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.

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!

The Muslim holiday has finally arrived, though we dont know what it is or what it’s for. What we do know is that it would happen either on Wednesday or Thursday, depending on the moon. It comes on Thursday, and the big kids have the day off from school. Because they have no school, we take a field trip to the Ghion Hotel pool. Yidnicacho comes to pick us up in the red van, full of kids. They run around the house for a while, and then we all get in. Me, T, M, B, Yidni and 18 children.

I spend most of the time at the pool pulling the girls around by their arms so they can float and kick. None of the kids really knows how so swim, but we’re all in the shallow end, so it doesn’t really matter. I drag the girls around, trying to avoid all the other swimmers, who all seem to be in the shallow end. Eventually, they get bored and my legs start to hurt from squatting down to stay in the water. Then, they all get cold.

We are all sitting against the wall, me and about five little girls, and they can’t stay warm: partly because they aren’t moving anymore, and partly because they are far skinnier than I am and don’t have that useful fat to keep them from freezing. M is huddled with another bunch of kids against another wall, and I bring the girls over there, where we find a hot water spout. One boy especially is freezing, and eventually he gets so cold that I call T over to bring him to the men’s showers, which have hot water. He stays there for about an hour.

In the meantime, one of the older boys is stealthily swimming around and dunking me, M and B. He sneaks up behind us, grabs our legs and drags us into the middle of the pool, where he pulls us underwater. B handles this the best, standing in the middle of the pool, throwing kids around. The boys jump on her back and try to dunk her, and she rears back up, roaring at them. One of the little girls with me leans over and says, B is crazy! I laugh and nod, watching the boys’ delight and wondering what the locals think of these white girls with all these kids.

And speaking of white girls with strange kids, I notice a boy sitting further down the wall from me. I ask the girl in my lap, MIss Congeniality, what his name is. I don’t know, she says, shrugging her shoulders. Huh. So maybe he’s not with us, I think, feeling better about the fact that I have been snuggling all the AHOPE kids and have completely ignored this boy. But then she starts speaking to him and tells me his name is Itzak. So then I am completely confused. I ask him if he lives at AHOPE. He says yes, and the guilt kicks in. I tell him to come sit next to me, next to the spout, and he does. I rub his arm to warm him up, but feel funny about hugging him, since I am still not sure if he’s one of our kids, and I don’t want to look like some creepy ferenge, molesting the Ethiopian children. Then, Miss Congeniality looks at me and says bacca, which roughly translates to enough, I’m done, get me out of this pool now. I turn, and all the girls are decamping to the shower. I turn to Itzak and tell him were gettng out and going to the shower. He says, me? No, I tell him. Well, unless you want to. It’s up to you. And I get out of the pool, with him still sitting there by the spout, all alone.

Later I discover that, of course, he is not one of our kids, and I am just a fool. Thank God I didn’t hug him.

My humiliation at being a stupid ferenge is mitigated only by one thing. B is completely addicted to Mama’s milk, an Ethiopian milk that comes in a plastic bag. She drinks it ice cold, straight from the store, with the bag hanging out of her mouth as if she is actually suckling from a teat. We tease her about it until T and I try it, and it is completely delicious. After the pool, T and I walk around the corner to buy some. On our way out, we ask our guard Eyob if he would like some. He would, and so we come back with a bag for him. When I give it to him, he gives me the Ethiopian chest bump greeting and tells me, Thank you, sister. I spend all night crowing. I am Eyob’s sister! I may not know our kids and may be a weird ferenge but I am Eyob’s sister, and that makes it all okay.

The next day, we get three taxis across town to the Child Development Center run by AHOPE. The CDC is designed to let HIV-positive kids remain with their parents, by giving them a place to spend their days. The girls have been painting the bedrooms there for days on end, and we are going to paint the last bedroom and two classrooms.

The CDC is a one-story yellow building in a large dusty lot. When we come through the gate, kids emerge from nowhere to come greet us. They throw their arms around our necks and kiss us, or solemnly shake or hold our hands. When we paint, they peek in the door and whisper until we turn to look at them, and then they all scatter. In one of the classrooms, a couple of boys repeatedly come to the door and yell hello! before running away and returning a few seconds later to start all over again. They give us lunch of shiro and beets and I am shocked to find that I love beets, after years of thinking I hate them. At the same time, I should admit that you could soak a rat in shiro and I would still eat it, so maybe my discovery isn’t as valid as I hoped.

We get the buses back across town, stopping at Piazza and Mexico to arrive at big AHOPE so the girls can teach English class. While they teach, T plays basketball with the boys and the guard, and I play more tatare with the girls. I quit playing before I shame the ferenge race forever, and one of the little girls starts braiding my hair while another tries to fix my bangs. She pushes them all over to one side and then pulls them all the way back. Konjo? I ask her. Am I pretty? She wrinkles her little nose and shakes her head. No. I am not pretty. As if to reassure me, she pulls the bangs back and then pats my cheeks.

By the time we leave, it’s dark outside. M’s flipflop has broken and she is walking up the hill, dragging one leg behind her so her sandal doesn’t fall off. By the peak of the hill, we have decided we need a taxi home, but none come. Instead, T takes his shoelace and ties it around her ankle, Roman-style, so she can at least make it home.

In the morning when we get to AHOPE, we meet Nate, who works for AAI. He has brought over a new adoptive father, a man from the midwest who is adopting a little girl. We watch as he greets her, and sits calmly with her on the front steps of the house. They sit together in silence, and she looks up at him with wide eyes.

The lawyers from Makush arrive, and they are great with the kids. They sit with them, and hug them, and let them use their cameras to take pictures. They are unlike the people who came earlier in the week who looked at them as if they were aliens, and asked questions like, is it okay to touch them? and, do you worry about catching HIV? People like this need a good slap, and I will happily volunteer to give it to them. The lawyers play with the kids for hours, until they have to go, and we leave soon after.

We go on a quest for Korean/Japanese food, and we end up on another taxi to Bole Rd. Our driver tells us he will tell us when to get off, but he doesn’t and we end up at the end of the road. So we end up on another taxi, and then we walk for ages, looking for the restaurant. We are getting sunburnt, dehydrated and crusty, and eventually we give in and get a private cab. He takes us back to the last bus stop and turns down a side road we would never have found. By the time we get to the restaurant, it is closed, so we have to pay him to take us to another place.

The second place is Lebanese, and when we sit down, M asks for a bathroom. She is escorted away, and she returns a few minutes later with a stunned look on her face. It turns out that the man brought her to a bedroom, instead of a bathroom. When she realized that there was no hidden squat toilet, she had to ask for a BATHroom in Amharic. We all laugh at the thought that this man thought there was nothing odd about a white girl asking to go to a bedroom in the middle of the day. Then we order copious amounts of hummus and about 47 bottles of water.

On our way out of the restaurant, the four of us are walking down a small road when I say that it feels as if we are a gang. A big ferenge (white) gang. The whitest, most ineffectual gang in the history of time. As if to prove my point, when we turn the corner, a bunch of young boys playing soccer yell FERENGE! and try to play with us.

On our first day volunteering at AHOPE, T and I are assigned to sort through the medical supply closet with Tigist, the beautiful nurse. Supplies come in all the time, from families adopting through other organizations, and the closet is chock full of stuff. One plastic bin is almost entirely full of toothbrushes, and we find jar after jar of vitamins. We sort them by expiration date, putting them in boxes for 2008 and 2009, and chucking the ones that have already expired. We go through all the giant bins and manage to finish before lunch, but the triumph is shortlived, since more boxes will inevitably soon arrive.

In the afternoon, we go shopping. M and B teach us how to take the public taxis, which are Toyota Hiace vans in blue and white, with four rows of seats. Men hang out the windows of these vans, yelling their destination: Mexicomexico, or Piassapiassa. The taxis dont leave until theyre full, and by full, they mean three people in front, two in the first three seats, four in the back row, and people sitting on the back wheel.

We go to the Churchill St shops, since the girls say Mercado is too crazy. There is a short row of stores selling jewelry and art and other souvenirs; in the middle, there is a restaurant that the girls say has the best pineapple juice ever. We stop for some juice, and its so good that M and I each have two. I dont buy anything (which T thinks is a miracle), but the girls both get some small things.

For dinner, we go to an Indian restaurant on Bole Rd., one of the most famous roads in Addis. B doesnt think she likes Indian, so we decide that she just needs to know what to try. Our waiter is a man with a wide smile who helps us order, telling us we need X number of naan, and X number of dishes, and showing us which to eat in which order. I wasnt thrilled about eating Indian again, so soon after leaving and in another country, but the food is delicious and B does change her mind. Before we leave, I tell the waiter that we were just in India, and his food is just as good. He nods, knowingly, as though I have just told him I am not African, or something equally obvious and simple.

After dinner, the girls take us to Makush Gallery, just a few doors down from the restaurant. As we are walking up the stairs, the Americans in front of us start talking to T, and it turns out that they are law students from Northwestern who have been trying to get in touch with AHOPE for an adoption project theyre doing. They plan to visit the following day, and we check out the art, which is wonderful. I beg and plead with T to buy me some, but he says no, mostly because he is evil and wicked and hates beautiful things (me included, of course).

After the gallery, we are standing at Mexico Square waiting for our taxi home. Kids come up to us, begging, with the usual story: my mother and father dead, please, food. M gives our leftover rice to one little girl, and she sprints off into the night, with the other children at her heels.

Sooprise! It turns out that computers in Africa aren’t all they’re cracked up to be! I am having a difficult time uploading my posts to wordpress, and also doing it on a day that there aren’t rolling blackouts at the internet cafe. As a result, you will be getting my thrilling Addis posts in fits and spurts and will be getting very few pictures. DON’T BE SO GREEDY! The good news is that my thrilling Addis posts will surely change your life and you will become a more insightful and caring person after reading them. Or something.

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.

We arrive in Addis Ababa and expect complete pandemonium, but see none. We cruise through immigration and customs with no problem at all and then grab our bags. The airport is surprisingly quiet, with very few people around, but almost immediately I am struck by the attractiveness of the Ethiopians. Ethiopians are pretty, I whisper to T, and it is a thought I will have a hundred times a day. The women are all eyes and cheekbones, and the men all smiles with bright white teeth.

Our driver, Yidnacachu, meets us with a sign saying AHOPE and takes us to his red van, with us blinking in the lazy sunshine. We sit in the back and T talks to him about football as I look out the window. Addis is a dusty city sprawled across a valley, with faded hills in the distance. The roads are newly paved, thanks to the Chinese, but Yidnacachu repeatedly apologizes when there is a brief patch of dirt road. There are huge piles of boulders alongside the road where the ground has been gutted. I am surprised by the relative quietness of Addis after India, and I like it.

At the guesthouse, we meet Genet, our housekeeper, who is a beautiful 25-year-old with perfect skin and a voice like a song. We also meet Mifta, one of our guards. We are put into a room in the back of the main house, with two huge beds pushed together with clean sheets and soft pillows. We think we like Ethiopia already.

Then the girls come. T had predicted that the other two volunteers would be hot American girls in their 20s, and he wasn’t wrong. B is a sassy 21-year-old from Anaheim, who is working at AHOPE on a missions trip, and M is a 24-year-old English teacher from New Hampshire who T thinks is my other half. We instantly like the girls, which is a good thing, because M is here for another five months, so if we didn’t like her, she would have to go. Lucky for her, we let her stay.

The girls have been having coffee ceremonies every Saturday, and B loves Ethiopian coffee, so we all sit and watch M perform the ceremony. She gently rinses the pale beans in her hands, and then roasts them in what looks like a wok. After the roasting, she bashes them with a mortar and pestle and then we drink. Glass after tiny glass of beautiful, dark Ethiopian coffee. I don’t even like coffee as a rule, but I can’t drink this fast enough. I expect to get all cracked out on the caffeine, but feel no real difference. Of course, staying awake might be proof enough that the coffee works, because I should be passed out from exhaustion by now.

Then, we walk down the road for dinner. The best thing about B and M is that they instantly include us and there is no weirdness about us being old, haggard and married, or brand new. So we go, the four of us and Genet, to a local restaurant. The girls order chickena tibs, which I thought was chicken but is really beef, fasting food (vegetarian dips) and shiro (heaven in my mouth). In Australia, we tried African food a couple of times and T always wrinkled his nose, but in Addis, he chows down big style. Even so, Genet spends the entire meal imploring us to be, be (eat, eat), even when we have our mouths full of food. So much for the weight I lost in India…