam a little shell-shocked. Thankfully, we had bulkhead seating and a bassinet for Daisy, so I didn't have to hold her in my arms the whole way and she was able to sleep quite a bit.
Much to our relief and the kids' excitement, Grandma and Papa were in Amsterdam to meet us and be with us on the flight from Amsterdam to Addis. Hauling a sleeping Daisy, a diaper bag, two kids backpacks, two rolling carry-ons, and a regular backpack, trying to keep Ezra being run over by the motorized carts, we trudged from one end of the Amsterdam airport to the other and about melted into Caleb's parents' arms. We decided to go ahead and go through the gate-side security and be ready to board the plane a little early. If anyone has been to the Amsterdam airport, then you may remember that they have these holding-type rooms that you make your way through between the rest of the terminal and before you board the plane. So we went through and were waiting to board when we found out that the plane was to be delayed two hours because of mechanical trouble. No big deal, right? Usually. But they had herded an entire plane's worth of people into these tiny holding rooms and then none of us were allowed to leave while waiting out the delay. And I don't think I have EVER seen as many families with small children on a flight before. Also, Africans operate from this mentality of whoever-pushes-to-the-front-of-the-line-first-gets-helped-first. It was mayhem. Chaos. So because of the crowded plane, there was a little KLM dude marching around demanding that everyone with rolling carry-ons check their bags instead. We off-loaded our carry-ons to him and claimed a couple of chairs to sit and wait. Oh, and I forgot to mention that we didn't all have seats together. Caleb had a lone seat (an exit row, so that ruled out the possibility of the baby sitting there with me) and then me with the brood in the back of the plane. And due to the above mentioned mentality of pushing=being helped, I was unsuccessful in getting any changes made to our seating arrangements.
All is well that ends well. We all made it on the plane...Caleb's mom graciously (heroically, life-saving-ly, awe-inspiring-ly) offered to sit with Elsa and Ezra, Caleb's dad sat in the lone seat, and Caleb and I sat with Daisy in their two seats. Daisy and I slept a lot of the flight and I think it was only once that I almost dropped her in my sleep.

Arrived in Addis to only be stopped in customs (a new experience for us--we've never been stopped before) for three hours as the customs guys tried to figure out how much to charge Caleb for his used radiator shrouds and the new cordless drill. We woke up the next morning to find that our carry ons (yes, the ones forcibly removed from us in the Amsterdam chaos) had been rummaged through and both our satellite phone and video camera had been taken. I've never been stolen from before and it was a strange feeling--the kind of sputtering indignation of "But that was MY stuff!" As if that matters.

And it doesn't. We're here. We're safe. We'll be headed home soon.

She's a Party Kind of Girl (I don't know how she came from me)

2010-06-10T15:50:00.000-07:00

"Do you know what my most favorite thing is that God made?"

Yes?

"Balloons." (pause) "And cake."

You Know You're A Mom of Three (Updated)...

2010-06-03T08:48:00.000-07:00

You go shopping with your mom with only the baby and your Mom decides Starbucks is a good idea (which it is) and so you both jump out and go la-dee-da in Starbucks for 20 minutes ordering your drinks and then get back in the car and just happen to look in the back seat and realize your poor sweet youngest child has been sitting in the car one hundred percent forgotten for the last 20 minutes

Hypothetically speaking, of course.

Packing

2010-05-27T20:56:00.000-07:00

I totally should be. Packing, that is. But anyone who knows me could predict that is exactly what I'm not doing, and rather doing what I do best (procrastinating). It's not dire yet, and actually, the fact that I'm already this far into THINKING about packing three weeks before we go is entirely promising. But thinking about packing is getting me thinking about going and that leaves me with a whole mess of things to think about. So I'll indulge my procrastination and revel in a quiet house and my husband who is beside me watching some show where men in hard hats keep driving up to major swamps and shaking their heads and I can't really follow it. Anyways. What was I saying? Oh yeah. Packing...going...leaving.

Going is pretty much beside the point. I don't worry about going. I'm excited to go, in fact. I'm excited to be in my house and sleep in my bed and not go to bed every night calculating how many nights I have left before I have to start packing (there it is again) to move to the next bed. I'm excited to see our dog and our friends and count how many chickens Caleb has left (zero is my guess, poor Caleb). I'm excited to see Caleb get back into work and to see what Erogit and Goradit and Nanuk and Marta think of Daisy. I'm excited for Elsa and Ezra to feel secure and to watch them discover their home all over again.

Leaving is actually the point. I don't want to leave. Leaving makes my heart crack in a thousand different places. I don't know how to embrace this part of the life we live--the part where I don't get to be a part of Leah's daily life, watch Nola and Calven grow up with Daisy, hear Isla learn to finish her words, see Kellan run track and Brennan play soccer, laugh as Emma learns to walk and celebrate as Sam turns 5. I don't know how to love the part of my life that measures time in chunks of three years. Do you know how much my four year old grows in three years? She'll be seven. SEVEN. Before we return to the US and most of my family gets to see her again. My throat closes.

So my procrastination is not the only thing being indulged here. You didn't know you were being invited to a pity party tonight, did you? Apologies. I know in the end it's not really about me.

I don't even know how to finish this. There's no clean resolution here. Nothing I can come up with makes it any easier. It's just doing it. It's just leaving.

Thankfully, not yet. Three weeks still.

Kiddo Photos

2010-05-27T16:10:00.000-07:00

Check out these gorgeous pictures taken of the kids...beautiful photography done by Christiana Childers Photography.

Christiana Childers Photography http://www.christianachilders.com/

This Blog is Mine

2010-05-23T21:17:00.000-07:00

I've felt for awhile like I need to re-work the blog. I really enjoy writing this, about whatever pops into my head, about the nothing-ness and everything-ness that makes up my life as a mom and missionary. I like the times I sit driving in the car or lay in bed and write blog posts in my head (most of which never make it to 'publish post'). It makes me feel, oh I don't know, connected. Like I belong to something a little larger than my own living room.

I started this blog to mainly let family and friends get a glimpse of what life is like for us living in Ethiopia. When we were raising support three years ago, numerous people and churches asked us if we had a blog and I would share this site. Since then, it's kind of made me feel strange about what I write...what people expect to read on a 'missionary' (who, me?) blog. I'm sure much of what I write ISN'T what people expect. And I guess I've decided to let that be okay. I've decided to reclaim this blog--for myself. For my experience as a mother who lives overseas, to write with honesty and with no guilt and to just...write.

So. Please read. If you want to. If you want to just see a little through my eyes. If you don't mind stories about my kids and the things they say and do that probably is only really entertaining to me and to their grandmas. If you don't mind me going on a writing binge and flooding the blog and then disappearing for weeks at a time. If you can put up with all of that, then please, read on.

You Know You're A Mom of Three When...

2010-05-17T21:39:00.000-07:00

You take a cross country flight with only one of the three to attend a funeral and kind of feel like you're on vacation.
You can successfully nurse a baby, read to one child, put another in timeout, and eat a bowl of ice cream (all at the same time).
You go through about four different names before you finally hit the one you're meaning to say.
You haven't slept through the night in about four and a half years (and find it odd that people actually DO sleep through the night).
You honestly forget the existence of the third child--at least once a day (sorry, Daisy).
You fully condone bribery as an effective parenting method.
You can remember every word to the Handy Manny theme song but can't for the life of you remember where you put your car keys.
You really feel like you're dressing up and looking good when you manage to put mascara on.
You'll drive on the shoulder rough to 'make the car go gas' just to hear your three year old bust up laughing...and then you'll forget and do it when he's not in the car, and YOU will bust up laughing.
You feel like if you say "Let's be sweet" one more time today, you might just punch a wall.
You know, deep inside, that giving them each other is by far the best gift you ever could have given your kids.
You finally embrace the fact that you are officially a mother...and then it hits you: holy crap, there are three of them!
You smile at first time mothers a tiny bit condescendingly (for shame!) because you never realized how easy a newborn was until you had a toddler.
You get all three to bed in the evening and think to yourself, "Man, I could totally do four"--and then 6 am comes around and you have three in your bed and you think to yourself, "Whose stinking idea was it to have three?" Oh yeah. Mine.
You get those moments...you know those moments...when nothing in the world could be as important as what you're doing in that moment. And everything is okay for another day.

Add your own!

Home

2010-05-17T10:14:00.000-07:00

I know many of you have been praying for us and for Caleb's family during the course of his grandfather's illness over the last 10 months. Last night Pa went home. Thank you for your continued prayers. His service will be Thursday.

Boo-Yah

2010-05-10T08:06:00.000-07:00

My kids now say "Boo-Yah". This can only mean one thing.

Time to go.

A Very Happy Birthday Indeed

2010-04-30T18:05:00.000-07:00

PS. Yes. That is us laughing in the background.

PPS. Yes. I only had one party hat and had to improvise for Elsa.

Granola

2010-04-28T18:53:00.000-07:00

I never thought I'd be a person who makes my own yogurt and bakes my own bread and hangs my laundry on a line to dry. I never imagined that 'pizza night' would mean rolling out my own pizza dough and making my own sauce and shredding my own fresh mozarella. But here I am. And I feel like I've actually become quite adept at those things. I can handle it: the pizza tastes decent, the yogurt doesn't flop more than 50% of the time, my bread actually rises and I really do like the feel of clothes that have dried in the sun. But for all the things that I have learned over our last two years living at Omo, there is one thing I haven't mastered. And I don't think I ever will. My granola struggles. REALLY struggles. Just ask Caleb, he'll tell you. It's terrible. Somehow I take oatmeal, butter, and sugar and turn it into something that tastes burnt and undercooked at the same time. Really, it's like burned dry oats. Tasty.

But. Elsa loves it. My sweet child eats it like it's Lucky Charms. And says, 'Mom, this granola is delicious.' I always used to just say 'Oh, baby, you don't know what you're talking about. Just wait until we go back to America and I buy you some Life. Or Honey Nut Cheerios. Or Special K Red Berries.' So I really thought that after 5 months in the US, I'd be force-feeding the homemade granola to my children whose taste buds had matured and spoiled. But today Elsa spotted a container on top of Leah's fridge that looks like the one we keep our granola in and she about somersaulted with excitement--'Mama! Is that granola up there? Can I have some?' I had to let her down gently--no, that's just the container that Leah keeps her coffee in, but yes, it does look like the container we keep our granola in. Disappointed for a minute (you can't keep Elsa down for long), she just told me, "Okay, Mama, but can we please just go home now? I really really want to eat granola again."

So I guess 5 months in the US can't change everything. My granola will still be terrible. Apparently that is okay with Elsa. She just wants to go home.

"But Mama, We Always Go!"

2010-04-16T19:21:00.000-07:00

"Mama, we always take so many trips and trips and trips and trips!"

That about sums up our life at the moment. We're currently in Kansas, enroute to Iowa, coming from Atlanta. I think that Daisy, at 9 weeks, has seen more states than some people see in their entire lives. (Does it count if she sleeps through the state?)

Our kids are excellent. Maybe this is why?

DVD players very well may be straight from heaven.

But it is wearing, for sure. For example, Elsa is throwing a fit right now as Caleb puts her to bed. Meltdowns are inevitable. But this is the third bed in which she has slept in as many nights. Anyways. Focus on the positives. And the positives are many. We've gotten to spend many sweet nights with friends we haven't seen in ages and family we love. The occasional (or not so occasional, depending on the day) meltdown is worth it.

So here we go. We are headed up to Iowa for the next two weekends to share in some churches, then we'll head back down to Atlanta for a week before the kids and I fly up to Washington on May 5. Caleb will join us near the end of May and then we'll all head back to Ethiopia June 16th. Elsa, apparently, is ready to go home. She told me tonight, after saying what she said about all the trips, "I just want to go back to Omo where we can stay." Okay, baby. Soon.

Lost Without Her

2010-04-09T18:05:00.000-07:00

Ezra has been moping all week. You know one of the stories of Toot and Puddle, the one where Toot mopes for a week? "Mope. Mope. Mope.", it says. That is Ez.

The problem? Elsa is gone. She went up to Tennessee with Caleb (without giving us a backward glance, I might add) and Ezra doesn't know what to do with himself. He has no one to tell him what to do. Poor kid has never had a day to himself, and now that it comes right down to it, he just doesn't know what do now that he has one. Elsa gives him purpose in life--she tells him what, how and when to play, leads him in all adventures, and gives him things to laugh (or cry, as the case may be) about. What's a boy to do without his sister ? Mope, I guess.

And bug Isla. It seems that in the absence of Elsa on which to focus all of his love, adoration, and irritating pokes, Isla has become the new go-to girl for picking on. Isla, though, has evolved over the last two months of us living here with Tim and Leah--she's learned to tattle. Ask Isla what's wrong and she'll tell you: "EZ."

Thankfully, Elsa and Caleb returned this afternoon. All is right in Ezra's world once again.

Let Me Tell You About Daisy

2010-04-08T07:07:00.000-07:00

Tiny. She is not. She never has been. But it's somewhat of an optical illusion. Because she's not all that big--6 lbs, 10 oz at birth and now 11 pounds at 2 months. But something about this child is just...strong. She came into the world being able to hold her head up (although if I am to be completely honest, it was probably due to the LACK of a neck rather than STRENGTH of her neck) and somehow the whole "newborn-I-look-like-a-bug" stage bypassed her completely.

She's beautiful. I think she's cuter than our other two at this age (hopefully they'll never read this blog when they get older). She's like an old soul to me. I look at her and she looks back. She watches everything around her with an intentness that is older than her 8 weeks.

She likes her bouncer chair. Correction. She LOVES her bouncer chair. Put that thing on vibrate and she's good for at least an hour. Although I can't say that she has always been so content for the whole of her short life. In fact, this is what Daisy looked like for most of the first month:

MAD.

Don't blame her. The poor thing has reflux. Thankfully, what used to be called "colic" now has a diagnosis--and a medication. So thanks to Zantac and Prevacid, Daisy can now look like this:

Calmer, right?

Thank goodness.

Ezra loves Daisy. When I say 'loves', what I really mean is ADORES, WORSHIPS, SMOTHERS. He is her biggest fan. I hear "Mama, she's cute" at least 20 times a day. I'm not exaggerating. I wouldn't do that about a brother's love.

And I don't blame him. There's just something about Daisy. I love this child. It sounds ridiculous, right? Of course I love my baby. But like I said, there's just something about Daisy. Leah says she's unique. And I agree. Happy 2 month birthday, baby. We're glad that you are ours.

Nola and Daisy

2010-04-03T06:57:00.000-07:00

The girls are growing up...(Nola, 2 months and Daisy, 6 weeks)

5 or 32

2010-04-02T17:34:00.000-07:00

Elsa: "Do grownups go to bed at bedtime?"

Me: "Yeah, we just have a later bedtime than little kids."

Elsa: "So when I'm five, or thirty-two, I can stay up and play more and eat more and stay outside more?"

You bet.

Hmm...

2010-04-01T19:08:00.000-07:00

Things Elsa and Ezra Have Learned Over the Last Three Months:

*They can now recognize the difference between McDonalds (the big M) and Chick Fil A (the Cows) with only the slightest of glances--and know that McDonalds gives them better toys, but Chick Fil A has better playgrounds

*They can now sing "Single Ladies" (Chipmunks version, of course) and "Life as a Highway" (AKA the 'Mack' song), whereas before their repertoire consisted of "He's Got the Whole World" and "Jingle Bells"

*They know that Sundays now mean Krispy Kreme donunts on the way home from church

*Ezra now likes people--at least junior high girls (He giggled through our entire presentation to a junior high youth group last Wednesday)

*They've learned to ask the question "How much longer?" while on our trip from Atlanta to Michigan (and back a week later)

Namesake

2010-03-11T09:59:00.001-08:00

All three cousins met their namesake yesterday. Ray Giles is Caleb's grandfather, a man we are extremely proud to have named Daisy after. A lifelong missionary in Ethiopia, the way he has lived his life has helped to shape the legacy of this family. Pa was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in August. Not entirely sure we would get to see Pa again, we have been so blessed to get to see him and GG twice now since coming back to the US. There are really no words to describe the simple sweetness of seeing him hold these three new babies who all bear his name. Pa's health has stabilized amazingly, thanks to the prayers of the many faithful and to the wonder of the body's ability to heal with the help of modern medicine. Nola, Calven, and Daisy, you all have a lot of love to grow into...and a lot to live up to...

Happy 4th Birthday, Elsa!

2010-03-06T18:41:00.001-08:00

"Slow Recipes"

Dragging your little chair across the floor
to be my 'help', you stand
tiptoed upon it, much too close
for me to stir ingredients,
open a drawer--or think.
The apron tied beneath your chin
reaches to your knees;
You wait with silken hair and skin
like milkweed drifting from the pod
wait
for me to measure so that
you can proudly pour
We blend important things
in flowered bowls
using the long hands of a yellow clock
this year
while you are four.

~by Jonelle Heckler (given to me by Grandma Giles)

Hello, Calven

2010-02-25T09:50:00.000-08:00

And the last cousin makes his fashionably late entrance...welcome, Calven Ray...Congratulations, Dave and Shelah!

Cousins

2010-02-19T08:01:00.000-08:00

Daisy Ray (born February 8th) and Nola Ray (born January 31st to Leah and Tim)

Shared a due date, born 9 days apart

Still waiting on one more cousin to join the family

Welcome to the world, Daisy Ray

2010-02-08T11:25:00.000-08:00

Daisy Ray Swart
February 8, 2010
6 lbs, 10 oz

Adaptable

2010-02-02T11:30:00.000-08:00

OMO: 109 Degrees (Clothing Extraneous)

PLAIN, WASHINGTON: 22 Degrees (Clothing Recommended)

New Pictures

2010-01-27T12:47:00.001-08:00

I've gotten a chance to update our photo website. It's mostly just a site for our family and friends, but if you're interested in seeing more pictures, go here.

Back in the USA

2010-01-12T12:22:00.000-08:00

Thank you for all the prayers surrounding our travel back to the US! The kids and I made it back to Seattle, Washington on the 1st with a relatively smooth and uneventful trip. The kids did amazingly well, I could not ask for two better travellers. We have had a great week and a half with my family here in Washington--we have been able to attend my niece Amelia's second birthday, participate in the traditional Judy family New Year's fondue dinner, and my best friend put on a baby shower for me. The kids have gotten to play in the snow for the first time (snow angels and sledding with Grandma!), and have become so attached to their cousins in the last 10 days that I am not sure how I will tear them away.

Tomorrow Caleb comes. He has had a great trip riding with his brother-in-law and cousin over the last 10 days, and he should actually be boarding the airplane in Addis Ababa as I write. We are very excited to have him back with us!

I'm taking advantage of this chance to flood the blog with some videos, so scroll down to see some of the new uploads.

I'll try and continue to do the blog some justice by adding some more pictures and posts over the next few weeks.

Sally

2010-01-12T11:55:00.000-08:00

Putting Up Lochama's Windmill

2010-01-12T11:44:00.000-08:00

Here is a series of videos from a few months ago. Caleb, Erogit and Goradit spent the morning putting up a windmill for Lochama, one of our night guards.

Proof (Rating: NBJ--No Beck Judy)

2010-01-12T11:26:00.000-08:00

Now that I've had a chance to read some comments on our blog, I see that our credibility regarding snakes has been called into question. So although this isn't a great video, here's a short video of a 9 1/2 foot python Caleb killed about two weeks before Christmas.

No Title Necessary

2010-01-12T11:25:00.001-08:00

Petitionary Prayer

2009-12-23T17:02:00.000-08:00

Ezra's bedtime prayer last night:

"Dear Jesus, help Pa to get better and help our baby grow big and strong.
And please help Ezzie sleep good tonight so he can get a popsicle tomorrow.
Amen."

Where We Will Be

2009-12-21T08:04:00.000-08:00

Just for general information, I'm letting you know where we'll be over the next 6 months. If you're interested in getting in touch with us, let us know! I will soon be able to check this blog like a normal person and so will be able to view any responses.

Jan 1-18: Washington State

Jan 18-March 15: On maternity leave in Atlanta, Georgia

March 15-May 1: On home assignment in Holland, Michigan-doing speaking in churches and visiting with supporters

May 1-15: Atlanta, Georgia

May 15-June 15: Joanna and kids in Washington State

June 1: Caleb follows to Washington

June 15: Return to Ethiopia

Peach People

2009-12-10T08:07:00.000-08:00

We have a lot coming up over the next three weeks. We're getting ready to leave home to head back to the US for our maternity leave and home assignment in the spring. I'll be flying with Elsa and Ezra to my family in Washington on December 31, and Caleb will follow two weeks later after a 10 day riding trip with his cousin and brother-in-law who are coming out to do a riding tour of Ethiopia. Before we leave Ethiopia at the end of the month, we have a four day biennial conference with the organization we work with here in the country. So consider the travel: two days in the car from Omo to the conference.then another half day from the conference to Addis.re-pack and organize quickly so that the kids and I can leave for the airport that night.an 8 hour flight to Amsterdam.a 9 and a half hour flight to Seattle.ahh. I'm tired already.

Explaining to Elsa and Ezra exactly what is taking place over the next three weeks has proven confusing. Time, as I'm sure anyone with two, three, or four year olds knows, is a slightly nebulous concept. I'm sure for as many times as I've said the words "when we get to Grandma and Grandpa Judy's house", there's been some niggling doubt in the back of Elsa's mind about that day will actually ever coming. "Today after naptime, you mean," she's asked me on multiple occasions. Or, "The next day when I wake up?" Poor kids have no idea what life has in store for them over the next six months, considering the many moves we have to make, people we have to meet, and miles we have to cover.

One morning at breakfast I was going over again with Elsa exactly what was going to take place before we got to Grandma and Grandpa Judy's house. The following incident illuminates perfectly the stark difference between our two kids. (Elsa is likely to love someone simply because he breathes and has a name--Ezra, on the other hand, is just as likely to DISLIKE him for that same reason.) Anyways, I told Elsa that we were going to go to a conference, where she would get to play with other kids, do projects, play games, eat snacks and do all sorts of fun things while Mama and Daddy would be in some meetings. Elsa's eyes were getting bigger by the second and she was getting harder and harder to contain in her chair because she was bursting with
excitement at the thought of all the activity. Meanwhile, Ezra was sitting in his chair, glaring at me fiercely and saying, "Me don't LIKE other kids! Me don't LIKE to play games!" Now we've known this about Ezra for quite some time-a tendency toward being a total booty around other people-but we've really been trying to work on some basic common courtesy despite his anti-social tendencies. So in recent weeks, he's been practicing (and gotten very good) at greeting people, putting out his hand to shake hands, and smiling. So knowing that he's been practicing this lately, I said "Well,that's okay, but we can still be sweet to people and shake their hands, just like we do here". Elsa, ever the wise big sister, cuts in and says, "But Mama-peach people don't say Kuun Methob (our local greeting)!"

Leave it to Elsa to find the loophole.

Nighttime Dilemma

2009-10-29T05:51:00.000-07:00

3 AM
Elsa: "Mama, I can't sleep because my pillow is not the perfect temperature
for my head!"

Plus One

2009-10-22T05:49:00.000-07:00

The family that has been with us all week had some brake trouble on their
trip down. When Caleb and Mr. went over to check out the car and see if they
could work on it before they left to travel back to Addis Ababa, they found
out that pretty much all that had been holding their front wheel on the
whole second day of travel down here was the brake caliper. Needless to say,
the car isn't able to be driven out. Seeing as we were already planning on
heading into town to re-supply on Monday, we decided that we would just
drive them all out on Saturday instead, and get their car trucked out when
we return from Addis. So if you do the math--this will be 4 adults (one six
months pregnant and prone to motion-sickness), 1 teenager, 2 kids out of car
seats, and 2 kids in car seats. In our Land Cruiser which seats 5
comfortably and then has two fold down side-facing seats in the very back.
Fun.

Oh, did I mention the 4 foot python as well? He also is making the trip with
us. This morning Caleb was called over to our evangelist's house to kill a
snake and found a python. Knowing it's not poisonous, he captured it instead
and intends to bring it with us to Addis to give as a present to one of our
friends there who is an avid snake-guy.

Fun.

A Matter of Perspective

2009-10-19T05:48:00.000-07:00

We have a family of five visiting us this week, some colleagues of ours who
live and work in Addis Ababa. Last night we took them on a cookout out
beyond our house a few kilometers, to the ridge where we always start a fire
and roast hot dogs and marshmallows. It is usually the highlight of
visitors' trips down to the Omo because of how beautiful it is out there and
watching the sunset from the ridge, but the elements were against us last
night. As soon as we got our fire started, a major wind and dust storm blew
in, knocking over all of our chairs and covering us and our food with a
thick layer of dust. Our kids were oblivious to anything out of the
ordinary--sitting on their mat happily eating their hot dogs as if this is
what life is like everyday. Oh wait, sometimes it is.

On the way home, Caleb put Elsa and our visitors' two younger kids up in the
cab with him to escape the worst of the dust (Ezra turns into a complete
Mama's boy when other people are around and wouldn't be separated). Elsa is
one of those kids who thinks if you breathe you are wonderful, so has been
in heaven ever since these other two kids arrived because she has playmates.
Elsa was enthusiastically trying to tell the other two stories and ask them
questions, and getting rebuffed at every overture. Finally the older girl,
Esther, asked Elsa how old she was. Elsa said "I'm three." Daniel jumped in
quickly and said "Well, I'm four and a half!", and Esther, not to be
outdone, said, "Then I'm the biggest because I'm six!" Elsa sat there for a
minute and then said "Oh. I think though that God is the biggest."

She's got it all figured out, doesn't she?

Bedtime with Ezra

2009-10-18T07:24:00.000-07:00

Daddy: "Okay, no more talking. Good night, Elsa. Good night Ezra."

Ezra: "Daddy, me got a question!"

Daddy: "No more talking, good night."

Ezra: "Daddy, me got a question!"

Daddy: "Ezra, no more talking, you can ask me in the morning."

Ezra: "Daddy, me got a question!!"

Daddy: "Ezra--"

Mama (from downstairs): "Just let him ask you, then he'll say 'love you, Daddy, good night'"

Daddy: "Okay, Ezra, what's your question?"

Ezra: "Daddy, please you stop talking. Night, night, Daddy!"

Walk, Bike, or Swim

2009-09-13T07:24:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I was laying down on our living room floor during our afternoon rest time when I saw a bicycle ride up right to our front door. I got up expecting to tell a Daasanech man that Caleb wasn't here and to come back later, but much to my surprise there was a Japanese tourist at the door! He'd ridden his bike from across the Kenyan border that day, and was wondering how much further it was to Omo Raate (the closest town and where immigration is located). I told him it was about 7 more kilometers and then across the river before the town, and asked if he needed any water or anything. I was having trouble not staring at him in fascination--these tourists, especially the ones on foot or on bike, are so out of my realm of understanding. WHY? It was 108 degrees in my kitchen and here was this poor soul riding his bike through the deep sand in the heat of the day, through a country where he couldn't communicate with anyone, on roads that are just as likely to disappear as take you where you want to go.

Caleb returned and spent some time talking about the road he would take to his next destination. Turns out he started in Morocco, has been travelling for 5 years, through parts of Europe, the Middle East, and now Africa. He's on his fourth bike in 5 years. We started to feel responsible for him--sending him out on a road Caleb knows is difficult, if not impossible, to find and follow, but then realized that this has been his life for the last half-decade, and surely he's encountered worse.

Before he left he asked Caleb, "How many rivers are there to cross between now and Maagi (further north)?" Rivers evidently are a major obstacle because apparently on this trek of his, this slight Japanese man can ONLY walk, bike, or swim. So for example when he reaches Omo Raate, he will hire a boat to take his bike across the river while he swims beside it. He'll go to immigration to get stamped into the country, and then have to swim all the way back across because the road he is travelling is on this side of the river.

This world is full of people I will never understand.

14 Diapers

2009-09-11T10:55:00.000-07:00

That's how many diapers I have left for Ezra. And 49 nights left until we go
back to town.

So I'm trying all I can to get him nighttime potty-trained. He does pretty
well sometimes, but not lately. Being as warm as it is here during the day
and most nights, both kids have always taken a water bottle to bed. Of
course, chugging a full water bottle all night long doesn't really help the
potty situation. Starting last week, I've tried to requisition Ezra's water
bottle. It isn't working out too well. He's goes to bed fine without it, but
every night since I took it away, he comes into my room about 11:30, wanting
his water bottle. So then I have a battle-between knowing I am two weeks
away from no diapers, and wanting to fall back into bed. Usually, he gets
his water bottle, and I get to go back to bed. Last night as I walked out of
his room, a quiet little voice came from the dark corner of his bed: "Mama,
thanks for cold water." Somehow the sweetness makes everything okay at 12
am.

Little does he know that soon he'll be going to bed in plastic bags stuffed
with toilet paper.

The Power of Bauer

2009-09-10T10:51:00.000-07:00

Caleb and I have been 24 fans since we spent 5 months in Holland, Michigan,
which has a GREAT library and we were able to check out every season of 24
and literally spend 5 days of our life in front of the television. The love
affair has continued across the ocean, as our family has kept us supplied
with all the seasons of 24. We just received season 7 within the last month,
and Jack Bauer has been keeping us living on adrenaline every night since.
It was a sad night indeed when we finished the season two nights ago. "So You
Think You Can Dance" just doesn't provide quite the same kick.

Dust

2009-08-20T10:50:00.000-07:00

And that's all I'm going to say about that.

Excuse me while I go dig my children out from under a layer.

Grandma and Grandpa Judy Come to Visit

2009-08-20T10:23:00.000-07:00

A Baby Boy Chicken?

2009-08-15T10:53:00.000-07:00

Give thanks with us (or say a prayer for us, as the case may be)-we're
expecting our third baby in February of 2010. The newest Swart will join the
world along with two other Swart babies-both of Caleb's sisters are also
expecting and we are all due within two days of each other. Needless to say,
it will be a busy and exciting month!

Elsa and Ezra seem excited to welcome a new baby brother or sister, although
Ezra seems a little confused. When asked if he wants a boy or a girl baby,
he says "Me want a baby boy chicken." I hope he's not too disappointed.

After our maternity leave, we will be doing three months of speaking in our
churches, so our time in the US from January to June will be split between
Washington (where my family is), Atlanta (Caleb's sisters and where we will
have the baby), and Michigan (the location of the majority of our churches).

Putting up Nanuk's windmill

2009-06-11T17:53:00.002-07:00

On the River with Daddy

2009-06-11T17:53:00.001-07:00

Omo sunset

2009-06-11T17:52:00.000-07:00

It is not a joke

2009-06-11T17:51:00.000-07:00

HOT!

2009-06-11T17:50:00.000-07:00

Going on a picnic

2009-06-11T17:49:00.002-07:00

Fishing at Lake Langano

2009-06-11T17:49:00.001-07:00

Elsa's first drawing

2009-06-11T17:48:00.000-07:00

Elsa at Lake Langano

2009-06-11T17:47:00.002-07:00

Driving the Boat

2009-06-11T17:47:00.001-07:00

Camping at Lake Langano with Marshal and Rachel

2009-06-11T17:46:00.000-07:00

Baby Chicks!

2009-06-11T17:43:00.000-07:00

Cobra in the Bathroom

2009-06-06T04:34:00.000-07:00

(Beck Judy--don't read this post. Seriously, I mean it.)
>
> No, it's not the title of the newest Samuel L. Jackson movie. It was Elsa's morning. This morning I was washing the breakfast dishes while Elsa was in the bathroom washing her hands and brushing her teeth. Suddenly she starts screaming at the top of her lungs and yelling "Snake! Snake! It's growing and standing up!" Thankfully, she was already on her way out the door as I ran toward the bathroom. I got to the door just in time to see a baby cobra slip up behind the sink console. Which is, by the way, exactly where Elsa was standing on a stool washing her hands. Caleb was across the river, and seeing as I am less than inclined to be brave when it comes to snakes, I armed myself with two sticks and ventured back into the bathroom. The snake was gone. I heard the boat come back and so decided to just stand guard until Caleb got back up to the house. At first he didn't believe me (our house was promised to me to be snake proof-ha), but we stood there long enough to see its head poke out again from behind the sink. It slinked back to the safety of the sink, and so Caleb decided to bug spray behind the sink and irritate it enough to make it come out. It worked, Caleb smashed it, good-bye cobra.
>
> It's 'cobra season' around here. With the rains from April and May, the increased number of bugs and frogs make the snakes venture out from under the bushes more. In the last two weeks Caleb and/or Dick have killed 5 cobras and one baby puff adder. Thankfully no one has been hurt, although we have lost one chicken and our poor dog Bauer was spit in the eye. Hopefully he learned his lesson about playing with snakes in the grass. Knucklehead.

You Could Be Al-Qaeda!

2009-05-06T08:38:00.000-07:00

The "Dick" Effect has become a given on any riding trip that Caleb and his father, Dick, take together. Inevitably, if Dick goes along, they are bound to encounter some kind of hassle--police officers exerting authority, immigration officials harping on technicalities. This past weekend was no exception. Caleb and Dick took a Sunday afternoon ride to Kokoro, a town not far across the Kenyan border. Caleb has a good relationship with the border guards at the Kenyan border, and he often crosses the border a few miles into Kenya with their permission. Someone forgot to inform the police in Kokoro of Caleb's special relationship.

Once in Kokoro, Caleb and Dick were detained by a Kenyan police officer. His command of English being poor and his manner resembling a ranting lunatic, Caleb at one point leaned over to his father and asked quietly, "Is he drunk?" "Drunk", it turns out, is one word the officer did know, and so was none too pleased at the observation. He railed at Dick and Caleb for travelling into Kenya without proper identification and without a letter from the border post granting permission to travel--all wise suggestions, especially in the face of the officer's reasoning--"You could be anyone and we would not know...You could be Al-Qaeda!"

Thankfully, one of the officers and also the village chief--a friendly man named Ezra carrying a tent pole as his official stick--intervened and explained to Caleb and Dick that although their colleague's manner was suspect, all he was trying to say was that next time they come, it'd be a good idea to carry some identification.

Al-Qaeda? Doubtful. Travelling again to Kokoro without identification? Definitely not.

Meeting Obama

2009-05-04T08:38:00.000-07:00

I met Obama this morning. He was round, a beautiful caramel brown, wrapped in a pink blanket, wearing a cross necklace around his chubby little neck.

I went to do clinic about 45 minutes from our house and about half-way to the middle of nowhere. Obviously, though, despite being rather far from any local American voting district, Obama fever has travelled the airwaves and someone in Libumket must have a radio.

Play

2009-04-22T08:35:00.000-07:00

What is the saying--art imitates life? (Or is it life imitates art? I always forget) Anyways...I know those of you with kids know that their play often imitates life. (How many times have you heard something come out of their mouth that could have only come from your own?) Here are some things I've heard come out of my kids' mouths the last few weeks:

Elsa: "I need BCG!" (She and Ezra play as though they are babies being brought to clinic and need TB immunization)

Ezra: "Ouch, scorpion bite me!" (Playing doctor and bandaging up scorpion and snake bites)

Elsa: "Quick, get out of the river, the big crocodile is going to get us!" (Taking dips in the river with Caleb--keeping the swim short so as to keep the risk minimized)

Elsa: "I'm going to Paradise" (Playing that she's taking a trip to Arba Minch, the town half-way between our home and Addis Ababa, we stay in a hotel called Paradise)

Ezra: "Where Daddy? Really really want ride broom-broom!" (This is Ezra sleep-talking--dreaming about riding motorcycles with his daddy)

Ezra: "Really want dung beetle ball" (Dung beetles make great toys--they're huge and they don't fly very high or very far, so you can chase them down and hit them out of the air. Note to mothers: wash hands after play)

(Alternative titles for this blog: Things Your Kids Probably Don't Say or What Have We Done To Our Kids?)

Happy 2nd Birthday Ezra!

2009-04-20T17:10:00.000-07:00

Ezra's 1st birthday.

Ezra is born!

Happy 3rd Birthday Elsa!

2009-03-06T05:33:00.000-08:00

Elsa's 2nd birthday

Elsa's 1st birthday

Elsa is born

Bad Habits

2009-02-16T07:55:00.001-08:00

Caleb: "Elsa, stop chewing your fingernails."

Elsa: "Daddy, don't worry, I'm just licking off the boogers."

Back to Dirt?

2009-02-10T07:49:00.000-08:00

I'm sure by now you all have given me up as hopeless as a blogger, but I beg extentuating experience. We've been unable to communicate for nearly the last month (first travelling for meetings and then our email was down for over 2 weeks), so you can't JUST blame my lazy fingertips and uninspired mind. You really wouldn't believe how many blogs get written in my head on a weekly basis...well, at least the titles.

We are in the hot and dusty time of year here at Omo. You know it is bad when a two year old notices that it is dirty. A couple of weeks ago we were gone from home for about 10 days. First we travelled to a town about 13 hours from here called Awassa, attending a gathering of our SIM South Team. We left from there to go on to Addis to meet with our RCA Africa Director, who was in country, and to do some supply shopping. After travelling home another two days, we were on our last day of driving when we told Elsa, "You finally get to go home today!" And she replied, "to HQ (our headquarters in Addis)?" We said, "No, home!" She wasn't quite getting it, kept thinking of Awassa and Paradise (our stop in Arba Minch, the half-way town), so finally we started saying, "Back home, to Bauer and to your toys and your bed and your house..." She thought for a minute and said, "Back to dirt?"

Yes, it is extremely dusty, and hot. A few weeks ago we had 107 in the kitchen and 131 outside in the direct sun. At Omo you always trade one thing for another--right now the river is at its lowest, so is running clear out of our sinks and showers (so nice!). But with that comes the heat and dust. Come late spring, rains will fall in other parts of Ethiopia, causing our river to rise and turn muddy, flowing thick and brown from our faucets. But with that comes somewhat of a break from the intense heat and rains often settle the dust.

I've heard Caleb's grandma say that sweeping is therapeutic. My emotional health must be off the charts at this rate!

Picture Extravaganza!

2009-01-13T09:27:00.000-08:00

First of all, Merry Christmas! We’ve had a wonderful Christmas season, Caleb’s sister Leah and her husband and baby came out to visit us here at Omo for two weeks, and we have loved every minute. Leah is usually the one who posts blogs for me, so forgive the long silence. Leah and Tim leave Omo tomorrow morning to make the two day journey up to Addis in time for their flight on Tuesday night, so I am getting together a lot of pictures for Leah to post when she gets stateside. It’s a mixture of old and new pictures from the last three or four months—somehow in the last couple of months we lost the capability to send pictures via our radio email, hence the lack of pictures on the blog. I’m grabbing the chance now to flood the blog with pics, so enjoy the following pictures…the house is now totally finished, but there are some pictures from when it was still a work in progress. The adorable baby is Isla Brooks, Leah’s 9 month old. Enjoy! If you are interested in seeing more, I’ve recently updated the kid’s picture website. The link is http://www.elsamorrell.shutterfly.com/.

2009-01-13T09:18:00.000-08:00

A Sunday school class in North Carolina gave the gift of a goat to Nanuk, an evangelist in the local church

2009-01-13T09:14:00.000-08:00

Visit from Tim, Leah and Isla

2009-01-13T09:10:00.000-08:00

Elsa and Ezra with their friend, Ester

2009-01-13T09:07:00.000-08:00

Quite a catch!

2009-01-13T09:05:00.000-08:00

Elsa and Spice, her new chicken

2009-01-13T09:03:00.000-08:00

soon to be kitchen

2009-01-13T09:02:00.000-08:00

swimming with cousin Isla

2009-01-13T09:01:00.000-08:00

Ezra's favorite thing!

2009-01-13T09:00:00.001-08:00

roasting marshmallows

2009-01-13T08:59:00.000-08:00

Cousin, Isla, enjoying Elsa and Ezra's swing

2009-01-13T08:57:00.001-08:00

stockings on Christmas morning

2009-01-13T08:56:00.000-08:00

view of the stormy sky from our front yard

2009-01-13T08:55:00.000-08:00

Caleb welding our stairs

2009-01-13T08:54:00.002-08:00

Our House is finished!

2009-01-13T08:54:00.001-08:00

sunset at the fossil beds

2009-01-13T08:53:00.000-08:00

Omo sunrise from the boat

2009-01-13T08:52:00.000-08:00

"Jesus killed Mr. H?"

2008-12-04T06:08:00.000-08:00

Living here is a bust for keeping pets. In the last four months, we have lost one kitten (taken during the night by who-knows-what), three baby geese (one killed by a cerval cat, two succumbed to unknown illness), one puppy (tick fever), and two chickens (one got sick and died, the other taken by another unknown predator). Our most recent loss was the death of Mr. H, Elsa's beloved rooster and our first addition to the family since moving to Omo.
This was no ordinary rooster. Mr. H followed us everywhere, ate out of the same dish as the dogs, let Elsa and Ezra hang onto his tail feathers and pet his head, and became the chivalrous, doting husband of Mama C when we acquired a hen. Caleb witnessed the amazing Mr. H kill a lizard, cluck twice and stand back while he allowed his new bride to devour the lizard. I'll say it again: this was no ordinary rooster.> Alas, all good things must come to an end. At least, that is how it is along the banks of the Omo River, where getting a pet young and letting it live as a family member well into old age is unheard of. Two nights ago, Mr. H was dragged from his chicken house and taken off to become dinner for some mongoose or wild cat. The next morning, I had to explain to Elsa why Mr. H wasn't coming running as she called for him. Elsa's response? "Jesus killed Mr. H?"
I suppose that is the only logical conclusion to draw when you are two years old and mama tells you that all of your pets...Manny, Brown Sugar Chicken, Raines, and all of the baby geese...have gone to live with Jesus.
Today, we got a new rooster. I know, I know, you'd think that by now we'd have learned our lesson and perhaps passed on the whole pet-business. But...meet H2. You may call him Hummer.

Mango Ubba

2008-10-18T17:46:00.000-07:00

I think not being able to communicate much with the people around her has really started to bother Elsa. She seems to sense that she doesn't know the right words to say to be able to make her way around here. Considering how much she loves to talk, I can only imagine how much it irks her to not be able to understand all the other little kids.She's not laying down and playing dead though. Elsa has just decided to combine any Daasanech words she's picked up and put them together, even if we can't quite figure out what it is she is trying to say. Her newest phrase is "Mango Ubba!". She's taken to yelling this at anyone and everyone who comes close, and essentially it just means 'and mango!' or 'also mango!'. I can't imagine what the people think of this little 3 foot high blonde girl yelling 'and mango!' at them. But she's trying. She's trying hard. And she doesn't care what people think of her or what mistakes she's making in the process--she's communicating. And so I'm taking a page from Elsa's books...attempting to take a stab at beginning to learn Daasanech, and to just yell out the words I think I may know. A few times a week the kids and I go back to a house in the village and sit with the main leader in our church (and however many other people may be packed into the house), and I try desperately to figure out, through a little English and a little Amharic and a lot of confusion and miming, what it is they are talking about. I don't know how successful it is, but it's been good for us to at least make a start. So here's to becoming child-like and not being afraid to try...here's to Mango Ubba!

See How The Ferenji Kids Play

2008-10-06T08:24:00.000-07:00

Last week the main Daasanech health worker, Girma, was over to our place early one morning to head out with Donna to do a clinic downriver. It was about 7:15 am, the time of day my kids are running around outside, enjoying the cool of the morning, typically dressed in nothing more than that night's sagging diaper. Girma was watching Ezra as he pushed his Tonka truck up and down a sand incline, and Elsa as she ran in circles swinging her arms around. Caleb, who was starting work for the day, overheard Girma as he said to some other Daasanech health extension workers there, "See how the ferenji (foreign) kids play, Daasanech kids only think about their stomachs." How true Girma's words. My kids have the luxury of a childhood, something we think of as a right to a child, while this community of Daasanech parents send their children out at 4 and 5 to watch the goats, haul water, work in the garden, and mind the younger children. A child here has the responsibility of an adult. The thought of the gross discrepancy between the lives of my children and the children all around us has been on my mind over the last few weeks, because I've spent a lot of time lately trying to figure out which kids are closest in age to Elsa and Ezra. I can't figure it out. The ones that look about the same size have eyes beyond my kids' years, and tell a story of an experience far beyond my own 2 year old's life. I don't fault my kids for having a childhood. In fact, I love it, and I want them to have a childhood for as long as possible. And I don't necessarily feel sorry for these Daasanech kids either. I think they have a joy living here, in this community where they know their mothers and fathers and grandfathers and grandmothers, all their cousins and siblings and aunts and uncles, and all live together from birth to death in the same community. I would not impose myself to say that the way my own kids grow up is better than the way that they do.
The gardens are being planted as we speak. Sorghum is the main crop in this area, and because we did not have a full flood this year of the Omo River, the crop will be smaller than it should. We have had rain in the past week, though, unseasonal rain, and it should help their gardens start to take off. Pray for these gardens. Pray for the women as they work them, and the children, too. Pray that there will be a bountiful harvest, so that maybe Girma's words will ring a little less true this year...so the Daasanech children can cease to think about their stomachs, and play like only a child can...arms swinging and bellys full.

Home

2008-09-22T13:50:00.000-07:00

Home is where...you fill in the blank. I've heard the saying many different ways--your toothbrush, your pillow, your heart, your shoes. I cannot honestly say how I fill in that sentence. I can't quite say home is where my heart is, because my heart is split between Ethiopia, Atlanta, and Washington. We just returned back to Omo after I spent two weeks in the states for my sister's wedding, and one week in Addis doing shopping for supplies and things before heading south. It was an incredible high to step off the airplane in Addis Ababa and know I was finally back on the same continent and time zone as Caleb and the kids.
As wonderful as it was to be back 'home' in the US, I felt the separation from my family sitting on my chest the whole time.
It is strange though, to have come off the last few months of feeling quite 'home'-sick, and then to go back to the US and miss my other 'home' so desperately, my home that consists of Caleb, Elsa, Ezra, and the life we're building together by the Omo. I think it was good for me, to go back and realize that no matter where I am, I will feel the pull of a different place. That is simply the reality of the kind of life we've chosen. Hard at times, but amazing as well, to be able to call opposite sides of the world 'home' at the same time. To always be leaving home, but to always be going home as well.
So I am home...with my husband, my kids, this world over here.

Joanna in the USA

2008-09-07T20:54:00.000-07:00

I'm not going to tell you how long I've been here. Granted, it hasn't been long, but considering the fact that I am leaving in the morning, I defnitely should have taken advantage of the last week of internet access to easily update this blog!

I was informed by my friend Britany that she LOVES the blog, but she finds my habits in updating the blog a tad reprehensible. She did say she would give me a break for the month of August because she said "I know you've been busy". (Her words, not mine! I won't correct her). So I'm coming away from this quick trip with one strong resolve--I will be better about writing more! Britany convinced me that there is at least one person out there who reads it regularly.

I'm jumping ahead. Most of you did not even know I would be in the USA. My beautiful sister, Jonelle, married an amazing man last night.

I landed in Atlanta last Thursday. I was able to spend the weekend with Leah and Tim and my new niece, Isla, before coming out to Washington state on Monday. I loved getting to be with Leah and Tim for the weekend, it was like I had never left the street we both lived on for the four years before we moved to Ethiopia. And their baby is without exaggeration the most precious little girl I have ever met. My kids are unbeatable, but you could never use words like "good", "calm", or "perfect" to describe either Elsa or Ezra. They have kept me up too many nights to give them those particular words. But Isla...she is beautiful. And precious. And I love her.

I came to Washington on Monday and have spent the last week doing all of the crazy wedding business that comes in the last week before a wedding.

It has been a great week of seeing family and friends and getting to be here with my sister and to spend some time with her husband. Coming from my quiet life down at Omo, I've definitely been going hard--they dragged me up Mt. Pilchuck and we water-skiied and did brunch in Seattle and family dinners and wedding rehearsals and more family dinners and lots and lots and lots of pictures. It has all been precious, from getting to see my 2 week old nephew, Benjamin, to seeing one of my nephews play football and another play soccer and most of all to be there to watch as my sister married her best friend.

It has been an eventful and busy week and a half, and tomorrow I head off to start my trip home. I have missed my kids and Caleb so much during this time and I am so ready to be back home with my family. I cannot believe that I have survived this much time without them! Caleb has been very brave to be in charge for two weeks, and Grandma Donna has been a lifesaver to help Caleb every day. Caleb and the kids will meet me in Addis to pick me up from the airport. As much fun as it is to reconnect with family and friends on this side, I am counting the hours to walking off that plane.

Many congratulations to my family here who have all had such momentous events in the last weeks and months...much love to the new babies, Isla and Ben, and to the new journey begun by Jonelle and Aaron.

Samuel and Benjamin Judy (my newest nephew)

oops...

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and here is the website...www.elsamorrell.shutterfly.com