Home Cooking

We've been searching for a house for a week now, after a first week of acclimatization. Yesterday we thought we had one, but it was too good to be true. But we know what area we want to be in (Bole Road, on the way to Bole airport) and we're confidant that the prices we're seeing are firm, not just inflated "faranji" prices.

• Dinner at Home


Last night we ate at the home of a cab driver whom we have befriended. His name is Yohannes, but asked us to call him "John". His regular station is near the hotel, which is how we met him. He's 29, married to a woman named Tarikua. She works in a beauty shop, also near the hotel - we went there to meet her and she braided Maddie's hair. John is well educated, savvy, friendly, and enterprising. Not only does he drive his little blue and white Pugeot taxi, he also rents houses and cars (later we'll learn that he also operates one of the hundreds of independent minivans that move the city). We had invited John to coffee a number of times and dinner once over the course of days when he's been driving us and showing us houses. Nonetheless, it was quite unexpected when he offered us an invitation to his house. We were touched.

Saturday night he picked us up at the hotel and drove us to his house. We've seen three types of housing in Addis: compounds, apartments, and corrugated tin shacks. The basic compound has a seven foot wall wall topped with another couple feet of wrought iron, razor wire, or simply broken glass embedded in concrete. These walls contain a carport, perhaps a garden area, and a house in a variety of styles from 2 or 3 bedroom ranch to multi-storied "villas" designed to modern western taste. We have not seen any houses that are not within walled compounds. Some areas are surrounded by a neighborhood wall and the individual houses inside have somewhat less imposing walls, perhaps just a tall iron gate embedded within a hedge.

John and Tarikua live in two rooms of the back houses in a compound with a small main house. Within the compound a few other families live, as well as a cow, and some pigeons. We sat, the 6 of us, John, Tarikua, and their friends Amush and Abraham in a 10x10 room decorated with their wedding pictures and a poster about Jesus. Tarikua and Amush must have cooked all day. They served an Ethiopian feast - Injera, egg wot (spicy stew), lentils, rice, gomen (greens), lamb cubes, and shiro (garbonzos, butter, & spice). In the background John played the two tapes of their multi-day wedding celebration. It sounds lame to have the video going during dinner, but it worked out well. For one thing, though John's english is good (he's quick and picks up jokes), Tarikua and Amush didn't say word one in English and Abraham's English was rough. And our Amharic is negligable. When there was a lull in the already difficult conversation, we could react to what was going on in the videos. And John and Tarikua were able to show us the celebration of which they were obviously proud.

We sat around the central serving dish and ate by pinching bits of sauce in a bit of Injera, in the traditional style. Our hosts had prepared bread also, since John knew that Isabel would prefer it. Half way through the meal Tarikua started looking at me with a worried expression. She said something to John who relayed her concern that I wasn't eating enough. I felt that I was moving apace and getting quite full, but apparently it wasn't good enough. Not wanting to insult, I ate and ate and ate, as did we all. Somewhere towards the end I asked in an aside to Miriam what the tray behind Amush was. Oh, they had forgotten the giant tray of salad, , a green salad garnished with dried sardines, potato chips, and slivered jalapenos, which Tarikua scraped onto the remains of the first part of the meal. I was happy the salad had not been forgotten entirely - I enjoyed especially the fish which we had not yet eaten anywhere in Ethiopia. Tarikua and John offered the kids some of the fish from the salad as Gursha, a ritual morsel served directly by the host. Thankfully, the kids took it well.

After dinner Amush prepared coffee, also in the traditional style, starting with unroasted coffee beans. She brought a small squared-hourglass shaped brazier filled with hot coals into the room. She set it on a green and white woven plastic mat with a long green fringe that was meant to look like grass. This is clearly part of the ceremonial accoutrement - when we've seen the coffee roasted elsewhere it is always on a grass mat. At this point the kids were playing in a very animated way with John, who was encouraging them. He would pretend to sleep while they approached, and then he would "wake up" and snap at their fingers. The mixture of careening kids and hot coals in a tiny space was fun in a an until-someone-puts-their-eye-out kind of way. Amush put the coffee beans in a small aluminum pan with a long handle and shook the pan over the coals, raising the heat by fanning through a hole in the brazier with a fan in her left hand. It took about 20 minutes to roast the beans, during which time Tarikua prepared and served popcorn, also standard fare, because of its preparation that is so similar to the beans. Eating the popcorn mingled with the smell of roasting coffee beans tastes like you're eating the beans directly.

Miriam kept wondering how Amush knew when the roasting was done. John said it is just by feel, maybe by looking at the colors of the beans and seeing that some of them are still light brown and need a bit more time. Amush passed the roasting pan to Tarikua who took it outside and transferred the beans into a deep stone pestle and ground them with a heavy iron rod. John took a turn because Tarikua was slowing down in the crushing. The smell was strong and good, even in competition with the cow stall. Tarikua poured the powdered beans into a small plastic container with a lid and let Isabel carry it back in to Amush. Amush spooned the fresh coffee into the tall-necked ceramic coffee pot with water and boiled it on the same coals she used for roasting. After a third boil, like Turkish coffee, she let the grounds settle and poured into small china cups with a spoonful of sugar waiting at the bottom. Miriam and Kristen took it with milk while I took it straight. We learned later that the milk was straight in its own right. Straight from the cow (they buy the milk from the owner of the house whose cow it is). The coffee was rich and had a bright citrus accent.

Abraham had tea. Miriam pointed out, "'scuse me", that John, Tarikua, and Amush weren't drinking any of the hard won coffee. They laughed and Amush poured for John, but then it was clear that after the kids had their warm milk with sugar there weren't enough glasses for the women to have their coffee at the same time.

John says that in the mornings when they want a coffee, they wouldn't go to the trouble, but that on a Sunday afternoon when they are just hanging out they regularly prepare fresh coffee this way. Does everyone know how to prepare coffee in this way? John says yes, everybody. All women, that is. Men don't do it. Though he says his mom taught him in secret how to do it.