If you haven't read the first few days, scroll back to the beginning!
We chose the guest house based on a file we read from our agency on different guest houses. It said it was about a 10 minute walk from our guest house to the orphanage. Eric thought the directions sounded really easy, so we started walking, and walking, and walking, and I didn’t recognize anything, but Eric thought we were still going the right way. When we came upon an ornate church, we knew we had never seen it before and must be going the wrong way. We turned back and tried a different way and soon realized that wasn’t the way either. It was starting to get dark and we didn’t have any way of calling anyone. I was nervous that people would notice that we were lost (we were the only white people on the street) and try to take advantage of that. We quickly made our way back to the orphanage and the guard, who didn’t understand our problem, led us into the orphanage. Vivi had fallen asleep on our long walk.
Apparently none of the English speaking nannies work at night. We ended up in the same room that Little Boy was in, and tried explaining the situation, but they didn’t understand us. Eventually we got across that we needed to borrow a phone. Eric called Zewdu to see if he could pick us up, but he was at the airport and couldn’t come for an hour. Being the only driver who knew how to get to our guest house, we didn’t have a choice but to wait. We communicated with the nannies that we would be there for 1 hour, and they got us chairs and invited us to sit and play. The room was all kids under 4, and they were all so sweet! Little Boy sat back and watched as other kids came up to us and started playing. Eric taught them a simple hand clapping sequence that they all wanted to do. Little Boy best friend is very outgoing, and as he and I played the hand clapping game, Little Boy slowly scooted closer to watch, and then went to Eric and put his hands out to play the game.
On a separate note, we met the family of Little Boy best friend through email, they live in Indiana. We are planning on getting together after both boys are home and settled in. They haven’t been assigned a court date yet but asked us to get some pictures of him and share any stories of our time with him.
I noticed that one of the other boys was holding the car we had given Little Boy, which we knew they would end up sharing, but when Little Boy noticed, he tapped Eric’s leg, showed him the car, and made a whimpering sound. We had brought 2 cars, so Eric pulled the other one out and gave it to him. He went over to the other little boy and traded for the first car, then brought it back to show Eric.
One of the older boys saw my camera, and came up to me. He tapped the camera, said “photo” then pointed at himself and said “me” and then stood there with a big grin. I took his picture and then let him look at it. He thought it was the coolest thing!
We were all having a good time when suddenly the light in the room slowly faded away, and suddenly it was completely dark. Some of the babies started crying, and we couldn’t see a thing, the power went out in the whole area. The nannies seemed unfazed, one went to the closet and got out a couple of wind up flash lights (and by wind up I mean that you had to keep winding it to get light; if you stopped, the light went out) and another nanny came back in with a lit candle. She poured some wax on the end of one of the cribs and stuck the candle into the wax. They handed a flashlight to Eric, and all the little boys wanted to try turning the handle. Little Boy sat back and watched as the other boys tried, and then when he decided he knew what to do, he asked for a turn, and did it exactly right.
The nannies started putting pajamas on the kids and put the littler ones to bed. The bigger boys played with us for a few more minutes, then one by one decided to get into bed. We thanked the nannies and told them we would wait outside and they said no, stay inside and wait because it was cold outside. So we sat back down and hung out. Little Boy kept popping his head up to look at us and smile, and when Zewdu came to get us, he waved and said “ciao”. As we walked out to the car, Eric said “I’m so glad we got lost!”.
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