It’s no secret, K is from Ethiopia. As many of you know, I taught myself a bit of Amharic so that I would be able to communicate with him when I brought him home. I knew that he would be verbal when I traveled and I wanted him to have “something” from his homeland (since I had basically taken him away from everything he had ever known within 5 days of meeting me). I wanted him to know that I respected him as a person and that I love Ethiopia, its culture, and people as much as I love him.
But now, he refuses to speak it. He understands Amharic and will respond in English, but won’t use any words except, “I love you!” Even having said that, I use it A LOT. Granted, I am not fluent, nor do I claim to be, but I have about 50 phrases that I still use regularly with him. Most of them are terms of endearment or punishment… The other day, I was at a supermarket that I don’t usually go to when I had to scold him. In public, I choose to discipline him in Amharic so I don’t have to look at the faces of all the mom’s questioning my parenting skills, and they do… Ironically enough, after scolding him in Amharic, I hear a cart in the next aisle almost racing down the row, and from around the corner comes an Ethiopian woman who simply says, “I wasn’t expecting you to be white!” All I could do was laugh and say (clearly not how these words are spelled, but phonetics work for me), “Selam! Ah-te-free! Sih May, Char” and then K chimed in with, “I’m K!” We only shared a quick moment, but what a beautiful moment it was. As she left, she said something to him in Amharic, kissed his forehead and the tops of both of his hands, as did so many lovely people on the streets of Addis Ababa. It blessed me.
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