Easter calls up in my mind the prisoner I was in childhood. My parents, God bless them, would lock my brother and I in the house as we squirmed in an electric fashion in unbridled anticipation of the search for plastic easter eggs in our backyard. In cruelty, some eggs would be placed out of a child's reach. I may be making this up in my head, but I think they once placed one at the top of a palm tree in our backyard in Hanford, CA. Pure cruelty.
The easter in Ethiopia has not been Hallmark-ed enough to be disassociated with religion. I did not see any bunnies, but I did eat 3 lunches. 3 lunches! One of them did include a large amount of enqulal (egg) and thankfully my vegetarianism allowed me to dodge the large amounts of doro (chicken) wot and beg (sheep) wot that were passed around with much jubilation. Oh if you could only see the long stick with 20 or 30 chickens unconscious from the blood that ran rivers to their heads or the mountains of sheep skin being carried through the streets on this glorious day. I see in my head two faces that remind me of that day. A tribute to the Greek masks of comedy (the Ethiopian smiling and eating the lovingly cooked remains) and tragedy (the bleating sheep who know that the red paint on their skin was not a sign of living a long life).
The first Ethiopian lunch attended was for street children in the Dessie-area. The lady that put this activity together with the help of the Ethiopian Orthodox church, is running (I think) the only NGO that focuses on street children here. In a tent strapped to the side of a building, benches were laid out and plates of injera were passed out. Little hands reached up to provide gorsha (see hand-fed signs of endearment) dripping with meat. Due to the lack of vegetarian options, I dodged the gorsha with quick references to not eating meat.
Soon I took out my camera to take pictures of these hard knocks children. Within the flash of a flash, children were sprouting like speed-framed flowers in my lens. Every time I thought I had a shot that was framed well, another child would blossom into the fray. I didn't get a large amount of amazing photos from the photo session, but I did get a couple of classics and the end result was a tent of smiling children that may have forgotten about the streets for the click of a shutter.
On the second lunch of Fasika my true love gave to me, a large plate of fried eggs and some Ethiopian yogurt that tasted a bit like sour cream. When the glass arrived for the yogurt, she started to pour the yogurt into the glass. I looked on expecting her to stop pouring, but she filled the glass all the way to the brim. A clapped hand or loud word would have caused the glass to overflow. Before I gulped the yogurt, I gulped in fear of the gastro-intestinal effects of such a large glass of foreign bacteria. It was quite good and was made better by a surprising addition of chili powder on top, but that much dairy was harsh on my stomach. After some non-alcoholic home-brewed beer (the second house was Protestant and in Ethiopia that means ixnay on breway), I was stuffed.
On the third lunch of Fasika my true love gave to me, more food and a lot of local beer and coffee. The hostess was such a good hostess that at every point where my attention was taken away from the glass on the table in front of me, she would dive in to top me off. My original strategy of drinking quickly in order to leave early and finish off the day by working in the garden worked against me. She would not let me leave! By the 7th or 8th glass (I think) I finally protested enough to dodge any further incoming beer salvos. I was day-drunk enough to do nothing for the rest of the day.
I have been lucky enough to have my first tourists. They stared at me through my open windows. They sat on the old tire outside my house. When I went to the restroom and came out again, they were gone. I sighed in relief. Then I went outside to water my compost and they were still there, but now they were taking pictures of each other in front of my house … on my patio. Laughing in my head about the whole situation, I didn't refuse when they asked for me to be in the picture. I can just picture these two fine young gentlemen in the future talking about the good old days and “that one marvelous holiday” spent at Jon's house.
Finally, a word on Fidel. No, the Bay of Pigs has nothing to do with this Fidel. The Fidel I refer to is the alphabet for Amharic, of which I am currently learning. The script has 276 letters in its syllabary (there are patterns – I am not learning 276 unrelated letters) and 7 vowels instead of 5. So a word like wendem (brother) would have a letter for we, ne, da, and me (the vowels I would use in Amharic are not on my computer). It's a beautiful written language and being able to learn to write it is, to me, an exciting privilege.
Anyways, thanks to Marina, Sara, Libby, Arsie, Karin, Erika, Jess, and Jennifer for more letter love and the amazing package from abbate, ennate, wendame, and yene wendam gwuadennya (my father, my mother, my brother, and my brother's friend - or in other words Renee :)) The books were great for furthering my limited knowledge on FDR and Africa, the spices will allow me to try and perfect Indian food, and the jump rope will keep me listening to Kris Kross.
I'm thinking late november now los. that way I can stay longer...thoughts?
:) xoxo!!
Posted by: libby! | May 17, 2009 at 06:53 PM