The Coffee Ceremony

At Easter at Wuhib's house and again the next weekend at Rebecca's house, we were treated to the traditional coffee ceremony. Ethiopia's coffee ceremony is an integral part of their social and cultural life. An invitation to attend a coffee ceremony is considered a mark of friendship or respect and is an excellent example of Ethiopian hospitality. Performing the ceremony is almost obligatory in the presence of a visitor, whatever the time of day. You learn to not be in a hurry though - this special ceremony can take a few hours. You simply sit back and enjoy because it is most definitely not instant and certainly worth the wait.

The Ethiopian homage to coffee is sometimes ornate and always beautifully ceremonial. The ceremony is usually conducted by one young woman, often dressed in the traditional Ethiopian costume of a white dress with colored woven borders. The long involved process starts with the ceremonial apparatus being arranged upon a bed of long scented grasses. The roasting of the coffee beans is done in a flat pan over a tiny charcoal stove, the pungent smell mingling with the heady scent of incense that is always burned during the ceremony. The lady who is conducting the ceremony gently washes a handful of coffee beans on the heated pan, then stirs and shakes the husks away. When the coffee beans have turned black and shining and the aromatic oil is coaxed out of them, they are ground in a wooden mortar with a long handled pestle. The ground coffee is slowly stirred into the black clay coffee pot locally known as a 'jebena', which is round at the bottom with a straw lid. Due to the archaic method used by Ethiopians, the ground coffee result can be called anything but even, so the coffee is strained through a fine sieve several times. The youngest child is then sent out to announce when it is to be served and stands ready to bring a cup of coffee first to the eldest in the room and then to the others, connecting all the generations. The lady finally serves the coffee in tiny china cups to her family, friends and neighbours who have waited and watched the procedure for the past half-hour. Gracefully pouring a thin golden stream of coffee into each little cup from a height of one foot without an interruption requires years of practice.

The coffee is usually taken with plenty of sugar (or in the countryside, salt) but no milk and is generally accompanied by lavish praise for its flavor and skillful preparation. Often it is complemented by a traditional snack food, such as sugared popcorn (kettlecorn), peanuts or cooked barley. In most parts of Ethiopia, the coffee ceremony takes place three times a day - in the morning, at noon and in the evening. It is the main social event and a time to discuss the community, politics, life and about who did what with whom. Forget about any work happening during coffee time. When at a home ceremony it is considered impolite to retire until you have consumed at least three cups, as the third round is considered to bestow a blessing. Transformation of the spirit is said to take place during the coffee ceremony through the completion of 'Abol' (the first round), 'Tona' (second round) and 'Baraka' (third round). This is three separate boilings of the grounds with the first being the most delicious (and strongest of course) and the final tasting quite a bit like weak Folger's or Maxwell House. You know, the kind you can see through.

According to national folklore, the origin of coffee is firmly rooted in Ethiopia's history. Their most popular legend concerns the goat herder named Kaldi from Kaffa, where the plants still grow wild in the forest hills. After discovering his goats to be excited, almost dancing on their hind legs, he noticed a few mangled branches of the coffee plant which was hung with bright red berries. He tried the berries himself and rushed home to his wife who told him that he must tell the monks. The monks tossed the sinful drug into the flames, an action soon to be followed by the smell we are all so familiar with now. They crushed the beans, raked them out of the fire, and distilled the stimulating substance in boiling water. Within minutes the monastery filled with the heavenly aroma of roasting beans, and the other monks gathered to investigate. After sitting up all night, they found a renewed energy to their holy devotions. The rest, as they say, is history.

I have a video of the one Rebecca performed at the Easter dinner. The steps are:

1. Take a handful of green coffee beans and blow away the husks
2. Wash the beans
3. Roast in a pan until wonderfully dark
4. Pick out the "blonde" beans, they make the coffee really bitter
5. Grind
6. Boil all of the grind in a Jebuna (or a teapot) in about 3 cups of water
7. Serve in expresso cups, likely through a strainer
8. Boil in 3 cups of water again while enjoying the 1st cup (Abol).
9. Serve in expresso cups, likely through a strainer
10. Boil in 3 cups of water again, while enjoying the 2nd cup (Tona).
11. Serve in expresso cups, likely through a strainer
12. Enjoy the 3rd cup (Baraka) and receive your blessing.

Try it, there is nothing else like it in the world. If you are lucky, Courtney or Michael will share some of theirs with you.

Easter in Addis - Part 2

Wuhib has a wonderful view from his home. The cool mountain breezes and warm sunlight made for a comfortable and homey Easter meal. It is a good thing too, because we ate outside.

We began with what they called a "treat" some of the most tender part of the sheep. Ended up it was the backbone, boiled up in spices and a chili pepper they call Berbere. It was certainly tender, but there was not much of it.

Then came the Doro Wat, Ethiopian Stew. There were two types, white (lamb) and red (chicken). The chicken version was made from the chicken that Wuhib's sister had found the day before, five hard boiled eggs, about three pounds of onions and then, garlic, lemon juice, salt, ginger, fenugreek, cardamom, nutmeg and a spiced butter. All is cooked down to a thick stew and then the berbere is added. LOTS of berbere. Man is it hot. So until my taste buds get used to it (or they burn off) I dilute the berbere with some soup juice when i can. Berbere is alot like our cayene chili powder and the locals use it as a dip on almost everything. I asked what it was made from and they rattled off a list of spices as long as my arm. The white doro wat is a lamb stew with MUCH less berbere. Huwot gave me some regular white bread. When I tried to eat it, she stopped me and showed me that I was to use it to wipe the berbere off the chicken so I could eat it. Even Ethiopians do not respect "wasper nest" bread. She then brought out the Yemarina Yewotet Dabo, or honey yeast bread. It was about 2 feet across, 6 inches thick and had been baked the day before in a huge clay pot over charcoal. Of course there was injera as well.

The celebratory drinks were made there as well. Talla, Tej and Arakae. Tej is an ancient, golden, honey-based wine, Talla is a local beer (that to this day still tastes rather nasty to me) and Arakae is Ethiopian moonshine, white lightning with a slightly different flavor and all of the kick.

As a follow-up we had "tibs". The cut a thin strip of lamb such that there are chunks of meat held together by a strand of sinew. This is then quickly fried in butter with onions, garlic, hot green peppers and a little berbere (of course). It was then moved to the "fry daddy" that Nanci had purchased the day before. It is eaten by pulling off the chunks you want and eating with bread or injera. Yummy yummy yummy! This was a hit for sure.

It was dessert time and the crew was treated to American chocolate cake and southern fruit cobblers. They were fascinated with the cake, primarily because it was so sweet and so richly chocolate. I discovered that the most common form of sugar used here is glucose, rather than sucrose. Sucrose is about 3 times sweeter, so their sweet treats are hardly sweet at all. They use chocolate sparingly (more to darken the bread it seems) so this cake would have knocked their socks off, if they wore socks.

Then came the coffee ceremony. Ribka performed it for us. I'll go through that process next blog, but in short, they roast, grind, and prepare coffee right there and MAN is it tasty! There is truly nothing like it.

Finally came the most fun part of the day. The dancing! Wuhib tried his best to teach John, but to no avail. In the end he is still a testament to the phrase "white guys can't dance". Of course I was likely just as bad.

Thus ended the Ethiopian Easter feast. I doubted that I would ever experience another event like that. I was wrong. The following Sunday is also an Easter holiday and we did another feast at Ribka's home. Details to follow later.

Easter in Addis - Part 1 The preparation

OK, firstly, my apologies for being a blog slacker. Massive efforts have been required for the 90-day report for the Minister. Its done now, so there is a little downtime available so here is a big one too help make up for it.

The largest holiday of the year is Easter, larger than the Timkut celebration or Christmas (which is in January here). People save u, sell off, buy presents for family and feast, dance and drink on this day. There are a couple of reasons, being Orthodox Christians, it is the most holy of holy days. Perhaps for reason for celebration is that 55 days of seriously bland vegi-fasting is OVER! Think Fat Tuesday in New Orleans times 10!

Wuhib (our driver, 34) invited us to his home for Easter dinner, a coffee ceremony and to meet his family and friends. A traditional celebration and feast. Nanci and I decided to add to the tradition by cooking some traditional Amerikan foods to take as well. She made chocolate cake and I made mango and guava cobblers. But the real adventure was the preparation for the rest of the feast.

You see, we had to go shopping for a sheep, the wood to cook it over and the proper charcoal and incense for the coffee ceremony. It could not be just any old sheep, it HAD to be the RIGHT sheep. So off we drove to the "countryside" to a place named Sendafa. It was my first time out of the city of Addis and boy was I ready for it. I still hate big cities so this was quite the relief. We were only about 10 miles out of town and the land changed to a countryside that reminded me of Wyoming, vast grassy plains with great mountains on the horizon in all directions. If the area surrounding Laramie had grass hut buildings and hump-backed oxen instead of cattle it would have been a really good match. Many people were getting their sheep out of town. I guess that country sheep in town are not as desirable because they had to chase them 10-20 miles into town and that makes them a bit tougher. We needed a fat lazy country sheep for this feast. Others thought the same thing it seems, as there were many vehicles loaded with live sheep - taxis, buses, trucks and yes, even Volkswagen Beetles. We finally arrived in Sendafa and Wuhib turned the truck around and in his wonderful broken English said "enough driving, I know where get sheep better." So back toward Addis we go. Apparently he knows someone who trucks in the sheep from way out in the country and he is at a market just outside of the city. This is where we will find "big sheep". On the way back we passed a pottery stand where local craftswomen make doro wat cooking pots, talla pots, baking rounds, drinking cups, coffee pots and something that looked like a black clay "Fry Daddy". Nanci bought the "Fry Daddy" and a Doro Wat pot for Wuhib and I picked up 4 black clay goblets. We were so eager to get out of the truck and see the pots that we both forgot tot take any pictures of the place.

We managed to find a wood seller and bought 5 bundles of firewood. They were about 4 ft long, about 1 ft in diameter and covered the bed of the pickup truck nicely. A few kilks and a couple of turns later we say the sheep market, a stockyard in a big flat spot beside the road.

There was just one small problem. Wuhib had 3 white Amerikans with him. Around here, that is a sign to increase your prices by about 50%. Apparently the potters had done that to us just a few minutes before, where it likely added a couple dollars total to the entire purchase, but Wuhib was not about to let that happen on the sheep. That would be too expensive and just wrong, especially on Easter. So the three of us agreed to hang back and wander around the rest of the market while he found and negotiated for dinner on the hoof. In less than ten minutes two guys were walking with dinner, tying up the hoofs and tossing the sheep into the back of the truck, all for about 500 birr (about $55). Now there was no way we were going to keep the sheep at our house, so we took it to Wuhib's house and tied it to a tree in the yard. Nanci and John thought that this was just such a cool thing and I agree. None of us had been sheep shopping before and certainly not in Africa. After all the driving and excitement, we forgot to get the chicken. Wuhib said he would make his sister go get it later so we could go back home and prepare our part of the meal. Alimu (our guard, we call him Alex, 28) went home with Wuhib to attend Easter services and to help with the meal preparations the next morning.

Easter church services begin at Midnight and run until about 3:30 AM. This was an amazing thing actually. A little after Midnight there came a sound that arose from the ground and filled the air. Ever so faint at first, it grew to no more than the hum of a bumble bee from about five feet away, but it surrounded everything. It was the sound of hundreds of thousands of people chanting a moaning, but happy, chant. I was the only one in the house awake to hear it. Wow.

After church, everyone goes home and slaughters a sheep or a hen over prayers and chanting. This is part of the ritual and the tradition, with all of the normal representations of the "blood of the lamb" and the "cleansing of the sins" tied to the process. It is learned at a very young age and considered quite normal. I accepted this explanation, trusted them to know what they were doing and slept through it all back at home. It appears that I missed one of the "best parts" of the ritual - the eating of the fresh kidneys. Quite the treat I was told. I cannot say that I am too disappointed to have missed that part. The end result was a large amount of sheep meat, ready for the pot. The chicken also found its way to the pot and all this before 6AM.
On Easter afternoon, Wuhib returned to the house to pick us up and drive to the feast. He was dressed in his all white traditional garb and the six of us crammed into our little Toyota pick-up with crew cab and happily drove through the rain to the celebration. Although it made the "driveway" up the mountain a little muddy, the rain on Easter day was said to be a blessing and a good sign of things to come.

Wuhib's home is fairly typical of homes in Addis Ababa "suburbs". He's on the side of a mountain, has a living room and a bedroom with an attached kitchen and an outbuilding that serves as the hot baking room and outhouse. He does have electricity, but no running water yet. There is a neighbor a few doors down with a well that they get their water from. The fill and carry plastic "jerry cans" of water for cooking and drinking and sponge baths. The kitchen was where the sheep was hanging and where all of the cooking for the day was being done. Wuhib's brother, Kelelaw (24) lives there as does his two sisters, Hiwot (14) and Menebere (21) who just returned home from her first and only year of college. She did not pass the exam to return for another year. As is tradition, the girls did the cooking and the men did the preparation. As for what we had, well, you have to wait for the next entry. We're going to Ribka's (our housekeeper, 28) home for dinner today.

About Miracles

800 years ago, King Lalibela wanted to create a new Jerusalem, which Saladin reclaimed from the crusaders in 1187. Because his people were denied access to the Holy Land, pilgrims from Ethiopia and the small Christian states along the Nile would be able to worship there. The stream bubbling past the city was christened the Jordan, and the hill overlooking it Mount Tabor. It was in this place that they chiseled out churches directly into the stone bedrock. 11 churches, connected by tunnels.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,473358,00.html


Ancient superstition is woven into the teachings of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. So much so that people with knee injuries or dying of HIV/Aids will refuse medications in favor of Holy Water.

http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30200-1258762,00.html?f=rss

It is practices like these that show evidence that the church is keeping this country in poverty.The church also forces over 60 non-working weekday holy-days, no working on Sabbath day, over 160 of no-protein fasting and continues to this day to preach that spending money is a sin and the poor man shall goto heaven.

This is one of the biggest hurdles this country must deal with. Not the people's faith or religion, but their church.

General Impressions #1

Ethiopia is very interesting indeed, the local people are some of the friendliest you could ever meet. They are extremely courteous and seem to smile most of the time. After you see the conditions under which the vast majority of the people live you begin to wonder why they seem so happy. For example on the outskirts of Addis Ababa, what we would normally call the suburbs, many of the people still live in either small huts with walls and roofs made of sticks and mud/dung or in houses constructed out of large sheets of corrugated metal. Even with all its poverty Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, is both the largest and most affluent city in the country. If ever there was an example of "all things are relative" it is this one. Some in the city work, some make do and many others beg. There is even beggar "turf" and a clear pecking order too. Quite a strange thing to begin to understand.

Once you begin to look deeper into the lives of individuals it becomes apparent that much of their contentment and happiness is due much to their strong family ties and extremely deep religious beliefs. Most Ethiopians practice a very ancient form of the Christian Orthodox religion and attend church several times each week. In addition many people study their bible several times each day and enjoy discussing the meaning of a particular passage that they have just read. In discussing a bible passage they are eager to hear you explain your personal interpretation. Rather than wanting to debate your point of view they seem eager to learn from you so that they may better understand.

I am just beginning to learn much from these kind and gentle hearted people and am looking forward to what I can already tell is going to be a great adventure.