In the morning when we get to AHOPE, we meet Nate, who works for AAI. He has brought over a new adoptive father, a man from the midwest who is adopting a little girl. We watch as he greets her, and sits calmly with her on the front steps of the house. They sit together in silence, and she looks up at him with wide eyes.

The lawyers from Makush arrive, and they are great with the kids. They sit with them, and hug them, and let them use their cameras to take pictures. They are unlike the people who came earlier in the week who looked at them as if they were aliens, and asked questions like, is it okay to touch them? and, do you worry about catching HIV? People like this need a good slap, and I will happily volunteer to give it to them. The lawyers play with the kids for hours, until they have to go, and we leave soon after.

We go on a quest for Korean/Japanese food, and we end up on another taxi to Bole Rd. Our driver tells us he will tell us when to get off, but he doesn’t and we end up at the end of the road. So we end up on another taxi, and then we walk for ages, looking for the restaurant. We are getting sunburnt, dehydrated and crusty, and eventually we give in and get a private cab. He takes us back to the last bus stop and turns down a side road we would never have found. By the time we get to the restaurant, it is closed, so we have to pay him to take us to another place.

The second place is Lebanese, and when we sit down, M asks for a bathroom. She is escorted away, and she returns a few minutes later with a stunned look on her face. It turns out that the man brought her to a bedroom, instead of a bathroom. When she realized that there was no hidden squat toilet, she had to ask for a BATHroom in Amharic. We all laugh at the thought that this man thought there was nothing odd about a white girl asking to go to a bedroom in the middle of the day. Then we order copious amounts of hummus and about 47 bottles of water.

On our way out of the restaurant, the four of us are walking down a small road when I say that it feels as if we are a gang. A big ferenge (white) gang. The whitest, most ineffectual gang in the history of time. As if to prove my point, when we turn the corner, a bunch of young boys playing soccer yell FERENGE! and try to play with us.