ethiopia

Let’s talk recipes for a moment. In the 2,500 metre above sea level kitchen of Lalibela, Ethiopia, bring together a generous dash of Orthodox Christianity, mix in a few thousand metres of white, cotton cloth, sprinkle in a bit of day and night chanting and bring to a boil in a cross-shaped bowl filled with holy water. This Epiphany dish is better known to the locals as Timkat … and no, this is not an endearing name for the regional felines that stalk in and out of doorways nibbling on scraps. Timkat is the Ethiopian Orthodox Church celebration of the baptism of Jesus in the River Jordan (unlike the Catholic version of January 6th, which celebrates the manifestation of the holy nature of Christ before the three kings) and is usually celebrated on the 19th of January instead, though leap year can push it back to the 20th if it so chooses.

When one comes to sit at this feast of Timkat, there are a few things you should know so as not to embarrass yourself in front of the thousands of guests also scooting up to the dinner table. Lalibela is perched in the northern regions of Ethiopia, and its table-setting is a sight to behold whether it is for a yearly gathering or a simple breakfast! Can one only whip up this tasty religious culinary treat in Lalibela? Not to worry! With a simple change of kitchen and bowl, this is a national dish that can be thrown together once a year in any Ethiopian town or village! But for the sake of argument, we’ll just keep to the ingredients found here. Lalibela (whose title comes from Gebre Mesqel Lalibela, ruler of Ethiopia in the 12th and 13th century) was previously known as Roha before a change of name was decided upon to honour the king who so loved the area. King Lalibela had supposedly seen Jerusalem before its capture by Muslims in 1187 and decided to build a “new” Jerusalem in Ethiopia, which explains why many of the place names here are Biblical in nature, even down to naming the river running through the town Jordan. It was this king that commissioned the most spectacular of the city’s features … the rock-hewn churches. If these extraordinary monolithic churches can be considered as the furnishings of Lalibela’s kitchen, then they would be God’s very own spice rack! Within easy walking distance, eleven of the world’s most exotic of “spices” can be found dug down into the living rock. By any standards, these are amazing structures that rival even the magnificent façades of Petra in Jordan, especially if you believe in the theory that a majority of them were carved and constructed by medieval Ethiopians during Lalilbela’s approx. forty year reign. With names like Bet Medhane Alem (Saviour of the World), Bet Maryam, Bet Golgotha, Bet Amanuel, Bet Merkorios, Bet Abba Libanos, Bet Gabriel-Rufael, Bet Meskel, Bet Mikael, Bet Danaghel and, my personal favourite, Bet Giyorgis (where St George – the patron saint of Ethiopia – and his trusty steed were said to have made a visit, prompting it to be quickly names after him) to tantalise your senses, a day or more perusing the narrow corridors, contemplating the symbolic carvings and early Ethiopian Christian artwork or standing in awe before the 60 cm, 7 kg gold Lalibela cross will leave you with memories not soon forgotten.

Now that the setting has been placed, let us prepare ourselves to get into the menu at hand, shall we? Firstly, if you wish to be properly dressed for the occasion, you must wrap yourself up in the lengthy white cotton cloth that is typical of church attire throughout the country. One would hate to stand out in the procession that goes from the churches to the central meeting point, eh? I know what you are thinking … “White? But I look so much better in a black tux / red evening dress!” Well, if you happen to be higher in the ranks of the church, then maybe you could get away with more colourful robes of the clergy and a gold embroidered velvet umbrella as an accessory, but since most of us most likely are not Ethiopian Orthodox priests, we’ll just try to blend in, shall we? On the eve of Timkat, each of the churches starts with a religious ceremony and then proceeds to carry (with much chanting, dancing and singing) their holiest of items, the tabots, to a central meeting place in town.

“What are talbots?”, I hear you ask. A soup starter? A Greek salad? How many of you have seen Raiders of the Lost Ark? Well, according to the Ethiopians (Steven Spielberg and George Lucas as well), the tablets that Moses brought down from Mt Sinai, which were stored in the Ark of the Covenant, were not lost after the destruction of Solomon’s Temple by the Babylonians in 586 BC. Legend has it that they were brought back to Ethiopia and hidden here for ages. The original tablets and the Ark are now claimed to be housed in a chapel in Aksum (or Axum, if you so prefer), though only the monk that guards this holiest of religious items is permitted to view them (and we all know that your face would melt off if you did see them close up anyway, right?). This has led to the tablets, or tabots, becoming the most sacred symbol of the Ethiopian Orthodox church, and every church is supposed to contain their replica versions within their inner sanctum.

Just because they are replicas, don’t think you will ever get the chance to feast your eyes upon them either! This is still a bonus solely for priests. Even during the procession, they are thickly covered in ornate velvet cloth as they are transported from one place to the next. Definitely a closely guarded recipe, wouldn’t you say? The priests tempt us and get us salivating as they parade their treasures around town and down to a central meeting point, where they are prayed over, used in blessings and, in general, just glared upon as objects of inspiration.

The Timkat Festival in Lalibela continues to draw hordes of tourists, though. And as of February 2011, you may find it difficult to find a space at this “dinner table”. Visitors and those with cash can get a better viewpoint from the wooden stands set up around the baptismal font, but I should forewarn you: after the priest has spoken his lengthy prayers, blessed the water and done a quick sprinkle over his deacons, even the angels say, “I’m outta here, dude” and all hell breaks loose! Everyone who is anyone wants that water, and since the priest knows better that to hang about and waste his day dabbing a little on the foreheads of the masses, everyone with a cup or bucket is permitted to dive right in and sling this heavenly soup for all it’s worth. Now, most local folks truly want to get a bit of a holy soaking, but those coming for a bit of voyeurism up in the stands become a captive crowd of slow moving targets just waiting for a good drenching. Watch your cameras, as I have heard many a pale-skinned onlooker cursing (in very un-Christian-like manners) the day they had their costly digital ruined with an overdose of moisture.

After the pool has been drained without a drop not doused over the heads of whoever is in range, everyone heads away for a break to towel themselves off and get into some warmer dry garb. You can’t be away too long, though, because desert is yet to be served. Around noon, everyone reassembles again, and a procession begins complete with chanting and dancing, leading the tabots back to their resting places to await another day.

And so concludes our Ethiopian feast. I hope your belly is stuffed to bursting and you have enjoyed your time without drinking too much and making an arse of yourself. But please: take the dishes to the sink and wash your hands, will you?

The “Cradle of Civilisation”; the “land of the burnt-faced men”, Abyssinia: home of the powerful Aksumite empire from the 2nd to 7th century A.D. – These are just some of the descriptions that have been granted upon Ethiopia through the centuries. Sounds majestic, does it not? Before I even go into this, let me first stress that Ethiopia’s history is just that … majestic! There is more than enough to be proud of for its nearly 80 million population (a rough estimate made at the end of 2008), and to top it all off, it was also one of the only African countries never to succumb to colonialism during the European land-grab of the 19th and 20th centuries. Italy tried their damnedest … twice … and failed miserably as the strong-spirited Ethiopians proved too crafty to enslave (though the Italian influence, mainly in the form of the carving of roads through impossible landscape and the donation of pasta-based cuisine, has had its positive effects). Even communism could not seem to retain a lengthy foothold, only lasting approx. 17 years. Little would you expect then that one of the most innocent of ideas could rip asunder such a proud people in such a short space of time. In a span of just over five years, Ethiopian children have been stripped of their dignity and have become a plague upon the nation with their hands outstretched and palms open. The cries of “You! You! Gimmee money! Gimmee pen! Highland*! Highland!” can be heard nearly everywhere following after the faces of those less pigmented. Even the famines of the 1980s (most Westerners sole knowledge of Ethiopia due to the Live Aid concerts) was a minor toothache compared to the root canal that is needed now. Do not blame the parents of these persistently begging youth! Do not blame the government (there is so much else to blame them for) for the lack of school facilities! Do not blame their economic situation (though they are rated as the 3rd poorest nation in the world) or the hardship of their lives! Do not even blame tourism, which brings an influx of much-needed income into the country and broadens the world’s limited knowledge of this fascinating place and its wonderful people! Blame the tourists! Blame the photographers! Blame the magazines and journalists! Thanks to that first batch of individuals coming in under the moniker of mass tourism, a majority of the children have been converted into obnoxious little scabs.

Why do I put the blame upon the above-mentioned? You see, many years ago, after the fall of the Derg (the heavy-handed communist rule of the mid-70s to early 90s) and the pointless conflict with Eritrea, adventure tourists and magazines like NG could get back into the country and photo the average citizen, not just the scores of dead that had piled up from the conflicts and famines that they had a few glimpses of previously. Here were a race of people after many years of hardships and with little previous contact with the outside world that were curious to see other people. From all accounts (since I was not there at the time), the staring at foreign visitors was due to genuine curiosity and true interest. Then some twat thought to himself: “Hey, I remember seeing pictures of people here on Live Aid a few decades or so ago. Aren’t they all supposed to be emaciated and on the verge of starvation and death? Well, they look pretty fit now … probably from all that wonderful aid we have sent them .. so maybe I will give them a pen for posing so nicely in a photo for me. That pen should help them all learn to read and write. And since they must also be dying of dysentery, I’ll give them my bottle of water. And what the hell … a few Ethiopian birr** could do no harm! Maybe help them make ends meet!” OK, let us go through the wrongs here:

1) Yes, there was a horrible famine during the early to mid-80s which saw nearly one million people die, but what you may not realise is that the communist government of the time exasperated this exponentially by taking the food that was being produced back to Addis Ababa to feed themselves. The two worst areas affected (the Tigray and Oromo regions) were further pushed into hell by being major regions opposed to the government of the time. Let’s put this in a bit more different perspective, though. Around 8 million people affected by the famine … a conservative guess of population at the time would be around 50 million inhabitants. In other words, the population was tightening its belt overall, but that does not mean they were all the walking skeletons as seen on TV. Don’t get me wrong, I am not trying to belittle the situation at all! It was horrible … but this is not what should define the country!
2) Western aid, my arse! The US government barely lifted a finger (on the grand scale of things) when it came to feeding those affected by the famines, which is why Bob Geldof tried to do what he could with Live Aid. You have to remember, though, there really isn’t much the US wants from Ethiopia. No oil! Well, there is coffee … but Starbucks wasn’t the world power in the 80s as it is now. As for all that money from Live Aid, well, Mengistu (the communist leader of the Derg and murderer of Haile Sellasie) and his cronies made sure it got dispersed evenly … among themselves!
3) In a country with a literacy rate of approx. 43%, this is a country that doesn’t need pens! It needs teachers and schools! If you want to help, don’t give a kid a pen (What are they going to write on? They don’t have paper either!) … find a school or educational organisation; donate books or other educational material (to the schools, not the individuals)! If you prefer to give money, then donate to an official cause or community project. When you give individual kids gifts of pens, money or books, you never know how they are actually going to use it. A big scam from children is to get you to buy them a dictionary or something from the local shop (at slightly inflated prices), then after you are out of sight, they just sell it back to the shop for a cut in the profit. That dictionary you just proudly purchased has probably been “donated” to the kid 7 or 8 times already!
4) “Highland” was the first bottled water available in Ethiopia, and children will chase you down the road for miles screaming this word at you. Good, clean drinking water is needed everywhere in the world, but handouts don’t really teach people anything. There is water in the country (though much less in the dry season), but teaching people irrigation techniques and helping communities get hold of filtration pumps (which a few private companies have started donating or selling at reasonable rates to locals) helps people be self-sufficient and retain their pride. Also, these one litre plastic drinking bottles are not the most durable items in the world. After they are worn out, do you think they get thrown into a rubbish bin or recycled?
5) Unfortunately, most people are just people. Money is needed, and human nature makes us all opportunistic at times. When the first photographers came into Ethiopia en mass, they gave each photographed individual a donation of a few birr** for their time. Now we have taught them that since there is not much money in tending your own fields, herding your own cattle, leading your traditional lives, the best way to make money is to ignore everything else, screw education and prostitute yourselves for a camera. Children are no longer learning long-term ways of how to be useful members of their tribe. They stand around for tourists (actually, they don’t just stand around … they follow you everywhere you go, constantly pestering you to take a photo and give them 2 birr**). There are quite a few adults from the tribes in the south of Ethiopia that do this too (the Mursi and Arbore tribes being the worse). Besides their appearance (and even that is changing), there is little you can see of their traditions during a visit. They just stand about doing bugger all except waiting for the next carload of tourists to arrive. Actually, the adults do a bit of something … they buy cheap alcohol from town and get pissed. Since they are too “busy” waiting for photographers and easy money to do anything productive, like farming or hunting … or getting an education, passing the time with booze has become a thing to do. There are some associations trying to get people to continue their lives as they usually would in front of foreigners by getting the tribe to accept a flat fee from a tour group, the funds of which would benefit the entire tribe and not just the individual, but this will be a long time in the making. And many individuals are too spoilt now to lose out on their own personal gain.

As you can see, we did this and have only ourselves to blame for the discomfort now felt when kids come chasing after cars like dogs or the unease felt when stopping for a pee break and being swarmed by these same kids with outstretched palms unknowingly behaving like ravenous vultures over carrion.
I really don’t mean to sound so negative … I just hope we haven’t caused permanent harm by wiping away any good opportunities that are on offer for the children. The country and a majority of the people are something to behold, and it is definitely an experience that should not be missed. We just need to stop teaching them that easy handouts are the way to the future. We need to stop ripping away their proud past. We need to stop treating them as inferiors that cannot manage their way out of a wet paper bag and could not survive without the aid of the wealthier Westerner. This country was once a major empire and has had the blood of King Solomon running through its leaders’ veins for centuries. It had and still has so much to hold its head up high for. And these heads deserve more than to be pitied and looked down upon.

* Highland was one of the first brands of bottled water in the country
** Ethiopian currency

Tim the Cat

You! Gimme Pen!!