Taking the rough with the smooth in Addis Ababa

Asa has now spent a little more than half of his life in Ethiopia: he left the US in April at 2 months of age, and turned 4 months old last week.  

Asa's foot, as a newborn, and at 4 months

When I rejoined Asa and Selam in May, Asa was a little over 3 months old and had adapted effortlessly to his new surroundings.  Our one-bedroom apartment in Addis Ababa, as far as we could tell, seemed just as comfortable to him as Aunt Sylvia's spacious house in Atlanta.  

For the first two weeks after they arrived, Selam spent most of her time at home with Asa.  Since then she's returned to her job at the UNHCR, although she usually comes home at lunchtime to breastfeed. 

I've taken over from Kuri some of the work of caring for Asa during the days. I've  gotten the hang of changing his nappies, warming bottles and feeding him, putting him to sleep when he's drowsy, and -- when other tricks don't work -- carrying him outdoors in a sling, which never fails to calm him.

More recently I've been leaving home during the days, and working at the UNECA library.  I've begun to think of the library as my office.

We've fallen into a rather comfortable routine. 

A run-in with a bigot

Our comfortable routine was interrupted one weekend soon after I'd arrived, when Selam and Asa and I were the target of a silly joke, and then some spiteful insults.  

It was late afternoon on a Saturday and we were out strolling in our neighbourhood, on our way home from the shops.  We walked towards of a group of young boys playing in the street, and as we approached, a ball rolled towards and past us. 

"If I weren't carrying Asa, I'd jump up and kick that back to them," I said to Selam.  I was carrying Asa in a sling on my chest. 

We walked through the midst of the group, and as we passed them, one of the boys kicked the ball at close range, and it hit Selam hard in the back.

"Give me the ball," Selam had heard one of the boys say just beforehand; it seemed that this boy had kicked the ball at her deliberately. 

Selam picked up the ball and shouted to the boys, who had come running, that she was taking it. 

As we walked on, a small boy dogged our heels, pleading with Selam to return the ball, which she refused to do. 

As we reached our block, a heavy-set man with a glass bottle in his hand intervened in the argument.

"Give it back to him," he said brusquely. 

"I won't," Selam said.  "They kicked it at me."

"It's nothing," he said. "Give it to them."

"No," Selam said.  "Who are you to tell me that?"

"Give it to them."

A short man who works in the pizzeria opposite our apartment building joined in, trying to persuade Selam to do as the man said.  "They even break people's car windows sometimes," he said.  "They don't mean it…."

"Why should I give it to them, just because he tells me to?" Selam asked.

"I could beat you," the man said.

"Yes, you're a big man.  That doesn't mean you're right," Selam said.

As the argument continued, two other men who were in a cafe opposite where the boys had been playing joined in.  They confirmed that the boy had kicked the ball at Selam on purpose.  The children should know better, they said.

"It doesn't matter," said the man, whose name, we later found out, is Tesfay. 

"It does matter," Selam says.  "My child could have been hurt."

"He's not the only child in the world," Tesfay said.

"Was it your child who kicked the ball?" she asked.

"They're all my children," he said.

"How would you like it if you and your wife and child were out walking, and someone kicked a ball at you?" one of the men who had been sitting at the cafe asked.

"She's a child too," he said, referring to Selam -- "She's their equal." 

This was the one statement of Tesfay's that I recognised as an insult at the time.  The argument was in Amharic, and it was fast-paced; in these circumstances my ability in the language fails me. 

"She's not a child, she's my wife!" I thought of saying.  But by the time the words had formed in my head Tesfay had snatched the ball from Selam's hands and thrown it back to the children, and the argument had moved on.

The two men who had intervened in our defence urged us to leave, and we did, while they continued to argue.

  *  *  *

After this incident, Selam and I were sad and angry.  I wanted to find out which apartment Tesfay lived in, and go and confront him.  Selam thought this would make things worse, and persuaded me against it. 

We talked with other neighbours about the episode, and they were universally supportive of us, and angry at Tesfay. 

If there‘s a positive side to the incident, it's that the men at the cafe, who saw the boy kick the ball at Selam, took it upon themselves to get involved in the argument.  They could have sat there minding their own business.  But they decided that their neighbours' business was their business: that kids shouldn't grow up thinking they can get away with being rude to strangers, and adults shouldn't get away with acting like overgrown bullies. 

That's one sign of a healthy community.

Sadly, there's bigotry in every culture.  In Ethiopia, one of the most common forms it takes is disrespect for women. It was immediately clear to Selam that Tesfay's behaviour was rooted in prejudice against local women who form relationships with foreigners.

For someone who harbours this prejudice, the sight of an Ethiopian woman and a white man walking through the neighbourhood with their baby must seem like provocation. 

Sadly that remains the case for mixed-race couples in many other parts of the world too.

In the weeks that have passed since the incident, the boys who used to play football in our street have gone elsewhere to play.  Which saddens me a little, since I like seeing children playing. 

And we've gone about our lives as usual.  Which is probably the best thing we can do.

Asa's response

Appropriately, it was about the time that we had our encounter with the unfriendly neighbour that Asa began to stick out his tongue. 

Soon afterwards his spine stiffened somewhat, and his arms began to gain strength.  Now, with some effort, he can sit by himself -- albeit resting much of the weight of his upper body on his arms.

His vocalisations have increased in frequency and diversity too, as if to meet the verbal challenge of a sometimes unkind world. 

"Haaaaa,"  he says.  "Aaawooo." 

And still, when he's unhappy, "Emmmmbii!"

But most of the time he's happy.  He smiles at almost anyone who comes into range, and occasionally he laughs.

Apart from the argument with our neighbour a few weeks ago, there's been little stress in Asa's life.  His days are spent in turns sleeping, feeding, and being sunned on the veranda.  Being kissed and jiggled and bathed and fussed over. 

In short, life is pretty good.

His only experience of acute physical pain has been needle jabs when he's gotten vaccinations. 

These jabs are for his own good -- they'll protect him in the future.

But one lesson of the run-in with our neighbour is that, as much as we want to, we can't shield Asa against all the foolishness in the world.  We can't vaccinate him against every threat.

Some of them, Asa will have to learn to deal with himself. 

For the moment, as he smiles and sticks out his tongue, he's responding well enough in his own way.

My mistake / Wonderful life

A few days ago I wrote that, compared to other animals we are born early, and do an unusual amount of developing after birth.  

On reflection, it would have been more accurate to say, "unlike other mammals".  

Animals in general have a lot of weird and wonderful ways of managing the early stages of development -- laying eggs, for instance, and either sitting on them until they hatch, like most birds, or trusting them to their own fates, like frogs do.

But even among mammals, I've realised, we're far from being the only unusual ones:  

The platypus and echidna are mammals, but they lay eggs.  

Marsupials are mammals, but they emerge from the womb in a very rudimentary shape, and migrate to their mothers' pouches, where they spend more time developing than they do in the womb.  

Left: kangaroo at 5 weeks gestation, fastened on his mother's nipple soon after birth.
Right: kangaroo surveying his kingdom at 5 months.

A more appropriate comparison would have been between us and the rest of the placental mammals, including rats, bats, cats, and whales.  

Other placental mammals give birth to little ones who are livelier than we are in the days and weeks after birth, variously scurrying, flying, or swimming around while we're still lying on our backs, like Asa's doing.

So it's in respect to them that the "fourth trimester" idea makes most sense.

Wonderful life

These reflections may seem weird.  

All the work Jed was doing on that dissertation went to his head, some of you may be thinking.  

He has finally lost it completely, others of you may have concluded.

Here's the inspiration for these thoughts: 

Thinking about the stages of development that Asa has been through over the past months -- thinking about Asa in general -- gives me a new sense of the wonder of life.  Not just ours, but all the humming, buzzing diversity of life that animates this planet.  And a new sense of my own kinship with it.

On another level, these thoughts distract me from the sadness of being away from Selam and Asa.  Today, for instance, I found a sponge in the shape of a fish that Selam and Kuri had used to scrub Asa with when he was here.  That gave me a pang of nostalgia. 

But in a few weeks, I'll be with them again.  

Then the blog may become a bit more concrete.  

Or maybe Asa will continue to inspire me to write about how wonderful life is.

Fourth trimester

Since I've been working on my dissertation, I've not been able to write on the blog recently.  But now the dissertation is done, I can pick up Asa's story again.

Asa is 80 days old today: a little under 3 months.  So far he's racked up the following list of accomplishments:

• Feeding.  He's got that down, at least as far as breast milk goes.  
• Crapping.  Also under control. 
• Growing.  He has grown prodigiously, acquiring a second chin and adding rolls of spare fat to his legs.
• Crying.  Thankfully he doesn't do this too much.  But when he's unhappy, he lets us know.
• Smiling!  He started doing this after about 35 days, and does it a lot.  (He has even laughed a little in his sleep.)
• Moving around.  Placed on his stomach, he supports his head and writhes about a good deal.  He doesn't yet get very far.
• Finger-sucking.  Sometimes this happens in the womb, I've heard.  For Asa, it seemed to happen in the course of routine flailing, but recently he brings his hand to his mouth more often than you'd expect by chance -- and then to give it a good suck.  Once Selam reported that he put almost his entire hand inside his mouth.  (Try that for yourself.)
• Vocalizing.  Largely vowel sounds, but some consonants too.  Once I seemed to hear him say "Embi" (an Amharic word which translates roughly as "No way."). 

In addition to these achievements, Asa has gotten a passport, and has been Christened in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.  (The Christening deserves a post of its own, and I'll report on that soon.)

Asa's passport photo.  Not looking his best.

On April 1, Asa flew to Ethiopia together with his mum and grandmother Kuri.  

Selam has gone back to work with the UN Refugee agency in Addis Ababa, and I'll be joining her and Asa there in a few weeks.

Asa has reportedly adjusted well to Ethiopia.  We're not sure whether he noticed the difference.  In Ethiopia, as in the US, he's been doted on by his mum and grandmother, who cater to his every need.

Back here in the US, I wonder what these first months have felt like to him. When he dreams, for instance -- when he's asleep, and his eyes are darting around and his breath is irregular; when he laughs in his sleep -- what is he seeing?

Some people consider the first 3 months of life as a fourth trimester, a period of rapid development that in other animals happens in utero, but in humans happens after birth.  So in a sense Asa is as yet unfinished (more than us older folks): a compromise between what his mum's pelvis could accommodate in terms of delivery, and where he could get to in terms of viability.

On this basis, we should be generous in appraising what he's able to do so far.  

Bravo, my son!  Keep it up.

First days

To pick up where we left off:

This is the world that Asa came into. 

 

It was still and peaceful in the room, with the lights dimmed.  After Asa was born we were given a minute or two to hold him.  Anjli clamped off the umbilical cord, but gave me the honor of severing it, cutting Asa free from his mother. 

(Cue ululation.)

Then the nurse, Sandra, whisked him over to a heat lamp, and tidied up his cord stump, and weighed him, and put a nametag on his wrist and an alarm sensor on his ankle. 

Selam meanwhile had clambered out of the pool and had been helped onto a bed.  She was having some stitches inserted when Asa was handed back to her a few minutes later, wrapped in a hospital blanket and wearing a handsome cap.

"All citizens of the republic shall be issued at birth with a Phrygian cap, to insure against monarchist proclivities," my dad remarked.

Kitted out with cap, anklet, and armband, Asa was well on the way to official personhood before he'd even had his first meal.

Asa in Selam's arms -- in Phrygian cap (as per federal regulations). 

But the meal was coming soon. 

As Selam's repairs dragged on (a painful business, even more than the birth) the surgeon, Margaret, suggested we unwrap the baby and put him skin-to-skin on his mother's chest.  

Lying there at about 15 minutes of age, Asa had a go at sucking on his mother's nipple.  He did pretty well for a beginner, although it would be several more hours before he started to suckle properly.

What was beautiful was to see Asa stretched out on Selam's chest -- and that even in the midst of the painful surgery, she would smile every time she looked down at him.

                                                               ***

Now Asa is 9 days old, and he's settling into the world. 

Outside of home (great-aunt Sylvia's house in Decatur) he has caught glimpses of Atlanta on the way home from hospital, and seen parts of the neighborhood on short walks in the arms of him mum and other relatives.  

But mainly his world has been our home.

At the pediatrician's office last week (when Asa was 5 days old), the doctor asked me how many people were living in our house.

"Four, isn't it?" I said to Selam.  "You, me, Kuri, and aunt Sylvia."

"Including the baby?" the doctor asked.

"Oh, no.  Five including him."

I will have to get used to counting him as a member of the household.

Up until now he's still around 3.5 kg (7 and a half pounds) -- about a sixteenth of his mother's weight.  Small enough that it's easy to overlook him.

Asa in a reflective moment.

But in spite of being small he has exerted an extraordinary power over friends and relatives.

Although grandfather Jan Stevenson has now returned to England, grandmother Kay Stevenson and honorary grandfather Clive Hart have come from England to meet him.

Cousin Caroline Crownover and husband James came from Tuscaloosa yesterday, and great-aunt Ginny Fikes is due to arrive from Tuscaloosa today. 

Grandmother Kuri Shibo has scarcely left Asa's side since he was born.

Friends and neighbors have dropped by to admire him, and he has been showered with gifts and blessings. 

"I've never seen such a rich child," Kuri said yesterday, as a consignment of presents arrived.

                                                               ***

Various things that we notice about Asa:

• how his head flops around when it's not supported
• how the skin hangs loose from his shoulder blades, like a shirt he has room to grow into
• how his eyes wander, sometimes making him look cross-eyed
• how his chin trembles when he is distressed

All these things tend to prompt from his mum and grandmother Kuri the comment, "Yasazenal," or "Siyasazen!"

This Amharic expression is difficult to translate into English. 

Literally, it means "It's sad," or "How sad!" 

But that's not the sense of it: It's not really sad that he can't support his head, or control his eye movements; it's normal at his age. 

What the expression gets at is that these things (like many other aspects of babies) elicit pity and empathy -- a particular mixture of emotions that we reserve for children in particular, and which tug at our heartstrings, and make us want to take care of them.

And take care of them we must, because they need us.  And we need them.

Birth

Asa was born on February 4, 2011.

Selam had been in labor for about 15 hours.  During the last 3 hours we sat in a birthing pool, and Selam alternated between drowsiness and alertness, good humor and exasperation as the contractions grew stronger.

Midwife Anjli encouraged Selam when she needed encouraging, and gave us all confidence that things would go well.

At 3:39 AM, Asa surfaced in the glow of a spotlight and was delivered to the arms of his astonished parents.  

Asa's maternal grandmother, Kuri Shibo, and paternal grandfather, Jan Stevenson, were present at his birth.

It was a rainy night in Georgia.  But a ray of sunlight burst through for us all.

He is a boy, and his name shall be called Isaac Dhaddacha Stevenson

A strange fish

When does personality emerge?  In the case of the hero of this blog, it was around 7 weeks gestation, when we chose the nickname, "fish" (asa in Amharic).

At 7 weeks gestation, we're all more or less like fish.

Embryos of various species at early (top row), middle, and late (bottom row) stages of gestation.
Fish on the left; human on the right.  After a drawing by Ernst Haeckel.

Back then, Asa was less than 2 cm (1 inch) tall and weighed about as much as a bean. The nickname gave us a way of thinking about this little thing as a real live individual.

Now, just a couple of days short of 9 months gestation, dozens of people are looking forward to meeting Asa.

And yet there is much that remains unknown:

• Gender.  Is Asa male or female?  We don't know.  (For the meantime, we'll use 'he' for convenience.)
• Complexion.  Asa's mother and father happen to differ quite dramatically in skin color.  Grafted from the two of us, Asa may be light or dark, or somewhere in between. Amharic has five categories for skin-color: nech [white], qay [red], yeqay dama [dark red], tayim [burnt], and tiqur [black]. Perhaps he will be, as the Ethiopians say, "the color of burnt fish" (tayim asa masay).  (It's a compliment.)

There is an increasing amount we do know about Asa, though.   For example:

• He now weighs more than 3kg (6 lb, 7 oz.).  (As substantial as three bags of sugar -- but much dearer!)
• Although yet to make a sound, he speaks in crude gestures -- jabs of the elbows and knees -- through the medium of his mother's taut belly.  When my hand is resting there and Asa rolls over, it feels like a whale surfacing, turning, and then diving.

A strange fish indeed.

About me and Selam 

Selam is from Ethiopia and I am from England.  Fate brought us together in her country; and now we await Asa's arrival in Atlanta, GA -- home to Selam's mom Kuri and uncle Alex, and to my aunt Sylvia and uncle Rick -- where I am finishing up a PhD in Anthropology.

Asa's mum and dad on their wedding day.

The inspiration for this blog

In addition to Asa, the inspiration for this blog comes from two people:

1.  Anne Ginestier, my aunt, maintained a blog, www.ginestier.blogspot.com, that helped her family and her many friends stay up to date during her struggle with cancer over the past year.  Anne died yesterday, January 30, 2011.  She was excited at the prospect of Asa joining the family; this whole thing is something she would have taken joy in.

2.  Seth Fisher, my cousin, started a blog in 2005 in celebration of the arrival of his son Tofu.  Tragically Seth died when Tofu was 20 months old.  The blog was a beautiful monument to his love for his son.  Seth's mom Vicki Sheridan maintains a blog in Seth's memory at
www.floweringnose.blogspot.com

Why "O our Asa" / "Asachen hoy"?

The title of this blog is an adaptation of the first words of the Lord's prayer in Ge'ez (the language used in the liturgy of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church).

"Abbatachen hoy"  means "O our father".
"Asachen hoy" means "O our fish".