Ethiopia - different than you think

Hi there - March has been an intense travel month for me (Tim), as with travels to Ethiopia and Cameroon (and Mali and Benin). News on on the east first...

Ethiopia, East Africa – I have arrived in the capital city Addis Ababa, it is March 1.

I'm here to participate in a training conference with Samaritan's Purse .

The SP staff in Ethiopia are quite friendly and cheery (photo on right - training class). They have some programs similar to Niger, they also have a large HIV/AIDS awareness program (called MET and Prescription for Hope). Their project sites are quite far off, some are more than 10 hours driving from Addis. As a result they do have a staffed remote office in the south Somali province.

But - rather than bore you with too much work stuff I'll share about my adventures. As flights within Africa are not so frequent or convenient, it was convenient for me to have some extra days to explore Ethiopia a bit - very nice!

FOOD - now that I have your attention. An important part of any country, and so much so in a country like Ethiopia. Ethiopia has a very unique traditional food not found anywhere else on the globe and it is quite delicious. The meal is comunual, buffet style, and consists of many sauces which are scooped up by a chunk of dough called “Injera”. Traditionally Injera is a very large pizza-like dough baked over a pit fire, but in the city people often make it in pans and then make rolls of the dough (As you can see in the photo). The dough is moist and flexible and fairly strong, so one tears a piece off the roll or platter, and use the piece of dough like a mitt to scoop sauce. I must admit that Injeri can only be eaten with your hands, fork and knife just wouldn’t make sense. I ate many different sauces, usually I have no idea what I’m eating. I know that one sauce was raw meat (ground beef), I didn’t eat much of this. A typical good restaurant will have more than 20 different sauces.

Surprise is a word that comes to mind for visitors to this city. In some ways as you look around Addis you might think you are in a US city, in an African-American neighbourhood. The capital is well developed, however there are malnutrition and many other needs in the rural majority of the country.

Even so - living in Addis is quite unlike the US due to its distinctive culture and religion, and as well as you look deeper you find an eclectic mix of African and Western life going on. From my hotel room window, I took the photo of this cathedral in the distance. As it is the Easter lenten season, there are throngs of Ethiopian Coptic Christians at the churchs everyday, as you can see in the photo. Notice the white garments. This was a regular workday morning.

Addis Ababa (which means “New Flower”) is a flowering city, prosperous and modern, good paved roads with much traffic, and a substantial availability of goods and services. You can find many modern things here including smog :-)

Notice the photo of the food and the "fasting" sign. PUZZLED? READ on.

March 2 is a significant day and time of the year for Ethiopia. For starters, they celebrate the Adwa Victory, which was their victory in defeating the Italians. Ethiopia is the only country in Africa that was not colonized, and was for a few years occupied by Italy in the region now called Eritrea.
The other thing kicked off in this country is the Christian Coptic lenten fast, which is a 40 day fast following up to Easter (Orthodox date), and is taken quite seriously and performed by a large proportion of the population, basically most Coptic Christians.

This food photo above has a good closeup of the injera dough, the beige rolls at the bottom. The “fast” is actually a vegan diet, an abstention from meat of all kinds and all dairy. It is significant enough that many restaurants immediately stop offering meat or dairy dishes in their menu. Alternatively restaurants will separate “fasting” food from “non-fasting” food, as is the case here. Of course fasting generally means to abstain from eating food, so the idea of "fasting food" is an oxymoron. Personally I enjoy the wide variety of tasty healthy vegetable sauces and foods that you find everywhere.

Coffee connoisseurs know well that Ethiopia is highly sough out for its coffee. And no less so in Ethiopia which has well entrenched coffee traditions. In the photo I'm in the restaurant next to the lady taking care of making coffee for all the patrons, as a meal normally is followed by coffee.

In the local coffee shop, the coffee menu includes “fasting hot beverages”, meaning coffee drinks with non-dairy milk substitutes like soy. Effectively a Soy cappuccino is called a fasting cappuccino. Interesting.

I took 2 photos which also would raise some eyebrows on some people –
One is of a throne seat near the front of the church, a special large luxurious chair reserved for the king or honored guest.

Apparently many of the Coptic churches have such throne chairs. The 2^nd photo is of the church ceiling fresco, on the right side you see Christ on the cross and on the left adjoining it a picture showing a troop of armed soldiers saluting the King. For Anabaptists this association with the military would be quite disturbing, alas the reformation.

Mountains, exploring - On Thursday we had the great opportunity to visit the Ethiopian country side, and some beautiful natural scenery. I took a lot of photos!
Ethiopia is quite mountainous, and Addis Ababa is on a high plateau, one of the highest cities in the world. As a result the weather is actually cool and comfortable (a bit chilly at night). I'm standing here with two of our SP colleagues, at the edge of a cliff.

While we were sitting having lunch, a large herd of monkeys came down the mountain side and walked in front of us, about a 100 monkeys, at a safe distance from us. My photo on the right was fully zoomed.

We went up a plateau to visit two famous monasteries. One is active with pilgrims attending everyday during the lent period.

We were allowed to visit, with a guide, during the mass service, and so I have some photos inside while people are praying. The participants there are on the floor, either sitting or kneeling in prayer, head to the floor.

The church has a replica of the Old Testament Ark that Moses had. Ethiopians have a strange fascination with things like that, a leader in the church said that all the Coptic churches in Ethiopia have an Ark, they wouldn’t be a church without it.

A guide brought us up a steep hike into the mountains, where we encountered a small “chapel” built into a cave in the mountain. I enjoyed the opportunity to hike and get some exercise, two of our party were pretty exhausted once we arrived. The chapel is simply a cave with a wooden wall and a light inside. The history there is that a famous monk from centuries ago used to pray and fast there for many years. His left leg fell off (amputed?) and so he is depicted in a painting there standing on 1 leg, with the other leg lying on the ground. Saint Terry Fox? Water is seeping from the roof of the cave, and this water is diverted into big drums as it is revered as holy water. There were 8 large drums in the cave and a hose filling one of them. Pilgrims will come from afar and pay good money in order to get this holy water, which they would use to apply to their faces or drink.

Personally I like drinking tonic water, they have 3 flavours/brands here and most places provide 2 or 3 brands.

Being here in Ethiopia is a treat, but not a treat in the way Canadians would think. Niamey does not have much of many nice things readily found in Addis Ababa, and so I feel spoiled. These things include: flush toilets and nice washrooms are common; people can understand English; there are bookstores with English books; there is often green grass growing on the ground and the soil is black; high of 25C in the day; you can find fresh brewed coffee in cafés; also cappuccinos, lattes, café au lait etc; the streets are not strewn with garbage (not as much); and a few others.

Shoulder bumping! Many cultures I notice have their unique ways of greeting friends and family, and Ethiopia most certainly is unique! Ethiopians on the whole are physically affectionate; people embrace and kiss each other if they are close friends or relatives. However the common greeting here is something quite unique – I supposed it is a more subtle or abbreviated form of physical contact. It involves bending your right shoulder towards the other person’s right shoulder and touch shoulders. This is often done while holding hands during the initial hand shake. So the right hands clasp for the hand shake and then you do the shoulder bump! You will not see this in Niger. In Niger you hold the person’s hand for a few minutes while going through a long series of greeting questions (not intended to be nosy) where you ask how is the health, then family, wife/husband, work, heat/cold, dust, tiredness, sickness, …

My flight back to Niamey was delayed by over 3 days! So I spent some extra time in Bamako.