A Grand Welcome

I’ve written before about Ethiopian hospitality and how it’s unrivaled, but even after living here for so long it still knocks me off my feet sometimes.  I’m a fairly hard person to surprise. I see things coming, read into foreshadowing, and pick up on subtle signs. But this incredible hospitality often gets past my radar and surprises me more that anything.

The morning after my friend from home, Chris, arrived in Ethiopia I made him board a bus at 5am heading north to Dangila.  This ride is something I’ve become used to enduring by now, although it never can end soon enough.  Around 3pm we finally arrived in Dangila, exhausted from the journey.  We loaded our luggage into a bajaj taxi and were taken straight to my house.  As I opened the gate to my compound, waiting patiently inside was my student/friend Aregach.  As we got all our belongings inside I realized she went back outside and was bringing in a pot and basket, filled with the special holiday food duro wat and injera.

I later found out that Aregach, who had been fasting from meat for two weeks (as were all Orthodox Christians), postponed her holiday celebration by several days just so she would have duro wat (chicken stew) for our arrival.  She also came over to my house over two hours before we arrived by bus and waited patiently for us to show up!

 My new friend/neighbor Taish came over to join the celebration as well.  The four of us ate the delicious food and hung out for a couple hours which was more than anything I could have asked for. Aregach is such a wonderful friend and she teaches me new things every day about loving and giving. It was a great welcome back to Dangila.

During Chris’s week-long visit in Ethiopia we only stayed in Dangila for a couple days, which meant we had a LOT of coffee and food invitations to squeeze into a short amount of time.  And Chris had only been in Ethiopia for less than 24 hours when we got to my town, meaning his experience with, and acquired taste for injera was minimal.  He was a great sport to eat whatever happened to be put in front of him.

After we went to my final class of my summer English club, one of my students invited us over for coffee and lunch.  We enjoyed listening to American music (from the CD I’d given my perfect attendance students as a prize), drinking the three rounds of delicious coffee, and stuffing ourselves with yet another meal of injera and wat.  I think by this point Chris was finally getting the hang of what my life is like here!

Then finally, on our last day in town, we stopped in my neighbor’s house to say “hi” and found ourselves leaving several hours later, stuffed to the brim.  It was not altogether unexpected since I often spend hours at a time laughing and eating in their house, but it surely was nothing less than an adventure with Chris there.  We sat for the longest time just drinking the rounds of coffee as I played translator between the family and Chris.  We were all set to leave when the mother insisted on making something for us to eat (since she had promised me the week before that she’d make something special when my friend arrived), so we got comfortable knowing there is no turning down such a generous invite.  Luckily we saw Taish walk passed their house and called him in to eat with us, adding another stomach to divide the food between.

Dangila is full of surprises and every time one of them hits me, it makes me want to stay until I discover them all.  With the end of my time here in sight I really am trying to live every day to the fullest, and sometimes that is referring to the state of my stomach.  The culture I’ve experienced here of entertaining neighbors and guests is something I hope to carry with me throughout life.  It is beautiful, selfless and loving. I think we can all learn something from a culture like that.  On that note, I’m here for five more months and very open to more visitors… any takers?

Ethiopia Through New Eyes

This week I’ve had the privilege of introducing one of my good friends from home, Chris, to Ethiopia.  It’s been filled with adventures and bus rides, but one of my favorite things is hearing his impressions of life here, giving me a new perspective of seeing things.  Being here for over a year and a half I have certainly become adjusted to life and I often don’t see the peculiar things anymore.  I love the comfort this brings to my everyday life; seeing all these things as normal makes me feel more at home.  But it is refreshing to hear about all the surprising parts of Ethiopia which once also stunned me.  I’ve decided to make a list to share so that you can all start to understand the basic differences which I somehow find normal.

•    Constant reminders from locals to “eat!”
•    Affection between guy friends: holding hands, hugging, etc
•    People feed you by hand as a sign of respect
•    Coffee cups between the three rounds of coffee are often mixed up but we never question which we receive
•    Showers are optional
•    Time here is six hours off (noon = 6:00)
•    It is 2002
•    Ethiopians are deathly afraid of dogs/puppies
•    Animal dodging while in minibuses
•    People in the middle of nowhere – people are everywhere
•    Injera for every meal is common

More updates to come about my travels!

24 Hours of English

Last spring I started teaching an extracurricular English Club for students in grades 9-12.  This class was only for girls and we would use half the class time to talk about grammar and the other half to discuss gender issues.  I loved getting to know my girls but having to turn away boys week after week I decided to switch it up for the summer.  My co-teacher and I made the decision to take the first 40 students to sign up, both girls and boys, and we set a six week schedule. We meet every Monday and Wednesday from 10am-12pm, bringing our grand total of class time to 24 hours for the summer.  My co-teacher told them the first day not to waste this “day of classes with Jennifer” since I’m such a good resource for them.  Pressure on!  I try to live up to this expectation by making a fool of myself in front of the class for four hours each week.

I’ve come to have a love-hate relationship with teaching.  There was a point in my life in which I considered this as a career, but I long ago realized that I have other callings.  Teaching English is something most of the Ethiopian PCVs find themselves doing at some point during their two year service.  Some teach once or twice and call it quits; others have taken on an entire course load as a real teacher.  I fit somewhere in between those two,  but my reasons for starting the class last spring fits in with the reasons of most of the volunteers: it’s something to do.

The curriculum for our summer English Club was going to be all about communication, and on the first Wednesday of class I brought printed out copies of the lyrics to “Wavin’ Flag” in honor of the World Cup (also because I overheard far too many people mumbling along to the song in gibberish). We went through line-by-line and discussed what it means. They loved it!  Ever since, I’ve taken song requests and each Wednesday attendance numbers sky-rocket as we learn the song of the week.  And honestly, I love it too.  I’ve never enjoyed teaching so much; the two-hour class simply flies by!  In the words of a teaching Fellow who came to talk to my group of volunteers from the Embassy, “This isn’t even what I do and I’m good at it!”  

The summer semester is winding down and we’ve covered songs from JoJo to Beyonce.  Knowing there is only one song choice left for next week the students recently handed me a list of songs that filled a page.  ‘Suggestions for next week’ they said. I realized I can’t stop teaching quite yet.  This fall I have a bit of traveling and other work planned so I wasn’t going to continue the class but I think I’ll have to figure out a way to make it work. Maybe I do love teaching after all.

The Thirteen Spices of Burbere

Having purchased burbere packaged in a bag in the past I knew the only way to get delicious homemade burbere was to make it at home, go figure.  I’ve survived for a year and a half without my own ready supply of this delicious burbere but I decided it was time to put an end to that.  My student/friend/clothes washer Aragach was on board and for about a week she researched how much of each spice we would need to make a batch of really good burbere.  We decided on an amount to make (we’ll get to that later) and started buying ingredients.

Maybe I should tell you a bit about burbere.  It’s a mixture of spices used in just about every Ethiopia dish to a little zing!  At first I thought it was rather spicy, but now it is simply delicious and necessary to add to every meal.  This essence of Ethiopian food is rumored to contain approximately 13 different spices, but since it is usually homemade, every house makes it slightly different, exchanging some subtle spices for others.  I will promise that my recipe has 13 different spices but I’ll take the recipe to my grave! Ok, well, maybe I don’t know the names for all 13 but I think I could pick them out of a lineup!

Aragach and I decided to make 10 kilos of burbere.  Why 10? Is it because I’m used to pounds? Was I confused? Was there any good reason I wanted a small child worth of spice? No.  There is no good reason.  I told Aragach I would give her half, and I figured five kilos for myself and friends would be just about right.  I also thought that we weren’t accounting for the weight that gets lost while drying out many of the ingredients, but apparently it was thought over because we ended up with over 10!

The main ingredient in burbere is burbere. Confused yet? The dried out red pepper found in the market is called “burbere” and the final product of this ground up spice mixture is also called “burbere” (both pronounced bur-bur-e).  Other key ingredients found in all recipes include garlic, red onion and ginger.  The remaining nine are up for grabs, and I left that decision to Aragach and her mother’s advice.  I believe some of the spices include cloves, cardamom, cinnamon, and nutmeg.  The preparation lasted for over a week and involved drying, sorting, combining and roasting.  And you better believe there is some blood, sweat and tears in there too! Not really, I swear, but I cannot deny that my dog did run across the drying mats a couple of times.  I’m not really helping my argument for trying some of this spice when I get home, am I?

Alas the final morning had come.  I agreed to meet Aragach at her house at 7am on a Tuesday morning and would we go together to the mill to have it all ground together.  I arrived to find her and her mother roasting everything one last time to ensure that all the moisture was out.  We then combined the 12 spices in one bag, kept the bag of burbere separate, and added an additional kilo of salt.  Bundles in hand we walked across town to find a mill house with a burbere machine that was open.  Mills are on every street in Dangila, they are the Starbucks of small-town Ethiopia, but hours of operation are not posted and machines are kept separate to ensure that there isn’t any mixing between your bread flour and your spicy burbere!

Aregach's mom roasting everything to ensure it was dry.

With a stroke of luck we arrived at a mill that had just opened and we would be the first customers of the day.  I’ve been told that this is a very good thing because the amount of powder in the air is minimal and the machine is not yet hot which heats your product to untouchable temperatures.  Being the first ones wasn’t my favorite part even, I was overjoyed that children hadn’t seen us turn in here; we were the only people in sight other than the workers!  The moment of truth had arrived when it was time to pay for the grinding, 1 Birr per kilo, weigh-in time.  Ten kilos of bubere, three of other spices and one of salt.  14 kilos!  Then began the grinding, and I don’t think you can truly know burbere (or Ethiopia) until you inhale burbere and inevitably touch your eye with pepper residue on your hand.  Breathing in that intense pepper is unlike anything else; it feels like your insides are on fire and no amount of coughing will suffice.  But we survived.

Weighing the spices before entering the mill house.

Grinding the pepper together with the spices.

The pepper is in the machine waiting to be ground.

Aregach and me.

Aregach carrying our wonderful bubere back to my house.

A short while later, after taking plenty of pictures and befriending the mill employees, Aragach donned the basin of burbere on her head and we walked to my house proud of our product.  We stirred all the spices together and tasted what our hard work had produced; its brilliant orange color is unlike any color I’ve seen in nature.  I no longer worry about what I will do with 14 kilos (minus Aragach’s share) because this spice sells itself.  I finally have that homemade burbere I’ve wanted and it smells (and tastes) so good that I don’t even mind that my entire house smells of it!

Back at my house with the bucket full of burbere!