Ethiopian New Year! (Sept 11 in the International Calender)

In the Ethiopian calender, Wednesday was New Year. It also happened to be a fasting day and so celebrations were spread out over Wednesday and then Thrusday, because unlike the Greek Othrodox Church who said it was okay for American to eat meat on Thankgiving (which falls during the advent fast) because it was a holiday, the Ethiopian Church can't give thier people a break.

Or maybe the habasha don't want one because then they get two days off of work.

Regardless, I enjoyed both days and got to understand it a bit better compared to last year when I was a newly arrived Hurutalite.

Flowers are big for New Year, after all it falls at the end of rainy season. Children will draw flowers on paper with the words Happy New Year on them (melkam addis amat or inquan adasrashichu) and pass them out to people they know. The adults who receive them traditionally give the child money, a bir or so. Flowers are also the traditional gift of thanks from the small groups of children who go caroling.

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It's usually the small children who come singing, and all our visitors this year were girls. They sing the local version of Auld Lang Syne, and not all are as well equipped with a drum as the one above. As with receiving a drawn flower, singers are gifted with change and maybe bread too if you have some on hand. Not everyone gives money, I know I didn't last year, but if you do the kids will give you a handful of flowers as well as the previous song.

Most of the ones I got still had the roots attached, but oh well. It was just fun watching their reaction when they say me. When the this group first came to the compound, they were singing to Dani who was on the porch and didn't see me in the living room. But then the girl in the pink dress stuck her head in the doorway and saw me. Her eyes went wide and her mouth mute.

On other holidays, I go house hopping for doro wat, but on actually New Years we just went to Dani's mom's house for coffee and then on Thursday went around town to feast. I feel really bad I couldn't even eat a half plate at our place for dinner.

I did make no bake peanut-butter chocolate cookies to share, except for the fact that I over estimated the amount of oatmeal I had left and so instead of staying in balls my cookie dough just filled up platters. But hey, people enjoyed it, and I have a huge amount left over for me to just spoon into my mouth. It gets me all the time, how they put three spoons of sugar into a tea cup but can't handle sweets.

Well, I guess they are small spoons.

Welcome to 2005

The Ethiopian calender is different from the Western one.  For starters, there are 13 months. Each month has 30 days, with the remainder of the days of the year residing in a month at the end of the year. It's called Paugme. 

This often means that while I think it's September 1st, it's actually August 28th.  September 11th, aka September 1st in Ethiopia, is the Ethiopian New Year.  It is now 2005 in Ethiopia. I heard the year difference is because of difference in thought over when Jesus died, but I'm not positive. All I know is that Ethiopia, and some other African country, are eight years off from the rest of the world.

Habasha New Years is not celebrated quite as loudly as the Western January 1st variety. There's no staying up late and waiting for midnight, there's nothing special about New Years Eve here.

Everything happens on the 1st.  And by everything I mainly mean eating.

Most Ethiopian dishes here are a variety of wot, a sauce different types of food are cooked in. For holidays, the wot to eat is doro wot. It's not like the States where some families might have ham and the others roast beef for Christmas, every family has doro wot here.

Doro is the Amharic word for chicken, and doro wot included freshly killed chicken and hard boiled eggs. It's customary that every guest gets at least one egg and one piece of meat. There are no forks and knifes here, you have to break up the egg with a piece of bread and eat the chicken by peeling pieces off the bone with your fingers. It's a rather messy affair, but tasty.

It's customary in the morning for children to visit their parents for a meal, and the parents will return the favor in the evening for dinner.

I spent the day with my host family, and had two meals. First at my host mom's mom's, and then later at her place. I then returned to Huruta (my host mom sent me out the door with a bag of oranges and bus money. Food and cash, I felt like I was leaving my yiayia and papou's place.) and had two more meals. One with a counterpart and one with my landlords.

I feasted four times in 7 hours, I was rather surprised I didn't explode. As it was, I slept rather well that night.