For Tuesdays program, we have Bs going away party. It starts with the typical crashing around the yard, dodging basketballs, chasing each other and getting braided. The boy who tried to drown me at the pool joins forces with the boy who called me wolfrum, and one will distract me as the other tickles me from behind. I name them Sneaky 1 and Sneaky 2, and they cackle and tell me I am Sneaky 3.

For the story, M tells The Wreck of the Zephyr. The kids are riveted, except for one. I sit next to a little girl who looks like my cousin Pip, and I tickle her back as M talks. I am two people away from M, and on her other side is the girl who told me I am not konjo. The Honest Girl leans behind M and raises her eyebrows at me in the way that Ethiopians do, as a greeting. Unlike the people on the street, Honest Girl raises them repeatedly, over and over, and I try not to fall off my chair laughing. I look across the room, and T shoots me a look like the ones I used to get in high school for talking too much. Theres nothing I can do, though, because every time I look at M, Honest Girl is behind her, eyebrows twitching.

For Bs going away, there are songs and the kids present her with a card. B gives the kids a speech about how much the kids mean to her, and how sad she is to be leaving. M tells B how much she will miss her, and I silently agree. T always says that B is so young and energetic, and I wonder what things will be like without her exuberance. I can tell the kids are wondering too.

One day at little AHOPE, B is talking with the office staff about Happiness and The Belly and how after three months in Addis, her stomach is comparable to the two little boys. The office people laugh, and Abebe teaches us the word for fat in Amharic: wolfrum. Its a word we come to know very well.

Since B is leaving, we host a thank you lunch at the house for the people in the office. Genet spends most of the morning cooking shiro and a couple of other stews, and we all end up eating like pigs. Then, we have a coffee ceremony and we all sit in the sunshine, drinking the thick black coffee.

In the afternoon, we go to big AHOPE, where we watch M and B teach their conversational English class. They are teaching above and below. The kids sit on tables, or lie on the floor, and B spends most of the class lying on the floor with them, to demonstrate being below the table. At the end of class, I am talking to two of the boys when one of them grabs my cafeteria lady arm flab and says, wolfrum. The kid behind him, ever the peacemaker, says No, strong. Sorry, peacemaker. Its wolfrum.

For dinner, the adoptive father comes over with his daughter. They have obviously bonded and the father is ready to get home. He is waiting for approval from the US Embassy in Kenya, where their papers have been sent, but because of Easter, the office has been closed. It is the first time he has eaten Ethiopian food in Addis, and he watches in wonder as his little girl puts it away. Unsurprisingly, we all chow down as well, shoving shiro in our mouths in our best attempt to achieve the wolfrum Ethiopian baby boy belly.

Saturday brings us back across town to the community center. We stand outside the gate for ages, knocking and calling the guard. A little boy stands at the next door gate, looking shyly at us and laughing. Two older guys show up to help us bang on the door, and the guard eventually appears, horrified that he let us wait so long. We paint the underwater scene and finish everything but the outlines, leaving just before we all pass out from the paint fumes. The kids repeatedly sneak into the room to giggle at the painting and yell, FISH!! before B chases them away.

When we get back to the house, Genet has prepared another buna ceremony, so we all sit on the porch in the late afternn sunshine, with Genet and Iope teaching us new Amharic words. We drink endless cups of coffee and crack up at our mispronounciations and Genets explanation of how one of our guards has a baby: Mifta touch woman…baby. After the coffee, I make M cut my hair, because I cant stand the snarls anymore, and at the end, there are piles of hair on the ground.

Since were going out for dinner, Genet gets all dolled up in a sparkly red dress, and she looks hot. M and I both do our best, and Genet tells me l look good with my new haircut and that I should wear my hair down more often, because it is more better. Were going out for dinner at Habesha Restaurant, a local place that has dancing. We order a giant plate of food, with injera and fasting food and shiro and some kind of lamb wat that Genet picks. I literally cant eat fast enough.

And then the dancing begins. It is hands down, the greatest thing I have ever seen. Two men and two women shake and snap their bodies in ways I never knew possible. I could take dance lessons for the rest of my life and never be able to dance like this. For hours, we are all completely riveted, until we finally leave the restaurant at eleven, crammed into a taxi that takes the long way home, down all kinds of bumpy unpaved roads.

On Easter morning, we wake up early to go to the Orthodox church, which is supposed to be the biggest Orthodox church in all of Africa. M is feeling sick, so B, T and Genet and I take the two taxis across town to get there. Before we go to the church, we stop to watch a run for womens rights, with thousands of pink-clad women running and walking down the street, with the occasional boy sprinting alongside.

The church is enormous, with a brightly-colored dome with murals in the center. on our way in, Genet stops to kiss the ground numerous times, and when we get inside, there is a woman kneeling with a small boy lying on the ground in front of the altar. B, Genet and I accidentally sit on the mens side, until a man appears and asks us to switch to the other pews. All the women in the church are wearing head scarves, except for me and B, and we watch as a devastated woman cries and rants in sorrow in the front of the church, completely inconsolable.

On the taxi home, a man tries to get in the front seat with T and B. He climbs into the back with us, and apologizes to me. I tell him no problem in Amharic, and he congratulates me on my Amharic skills, and is impressed when I tell him I have been in Ethiopia only a week. We talk about how he lives in San Diego, how the American Embassy is a nightmare, and how I should beware in Ethiopia. Most of the time, Im not sure exactly what point hes making, but I am glad that he recognizes that I am an Amharic Master.

In the morning, two new teachers come into teach the kids. They work at the American school, and they read Green Eggs and Ham just as they do at home, stopping to ask the kids questions and pointing out pictures. During the lesson, a new girl arrives. She is about three, with a white dress and an explosion of tiny braids at the back of her head. She carries a ziploc bag full of stuff, and watches everything seriously. She doesnt cry, and after a couple of hours, she just walks over to me and leans into my arm, saying nothing.

The other kids are good as well; I sit with one of the little girls in my lap and bounce her around as she cries with laughter. She looks like our friend Emily, and her laughter is a shiny thing. Meanwhile, another little boy plays hand games with T, happy to have some man time.

I finally get a little boy who looks like my cousin Charlie (but with molluscum) to let me hold him, which he does with a smile, and Ms friend Happiness has cheered up enough to blow me kisses when we leave. It is a good day.

We go to the Melting Pot for the African buffet, and the restaurant is packed with people. A table full of African women in brightly colored dresses sits behind us, and suddenly one starts to bash her glass with her fork, calling for the waitress. When the waitress doesnt immediately sprint over, the woman begins to yell WE NEED THE BILL! We watch her, horrified, but secretly pleased that she isnt American.

At night, we get in a series of taxis to go to Charlene and Owens house in the suburbs. Charlene and Owen are missionaries from the West Coast with an Ethiopian son. They have come to Addis for a few years to work at AHOPE, and Charlene teaches the older kids English. On the bus, I am sitting on the back wheel, and I whisper to M that my $15 Malaysian jeans are a little low-cut and that Im worried I am flashing the back row of the bus. As if to confirm my fear, the woman behind me suddenly pulls down my shirt and pats my back. Yup, Im a creepy ferenge flasher.

Owen and Charlenes house is out in the suburbs, where the city is spreading rapidly. There is construction everywhere, and in a few years, the neighborhood will look entirely different. We have dinner with them and their sons family—his beautiful wife and adorable daughter, who is a studious-looking little thing with wire-rimmed glasses. (I am unable to resist children with glasses.) After a long conversation and some delicious homemade Ethiopian food, we go upstairs to see their new porch. We stand on top of their house, with Addis spread out like a blanket and a furiously glowing moon, and I start to worry that I might never want to leave Ethiopia.

On Sunday, we miss going to church with B because we can’t work out the water system in the house. I manage to take so long getting clean that M can’t go, and so we all meet B after church. At the church, we see an AHOPE family that has just adopted a boy and a girl, and the little boy is one of M and B’s favorites. He lets M hold him, but when his mother walks by, he immediately reaches for her.  We consider this a good sign.

After B finishes church, her missionary friends take us all to a nearby restaurant for some ferenge food. Ferenge is the Amharic word for foreigner (or white foreigner, I guess), and it is a word we come to know very well. The restaurant serves hamburgers, and I am unable to resist, even though I don’t really like beef.

Bs friends have been living in Ethiopia for years and years, and they run a printing company for Christian publications. After lunch, they take us to check out their new construction, because they want T to make sure it’s legit. It doesn’t look particularly legit to T by Western standards, but in Ethiopia, he figures it’s fine. Now, if the whole thing collapses, I figure they can blame him.

When we get home, we meet Abebe, who is the social worker at AHOPE. He wants to take us to both children’s compounds, and I virtually jump in the van. As soon as we arrive at the younger compound, we are mobbed by kids. One little boy clutches some chalk and demands to know how to spell our names, which he then writes in the concrete floor. T starts to play soccer with the boys, and I spend my time with girls draped all over me.

The younger kids don’t look sick at all, for the most part. There are a couple of kids with molluscum (which look kind of like warts) or head fungus, but I would never be able to distinguish most of them from any other kids. They are just as adorable and boisterous as the other kids I have seen walking around, and they are immediately full of love. B has a special friend we’ll call The Belly, who is about 2, all stomach, and the happiest kid I have ever seen. On the other hand, M has a special friend who is the saddest, she tells me. He arrived at AHOPE a few months ago and is miserable. Ironically, his name means Happiness. The complex is separated from the road by a blue metal fence, and from outside, it looks pretty ramshackle. Inside, it is brightly colored, with murals of Disney characters on the walls and bunk beds in the three bedrooms.

Then we go to the older compound, which is where the kids older than seven live. There is a new basketball hoop installed, and the kids are going crazy for it. I ask Abebe which kid is the boy I sponsor, and he points him out and asks if I want to greet him. Then he sees that the boy is playing cards, so he tells me we will do it tomorrow.  T starts to join in the basketball with the boys and B, and they are soon crashing into each other and balls are flying everywhere.

M sits with the girls, playing a game that looks like jacks, but with rocks. She invites me to play, and so I sit with her and the two girls who are playing. The girls are very patient with me, but are clearly horrified by my ineptitude. One of the girls puts the rocks all together so I can easily grab them, and the other tries to stress to me that I need to throw the rocks higher. She stares at me intently, saying, Up! Up! repeatedly, and trying to demonstrate very, very slowly. Unfortunately, the stupid ferenge can’t get a handle on this game before it’s time to go, but I leave anyway, delirious with happiness at the cute kids and horror at my hideous uncoordination.

Our flight to Dubai leaves at 4.30am and T spends the hours beforehand ranting about how it is ALL MY FAULT and how we are leaving at an inhuman hour. He is right about the inhumanity, but wrong about it being my fault, since he refused to spend the night in Dubai, making the 4.30 flight our only option. Please feel free to inform him of this.

I tell him my concern about Emirates being such a good airline that they would have a million delightful movies that I would be unable to resist. He tells me not to be ridiculous, that we haven’t slept in a day and it would be foolish to stay awake even longer. I nod in agreement, and then sit in my seat. The first movie listed (out of 250+) is Juno and I tell him there is no way I will be sleeping. Instead, I spend most of the flight cracking up until he finally gives in and watches it himself, snorting with laughter from time to time.

When we land, the little boy in front of me starts to reach his tiny hand through the seats to touch mine. I whisper to him as we pull into the gate, and then his parents speak to us. They are en route to Houston, which means they have a long road ahead. Their son, who is about two, is delighted to be on the plane, and they’re hoping he will keep it up.

We get a bus for what seems like miles, across the airport. When we get to the terminal, there are people everywhere and I tell T it is easily the busiest airport I have ever seen. We push through the throngs of people to get to the bookstore, where I snatch up two English books and we run to the gate. At the gate, the man behind the counter takes our tickets but tells us we have to wait for our boarding passes. We’re getting an upgrade! I crow to T. He shakes his head sadly. No, they’re separating us and putting us right next to the bathrooms.

GUESS WHO IS RIGHT? Hint: it is the person who is always right. Yes! MEEEEEEEEE! We take advantage of Dubai’s fancy shininess to send a quick email to my parents and then board the Business Class! entrance (when one is speaking about flying Business Class!, it must always be capitalized with an exclamation point). Our seats are wide and soft and recline all the way back, which was especially good since the movies on this plane stink. I eat a CHEESE PLATE! for breakfast, with Real Western Cheese! Oh cheese, how I have missed thee. Paneer just ain’t the same. Anwar the glorious flight attendant gives me the aforementioned cheese, and he is my new BFF, partly because he has to be nice to me, and partly because I think he is gay. I am pretty sure he recognizes me as his queen.

The rest of the time, we sleep. Then we awake in time to see Ethiopia out the window. And, in spite of myself, I start to cry. SHUT UP! I have wanted to see Ethiopia since I was nine years old, and trust me, that was a LONG time ago. Oh, and also, I am a sap.

T and I are in the back of a taxi on the way to the airport, with the windows open so we can breathe in the thick tropical air for the last time. We are wearing seatbelts for the first time in months, which is good because we’re playing chicken with buses, veering around cars and flashing our brights at oncoming traffic. As we drive, I start to think about India.

India is a study in paradox and a constant assault on the senses. It is both maddening and endearing. It is filthy and spectacular. We have given beggars food and had kids share their food with us. I have wanted to punch a sadhu and hug a monk. I have had pervy men leer at me so creepily that I was afraid to be alone with them, and had women hold my hand so warmly that I didn’t want to let go. I have said my name, my country and no thank you more times than I can count. We have seen the Himalaya, the Ganges, the Rajasthani desert and the crashing waves and lazy backwaters of Kerala. We have taken pictures of strangers and been in strangers pictures. We have seen kids chase us to say hello and watched children cry when their parents make them greet us. We have seen the chaos outside the Golden Temple and the silence outside the Dalai Lama’s residence. I have seen more men peeing openly than ever in my life and seen women swim fully clothed. We have smelled the aroma of curry and the stench of urine. We have seen cows handfed chapatis and then watched them root through trash to find food. We have seen piles of rubbish and feces on the streets and the magnificence of the Baby Taj and Udaipur’s floating palaces. We have seen Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Muslims, Jains and Christians. We saw black dirt and belching smoke and more colors than I ever knew were in the spectrum. I ate the best food ever and still managed to lose weight. We have been followed, tugged on, and heard the desperate pleads of barefoot children and been asked for chocolate and pens by immaculately dressed kids just for the cheek of it. I have been driven to laugh, cry and scream in anger and frustration. We have shaken hands with innumerable men and kids and seen the shy smiles of women of all ages. We have seen dozens of people sleeping on the streets and we slept in the home of a wealthy family. We met Punjabis, Gujaratis, Rajputs, Keralans and Maharastrans. We have seen anger, resentment and lust and felt kindness from complete strangers. We have traveled in bicycle rickshaws, auto rickshaws, taxis, cars, trains, planes and buses.

We got all this, even from our sanitized view of India—the white man’s English menu flashpacking version. We know a woman who saw prostitutes and a dead baby in the Ganges. We saw none of these things; maybe we didn’t look close enough. I told a friend of mine that India had beaten the hell out of us, yet still lured us back in. She said, you have to love those abusive relationships. She nailed it exactly. One day we are exhausted by the poverty and filth and poverty, and the next we are invigorated by the vibrance of the architecture and the sweetness of the people. I don’t know if we will miss India, or if we will come back. Either way, we will never forget it.

We leave Bombay in the very early morning for our flight to Cochin, cruising through the darkened streets. People sleep outside their shops, all lined up next to each other on thin mats. I start to think how unsafe it must be to sleep outside, but then realize that if everyone is sleeping outside, then it must be okay.

Our flight arrives at 8am and I immediately relax. The airport is tiny, with almost no one around, and there is a prepaid taxi stand. We pay to go to Fort Cochin and get in the back of the Ammbassador cab. The ride takes ages, but I dont mind, because I have the windows open and I can breathe in all the thick tropical air and look at the scenery.

We decided to go to Kerala because we repeatedly heard how nice it was. Kerala was Indias first socialist state, and also has a 92% literacy rate. Socialism + literacy = fun times! Cochin is outrageously green, with swaying palm trees and surprisingly little curbside trash. I give it my highest compliment when we are walking around town: it looks like Laos. The Fort Cochin area has wide, empty streets with colonial buildings and a canopy of green overhead.

At the far end of town, there are Chinese fishing nets dangling over the sea, and T and I take a walk past them and the men asking us to check out their fish. We walk along the water and I start to breathe more deeply, the way I always do when I am near the sea. We sit for ages on the rocks and watch the waves roll in, and try to eat our ice cream before it melts all over us, which is far easier for T than for me. On the way back to the hotel, a group of boys asks to take a picture with us, and we end up in yet another stranger’s photos. The best thing about the proximity to the water is the seafood, and our first night in town I eat chili garlic prawns that are so good, they almost make me cry. Another day, we sit at a waterside cafe and watch some dolphins frisking in the water as we drink lime juice.

The one problem with Cochin is the humidity. When we told our friend Deepak from Dharamsala that we were going to Kerala, his eyes widened and he told us it would be hot and sultry. Later, we laughed at the word sultry, but he was exactly right. Cochin was H-O-T. Our guesthouse, the Padikkal Residency, is nice enough, though too expensive for the basic amenities it offers. We have a big room without A/C, and at night, we stick to our flat pillows and have trouble sleeping.

Another thing I love about Cochin is the kids everywhere. They run around in the afternoon in their little school uniforms and beg me to take their pictures. What can I say? I can never refuse an adorable child. Most of the kids in the Fort Cochin area seem to to go to the Catholic Church, but we also see Muslim and Hindu kids out on the streets as well. The kids at the guesthouse are similarly adorable, calling out LOOK! LOOK! when we come back, wanting to show us the henna tattoos their mother did on their hands. The older one tells me quite seriously, FISH, or MONKEY, as he points to the designs. In response, I ooh and aah. The best thing these kids do is when we come back on Saturday at about 10pm and they are running loose in the house. The older boy, who is about six, is dancing around all over. I am surprised they are still awake, and the boy sings out I DON’T SLEEP UNTIL TWO! T and I are shocked and ask when he wakes up. His father, looking exhausted, answers, eight, as he rolls his eyes.

Cochin is full of Christians, to the extent that many of the rickshaws have JESUS emblazoned on the front of them. On the other hand, there is also a Jew Town. I say this not because I am racist, but because it is the name of the neighborhood, and to prove it, I have pictures. T and I walk down to Jew Town one day to wander the narrow streets looking for some spices. The shop owners are highly solicitous, and many of them try to lure me into their stores to buy clothes or jewelry, even though I have repeatedly walked by and told them no already. We cant go into the synagogue in Jew Town because I am dressed like a skanky American (it is too hot to wear clothing with sleeves, and I also have shorts, which means my shoulders and knees are all exposed, which makes me a big white slut).

In Jew Town, we stop to get some drinks and the owner orders me a vanilla milkshake. It is the best vanilla milkshake I’ve ever had; so good that I have to order two. We also end up buying tickets for the kathakali performance that night, because the owner promises us front row seats and we havent seen any local performances in ages. The owner is a liar, because when we arrive that night, we are in row 8 out of about 10. And the kathakali is painful to see and hear. In a nutshell, it’s mime with eardrum-breaking cymbals and cool makeup. The makeup takes about an hour, and for the second hour, we are left to listen to the CHANG CHANG CHANG of the cymbals, and we leave with agonizing headaches and a vow to never see local arts ever again. EVER.

The worst thing about Cochin is the heat, which is humid and sticky and causes me to sweat like a hog in heat (do hogs in heat sweat a lot? If so, then consider me one. If not, find another sweaty animal for comparison). People start to stare at me and say, So hot when I stagger over to speak to them. So, it turns out Deepak was partially right, though I would definitely say that Cochin was more sweaty than sultry.

I forgot to mention one important thing about Udaipur. One day T and I
 walked down to the boat jetty, just for the sake of it. When we gt
 there, there was a band from Ahmedabad, all dressed in Rajput traditional
 costume hanging out by the water. Inside the gates of the City Palace,
 people were getting elephants ready for a procession, presumably for the
 ministers daughter’s wedding. After standing around for a while, we
 started walking back up the hill to town.

As we were walking, a couple with a baby appeared. The wife walked up
 to me and handed me her baby. Here, take it, she said, planting the
 little boy on my hip. I stopped for a second and looked down at the
 adorable child, who must have been a little more than a year old. Then I
 thought, I could run away with this kid right now! I didn’t because A: I was
 wearing flipflops and who can run in those? B: I am scared of Indian
 jail and C: Kids wake up so early, yo. So instead I stood there like a
 fool, holding on to the little boy as the wife stood next to me and the
 husband took the picture. In response, T took a picture of the three of
 us, but unfortunately the wife took her son back so you cant see me
 awkwardly holding him, trying to plan my escape. Please admire my
 restraint.