Almos in action and Gill cutting her birthday bread

Happy Birthday to Gill! Gill organised a birthday “do” this Sunday afternoon at our house. We paid for Almos, Fiona’s maid, to cook for us and she and I carried an amazing selection of Ethiopian dishes to our house (I perhaps should explain at this point that everyone has a maid. The name “maid” might conjure up certain stereotype images, but here having somebody clean and do your washing is entirely normal. For many women it provides the only income they can get).

Even walking through the streets wiith Almos was eye-opening. Normally when I’m on my own I am used to being stared and shouted at. When I walked with Almos, an Ethiopian woman, she got the shouted comments and I was just ignored. I later discovered that she was receiving lewd, silly or abusive comments just for being seen alone with a Ferenji man. Although Almos is about 22 years old, she’s tough and I wouldn’t mess with her! She had her first child when she was ELEVEN.

Gill invited senior colleagues from college (Getachew, Fitsum and Mesfin), our landlord Fasil, his sisters Emembit & Mersha and nephew Abi, and the other VSOs, Fiona, Leena and Margaret. The first few minutes were a bit awkward as we all sat in our living room. Ethiopians don’t have a culture of “parties” where people freely mingle and chat so it was all a bit stiff and formal to begin with. Somebody at home once said to me that “inhibitions are soluble in alcohol”, but this was a social gathering without the great Western solvent. A lot of people here do not drink alcohol, and those that do drink do so in very modest amounts – partly a culture thing and partly a poverty thing. Gradually people loosened up and we had a good time.

For me, I was fascinated by the dynamics between the Ethiopians. The three college staff knew each other very well, and they filled the social space quite confidently. Fasil was uncharacteristically shy and quiet and only joined in conversation when directly spoken to. He is younger than the college staff and is “only” a teacher i.e. near the bottom of the heap of educated people. His sisters and Almos did not participate at all. As soon as I started doing anything to get the food ready to serve, Almos would take over while Fasil’s sisters automatically made all the preparations for the coffee ceremony. There was never any expectation that the men would help and, when I tried to do any of the “chores” the women would laugh and make it very clear there was no way they were going to let me do such things. Once Fasil and the college staff left, the Ethiopian women chattered away between themselves in Amharic. We were left with a small mountain of food to sort out. If we had a fridge or freezer (oh how I dream of the blast of cold air when you open a fridge door…) we could feed ourselves for the next three days. We kept some for us, gave some to Almos to feed her two kids, some to Fasil’s sisters and the rest went to Bobby, the cute-but-useless “guard” dog. Bobby now likes me.