A fleeting political background
When I visited Ethiopia in August I could sense it was a bright, fresh country, full of hope. The recent political improvement shines out of people’s faces with optimism. In the tedj houses they sing about the new Prime Minister and their beloved country. “Ethiopia is a free country… and has been for four months now!” The crowds love this, and roar with laughter. The young and reformist Dr Abiy Ahmed was appointed in April by his own party, after 27 years of unrest and political instability. More recently there were many anti-government protests which forced me to change my initial plans to take the Djibouti-bound train to Dire Dawa for Harar, near the Somali region where there had been violence in Jijiga. Ahmed studied Conflict Resolution as his PhD and seems to now be putting his knowledge to good use. In his short time in office he has amended the anti-terror law which allowed arrest of dissenters; released thousands of political prisoners and allowed journalists inside the prisons; invited home the diaspora; and re-opened the embassies and started talks with Eritrea, allowing families to be reunited after decades of separation. He also lifted the ban on flying variations of the Ethiopian flag, and that of other regions and tribes - a legal offence under the previous regime. Now the country is bright with flags, banners, and posters. His face is displayed on stickers in the windows of every tuktuk and taxi. It’s hard to imagine such adoration of any UK Prime Minister, never mind a Tory.The cuisine
Ethiopia, uniquely in East Africa, offers a refined and stand-alone cuisine. Every meal is based around injera, a soft, fermented flatbread made from the gluten-free tef cereal, and acts as both plate and spoon. Evelyn Waugh described injera as “damp grey bread”, which is rather unfair, although not completely inaccurate. Some people dislike the sour taste of the bread, but if you enjoy fermented foods such as kimchi and choucroute, you’ll love Ethiopian food. The injera is rolled out flat over the plate, topped with many different dishes, and is eaten by tearing off a piece and scooping up the sauce with the right hand. Here is a selection of dishes I enjoyed.Shiro: a delicious, bright orange chickpea flour blend, served as runny or as stiff as the chef decides.
Doro wat: this prized national dish is usually placed in the centre of the injera platter. It's a dark spicy chicken curry served with hard boiled eggs stained the colour of the sauce. The eggs I ate in Ethiopia were the best I’d ever tasted: small, with yolks greedily taking up almost the whole white. If, like me, you abhor soft-boiled eggs with the risk of surprise ejaculate ruining your day, dependable hard-boiled East African breakfasts will suit you.
Kitfo: essentially steak tartare; raw minced high-quality steak. The kitfo I tasted was so tender and melty it hardly seemed like meat at all.
 |
| Tere sega with berbere and awazi |
Firfir: mixed torn pieces of leftover injera mixed with berbere and ghee-butter.
Misir wat: spiced red saucy lentils.
Tibs: meat (goat/sheep/lamb) roasted in butter and served sizzling over a charcoal burner.
Gomen: garlicky spinach, sometimes served with green tomatoes.
 |
| Injera platter - bad photo quality indicates large appetite. Note the tedj (honey wine). |
How to make the locals smile
Try to learn a handful of Amharic words and your trip will be so much easier and more enjoyable. Even with the few words I learned below, people were astonished and joked with me that I must be Habesha (Ethiopian).Unless indicated otherwise, the syllabic stress is spaced evenly over the word.
- selam or selam-no: hello and how are you?
- amasaganalo: thank you
- konjo / konjono: beautiful, delicious
- zie’her neng: I’m already here (useful for responding to tuktuk drivers - it will make them laugh)
- sintano? How much?
- bira: beer. Options include Wahlia (which means ibex), St George (pronounced Giorgis), Castel, Dashen, Habesha. My favourite is Wahlia, but the best design is Habesha - see the funky bottle top below. I tasted them all diligently so I could report back to my readers.
- buna: coffee (buna-le? do you have coffee? / Can I have a coffee?)
- and: one
Habesha beer bottle tops - ulet: two
- sost: three
- arat: four
- uhshi: Ok
- abakish: please (to a woman)
- abakich: please (to a man) - the -ich is like in the Scottish loch
- ciao: goodbye (left by the Italians)
- ow: yes
Reading list
Remote People by Evelyn Waugh. An acerbic and witty account of the coronation of Emperor Haile Selassie in 1930, and later his attempt to travel back to Europe by way of inland Africa. He travelled from Zanzibar to Mombasa, through Kenya, around the Ugandan end of Lake Victoria, into Tanzania, across Lake Tanganyika to the Belgian Congo (now DRC), where he was evicted by the ferry captain for not having declared a motorcycle he did not own, and eventually had to turn back at Elizabethville (now Lubumbashi) and take the boat to Southampton from Cape Town (“a hideous city that reminded me of Glasgow”). I love Waugh not only because he’s a splendid bitch (“She has a face like Lent”), but he makes an excellent travel companion, being as adventurous as I am with overland cross-border travel attempts.Waugh in Abyssinia by Evelyn Waugh. An excellently-named account (although he disliked the title, which was suggested by a friend), five years after the coronation, of the impending Italian war. It includes a thoughtful history of Ethiopia and the European-led partition of Africa, and again, describes his often futile attempts at overland travel in the face of Ethiopian bureaucracy, whilst managing to maintain a certain quality of life ("We sat down to a breakfast of tinned partridge and Chianti”). The reason I chose this book, aside from the subject itself, is because the first chapter is entitled “The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to the Ethiopian Question”. He doesn’t satisfactorily explain why or who, so the only rational conclusion is that he wrote it for me.
The Emperor by Ryszard Kapuscinski, in which the author travels to Ethiopia following the fall of Haile Selassie in 1974.
Ethiopian Airlines
If you fly into or leave the country with Ethiopian Airlines, you can pay the discounted/local fare on all domestic travel. The difference is considerable: to fly from Addis to Awassa, for example, was £35 with the discount, versus £115 at full price. But more importantly, the airline is supremely agreeable and flexible: when I didn’t take my plane to Gondar and hadn’t managed to change my ticket before the scheduled flight, the staff were happy to simply discount my next flight by the amount of the Gondar ticket, when I went into the office two days later. Such flexibility is not offered by European airlines. A final reason I like Ethiopian is because of the announcement when we reach a certain altitude: “Ladies and gentlemen, the seat-belt sign has been switched off. Electronic devices such as tablets, computers, and calculators may now be used.” I always looked around in the hope of seeing a flurry of accountants doing gleeful arithmetic and sighing with relief.
Tips and curiosities
Make friends. If you are a ferenji (white westerner) and particularly a woman you will be followed down the street. It’s up to you how much you let this bother you. After a few days I realised that if I was already walking with a local, I wasn’t hassled by anyone else. Sometimes you have to let people in to be left in relative peace. In Lalibela I had my two boys, Geteye and Yonas, and my guide Alex and my driver Ephrem, as well as other regular friendlies I met every day, and between all of them I didn’t have any space or time for pesterment. In Awassa people were a little less nuanced than in the north, shouting after me, “You, you you you you you YOU YOU!” The only thing you can do is smile and wave, or catch them off-guard them with a little Amharic.
Hygiene. Wash your hands. There is a washbasin and soap in the main space of every restaurant. It’s a very civilised practise and I wish it were similar in Europe, so that we could avoid dirty bathroom doorhandles after having washed. My theory about food-borne illnesses is that germs are much more likely to be carried to your face by your own unclean hands than from the kitchen. Eat the fresh salad and the beautifully cut fruit. Don’t live in fear of what might not happen. It’ll probably be fine. But take a first aid kit just in case, and don’t drink the tap water.
Happy travels!
______
If you enjoyed this post, you can follow me to receive new posts by email. Thank you for reading!
Or see more posts here: Get in the tuktuk, no time to explain
More on Ethiopia:
The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Ethiopia
Into Africa
How to rectify a bad decision
Lalibela: Ashendye women's festival
Comments
Post a Comment