Can we say awkward?

Last week, I was invited to celebrate Natsenet’s 2nd birthday by attending a party at his house.  I invited Dawn and her daughter Chloe to come along with me.  They are in Ethiopia with other organizations and spent a few days with BCI.  So we go to the birthday party and most of the kids from the BCI foster home, one social worker, and BCI’s missionary coordinator were there.  I would say there were 17 of us guests.  At the start of the party, Natsenet’s social worker gave the testimony of this family.  I had heard the testimony before but I always love to hear it.  So here goes:

Natsenet has a nine year old sister that was adopted to a family in America 5 years ago.  After giving birth to her, the mother left the baby with the grandmother and went and lived on the streets.  We were told that the adoptive family and the little girl would be coming to the house to visit. The mom ended up pregnant again with Natsenet.  She returned home to her mother and gave birth to the baby.  Volunteers of BCI went to visit Natsenet because they heard about his dire situation.  During the visit, they started praying for his mother and a demon manifested itself.  A special prayer team was called in to handle the situation.  It was then discovered that the baby was never given a name.  In Ethiopian culture, if a family thinks a baby may die or be harmed they do not name the baby.  It was decided that his name was to be Natsenet, which means Freedom in Amharic.  Nothing is sounding awkward yet?  Well, here it is:

The adoptive family and little girl were scheduled (on purpose) to arrive while we all were there.  Just imagine:  you adopt a little girl from Ethiopia.  You make a special trip all the way across the world to meet her birth family.  The little girl is basically meeting her mother for the first time and reconnecting with her grandmother after 5 years.  You are nervous and excited as you walk up the front walk.  You enter the house and see 17 random people!

The look on the adoptive mother’s face broke my heart.  You could see that she was so shocked at the intrusion of all of these strangers.  You could see her confusion.  After just staring at all of us she turned to me and said “who are you people”?  A bit later, the adoptive father asked me if we knew they were coming today.  I explained that I knew they were coming today, but I had no idea that they were coming while we were there.

I completely felt as if we had intruded on such a special occasion for this family.  I hurriedly tried to get us all out of there so they could spend time with each other and get to know each other.  

Just another difference between our cultures.  Americans feel as if moments such as this should be private but Ethiopians tend to feel that things are to be shared amongst the group-community style.