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Eating and drinking in Ethiopia
by Laurens de Bever
The national dish in Ethiopia is injera, a flatbread made from teff flour (sometimes wheat or other types of flour). It is served in various ways, with sauces, cooked vegetables, roasted or cooked meat et cetera. The injera itself tastes a bit sourly, the vegetables and meats are usually moderately spicy and are not all that different from European food.
During my stay in Ethiopia I came across a few traditional dishes which could be more of a challenge to a European person.
Dorze pizza
On our first day we made a visit to the Dorze tribe. The Dorze are very famous for their typical houses (see pictures). These appear in every travel guide, and since Dorze is easily accessible from Arba Minch the place is visited by many tourists. We were to experience this later.
We stopped at a little Dorze village and made pictures of the houses. The people in the compound invited us to come in and assured us there would be no obligations. A woman showed us how they prepare their traditional food. It is made of the inner part of the leaves of the so-called false banana plant (I guess it is called false banana, since it looks like an ordinary banana tree but does not give fruit). The rasped leaves are buried and left fermenting for three months. Then it is ready for eating. The smell is very strong and reminds vaguely of cheese - I would call it a challenge for untrained noses! The woman formed a flatbread from it, which she roasted on a fire inside banana tree leafs. The flatbread was served with two sauces: honey and a very spicy chili sauce (spicy even for me). Despite the smell of the fermented sourdough, the taste of the bread was actually quite nice.
The big surprise came when we wanted to leave. Suddenly the man that had invited us requested an "entrance fee" of 50 Birr (CHF 2.50) per person. Despite hard discussions and negotiations, Boniface did not manage to lower this price substantially. Very typical Ethiopian.
Borana coffee ceremony
While in Borana we visited Jillo Elema (the girl whose school education we have been supporting for about 10 years now) and her family in Jijiduu. The family offered us the traditional Borana coffee (they had to go and borrow the ingredients from neighbouring families first). For the Borana, this is an expression of true friendship. The coffee berries are round and about 8 mm in diameter; the coffee beans as we know them in Europa are inside. Normally, the women crack the shell of the berries between their teeth in order to prevent them from exploding when being roasted. With us as visitors, they did not feel comfortable doing this since they felt that Europeans might not want to eat something that had been in the mouth of someone else before. The coffee berries are roasted in butter or oil, and then cooked with milk or water and sugar (because of Lisa's milk allergy, they didn't use butter and milk in our case).
The coffee is served to one person at a time. One chews on the coffee berries and grind them between the teeth. The remainders are normally being spit out. In return for me, I did not feel comfortable to spit onto the floor in someone's house (even when this is tradition), so I just tried and swallowed the ground coffee beans. As a matter of fact, the coffee tasted a lot better than I had anticipated.
When one person has enough, (s)he gives the cup back to the woman leading the ceremony, who refills it and hands it to the next person. In total it is a very relaxed ceremony that may easily take one hour or more.
Borana barbecue
Apart from the coffee ceremony, the Borana express true friendship by offering a freshly slaughtered goat to the guests. The goat meat is roasted above a fire and then eaten directly from the bones. The meat is quite fatty and it is a challenge to get it off the bones. The only way is taking a part in your fingers and pick off the meat with your teeth. I had to learn that a goat has many many small bones and bone splitters.
As an additional expression of friendship, the Borana prepare a bracelet out of the goat skin for each visitor. They cut a narrow strip of skin, about 1 cm wide and 20 cm long, into which they cut a hole for putting it around the wrist (see pictures). Walking around in the compound like this I had to beware of the dogs who showed great interest for my bracelet J.
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