"Thank you!"

Zoe does her best to thank them as Araari does.

The tribespeople laugh but seem to take this in good humor.

They bring the investigators a dinner of meat, milk, sorghum porridge, and pancakes.

Lev pokes at the meat suspiciously and then fills up on milk and pancakes.

Let's try everything. This all tastes a bit odd but at least pancakes are apparently universal.

Nibble nibble.

Araari eats the sorghum porridge and the pancakes but is with Lev on mostly only poking at the meat. She compliments everything, though, and is happy to offer her own meat to the others at the table.

Which of these food items combine with other food items? Let's try putting a little bit of each thing with a little bit of each other thing in turn.

The investigators mostly spend the evening resting and treating their inevitable and constant heatstroke. 

Zoe does an acrobatic performance for the children!

Zoe shall demonstrate her very exotic American circus routine to the public.

The children are FASCINATED by Zoe's EXTREMELY SKILLED PERFORMANCE.

Zoe, having demonstrated her talents, will spend any additional spare time teaching any kids who want to learn basics as best she can across the language barrier.

This is the most normal feeling thing she has done since she has arrived in this place.

Araari spins thread, it’s more portable and less notably strange than weaving.

She also translates a little between the kids and Zoe.

Mordred almost certainly doesn't have enough time to properly reorganize his notes and doing it halfway is worse than not doing it at all so instead he's writing a letter to Gale, to mail when they're somewhere where you can mail things.

Oswald asks Sister Waletta and Sister Araari what was said about Dallol.

"The children thought that you were sick, like the people in Dallol village."

"Huh. So not just strange and isolated, but sick as well? I wonder how."

“The children were very confused by you because they don’t have much knowledge of white people. They think you’re pale ghosts with strange hair. We tried to explain that people from very far away look different, but... children will believe what they believe. Then again, if they had asked if you were sick a week ago...” Araari is not making fun of them, that would be very rude, but it is taking a lot of effort to not smile or anything.

"I'll have you know I didn't get sick that time at all." He is smiling a little, though. And then he remembers Anemone and stops.

"Is there a way to ask the locals about Dallol without coming off as incredibly rude?"

“I don’t know this tribe’s norms very well, I’m sorry. If they were Oromo I would have a better guess.”

I wish I had introduced you in New York, I think you would have really liked her, she w and then Mordred's pen goes clean through the paper, ripping it.

And with one thing and another the investigators go to Dallol. 

As they draw closer to Dallol, they also begin to see strange and colorful geographical formations. Hot springs and centuries-old evaporation of seawater have left behind thick stratified salt deposits in extremely vivid yellows, tans, browns, reds, and even greens. Irregular fingers and pillars of minerals push up from the ground.

Pretty! The sheer number of vertical rock formations in Ethiopia is starting to grow on him.

Even short exertion — as simple as a five-minute walk — requires the more out-of-shape members of the party to sit down for a short breather, which is not refreshing and is eventually abandoned for its futility. Their soaking clothing begins to chafe their skin, leaving broad raw regions. In some places, their skin begins to rub away and bleed.