So you think you know Ethiopian food?

I know two and a half months sounds like a long time, but our experience once we got settled in Mekele is that time flies when you’re having fun.  And despite the sad and very abrupt demise this very day of the Devotion/Fight Club after many pseudo-successful runs of the Old Testament’s greatest hits, we are having fun.  Other sad news served to make the day a heavy one.  So it seems the thing to do is to consider the good things in life and celebrate them while we can.

Platters awaiting raw meat at a restaurant that
specializes in meat.  We have not braved raw meat here, but
it's a national delicacy.

I’ll fill you in on why our intrepid theatrical company tanked, as well as the other heavy news later.  Right now - and before our time in Mekele is up and I forget to do it - I really want to write about something I always find uplifting; the surprising and unique foods of Ethiopia.  If you live in the DC area - or if you are at all a foodie - you will have at least tasted Ethiopian food.  But in all likelihood, you will have been exposed to a fraction of what might be considered typical of Ethiopian food.  I certainly was, and I grew up eating it.  This blog is dedicated to the few months we have left to enjoy these tasty items, because most of them are difficult, if not impossible to find outside this country.

I have quite a few friends who aren’t fans of Ethiopian food.  Haters, I hope you read this and find enlightenment.

For orientation purposes, I’ll start with what a plate of typical Ethiopian food looks like. On the left, we have the star of the show; Injera, which is a flat, soft and bitter bread made from a grain called Tef. You use the injera both as a nutritious gluten-free food item, but also as a utensil to scoop up various sauces, such as the sauces shown here; siga wat (spicy meat stew), shiro (chickpea paste), and ye atikilt alicha (veggie stew).  Eating is done strictly with the right hand.  Traditionally, you would eat from the same large plate.  At home we always eat individual portions, like this. These are just a few of the many, many sauces typical of Ethiopian food. 

Moving on to slightly more exotic items, above we have shekla tibs; tender pieces of meat cooked at high heat on a clay stove, typically with onions, green chili peppers, and maybe tomatoes.  In the States, tibs is a favorite dish - tasty, unthreatening, universally pleasing.  Unfortunately, in the States, tibs rarely comes cooked on the miniature clay stove pictured above (shekla).  It’s sort of like a fajita situation, sizzling meat that’s crispy on the outside, tender on the inside.  It is typically eaten with the spicy red chili-based sauce in the picture (awaze) or with mitmita, a dangerously hot powder that you have to eat strategically so that you don’t accidentally inhale it.  (The trick is to dip the injera in the mitmita first, and then get a piece of meat so that when you put it in your mouth, the meat - not the mitmita is facing the back of your throat.  Sorry for the detail, I simply want you to benefit from my own disastrous experiences.) 

Behind the shekla tibs in a little covered pot is a dish called tegamino shiro.  Tegamino, in Italian, means fried.  But really, this is a shiro (chick pea sauce), that’s hard to get anywhere else because it’s cooked in a clay pot, rather than in a metal pan.  The clay pot imparts this delicious, deep, buttery flavor that’s impossible to beat.  Add to that the fact that Tigrayans are known for their shiro powder - the base of the sauce - and I can tell you we’ve never eaten shiro like this anywhere else.  Shiro - you can get in any Ethiopian/Eritrean restaurant in the States.  Tegamino shiro?  I’m not so sure.

Our friend Messi serves Tilho in her home

Moving on to even more exotic items, tilho is a dish that originated in a town called Adigrat, right here in Tigray.  Perhaps you recognize, that flat, pancakey thing covering the bottom of the plate. It’s injera, spread flat this time instead of rolled up.  In the center of the plate is a clay pot filled with a very spicy, very oily wat made with lots of onions, tomatoes, and dried beef.  Topping that wat is a unique, quite bitter yoghurt sauce garnished with herbs.  The little dumplings surrounding the clay pot are made of barley flour and water.  You take a tiny fork, pick up a dumpling, dip it into the wat, then the yoghurt, and enjoy a mouthful of the richest food you’ll ever taste. I have never been able to put away more than three bites. I'm willing to bet you can't really find this in the States.  You can’t really even find it outside of select parts of Tigray province, Ethiopia.

I’m moving on to breakfast dishes.  The dish above is not particularly exotic, in fact it’s really just cracked wheat.  But when you season the cracked wheat with salt and clarified butter, then what you’ve made is kinche, a favorite breakfast dish of mine since childhood.  Some of the people in my household who don’t have Ethiopian blood like to destroy the dish by drizzling honey or maple syrup on it, claiming that too many spicy/salty breakfast dishes go against the very nature of breakfast.  To each his own.  This is a very homey dish and I haven’t seen it on any menus Stateside.

In Ethiopia/Eritrea, when you scramble eggs, you finely dice and fry onions, green chili peppers, and sometimes tomatoes.  Then you add the eggs.  A very typical bread from this region is a bread that is only good the day it’s bought - actually, the morning it’s baked.  It is neither crunchy nor chewy, easily torn apart, and hasn’t got much flavor, but is very sturdy and easy to eat with a variety of breakfast foods.  It costs basically nothing and is sold in at least three little kiosks very close to us.  Just before we left the States, we finally found a delicious rendition of this common breakfast minus the bread at Meleket Restaurant in Silver Spring (owner Abe Bayu is a friend).

American Ethiopians/Eritreans will quickly recognize this dish - called fitfit, or injera firfir - because it’s a great way to get rid of old injera and whatever wat you have handy, and they probably ate it a lot growing up.  Usually, you would use left over wat (spicy stew), heat it up in a saucepan and break injera up into it.  Here, often the sauce is not left-over, but made fresh with berbere (red chili powder and other spices), oil, and very finely diced tomatoes and onions - a sauce known as silsi).  Although this is a super-homey dish, you can usually get it at most Ethiopian restaurants.  In our home, we always eat/ate it for breakfast.

Kitcha firfir (or chechebsa) is hands down the favorite household breakfast, and also not that common in US restaurants.  It is basically a thick tortilla broken up, then fried with clarified butter and berbere.  There is even a version I’d never met before - which is made with honey (right side of picture).  The spicy version is best eaten with yoghurt.  If you want to eat a really good version and you live in the DC metro area, go down to NoVA and eat the version with meat at Cafe Aurora (Dahab, the owner is also a friend).  You can also get it at Meleket Restaurant in Silver Spring.  I really haven’t seen it anywhere else.

Ful (commonly spelled fool) is not traditionally an Ethiopian/Eritrean dish, but an Egyptian one.  However, it is so commonly eaten here that it may as well have originated here.  It’s made from fava beans which are cooked and smashed with various spices (cumin being prominent among them).  In Ethiopia, it’s served with very finely diced tomatoes, onions, and green chili peppers.  Often a bit of clarified butter or olive oil will be drizzled over the top. Yoghurt is an optional side.  And this version being enjoyed by our friend Sandra includes eggs.  You use the bread I described earlier to scoop it up.  Ful is easy to make and so satisfying.  Also available at Cafe Aurora or Meleket in the DC area.

I ordered Special Fata.  When you say "special" in Ethiopia, it
means you want your dish accompanied by scrambled eggs. 

Fata probably originates in Egypt, but again, is eaten so often in Ethiopia/Eritrea that it may as well be local.  First, you’re given a couple of pieces of the bread described earlier.  You tear it into pieces then you send it back to the kitchen.  The bread is then fried with spices, and perhaps that silsi I mentioned earlier (tomatoes, onions, oil/butter).  Then it's brought back to you with a garnish of onions, tomatoes, and green chili peppers.  Yoghurt with this dish is a must because it binds the whole thing together.  This dish is one I’d never seen before, and is so commonly eaten for lunch or breakfast that entire restaurants specialize in it.  As common as it is here, I have never seen this dish served in any Ethiopian/Eritrean restaurant in the US.  

When Mark first ordered fatira at a restaurant, it I thought it would be disgusting. But he took one bite and insisted I try it.  Completely delicious.  It is basically a very thin omelette sandwiched between two chapatis, or tortillas, and then drizzled with honey.  Basically an egg quesadilla with honey, I guess.  Again, I’ve never seen this on offer in any Ethiopian/Eritrean restaurant elsewhere. 

I had never even heard of this giant, circular steamed bread, called hibishti, until we came to live in Mekele.  I have no idea if it is a regional or national food, but I suspect it is the former.  It is absolutely amazing to eat; soft, fluffy, a dream-come-true with a cup of sugary tea.  It really is a very special occasion kind of treat because it is such a pain to make.  It seems to be made more frequently at certain times of year.  I took the picture of the stove used to make it on one of our walks, during a time when every other street seemed to have this rudimentary steamer outside on the sidewalk.  It isn’t served often, and you can order it in certain bakeries, but you must commit to eating it with every meal, or else invite your neighbors because it’s that humongous.  No.  I don’t believe you can get this outside of this part of the world.

I’ll end with a beverage which we were interested to find was made entirely of blended peanuts in milk. The drink is called loze, which means peanuts, and it tastes exactly as you would expect it to taste - liquid peanuts.  It’s served hot, thick, and creamy, and that description alone distressed many members of this family.  But with enough sugar, I tell you, it’s a very entertaining drink.  But we’ll probably stick to coffee, which is obviously the national beverage of choice, and is - in my humble opinion - better here than anywhere else in the world.  And I grew up in Kenya, so that’s saying something.

Well, it’s cheered me up considerably to present these dishes to you.  Today was not the best day.  I promised I would let you know what happened with the Devotions/Fight Club.

I’ll be uncharacteristically brief and say simply that I’d had it.  And while I’m still stewing at my failure to herd cats, I’d better not attempt to write about the lessons learned here.  Because just at the moment, the lesson is that some performances are impossible to pull off when the number of middle-school girls in the cast has suddenly risen to ten, and the story involves stubborn Israelites, 950 self-flagellating false prophets, the prophet Elijah, King Ahab and, of course, a certain lady called Jezebel.  It was a grand adventure, a crazy ride.  God bless drama teachers.  God bless middle school teachers.

At the writing of this blog, it is not the best day for other reasons, too.  Mike Kenney, who many of you read about in an earlier blog post, passed away from complications of esophageal cancer yesterday.  I said I wouldn’t eulogize him while he was alive, but I’m finding it difficult to eulogize him now that he’s gone.  It might be enough to say that while I wish I knew him even better, he changed many things about me for the better.  How many people can you say that about?

When I look back on what I’ve written about in this blog post, I’m incredibly thankful for life and health and all the things I take for granted.  My friend Mike is gone, but I can still hear his big laugh, and think about what grace he maintained even in his final days.  In his final blog post, he mentioned that there was a huge phlegm build up in his lungs, and asked for prayer so that it could be resolved and he could breathe again.  I could post any number of inspirational words of faith he posted and shared via e-mail, but in the spirit of this blog post, let me just share this brief facebook exchange from four days before he died:

Kim S. Payne So, basically, we're praying for you to be able to hock the mother of loogies?

2

Manage

Like · Reply · 4d

Michael Kenney Kim you got it buddy!  😜

1

Manage

Like · Reply · 3d

Thanks for reading, all.  If you would like to donate to help families of Operation Rescue Ethiopia out, please forgive me for the jarring discrepancy between our eating adventures and the hardships faced by the many families at ORE, and remember that you can make a tax deductible donation at: http://www.fieldsofpromise.org/?page_id=72  Please add an instruction noting that the donation is for “Woodward family project.”

Please let us know if you do make a donation so that we can thank you!

PS:  Hazal has turned a corner and is behaving herself.  I think she had an epiphany while we were in Italy, and I returned to find her a changed woman.  She hasn’t tried to kill anyone in months.

Daniel, Eli, and Micah aren't afraid to ask you something. Please hear them out!

Greetings, friends and family. The purpose of this post is to inform you about a project that we are raising funds for. As many of you know, our family is spending this year in Ethiopia. We volunteer at a local childcare project, named Operation Rescue Ethiopia, which helps disadvantaged children and their families. As our time in Ethiopia is coming to an end, we boys plan to raise money for basic necessities that will help families and make their lives easier.  

While we were visiting some of these families’ homes recently, we noticed that most families live in cramped conditions in one room.  There is hardly any room for one bed or mattress.  Many homes have no regular access to water, and all the possessions are crowded into a corner of the room with containers for water storage.  

It was hard to know where to start helping, but we noticed that many families either had no electricity, or very dim lights. This makes it difficult for children to do their homework, which can lead to poor grades in school. Therefore, we would like to give these families d.lights, or solar powered lights. These lights will allow children to do their homework at night, and will give families enough light to do many things a little more comfortably.  In town we noticed that d.lights can be purchased for $8-$10 each.  These are popular solar lights and are even used out in the country-side where there is no electricity at all.  A few years ago, Daniel raised enough money to buy D-lights for about 100 homes in Tanzania (with our grandfather's help), and those lights are making a big difference in the kids' lives.  Here is the website, if you want to check it out: http://www.dlight.com/

As well as having no electricity, many children at the project have very little clothing, and the clothing that they do have is often ripped or torn. So we would also like to raise money for clothing for children. 

If you would like to support our project with a donation, you can donate through Fields of Promise, a U.S. charity that partners with Operation Rescue Ethiopia. You can make a tax deductible donation at: http://www.fieldsofpromise.org/?page_id=72 — please add an instruction noting that the donation is for “Woodward family project.”

If you would like, you can also sponsor a child on an ongoing basis through Fields of Promise, at the same web site.

Because we have spent so much time with the kids and with their social workers, we know the difference donations make in their families’ lives.  We promise, your donation will be very valuable.

Thank you so much!

-Daniel, Eli, and Micah Woodward

Here are some pictures from some of our home visits:

Eli and Micah follow Teame, a social worker, into an "unfinished home".
Home builders in Mekele often pause their projects for long periods of time,
during which they rent out unfinished spaces (usually just one room) to families.  Many of Operation Rescue's children
live in homes like this.

Even in an unfinished home with very little furniture or food,
the hosts always offer the social workers coffee.

Inside an unfinished home.  This was a larger one, many are much smaller.

Micah and social worker Merid visit a finished home.  Most homes
have only one bed, but multiple family members.

Often the rent for a room in town is very high for the families ($37 per month).
So some families live outside town in traditional homes.  This usually means the children
have a long walk to school and to ORE.

Thanks for reading, and remember, You can donate at: http://www.fieldsofpromise.org/?page_id=72 — Remember to add an instruction noting that the donation is for “Woodward family project.”

Hiking in Tigray, Hiking in Tuscany

        Hi there!  Today's subject...The Pork of Italy.

These are pictures of pork that Marta took. She loves pork and has missed it a lot.  Pork would have been
part of Marta's theme for this blog, but thankfully, Micah took over when she got stuck.  
A pork-centric blog will have to wait for another time.

        Just kidding. Todays blog, is not at all about pork, in fact, it is about comparing hiking in the middle-of-nowhere Tigray Ethiopia, and middle-of-nowhere Tuscany, Italy. By the way this blog is by Micah.

Moges, Marta, Noah hike in the Gheralta Mountains, Tigray

Eli and Nancy in Chianti, Tuscany

        Let's start with Tigray, Ethiopia, where we are living right now. In Tigray you're not just any old tourist. You're different. There's kids coming up to you so surprised to see a foreigner that they all just group up and stand outside the restaurant that you're eating at, and occasionally make a dash in to look at you. But there are also people around that you've gotten to know, who hug you when they see you. 

People we don't know

People we got to know (Moges greets Donica's great uncle while Donica looks on)

Maria greets her great-aunt, Hadgi

        In Tigray usually, when you're just starting the hike you walk by villages with small stone houses and people come out and wave at you. In Italy the equivalent to that is walking by an Air B&B, or quiet villa where no one, alas, comes out and waves at you. But on the trail in Tigray it's regular to walk by cows, donkeys, sheep, etc.  You don't see many of these on the trail in Italy, but when you do, they're HUGE!

Tigray Cows

Donkey crossing near Mariam Papaseit Church - Tigray

 

They may not look like it, but each of these Tuscan cows was twice the size of the average
Tigray cow.

        In Tigray the hikes are known for the churches. So at the end of the trail there is a church. A priest comes and opens the door of the church, and you go in with your shoes off. You walk in the church and right in front of you are all these beautiful paintings. You then receive a blessing stick and listen to the tour guide talk about the church. You then exit the church and walk back to the trail head. You can lean up against the paintings, and touch the Bibles. In Italy, you definitely can't do that.

Waiting for the priest to open the gate leading to Mariam Papaseit Church - Tigray

St. George - Mariam Papaseit Church in Gheralta

Mary, Jesus, and Saints - Mariam Papaseit Church

Just like in Ethiopia, people in Italy place shrines to saints near footpaths

        In Tuscany you start your hike usually by taking a bus from a super touristy town, (the one that you stay in), to a smaller, and less touristy version of that town. That town might be about 20 minutes away. Then you start the hike from there. Or, if you're with my dad, you start at your town, make a loop, see some hill towns, and hike for a long time until you end up back at your town.  Loops are very important for my dad.

Every single little town in Tuscany has a church. Sometimes the paintings are very old.
The oldest and most elaborate paintings were removed and are displayed in various museums.

        In Tuscany the churches that you stop at are in random hill towns, that you pass by. There's no specific church at the end of the trail. In the church no priest comes out to greet you. (Neither does the pope, for that matter). But sometimes the paintings inside were taken out and brought to museums.

        On the hike, (when you're on main roads), you go through hill towns where many tourists go through, so no one is surprised to see you. When you're on walking trails you see many vineyards and small country houses, (occasionally) with dogs that bark at you if you're anywhere close to the fence that they're behind. But I have to say that it definitely feels more peaceful in Italy.

Tigray

front row: Gabriel
Back row:  Micah, Daniel, Eli, Noah (holding Maria)
Background: Uncle Berhane

        But both places were both beautiful, and wonderful cultural experiences for me. And I feel so lucky that I got to experience both places.



     

Tuscany

Daniel, Nancy, Eli, Micah

 












                                                                                                                   

Life goes on, thank God

Waiting for the internet to return

Chances are that you've never had to play the game I'm playing above, and didn't even know that the dinosaur did anything but stand there.  Lucky you.  Life without reliable internet is like life in the 80's.  You sit around playing silly games on the computer.

Anyway, the internet kicked back in yesterday, carrying sad news.  Our dear friend, Mike Kenney, is entering hospice care after a long battle with esophageal cancer.  Two days ago was my mom's birthday; we lost her to cancer in 2012.  Mark's dad is also fighting metastatic cancer.  And now this news of Mike...  Mike and I (and our partners in crime, Gil Gotiangco and youth minister Seth Philbrick) taught high schoolers in the Sunday School program at our church.  I really wanted to go back and  hear his loud laugh fill that basement youth room again.  That's not going to happen.  I refuse to write any sort of eulogy here, not while he's still living. I know Mike won't mind my talking about this because he has been brave enough to share his journey with everyone in his incredibly thoughtful, well-written, and inspirational blog.

I don't like to think of a world without people I love and who've been critical in my development.  But that's life, isn't it?  We all have to go sometime.  What's tough is that we are so far away from the people who we would naturally turn to in times like these.  I've rarely missed home these past six months, but I'm really missing it these days.  The people I'd naturally want to hug or talk to are in Silver Spring, DC, Bethesda, Gaithersburg, Leesburg, and Northern Virginia.  And even if we live far from Mark's parents, it's usually so easy to Skype them, or talk to them on the phone.  Here, when we talk to Mark's mom in Rome, the delay is so significant that our conversation is usually a mess of interrupted comments and "hello?  hello?".  Conversations with Mark's dad in Oregon are rare since the internet is so spotty.  The same goes for my dad, who is holding down the fort in Silver Spring.  As for bros and sis, they're WhatsApp communicators, so again, the spotty internet gets in the way.  We miss our people.

So, because I can't run over and give Mike a hug, I think of him a lot.  I sit outside with our dog Teddy Afro, and say to myself that it's okay to feel disconnected because there's always prayer.  And prayer - if you're thinking about the people you've loved and lost - inspires gratitude.  Yesterday, while I was listing the things I was grateful for about Mike, Teddy licked my ears and toes regularly and eventually forced me to play fetch with him and things were better.  By the time I went to Operation Rescue in the afternoon, I was in thankfulness mode, even though my heart was heavy.  But by the time I left Operation Rescue at 9 pm that night, I'd had maybe the best day I've experienced here so far.  Let me tell you why.

First, someone tried to pick-pocket Eli. Bear with me.  It has a happy ending, if a gross beginning.  So, Daniel, Eli, and Micah were on their way home from making home visits with a social worker (part of a project we'll be telling you about soon).  A guy on a street corner came up out of nowhere and spit on Eli.  He'd been saving up for a while by the look of the glossy white smear on Eli's shirt.  The guy began to apologize profusely, pulled some toilet paper out of his pocket and began to wipe up the spit on Eli's shirt.  Eli, being an American teenager, is uncommonly attached to his phone, and felt the guy's fingers wander into his front pocket.  The theft was thwarted by Eli's calm backing away with his hand firmly in his pocket.  The guy disappeared.

Later, we went to ORE, and I happened to tell this story to a group of people.  First, they mentioned two people who were victims of this exact scheme.  The victims were so shocked by the unexpected expectorant that they had no idea their phones were being lifted.  Second, my listeners warned me, as always, to take good care of my phone.  I made a big show of exactly how careful I was, pointing out a hidden pocket under a flap of my bag where I kept my phone. I told everyone very loudly that the person who tried to steal my phone would receive a thorough butt-kicking, if they were lucky enough to even see where I kept it.  I went on about it for quite a while. There was general laughter.  It was getting late, and sweet little Feven was sitting at my feet.  She asked me what time it was.  I happened to know it was about four, so I told her.  She asked me if I could make sure, so I reached into the hidden Jason Bourne pocket of my bag and felt my hand descend into empty space.  My phone was gone.  Feven, that cheeky monkey, had expertly lifted it even as I was bragging about how awesome I was in the phone safety realm.  This is the face she made after she gave me back my phone.  I nearly died laughing.

Theif!  Theif!

Here's something else that brings a smile to my face:

Yeshi, Birhan and their siblings

I took this picture yesterday.  You might notice that two of these girls (the ones in blue) are identical twins.  They grew up at Operation Rescue, in a cell house that serves as a kind of orphanage.  But in fact, they are part of a set of triplets.  The third member of the triplet set is the sister wearing a white sweater.  The other kids are also siblings.  The amazing thing is that Yeshi and Birhan do not know these siblings at all, really, including their triplet.  Back in the day when Ethiopia still permitted international adoptions, a shady agency went to the village where Yeshi and Birhan's parents lived.  Agencies used to make big money on twins, and heard that a family had given birth to triplets.  They convinced this impoverished family to give two of the girls up for adoption, saying they'd never be able to survive otherwise.

The family drew straws to see which two should be given away.  As it happens, the identical twins were chosen, and were given to the care of the agency.  When underhanded dealings like this were finally put to a stop, only two agencies were allowed to remain open, and ORE was one of them.  So the girls were put in ORE's care and raised in the cell house.  They never knew their parents, never knew their siblings, never knew their extended family.

But ORE knew that at some point the girls would need to be reunited with the family, if the family could be found.  And found, it was.  So preparations were made to return these little girls to their family many, many miles away in a rural village where their people were farmers.

But how do you cause such a huge upheaval in the lives of two girls who've grown up in the big town of Mekele, whose education has been steady and good, whose entire world has been shaped by foster parents and siblings who practice a different faith? (Yeshi and Birhan have not been raised in the Orthodox church, but in the Protestant church, which in Ethiopia is sometimes considered to be as far from Orthodoxy as - say - Zoroastrianism).

Guess what?  The unbelievably brave and loving parents of this family decided to pack everything up, leave behind the village where they've had roots from a time before memory, and bring all their children to Mekele.  Rather than cause distress to Yeshi and Birhan, they chose to take on the stress of moving to them, instead.  They arrived last week.

They are at the mercy of charity.  They have no formal education.  They don't speak even one word of English, even the older children who should at least be able to say, "Hello, how are you?".  And they have to learn to be a family in these new circumstances.

I took the picture above with a big smile on my face, even knowing the hurdles the family will have to cross.  As we prepared for Devotion Club's weekly performance (Samson and Delilah, my friends, with Feven starring as Samson!), two of Yeshi and Birhan's sisters joined us, looking at us and our silly antics with wide open eyes, probably wondering what on earth they'd gotten into.

Still, I kept thinking of loss, of Mike, of goodbyes, of wanting to hug my friends and family.  And in spite of the laughter of the day, I just wanted to go home and wallow a bit.  But I had promised that I would attend the weekly cooking club started by a short-term Swiss volunteer at ORE.  She'd invited Yoshi and Akari, two volunteers in Mekele with Japan's version of the Peace Corps, to teach us how to cook Japanese food in ORE's guest house.  So I stayed.  I promised myself that I could sit in a corner and chop some carrots quietly.  I didn't have to be fun, or friendly, or anything.

Alas, video footage taken about an hour into cooking reveals that I left my chopping station to join a small impromptu kitchen dance party, pulling some really unimaginative but enthusiastic moves to Justin Timberlake's "Can't Stop the Feeling", while poor Yoshi and Akari criss-crossed the kitchen, trying to get food made.

Getting ready to cook.  Pre Justin Timberlake

Uno, the international card game of choice.  Some of these
folks grew up at ORE and now work there. Others are volunteers, local and international.

So yesterday, despite the internet tidings, was a good day.  I prayed hard in the morning until Teddy Afro the dog pulled me up and out of myself.  And then God sprinkled these little reminders to me throughout the day that life does go on.  And yes, people we care about will leave.  It brings tears to my eyes even to type that.  But that's the reality, isn't it?  What can you do but be thankful that your paths crossed, if all too briefly?  I guess you open your eyes to the people whose lives you get to be a part of today, and tomorrow, and for however long.

Life does go on, thank God.



PS, more evidence that life goes on.  Today (one day after the events described above) we were invited to experience the wonder of a spelling bee put together by Mark and the Volunteer Service Overseas volunteers in his class.  The competition was fierce, and the kid who won second place, Yohannes, was attacked by his friends in a show of violent support. I can't imagine what would have happened to the poor kid if he won.

Standing, left to right: Semere, Tirhas, Biruk (Tied 3rd), Mahlet (1st), Markos, Yohannes (2nd)
Helen (Tied 3rd), Dyela, Biruk
Squatting:  Zion, new VSO volunteer whose name we don't know

Yohannes goes down

PPS, Hazal was disinherited by her incredibly wealthy family.  This is surely evidence that God does, indeed, hear prayer.

Girls just wanna' have ....I don't know.

Piggy In The Middle

Girls, girls, girls....

The girls in the picture are playing some version of piggy in the middle.  They hurl the little plastic yellow ball (foreground) with all their might.  If it hits one of the girls in the middle, she's out, and has to wait for the next game.  I used to play a similar game when I was very little, but the girls in the picture are 14/15 year olds.  If they're not playing this game, they're playing their own version of baseball in which they bat the little ball with their hands and run like crazy around a group of "bases" that are so close together I actually hurt my knee trying to turn those tight corners; had to hop into "home base" on one foot.  No one cared because they will not stop for a simple tendon sprain.  Not even blood will stop them.

There are only a few things that will stop the game, usually temporarily.  One is if some younger girl is brave enough to join the game by stepping into the middle, or coming up to bat.  If that girl can jut her chin out just right, or lower her head, scowl and spit out words that are some version of, "I'm playing and you can't stop me so shut up!" and mean it, then she's in.  But it could mean that some other girl will storm off - usually to join another game of double-dutch, or piggy in the middle, but with a volleyball (that version is played for real, and is a good landing place for angry people).  Another thing that can stop the game is if someone's sense of justice is challenged.  Maybe a ball is smacked and it goes out of bounds, but there's some disagreement.  Or the pitcher manages to get the ball and beats a runner to a base, but there's some disagreement.

I wish I could describe both the intensity and the frequency of the disagreements.  The faces on those girls - you have to picture an angry kid in a Norman Rockwell painting.  They're like caricatures; their poses, their facial expressions - it's almost funny.  And then it's over.  I've seen girls look each other nose to nose, saying things like, "Go on then, do it.  Punch me.  See if you can walk home when I'm done with you."  Then five minutes later I'll see them arm in arm, looking over someone's shoulder at a cell phone.  It's nuts.

On the one hand, I've been reading a bit about how we in America have sanitized our lives of conflict.  We run from it.  And we teach our kids to run from it.  As a result, it could be that we just don't know how to have a respectful disagreement.  That's kind of sad, and kind of evident - if I'm anything to go by. On the other hand, these girls can have disagreements that are so dramatic that they almost belong in a Looney Tunes cartoon.  And just like that, the mess is cleaned up - just like in the cartoons.  Next scene - back to normal.  No one's head is flat.  No one's hair is singed off with smoke drifting off the scalp.  That can't be the alternative to our sanitized, conflict-free existence, either.

The way people - girls, especially - relate to each other here is something to behold.  The amount of physical contact they enjoy is startling.  When playing, the younger girls wrestle, just like the boys.  They don't mind dragging each other down into the dust and rubbing each others' faces in the dirt.  They run!  All the time!  I cannot imagine 14/15 year old girls in the States opting to spend their free time playing games that require constant motion.  I just can't imagine it.  They walk arm in arm, they braid each others' hair, they lie across each others' laps.  I rarely see a girl sitting even one inch apart from another girl.  And they can just as quickly fight like demons.

Sometimes, Mark and I walk home a bit dazed, trying to find the right words to express how we process things.  I had hoped - maybe not seriously - that I would have brought a Mother Theresa-like saintliness to every relationship I developed at Operation Rescue.  But as I walked home with Mark one day I just shook my head and told him how earlier that day, I had to extricate myself from the arms of two girls who really wanted me to go somewhere - I didn't even know where.  They were both talking in my ears, and I honestly felt man-handled.  And as I wrenched myself away, I said, "Likekun!"  This basically means, "Let go of me!"  One of them laughed, and the other said I was not to talk to her again, to which I replied "That is really fine by me." A proud, saintly moment for me.

But the next day their heads were not flat and their hair was not singed and we went right back to it, as if nothing had happened.  Every day is a guessing game, and maybe my friends who have teenage daughters are thinking "Welcome to my life". But every morning I find myself wondering what sort of ridiculous conflict I will find myself either watching or in the middle of.  And since Mark and I started a Devotions Club (stop laughing, it's actually much cooler than you think, especially when you factor in the fights) which only middle-school girls joined, we really do take a deep breath before our club meetings.  Most of the girls are in the pictures in this post.

I'll end with our most recent meeting.  K, a born leader and fledgling megalomaniac, is always the narrator.  As such, she always has the bible held close to her chest so that she can recall the specifics of the story for the actors in the club.  But she is not above occasionally shoving - say - Moses out of the way and saying, "Give me that staff.  This is how you throw it down!"  or "Are you kidding me, Pharaoh?  That's your reaction?  Move, dummy!  This is how you make an angry face!"

Well, yesterday, Pharaoh had had enough.  She'd just asked me some innocent questions about the order of the plagues that befell the Egyptians after each refusal to Moses' "Let my people go" request.  K, the born leader, was flabbergasted that one of the actors didn't have the story down, and  issued an insult that I didn't catch.  Moses and Aron wisely moved out of the way, and Pharaoh moved in for the kill.  I got in between them just in time to prevent Pharaoh's foot from connecting with K's shins.  K backed up against the wall, and - shielded by me - continued to taunt Pharaoh with a cheeky smile on her face and the bible held against her chest!  I mean, come on!

It all happened so fast that Mark didn't even see it.  And it's such a frequent occurrence that I haven't even told him about it.  Devotions Club.  Fight Club, more like.   Afterwards we went outside and as far as I know, K and Pharaoh, Moses and Aron all played piggy in the middle.  Probably the volleyball version.  I didn't stick around to see it.  I've learned that sometimes you just have to head home while your sanity is still intact.

But tomorrow the Devotions/Fight Club will present its third performance and it's going to be good.  We managed to make props this afternoon.  I was convinced to purchase some red food coloring - the girls are going to somehow dramatize the first plague when the Egyptian rivers and water sources were turned to blood.  I don't even want to know.  They have the bottle, though frankly, they don't really need it.  They could probably find a way to draw some actual blood during the performance itself.

Oh well.  It's all very entertaining.  And very draining.  I have to say, I come home and look at my boys and think, "I love these uncomplicated fellows very, very much."

"Baseball"

P.S.  None of these girls is as bad as Hazal.  In fact, the girls I write about are very sweet and loving, when they're not, you know, fighting.

  

On another note, if it sounds as if they boys haven't been coming as often, it's because Daniel and Eli have been getting a lot of school work done.  Also,  I think we have all hit what is known as the 6 month low.  Our good friend Nairy Ohanian, a counselor, told us to expect this.  I promptly forgot all about it until I mentioned feeling a bit down and angry to some ex-pat friends here and they said, "Ah, you must have hit the six month mark."  So we are letting the boys ease off for a bit and cover some school work.  How weird does that sound?  School work is a break...

The Smooth Ride

Well, we’re still alive. It’s been a while since this blog was last put into use, but now that we have a whopping 1/2 megabyte per second unlimited wifi connection at our house, the only thing standing between us and blogging is pure laziness. 

It has been a month since we returned to Mekele, and it’s more or less been a smooth ride. Settling in wasn’t nearly as difficult as it was back in August and September, and wow, we’re already talking about potential dates for returning to the United States.

But that’s still five months away. Right now, we are just enjoying our time here while keeping our return on the horizon, with some of us seeing it as sort of a light at the end of the tunnel, and others seeing it as a cause of dread. I will not say any names. We are well into our routine here, with schoolwork, Tigrinya lessons, and volunteering at Operation Rescue Ethiopia consuming the lion’s share of our time. The longest power outage has only lasted three hours or so (no match for those 48 hours from September 16th to 18th), our water situation has largely remained under control, and as for those stares and yells I wrote about back in October: meh. See the first paragraph if you’re wondering about our internet situation.

Some notable scenes we’ve witnessed:

Dad, my Grandfather, and I went to the local Orthodox Church on the night before Ethiopian Christmas (January 7th), and it was surreal. Seeing incense burning, the whole congregation wearing prayer shawls while singing in unison, just wow. What an ancient way to worship, one that probably hasn’t changed since the fourth century. Just imagine: people do this all night long here!

We celebrated Epiphany, or Timkat (January 19th) by going downtown with a British friend of ours, where we were among a sea of people waiting for a service, or for a dispensing of holy water- it wasn’t clear what we were waiting for, exactly. But, at least we talked to some other kids who were interested in hearing our Tigrinya skills. Just when we were about to leave, sprinklers came on, and the masses pushed and shoved to get their share of holy water. Being reminded of running down a mountain at nighttime surrounded by fire (Meskel, back in September), we decided not to join the madness this time around. And, naturally, the people who were emerging from the crowd all wet were young men willing to, well, push and shove. Afterwards, there were several processions of priests and singers on the streets of Mekele. Religious holidays are no joke here, man. 

However, I sometimes can’t help but let myself be taken over by frustration. This month, the language barrier has been what has caused me the most anger. It can also be difficult to feel at home at Operation Rescue, where kids are constantly running around, seemingly without a point in mind. I am reminded of the slogan from Chuck E. Cheese’s: “Where a kid can be a kid.” That’s exactly what Operation Rescue feels like, and man, when we get home afterwards, I feel exhausted. But I need to remember that all of these kids are from extremely disadvantaged backgrounds. For example, in our English class the other day, this one kid was being a troublemaker, and when Dad tried to include him in our game, some other kids said in Tigrinya, “He has nothing. [This kid] has nothing,” as in he’s one of the poorest kids in Mekele. These are the things that we must keep in mind whenever we feel that we are having a tough time here. There are other people who have it about a thousand times worse than we do.  

Meanwhile, I was just thinking about how now that we have wifi, given that it’s working (which it sometimes isn’t), I could just sit down and look up whatever I want. Just like in the U.S.! In fact, Eli and I are planning on waking up at 2:30 AM on Monday morning to hopefully see the Patriots lose the Super Bowl. I don’t know if it’s a bad thing because we were supposed to “unplug” this year, or if it’s a good thing because I don’t have to face internet withdrawal. I just hope that I’ll continue to fulfill our purpose here: experience a new culture and give back to the less fortunate.

When should we return to the U.S.? Before July 4th? After July 10th? It’s all complicated right now, but as I said before, it’s dawning on us. Between our arrival date (August 14th) and the first week of July, when we’ll probably leave Ethiopia, we are currently more than halfway there. We’re over halfway through our year in Ethiopia! Even closer is when our cousins from Kenya visit, and when we go to Italy and Austria for two weeks. As a certain movie character put it, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” That will probably summarize the next five months here.

P.S.: As I write this, Mom’s soap opera is on TV. One character literally just said “Hazal is cut out of the side of Satan. She looks like Satan.”

P.P.S.: Apologies for the lack of pictures (meaning none). We tried for hours to upload just three of them, at the smallest size, but were once again smacked in the face by our almost routine realization: in Mekelle, nothing is ever guaranteed.