We arrive in Addis Ababa and expect complete pandemonium, but see none. We cruise through immigration and customs with no problem at all and then grab our bags. The airport is surprisingly quiet, with very few people around, but almost immediately I am struck by the attractiveness of the Ethiopians. Ethiopians are pretty, I whisper to T, and it is a thought I will have a hundred times a day. The women are all eyes and cheekbones, and the men all smiles with bright white teeth.

Our driver, Yidnacachu, meets us with a sign saying AHOPE and takes us to his red van, with us blinking in the lazy sunshine. We sit in the back and T talks to him about football as I look out the window. Addis is a dusty city sprawled across a valley, with faded hills in the distance. The roads are newly paved, thanks to the Chinese, but Yidnacachu repeatedly apologizes when there is a brief patch of dirt road. There are huge piles of boulders alongside the road where the ground has been gutted. I am surprised by the relative quietness of Addis after India, and I like it.

At the guesthouse, we meet Genet, our housekeeper, who is a beautiful 25-year-old with perfect skin and a voice like a song. We also meet Mifta, one of our guards. We are put into a room in the back of the main house, with two huge beds pushed together with clean sheets and soft pillows. We think we like Ethiopia already.

Then the girls come. T had predicted that the other two volunteers would be hot American girls in their 20s, and he wasn’t wrong. B is a sassy 21-year-old from Anaheim, who is working at AHOPE on a missions trip, and M is a 24-year-old English teacher from New Hampshire who T thinks is my other half. We instantly like the girls, which is a good thing, because M is here for another five months, so if we didn’t like her, she would have to go. Lucky for her, we let her stay.

The girls have been having coffee ceremonies every Saturday, and B loves Ethiopian coffee, so we all sit and watch M perform the ceremony. She gently rinses the pale beans in her hands, and then roasts them in what looks like a wok. After the roasting, she bashes them with a mortar and pestle and then we drink. Glass after tiny glass of beautiful, dark Ethiopian coffee. I don’t even like coffee as a rule, but I can’t drink this fast enough. I expect to get all cracked out on the caffeine, but feel no real difference. Of course, staying awake might be proof enough that the coffee works, because I should be passed out from exhaustion by now.

Then, we walk down the road for dinner. The best thing about B and M is that they instantly include us and there is no weirdness about us being old, haggard and married, or brand new. So we go, the four of us and Genet, to a local restaurant. The girls order chickena tibs, which I thought was chicken but is really beef, fasting food (vegetarian dips) and shiro (heaven in my mouth). In Australia, we tried African food a couple of times and T always wrinkled his nose, but in Addis, he chows down big style. Even so, Genet spends the entire meal imploring us to be, be (eat, eat), even when we have our mouths full of food. So much for the weight I lost in India…