D is for Doro Wat

Wat is a type of dish here. Essentially a one pot meal with a base of onions, garlic, burbere, and oil whose extra ingredients change: lentils, meat, chickpea powder, potatoes, tomatoes.

Doro wat though is special – it's only eaten for holidays. And fancy dancy important meals. But regardless, it's a rare dish. Doro means chicken.

It's the common wat base, onions, garlic, oil, burbere with a whole chicken and usually about a dozen hard boiled eggs thrown in. Depending on who makes it, it can be very oily, or very spicy. It's sometimes mixed with the local variant of cheese.

I guess I just get a kick out of chicken being the holiday, and most expensive, meat. Chicken was a cheap, biweekly meal in the states. Here, you can go to a fancy hotel and either get a meat stir-fry for 30 bir or doro wat for 70.

C is for Coffee

Ethiopia is coffee country, considered the birth place of it actually. Every one in Huruta tells me the good stuff is exported so what's in the market is only okay, but hey, I'm rather fond of it.

Coffee is such a huge part of the culture here that while I hated the stuff in America I have it all the time at site. There's a ritual called a coffee ceremony, and it involves roasting the beans, hand grinding them, and then boiling it in a clay kettle called a jebena. It's essentially an excuse to have people over to talk. In the States, you go to Starbucks. Here, you make your own. Much cheaper.

It takes awhile though, usually 90 to 120 minutes because roasting and boiling are done over charcoal and a coffee ceremony includes three cups of coffee. If you're in a hurry, you still have to have at least two cups.

You use the same grounds for all three cups, so the coffee gets weaker as you go along but it starts out what I imagine to be stronger than most American drinks. Each round has a special name, matching what locals call the discoverers of coffee.

B is for Bir

Local currency is called bir here. Bills are colored based on amount, black ink for 1s, blue for 5s, red for 10s, orange for 50s, and greed for 100s. Coins, sadly, can look alike. Both the 10 cent and 5 cent have the same heads and color, but the 5 cent is smaller and the tails says '5' instead of '10'. The 50 cent coin is silver, and the one bir coin is gold with a silver ring.

What really gets me though is that I'll get a bill from restaurants saying 6.01 or something similar. Pennies don't exist in the country. No one ever pays that extra cent.

Bir, on average, is dirty. I've only seen clean ones when they've come from the bank or as change from a place in Addis. Out where a lot of volunteers live, dust is all over the place and wallets are passed over in exchange for just stuffing money in a pocket or clutch. It's impossible to keep your money clean, but when I get a gritty one I try not to think about things too much.

I will say this though, the fabric they make bir out of hold up pretty well.

A is for Amharic

Amharic is the main language of Ethiopia. It's not the only language spoken in country, many regions, and even zones down in Southern Nations, have their own, but Amharic is the only one taught to every child.

It's not an easy language. There's some sort of chart out there in the world that describes a language as a level 1-5 depending on how easy it is to learn from the standpoint of English as your native language. Japanese is a 5. Amharic is a 4.

I like to think of it at Yoda speech, the grammar is rather similar – verbs at the end.

Despite being in the Oromia region, and having Afan Oromo/Oromifa as the official language, Huruta citizens speak mainly Amharic. All the paperwork however, is Oromifa. I just get people to translate for me. XD Many people have a knowledge of both languages here in town.