New York: A bittersweet goodbye - Part One

In this post and the previous one I catch up on our our amazing week with Tesfaye before heading to New York and the busy first couple of days in New York.

 
Sunday October 4th and Monday October 4th, 2009: As mentioned in my last capsule summary on September 30th concerning the week of Monday Sept. 28 to Sunday Oct. 4 (which was very recently filled in with more detail and pictures), Nanci and I left with Tesfaye on Sunday October 4th to New York after an extremely busy week leading up to that comprised of We Day on Tuesday and the African Children's Choir dinner Tuesday night, VGH thank you/Tesfaye farewell at our house Wednesday night, Arthritis Dinner Thursday night, and the Ronald McDonald House BC Gala dinner Saturday night; as usual, I left the packing for last minute and after doing a last minute cleanup at the office Saturday night after the RMHBC gala dinner, I ended up staying up all night until leaving for the Airport Sunday Oct. 4th at 6 am.

Sunday October 4th, 2009 - Happy Reunions: 

Tesfaye, Nanci and I arrived in NY Sunday night around 9 pm after a long day
of flying via Houston .  After dropping our bags off first at our hotel we  took Tesfaye straight to Chloe Malle's apartment where he would be staying in New York until leaving for Ethiopia the afternoon of the 7th. Chloe's apartment fortunately was only seven or eight blocks away from our hotel, right across from Central Park. What a wonderfully happy reunion Tesfaye had both with Chloe, who had recently volunteered in Ethiopia with Rick for a year or so and authored Tesfaye's life story that appears on the right side column of this blog, and with Azmera,a 14 year old girl who also has lived with Dr. Rick Hodes the
last couple of years and had corrective back surgery done successfully in Ghana by Dr. Oheneba Boachie-Adjei (unlike Tesfaye, who was finally turned down by the anaesthesiologist for being too risky for there; in hindsight, based on the complications experienced post surgery in Vancouver, it was a prudent decision).

Azmera was brought to New York to tell her story to the audience at the Dr. Boachie fundraising dinner for his FOCOS Foundation (see  below about Monday evening's dinner). Azmera was sleeping on the sofa when we arrived, so we woke her up to see Tesfaye and it must have seemed like a dream for her to see the now upright and 7 inches taller Tesfaye. Azmera was also happy to see Nanci and me, as we had spent some time with her on our visit with Rick in March of 2008; she was still wearing the watch that Nanci had given her off of her wrist when Azmera had innocently seemed to be adimiring it. Eventually it was time for Nanci and me to head back to check in at our hotel. As Chloe had just started a new job with the New York Observer she was not going to be around for Azmera and Tesfaye, Nanci and I happily planned to spend all of Monday, Tuesday and half of Wednesday with Tesfaye and Azmera before leaving for the airport on our way to Israel.

Monday morning and afternoon October 5th, 2009 -  Dutch Consulate, Rockefeller Plaza, Central Park:

Monday morning I let Nanci sleep in a bit while I went to pick up Tesfaye and Azmera to accompany me to the Dutch consulate in order to get Tesfaye's transit visa for Amsterdam reissued. Unfortunately the visa that I had issued for Tesfaye in Vancouver was no longer good, as his flight from New York to Amsterdam had been moved up a week.Fortunately the Vancouver office of the Dutch consulate were very nice and in fact were aware of Tesfaye's story, so put in a good word to the New York Dutch consulate before I got there with a view to expediting the visa issuance process. Normally it would take five days, but they would try to do it within 2 days.

When we left the building, which is located in Rockefeller Plaza, we saw a big Fire Safety exhibition being put on by New York's finest fire fighting units for school children, so Tesfaye, Azmera and I hung around watching the activites and looking at the new and old fire trucks in the plaza; we also talked to a few fire men, which I am sure Nanci would have also enjoyed had she been there with us.

We then met up with Nanci for lunch, and after lunch decided to go on a Central Park horse and buggy ride.The weather was beautiful and we had a lovely time taking in the Central Park scenery;
you could tell it was a very enjoyable new experience for Tesfaye and Azmera.   

Monday evening October 4th:  The Dr. Boachie Focos Foundation Dinner: Early Monday evening Nanci and I made our way to the Marriot Maruqis Hotel in Times Square where the Focos Foundation/Dr. Boachie dinner was being held, and Tesfaye was going to be brought there with Azmera by Chloe. As Nanci and I met up with Dr. Rick Hodes and were introduced to a number of people at the reception, we keenly awaited Tesfaye's arrival, anxious to witness his reunion with Dr. Rick and others that knew him, including little mischievous Danny.  Danny was another young man around seven years old that Rick had taken in to his home just weeks before we had visited Rick last March in Addis; Danny had succesfully been operated on in Ghana by Dr. Boachie and was now under the care  of Marilyn Berger Hewett, the N Y Times journalist that was writing a biography on Dr. Rick Hodes. Sadly, Marilyn's husband Don Hewitt, legendary producer of "Sixty Minutes", had passed away this past summer.  Danny was going to be entering school in the New York area. 

Finally Tesfaye arrived for the dinner reception with Chloe and Azmera, and I can tell you that it was truly wonderful to witness the affection displayed forTesfaye at the dinner as he reunited with Rick and with a number of people who fondly remembered  meeting him in Ethiopia or Ghana, and to see and hear the amazed reactions as to how wonderful he now looks. Tesfaye looked terrific dressed in black pants, a white shirt, and the black VGH Spine Program vest that was given to him at the dinner Nanci and I hosted the previous Wednesday night at our house. People who knew Tesfaye from before were so happy for Tesfaye  that he finally was able to have successful corrective spine surgery, as I heard again how remarkably upbeat, kind and helpful Tesfaye was to the other young patients on the spine ward in Ghana that were lucky enough to be having the surgery; this time I was hearing it firsthand from doctors and nurses that were present in Ghana the couple of times that Tesfaye  went there to have the desparately needed surgery done, only to ultimately be turned away due to the complicated nature of his case and potential post-op complications.

The dinner was a very nice and successful event, raising funds towards the new hospital Dr. Boachie's foundation is building in Ghana that would be able to handle more complicated cases like Tesfaye's. I was happy to have the opportunity to finally meet Dr. Boachie and his wife and learn more about his foundation's activities. There were a number of very inspiring speeches and video presentations, including Azmera presenting her speech about her life story and the big impact the surgery that Dr. Boachie performed on her back has had on her life and aspirations. Her history is a sad one, being abandoned by her father at the age of 8 years old at the hospital in Gonder up north, where she lived for three years. She then ended up at the Mother Theresa Mission in Addis Ababa where Dr. Rick Hodes eventually met her, took her in to live at his house, and eventually arranged for her to have the corrective spine surgery done by Dr. Boachie in Ghana. (Incidentally, another life changing event for her was when Rick gave her his glasses to try on and all of a sudden she could see things with some clarity like never before, and they realized that rather than being "slow" as she had been labelled, she is actually very bright but simply quite blind).  In any event, as Azmera said at the dinner, the surgery totally changed her outlook on life and she now has aspirations to become a doctor herself. There are so many stories like Tesfaye's and Azmera's, and fortunately between Dr. Rick Hodes work on the ground in Ethiopia and Dr. Boachie and his team's volunteer surgical work in Ghana, the lives of many such young individuals have been and continue to be transformed.

It was also a pleasure for Nanci and me to be able to meet Chloe's mother, the lovely and talented Candice Bergen, who also attended the dinner and had heard about Tesfaye; Candice has always been a favourite actress of mine, so I couldn't help but act like a fan and request a picture with her, Chloe and the three of us.  At some point we had mentioned to Chloe that we were going to look into taking Tesfaye and Azmera to a matinee Broadway Theatre production such as "Lion King" if possible, and when Candice heard that she graciously said she wanted to try to arrange it for us, and that she would be in touch the next day. After the dinner Nanci and I ended up staying quite late talking with Rick and a few of the guests that had lingered afterwards.