Tamirat

By Lauren S.

Our adoptee, two-year-old Tamirat, fell asleep at the airport in Addis Ababa at about 8 p.m. Ethiopian time, May 15. He pretty much slept through the boarding process and take-off, at midnight, of the Ethiopian Airlines jet. He awoke when the plane stopped to refuel in Rome, some time before dawn local time. For the rest of the trip to Washington, D.C., he had the run of the plane, lovingly entertained by the many Ethiopian "grandparents" on board.

We dashed through customs, immigration and the bewildering system of buses and terminals at Dulles International Airport in order to make a flight from there to Albany, arriving about 2:30 p.m., local time. Actual flying time from Addis, allowing for the seven hours difference, was over 17 hours.

In that time Tamirat's life changed completely. He was born somewhere south of Addis Ababa, where he ended up, as an infant, in a hospital; then was sent to an orphanage in the capital. In his nine months there, he learned Amharic, his second language. Now Tamirat is learning his third language, English, while he teaches his parents his essential words, such as "Mama," "Baba," and "beep-beep" — his own appellation for his favorite source of pleasure, riding in an automobile.

Addis, a city of slums, broad boulevards and high-rise office buildings, has a population of five million. Traffic, which is chaotic, nevertheless, comes to a complete stop to let herds of sheep cross.

Teams of laden donkeys, without drivers, mingle with automobiles, apparently able to run their errands on their own. In rural southern Vermont, on a gravel road where traffic is light, we're more often called upon to share the road with deer or moose.

Drought, exacerbated by deforestation in Ethiopia, has led to famine. In addition, estimates predict that by 2009 the mortality rate from AIDS will reach 57 percent for the age group between 15 and 49.

Deforestation has also fouled the water supply even in Addis, so that tap water, or anything prepared with tap water that hasn't been boiled, is likely to lead to parasites. His new home is set in a northern hardwood forest. In Stamford he drinks from our wonderful, safe water well.

Whereas in his country of birth, people customarily eat with their fingers, soaking up their highly spiced food with a large, pancake-like bread called "injera," Tamirat now studiously applies his fork and spoon. Although we have a supply of injera, he seems to be adapting readily to other kinds of "dabbo" (bread), truly his staff of life - especially when he discovered it could be smeared with raspberry jam.

From living in an orphanage with 15 children and sleeping in one room with a half dozen children, he has gone to sleeping by himself in his own room, with only a couple of parents rattling around the house to call out to. From a world in which dogs roamed wild in packs at night and cats were mostly scavengers who would as soon slash you as look at you, he is gradually coming to accept a fourth denizen of our home, Lucky the cat, whom he calls "Yucky".

Addis, at an elevation of 8,000 feet, has a year-round climate of cool nights and days in the 70s. In Stamford at 1,700 feet — well, one day it's rainy and 40 degrees; the next it's sunny and 70. Still, this is probably a good time to introduce him to our climate, giving him the maximum time to adjust before he discovers winter.

Tamirat's life has changed. We marvel that he seems to take it all in stride. He is much more involved in being two years old — defined loosely as into everything and testing limits — than brooding over then and now.

He's just a happy, busy boy. Anyway, that's how it looks from Stamford, Vermont.

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