After breakfast, M and I head off to the CDC to finish painting, while T goes to the office, promising to tell us what transpires with the staff. It’s another long trip aross town, but when we get off the bus, we are immediately greeted by a grey-haired man named Mekonnen, who shakes our hand with a bone-crushing grip and invites us to come to his school across the road. At the CDC, we finish painting fairly quickly and are washing ourselves and the brushes with gas when M is called to the phone. She returns a few minutes later, her eyes wet with tears. I think that the staff has been fired, but I’m way off. Baby S died, she tells me. It takes a minute to register. The baby who we saw just two days before is gone. All the air is sucked out of my lungs and I don’t know what to say or do.

We leave to prepare for the funeral, and M walks down the street with the box of paints on her head. People love it, and amid the giggles and pointing, one man even salutes her. I’m sitting in the front seat of the bus home when the man next to me strikes up a conversation. He works at the American Embassy and asks me to call him if we ever go there. I agree, still dazed.

It turns out that the staff has been given an ultimatum and will not be fired if someone confesses. At this point, the thievery and resulting drama seems totally insignificant and I am furious with the world for letting this happen. Millions of people like this baby girl are dying or have died every day and no response seems adequate enough.

We wait at the office for the van to come, and when it does, there is a tiny felt-covered coffin perched next to the door. We step over it and drive down the road to the graveyard. The cemetery is crammed full of graves with cages over them, and rubbish blowing into them. It is a crowded but still lonely place, and it makes me even sadder for Baby S. We all stand by the van, staring at the ground as we wait for the family to arrive. I try not to cry, but then I see the men from the office wiping away tears and I can’t keep it in.

Baby S is one of the few kids AHOPE has taken with both parents still living. Unfortunately, though both are still living, they are also both dying of AIDS. Her mother is in the hospital and her father has left Addis and Abebe couldnt find him. He managed to round up a bunch of aunts, who walk down the road to the cemetery wailing with grief and calling her nickname. We all walk to the tiny plot, where Yidnacatchu and Aboma and another man dig the grave. The women stand together, crying out with a grief I have never seen or heard before. I watch them, conflicted. I want to yell, YOU GAVE HER UP! but at the same time, I think about how this tiny babys passing is just a precursor to her mother’s death and then her father’s. Our staff is watching the scene with an unbearable pain, especially Tigist, who cared for Baby S and spent her days in the hospital with her. I dont know how people survive this.

We return to AHOPE for a coffee ceremony, where M, T and I sit in silence with four of the relatives. The kids have woken up from their naps and I ache for the relatives, mourning their baby girl surrounded by the sounds of happy children. After the ceremony, I run to pick up New Boy. I hold him close to me and watch him make his goofy faces. This is how people survive, I think. Even with all the devastation, there is still joy in the world. I hug and kiss the other kids and hold him tight until we have to leave, to go see the big kids who finally make me laugh.