Letters to home...from home.

Noah has been working on a letter to send to Ato Teklu, a wonderful man who works for WACAP in Ethiopia.  It is being hand delivered within the week.  After Noah was relinquished by his aunt he was placed in an orphanage.  Mr. Teklu, knowing we were requesting to adopt a child around Noah's age,  is the man who traveled to that orphanage and found Noah.  His relationship with Noah did not end there.  Once Noah was moved to the WACAP transition home Teklu became a central figure in his life for the three months leading up to my travel to bring him home.  When I was in Addis I got to know Teklu very well.  He is a wonderful man who loved my son when we physically could not.  One of the most dynamic moments of our time in Addis happened during our final few hours on Ethiopian soil.  Teklu and his driver took us to the airport around 7:30 pm.  It was a very bitter sweet goodbye and I don’t think Noah really understood that this was really goodbye until we were at the ticket counter and tears just began to stream down his face as he cried for Teklu.  He realized that the wonderful kind Ato Teklu would no longer be on this adoption journey with him.  It was a sad realization for all of us.

This weekend Noah dictated a letter to Hannah who typed it on the computer.  She printed it off and gave it back to Noah to write in his own handwriting.   He signed it...Musse. "Because Noah is my American name and Musse is my Ethiopian name."  

We are so very grateful to Ato Teklu.  He is our Ethiopian angel.