One of my favorite things on this Earth is great food.  Lucky for me Ethiopia has some great foods and options to live on for 2 years. I’m sure many of you reading this have either heard about or tried Ethiopian food before (and loved it). The first time I had Ethiopian food was the day I graduated from high school. My parents and one of my best friends went to a restaurant in Chicago to celebrate my graduation. Little did I know that 5 years later I would be living in the country of that delicious food.

I have been a vegetarian for over 10 years, and I find it very easy to be a healthy vegetarian here. The Ethiopian Orthodox religion fasts on Wednesdays and Fridays year round, which means they do not eat any animal products, so many of the only options in restaurants are vegan dishes.  This fasting time is called ‘Som.

A typical lunch, including a lot of different kinds of Ethiopian dishes

Holidays are a big time to eat meat, because usually Ethiopian Orthodox Christians have been fasting for a long period of time before a holiday (2 straight months before Easter with no animal products), and families slaughter their animals and serve a lot of traditional meat dishes for the holidays. These are the only times it is hard for me to be a vegetarian, because when I go over to someone’s house for a holiday and they try to give me meat, I do not want to insult them by not eating. I solve this problem by explaining to them that I am a vegetarian and do not eat meat. Although they do not always understand my reasoning or motivation behind that, they are understanding of my wishes. Usually I just eat cooked cabbage instead…

One thing eaten with every meal is injera. It is the flat pancake-like bread that you use to eat the food. It is made from tef, which is grown everywhere around the country and is one of Ethiopia’s main farming crops. My host family taught me how to make it when I lived with them during training, which is just taking the tef flour, mixing it with water, and cooking it like you would a pancake over a special flat burner (usually a flat piece of metal over a wood-burning fire). The final product is a very large, flat, doughy bread with spongy holes and a slightly sour taste. Although many say it is an acquired taste, I have come to crave it everyday and love eating it with every meal.

     

Left: a stack of freshly made injera. Right: A woman in my house in Butajira making the injera over a fire-burning stove top.

     

Left: Fire-burning metal flat top used for making in injera in my compound. Right: The other injera maker in my house in Butajira.

The most common things to eat with injera us a runny stew called wot. This comes in many forms, such as misir wot (lentils), doro wot (chicken – usually only made on holidays), dinich wot (potatoes), etc. In Ethiopia, you would NEVER eat these with utensils, the only way to do it is to eat it with your hands by scooping it up with the injera.

A bayaynet, which is a mix of wot and vegetables on the same injera. One of my favorite lunch options

My favorite dish that is my usual order when I eat out at a restaurant, both in Durbete and Bahir Dar is called tegabino. It usually includes garlic or onions, and is a thick, creamy, spicy blob, made from shiro powder (that is really the only way I can describe it). It is also eaten with injera, and is served at every restaurant. The region I am in, Amhara, is known for the best tegabino, and is usually much thinner, soup-like consistency everywhere else in the country.

Tegabino – my favorite Ethiopian dish

One of the traditional meat dishes is tibs, which are small pieces of meat cut up, cooked, and served with injera. In terms of the kind of meat/what animal it came from, it’s usually best not to ask and can be anything from sheep to goat to cow. A very popular celebratory dish (especially in the southern part of the country) is called kitfo, and is big chunks of raw meat. Raw meat is a very common thing to eat here and many people do eat uncooked meat right after it is sliced off the animal (not my cup of tea obviously, but many other volunteers have been known to either love it or hate it).  Many times I have seen animals slaughtered, and often the day of a big holiday there are pools of blood in the streets from everyone killing their animals that they were saving for the celebration. For a long time I had a sheep in living in my compound, and didn’t think anything of it because there are always chickens and animals running around my compound. One day I opened my front door and the sheep was hanging upside down from the tree right outside my house and I had the perfect timing of seeing its throat slit right as I was leaving my house. Although it I still have a hard time watching things like this, and still don’t agree with the killing of animals for food, I have definitely become a little more desensitized to it since living here.

Tibs, a meat dish served in a small plate with a charcoal fire underneath to keep it hot and cooking

One thing all of those foods have in common is the traditional spice of Ethiopia, burbarry. It is a spicy red spice made from drying red hot peppers. It is extremely spicy and delicious and is put in all the food. Meetmeeta is also a common spice made from hot peppers that people usually eat with meat.

Every time I am in Bahir Dar, I always stop at a juice house for a fresh juice. They are all over the city and is a very common snack/drink. It usually includes avocado, guava, pineapple, and papaya, fresh squeezed and blended together with a lime squeezed over the top. It is extremely refreshing and a nice sweet break from all the other spicy foods.

Juice- at a juice house in a town near me. This one is avocado, guava, mango and pineapple.

Some of my favorite other miscellaneous foods are traditionally eaten for breakfast. The dish called ful is a breakfast food made from beans, and tastes like a chili, but with vegetables and eggs added to the top. Another of my favorite breakfast foods is called fatira – a big sweet pancake covered in scrambled eggs and honey.

    

Special ful – eggs, vegetables, and beans (right picture is after it is mixed).

Fatira – a sweet pancake with scrambled eggs and honey on top.

Eating meals here is a very social event, and it is common for a group of people to all eat off of one large plate. Another cultural tradition when it comes to food is called gorsha. This is one of my favorite cultural traditions when it comes to food. Gorsha is the act of feeding someone else while you are eating. This can be very alarming for foreigners who are unfamiliar with the tradition, such as I was when I first arrived to the country. My first day at my host family’s house, I was sitting in their living room eating a big meal they had prepared for me as a welcome. Suddenly, my host mom reaches to my plate, grabs a handful of my injera and wot and shoves it into my mouth. It was completely unexpected and I wasn’t sure how to act but they laughed and encouraged me to eat more. It broke the ice and introduced me to a completely new style of eating (which I am always open to learn about). It is supposed to symbolize hospitality and welcoming into someones home and mealtime, and is a friendly reminder that not everyone believes in personal space. Since then I have been gorshaed plenty of times and am used to it.

As I have talked about in previous posts, the coffee ceremony (or bunna ceremony) is one of the most important and common cultural traditions. Because coffee is such a huge part of both Ethiopian agriculture and culture, the bunna ceremony is a long process of roasting, grinding, and steeping the coffee beans to make a cup of coffee. It begins with picking the beans off the tree, which are green before they are roasted. The beans are then roasted over a charcoal fire, and crushed by hand until they are a fine powder. It is then put into a coffee jebena, which steeps and boils the coffee, and then poured and served. Traditionally the coffee ceremony is only prepared by women, and incense is always lit while it is being performed. It is a social event and many people are invited over to drink the coffee, which includes 3 rounds. The final product is a small cup of extremely strong and thick coffee, usually with sugar added to it. The first cup of coffee is called Abol, the second is Tona, and the third is called Baracaw. The coffee is usually accompanied by popcorn or bread.

The bunna ceremony setup. This is the step where they are roasting the beans.

I consider myself extremely lucky to be serving in a country with amazing food that I can enjoy and share with everyone back home. Compared to a lot of other countries in Africa which don’t have much variety or good food, Ethiopia stands out as one of the best.