On Monday, the kids are bad, and I feel terrible. I sit in the preschool class, being slapped by two of them for no good reason, feeling as if I am about to pass out. I’m not sure why they are all grumpy, and to be honest, I am feeling too wretched to care. It feels like a miracle when class ends for lunch. I am sweaty and feeling faint and don’t know what is wrong with me, and I go home and pass out for three hours. Somehow, I make it to big AHOPE to teach the English class, but T and M teach the class as I watch, sweating in the corner. By the time class has ended, it is pretty obvious that T, M and I are all sick.

The culprit? The mozzarella cheese we had on Sunday night in the beautiful tomato and mozzarella salad M made. Cheese, how could you betray us this way? We spend the entire week alternating who is sickest, and lying around watching TV. We are not pretty.

On Wednesday, M and I are feeling well enough to go into the office to say goodbye to Matt and Amanda, who are going back to Minnesota with their son. When we walk in the courtyard, New Boy is running back and forth across the pavement, screaming and waving his arms. When he reaches one wall, he turns around and runs back the other way, shrieking like a banshee the whole time. Amanda shakes her head, telling us he’s been doing that the whole day. Good news! New Boy isn’t depressed, he’s just crazy!!

In other news, there is a new boy called Big D, who has arrived at little AHOPE during our absence. He is about seven, tall and gangly. When I tell him hello, he hugs me. I love him immediately. As we wait for lunch to be served to the kids (we still can’t eat anything), I sit in a chair with The Writer beside me. He looks at my calf and cries, Wolfrum! You are very fat! Then he looks at his tiny little calf and says, tinnish. I am very small. He then plays an adorable little game where he points to my giant leg and says tudluc (big) and then his skinny little one and says tinnish. Tudluc, tinnish. Tudluc, tinnish! Dude, you are Ethiopian. You’re meant to be small. I am American! Fat is all we have!

We continue being sick until Friday, when T and M feel better and I still feel like death. We go to the clinic, where I see Dr Mekonnen Tibabu, a lovely man who asks me lots of questions about my bowel movements (or lack thereof). He then asks me for a stool sample, and I am forced to ask him if its okay if it’s not solid (it is) and then forced to produce one (which is not solid). Never in my life have I so pitied a lab technician. The good news is that its just plain old food poisoning, and he gives me some pills for my stomach and my throat, which he says is angry and red. I hadn’t noticed, what with my EXPLODING STOMACH.