I looked back at Luce and noticed her eyes were getting droopy. When she yawned, she gave me a rueful look. “Babe, I gotta go. I’m about to keel over. I’m glad you got in all right and already have a potential friend. Love you and talk soon, okay?”

I cringed internally at the mention of my new “friend” and blew her a kiss before signing off.

As I opened up the documents I wanted to review before our dinner meeting, I considered what I was feeling. I’d left DC feeling numb and lost, and now that I was here, I felt…different. Before getting on the plane to Addis Ababa, I’d been wondering if I even wanted to do this work. Never mind the acceptance to the NYU social work master’s program for the fall, I’d been avoiding thinking about. All that was still up in the air.

Yeah, I was still lost, unsure about what I’d do next, but that numbness had turned into something more like anticipation. I tried not to probe the source of it too much because I knew it probably had to do with my ill-advised crush on a certain logistics coordinator, and that was not advisable in any sort of way.

Dinner was a long and serious affair since we had a lot to prepare before our first survey day. By the time I got to my room it was past ten, but as tired as I was, sleep would not come. The hotel room had mosquito nets on the beds, and the ceiling fan made it flutter. It felt like there were birds flying over my head, and that, plus the lingering jet lag, made it hard to settle down.

After half an hour of tossing and turning, I gave up on sleep and decided to go out and take a walk around the hotel compound. They had a nice garden and pool area, and I hoped the fresh air would help me relax. As I stepped out of my room, I shivered in the cold night air, looking up at the sky.

It was magnificent.