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!

A Few Life Changes

Life around Dangila has changed a lot in the past month.  All of the change was spurred by my landlord and his family moving across town.  Following that, I moved into their old house on my same compound, and a lot of my daily routines have now changed.  Living on my compound now is a woman about my age, whose younger sister (maybe 18 years old) is currently living with her.  Additionally, there is a guard my landlord hired, who is pretty old and whose mumbled Amharic I can barely recognize as the language I’ve been learning for 18 months.

My landlord built this shack in the front yard for the old guard... way to make me feel worse about my big house!

As one of the nearby missionaries said when first seeing him, “wow, he won’t be stopping any thieves quickly,” but he does help with the children who are up to no good.  There is also another worker hired by my landlord to take care of the mama and baby cows on the compound.  He now lives here too, although he is gone all day taking the mama cow somewhere (18 months later I and still don’t know where they go all day).

The guy who takes cares of the cow; Here he is helping me build a fence around my garden.

Word on the street is that 2 Japanese volunteers from the organization “jica” are moving into the compound late in the summer.  I’ll keep you updated about that—could be fun to have new foreign faces around to sympathize with me!

Having the big house is life changing, really.  Let’s start with the fact that the walls are cement! The amount of dust collecting on every little thing is now minimal as compared with my former mud house.  I have BIG windows! The house is so bright and partnered with the yellow walls and shiny white tile floors, it just makes me happy.  I have space for all that “stuff” I have collected.  It’s so nice not having to cram things under my bed.  Plus the extra space allows for fun activities, like yoga or cartwheels, right in my living room!

The tile floors are my favorite part though.  I can walk around barefoot.  I can sit down on the floor and play with Arbay.  I forgot how nice those things can be.  Life is all about the simple pleasures!  But while I love my floor, it isn’t always “shiny” as I described above, especially during muddy season (the rains have begun!).  Which leads me to my other favorite addition to this life of luxury I’m leading: Aragach.

Aragach is one of my students in my English Club.  She is 20 years old, grade 9 student, doesn’t have a father, and her mother has recently hurt her leg and cannot work to support them anymore.  At the beginning of May I started paying her to come once a week to wash my clothes, a chore I never looked forward to, but something I did find therapeutic.  It was also something I took pride in doing, but sometimes you have to take one for the team, so in order to help Aragach (without just giving her money) I decided to overpay her to help me.

Since I moved to the big house, every Saturday she also mops my floor to clean up all those muddy dog prints!  Aragach and I also moved all of my stuff to my new house by ourselves (sans one big piece of furniture we pulled two random guys off the street to help with).  I love having her around, and as much as I haven’t adapted fully to the cultural norm here of just dropping by and lingering uninvited in people’s houses, I really enjoy when she comes by.  She’s becoming like a sister, and she’s such a sweet motivated young woman.

Another big change in life is that when I go out of town, the landlord’s kids take care of Arbay allowing her to stay in their new compound.  It’s kinda fun, like dropping her off at Doggy Day Care!  Since Arbay loves roaming the neighborhood and going off on adventures, just about every day when I’m in town she will walk herself over to the landlord’s new house to hangout.  Once in their compound they don’t let her out (I think they’re afraid she’d get lost or something) so I go by to pick her up.  It works out that most afternoons now she’ll go over there, meaning I still get to see the kids every day.  I usually stay for a little while to play with the kids, which has led to way too many afternoon photo shoots.  

I am feeling more independent in my own compound now which I really like.  I also love having the kids to visit—I think we appreciate each other a lot more now.  I’m sure there will be more changes to come in the next 7 months; for now, I’m happy and adjusted.