In the morning, just after Genet tells us the story about her rabies treatment, the phone rings. We’re actually in good spirits, knowing that we can take M to the Swedish clinic to get the damned shot. I answer it, and it’s Gelila from the office. I say hi and ask how she is. She’s fine, she says, but she has some bad news. There’s a catch in my throat as I wait for it. Sweet Girl died last night, she says. Shit. I listen to her explain how she died in the night and there’s a funeral in the afternoon and would we go? I tell her yes and hang up the phone.

And then my knees give out.

I don’t remember how long I cry. I’m sobbing–big, heaving, snot-filled sobs that suck all the air out of me and I just can’t stop. M is in the other room, and I can hear her crying from across the house. Genet is wailing in the kitchen, and T is breathing deeply beside me. I don’t know when I have last cried like this. I am devastated and horrified and so, so angry. What kind of a world is this where an 8-year-old girl can die like this? What kind of a world is this where an 8-year-old girl can die?

And oh God, it’s Sweet Girl. My little friend who would sneak up behind me and hold my hand, who would pose for sassy pictures, who would whisper that she loved me, who had the most beautiful crooked little smile I have ever seen. I can’t breathe and I don’t want to. I have  lost control of myself completely and I cry until I am so drained that I can do nothing but sit and stare at the wall.

Eventually, we go to little AHOPE to prepare for the funeral. The atmosphere is dulled, with the nannies walking around with tear-stained faces, and the office staff stonefaced. Mama Genet just cries. I hug Tigist and tell her I am so sorry. She was a beautiful girl. Tigist is sorry too.

The funeral is unlike Baby S’s. Sweet Girl had no family left. She was living with her mother until she died, and then her neighbors cared for her until they brought her to AHOPE. The neighbors come to the funeral, but there is none of the keening that went on before. Unlike the other funeral, the staff is crying openly. Everyone loved Sweet Girl, and she will be missed.

Afterwards, we go back to AHOPE for a coffee ceremony. We sit quietly as the neighbors talk to each other and the kids try to peek in the room. Gelila tells me that they know something’s up and that one of them said Sweet Girl was stabbed with scissors. I look around, wondering what happens to the memory of a girl like this. Her family is dead. The staff and the neighbors will remember her, but will she eventually be forgotten completely?

I hope not. I try to believe that a girl who brought so much light into the world will be remembered.

Goodbye, Tsion. I love you.

On Friday, as I am lying in my house of pain, M and T leave to go to work. They leave the house chatting to each other and I hear them say goodbye to the guard. Five minutes later, I hear them come back. Then I hear them saying something about a dog to Mifta, and they come in the house. M goes straight to the bathroom, calling behind her, “I need you to look at my butt.” I wonder if I’m delirious,  but then they explain that on the way to work, on the same path where T pushed M in front of a “raging bull” the day before, a dog ran out into the road and bit her in the bum.

T makes the offer to check her out, but suggests I might be a better choice. I dutifully go to the bathroom and look at the wound. Sure enough, the dog broke the skin. I make one crack about this being the logical punishment for her always sticking her ass out, and then I put on some clothes to go to the clinic with her. T goes to the office to tell them what happened.

We’re in the clinic waiting room when T calls. He went to the dog’s house with Tigist, the nurse. He didn’t understand the whole conversation, but he heard a whole lot of the word “ferenge”. As far as he can tell, Tigist told the woman that her dog bit Tigist’s white girl, and the woman has to take care of it. The doctor checks M out and asks some questions. Was it a street dog or someone’s pet? A pet. Was it older than 10? Who knows? Has it had its rabies shot? The owner says yes. M will probably be fine, if the dog is a pet and has had a rabies shot. Buuuuuuut, if it’s an old dog, the rabies shot might not work and M could die of rabies. Thank you, and goodbye!

So then we go to the woman’s house. It’s a nice house, behind a gate like our own, and the woman has two dogs. We slink past them into her house, where she waits for us with her baby. She is so sorry about this, the dog escaped from the yard, yadda yadda. She then pulls out a certificate for the younger dog (the one that bit M is 11 years old, of course) that says it was vaccinated for rabies the week before. She can’t find the one for the biter, but she swears that it was also vaccinated, because she has children and she doesn’t want her dogs to bite her children or their friends! (Only ferenge!)

We go home so M can call her parents. It’s something like 4am in New Hampshire and they are a little confused by the call. M explains that she needs to get the rabies shot, but we don’t know where to get it in Addis. The rabies treatment is one shot in the wound, and then five shots over a number of days and weeks. She says she and T will go out and find the shot, and then she’ll be fine.

Ha. Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa. She and T leave at about noon and are gone forever. I watch Oprah and all kinds of other shows and the news and I read my book and take a nap and they still aren’t home. They roll in at about 7pm. They have been all over the city looking for the shot, and they can’t find it anywhere. They went to a hospital that had the treatment, but they didn’t recommend it for foreigners, who don’t generally like 17 shots to the abdomen. They went to a rabies clinic, where they saw all kinds of pretty pictures of different varieties of dogs, but got no shot. They went to the UN, who said they couldn’t give it to her. They went to the FRIGGING AMERICAN EMBASSY, who told her that they only carry the shot for their employees (but they asked if she was carrying any guns before they let her in, which is a reasonable question given that I’m sure lots of scary terrorists admit to carrying firearms before attacking an embassy). GOD BLESS AMERICA! The only place in Addis to get the shot is the mythical Swedish clinic, which everyone recommended but no one could place on a map.

By the time they get back, they are understandably exhausted and M is a mess. Her parents want her to come home and her doctor in New Hampshire (who never suggested she get a rabies shot in advance) says she should come home for good to get the treatment. Even I am gripped with terror at the thought of her having to leave three months early. The whole situation is awful, and she is completely wrecked.

The next morning at breakfast, Genet tells us about how she was bitten by a dog and she “cry cry cry” during the treatment. I bet, dude. 17 shots?! Then M’s parents call. They managed to locate the Swedish doctor in the middle of the night, and he has the shot.  Thank you, Sweden! First Swedish fish, then Ikea, now the rabies shot! That’s the good news. M calls the doctor and he doesn’t have the first shot to go in the wound. That’s the bad news. M’s parents call her health insurance company and they say they will fly M to Israel or London for treatment. M chooses London. She will leave that night.

We go to the clinic and get her the shot. It is a lovely little clinic in a leafy compound, but we’re all too sad to appreciate the fact that we finally found it. We go to see the kids and tell them what happened. They look at us in horror at the story, and suddenly we realize why all the kids are afraid of dogs (if I was facing 17 shots to the abdomen or certain death if one bit me, I’d be scared as hell too).

We are all sad. M is leaving us. We go back to the house so she can get her stuff, and then we take a interminable ride to the airport. It’s really hard to say goodbye to her when we know we are going to miss her so much. She is the mini-me I never knew, and T’s second wife. She is the best friend we have made in a while, and we love her like a sister. Addis is not the same without her.

So let this be a lesson to you: no matter how good it makes you look in pictures, don’t make it a habit to walk around with your badonkadonk out, or a dog will surely chomp it.

The morning we leave Lalibela, I wake up with a disturbingly sore throat. It’s worse than the other days, when I have just popped a couple Advil and gone on my way. This morning, it feels like I’ve been drinking razor blades. We get in the bus to go to the airport, and drive past St George’s church where there is a long line of Ethiopians wearing white, snaking around the hill.

When we get to the airport, Leather Cap stops to talk to me. How long are we in Ethiopia, he wants to know. I tell him we’ve been living there, but that T and I are about to leave. He is taking the tour to Aksum, so he’s not going back to Addis. He wants my phone number anyway, so I give him M’s mobile number. Then I run over to T to tell him how much Ethiopian men lurrrrrrrve me.

On the flight, things go rapidly downhill and I start to feel really nasty. I get really cold and start to shake and end up spending most of the flight with my head in T’s lap because I am too weak to sit up (not really, but this is what husbands are for). By the time we get to Addis, I need him to help me walk off the plane so I don’t keel over and die. At the airport, we had planned on going to the Emirates office to change our flight to Uganda, but they are closed. Why are they closed on a weekday in the middle of the day? It is obviously to spite me and make me feel even closer to death.

We make it back to the guest house, despite me almost having a fist fight with the taxi driver who tried to scam us (fortunately, I was too weak to show him the full extent of my wrath), and I take a nap. M and T go to see the kids and they come back with the news that the kids have measles, that most of them seem better, but that Sweet Girl has now been infected and is really sick.

T takes me to the clinic around the corner so I can see a doctor. We both go into the doctor’s office, and he opens my mouth to look at my throat. “Ooooooh,” he says. “Come look at this.” T walks over, and looks down my throat as I am sitting there like a baby bird waiting for a worm. “Look at all that pus. We don’t like pus!” he says to T. Really? Because I am pretty sure pus is my favorite thing ever. Now let me close my frigging mouth!

T can’t see anything, but agrees with the doctor because he sees me gagging and choking away. The doctor says I have a throat infection. Did I finish the course of antibiotics the first doctor gave me when I had food poisoning and my throat was red? Of course not! That would have been sensible, and would have spared me this glorious trip to see you now, doctor!

He gives me a prescription for antibiotics and T goes to fill it for me, and then he and M take off to see the other kids while I take a long, beautiful nap. Just me and my pus.

We had decided to stay in Addis for Good Friday because of the church service and the performance, because Abebe told us the kids would really appreciate it. The next day, we were off to Bahir Dar on the first leg of our tour of northern Ethiopia. We would go to Bahir Dar, Gondar and Lalibela for 5 days and then come back to Addis and T and I would prepare to go to Uganda (with some kicking and screaming).

M had booked our taxi to the airport with Jamal, who called on Friday to ensure that we still wanted his services. “Remember, M, how you called me once and then told me you didn’t need me?” he asks. He is talking about the time we booked him to go to the dance performance out of town, but ended up getting the CHS van. We cancelled with plenty of time for him to make other arrangements. Stupid Jamal annoys me. He annoys me even more when we are waiting for him to pick us up at 5am and there is no sign of him and he is not answering his phone. Suddenly, the annoyance grows to an intense desire to poke him in the eye with a fork.

We end up calling Gonchu, Kate’s taxi driver, and he gets us to the airport in time for the flight but just barely. We are at the ticket counter, trying to check in when M and I hear the ticket girl look worriedly at her supervisor and say “yellam.” M and I start looking at each other worriedly, because yellam means THERE ARE NO TICKETS FOR ALL THESE FERENGE, more or less. Sure enough, the supervisor tells us there is no room on the flight for us. That’s it. There’s just no room. It is a busy holiday weekend and real people need to get home to their families. We get it, but why did we have to get up at 5am!?!! She can get us on a flight in the afternoon. She also gives us $10 each to get home, but only when we get American about it.

We head down Bole Road, thinking we can kill time until the flight. We try to get massages at the Boston Day Spa. No dice. We get coffee at Kaldi’s and decide we have to go home and sleep because we are all way too ugly to be awake right now.

We go home and sleep for some (many?) hours, and then decide to go to the little compound to check on the quarantined kids. There are about seven of them now, all lying on consecutive mattresses on the floor. None of them is looking well. They are feverish and sick and sad and I am miserable just looking at them. The nannies don’t want to give them too much water lest they pee themselves, but M insists that they get some. I sit with Six, who stares through me as if I’m not even there. The Good Boy sits at attention, blinking and licking his parched lips. I lie at the end of the beds with New Boy, who is just as sick. His nose is running and he is crying and sweating. I try to hug him and whisper that I love him. He coughs and tells me he loves me, and I try to tell him it will be all right. Then I try to tell myself the same thing.

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.

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.

So I have been blogging my brains out lately, and today I brought our memory stick to the internet cafe for the purpose of uploading said blog posts, and I realized that I forgot to save them to the stick, and they are all still on the stupid computer. This is bad, very bad.

Tomorrow, we go up north to Bahir Dar, Lalibela and Gonder. With any luck, I can upload them there, but if not, you’re out of luck until Thursday, when I will upload 43987592834798798 posts for your love.

Happy Ethiopian Easter!