On Saturday, we decide to go to mercato, the enormous market in Addis, to get some delightful treats. M calls her friend Jamal, the taxi driver, who is quite serious and always seems bored. Mercato is pulsing with people shopping, selling, begging. We get pulled into a store and the salesman tells me I am beautiful. Thank you, salesman! Later, I buy a bracelet for my brother for about $2.50. After I buy it, Jamal asks me how much I paid. I tell him, and he walks away, rolling his eyes. Then he turns and tells me I should have asked him how much to pay, because I paid WAY too much. I don’t think I like Jamal. I think I like him later, when he barters with the salespeople for me, because I ask him about everything I buy (I’m scared he might bop me on the head with a stick if I overpay again), but then change my mind when I am about to buy some necklaces and I ask him if they are the right price. He says no, and then he gets in a screaming fight with the saleswoman. I have no idea what she said, but apparently she insulted him and he is pissed off—mostly, it seems, with me. The good news is that I have purchased many jewels, and will not need to go back to mercato ever again.

When we get back to the house, it’s time for a coffee ceremony. We haven’t had any since B went home, and I am kind of excited. Genet spreads the flowers all over and gets the coffee set up, and we wait for M’s friend Tommy to arrive. We are all chowing down on popcorn when he gets there. T is pleased because he’s brought kolo, which is an Ethiopian grain that pretty much everyone eats all the time. I am pleased because he is fascinating. I figured he would be in his mid-20s, but he’s in his late 30s, and is an Eritrean refugee. He tells us about how he fled Eritrea through Sudan, how he was in jail for months, and how he came to Ethiopia. He talks nonchalantly, as if everyone is a refugee and has spent months in a jail simply because their home country was unlivable. He answers all my 4598674958673 questions, thoughtfully chewing on kolo, and I think I like Tommy as much as I disliked Jamal.