My First Ethiopian Easter

This past Sunday was Fasika, Ethiopia’s Easter. (For any new readers, Ethiopia’s calendar is entirely different from the calendar most of the world has adopted, so all of their holidays fall on different days of the year than ours do. This means I get two of everything!) For Ethiopian Orthodox followers, it marks the end of 55 days of veganism, referred to as fasting, for Lent. For Protestants, it marks the end of a two-day fast during the days that Jesus was dead. Regardless, Easter is the holiday of MEAT, and is tied with New Year’s for being the biggest holiday of the year.

The town was imbued with holiday spirit by the middle of last week, with offices shutting down, school attendance plummeting, and busloads of relatives returning home to their families. On nearly every compound, the women were busy making barley juice and roasting and grinding coffee beans in advance, while I took to hiding on my compound and in my back road neighborhood to avoid all the out-of-towners who made a big deal out of my presence.

On Wednesday I was invited to my favorite family’s house to eat muuluu (mushy boiled grains, served with mitmit’a – a spice mixture of red pepper and salt). Muuluu, I’m told, is a food that is also served at funerals throughout the year, and is prepared before Easter as a symbol of mourning for Jesus’ crucifixion. In my own analysis, the muuluu is a way to deny yourself enjoyable food in respect for the loss of life:

At my favorite family's house, eating muuluu and drinking coffee!

A close-up of my plate of muuluu, sprinkled with mitmit'a

On Easter Sunday, PCVs across Ethiopia were denied their sleep as both Orthodox and Protestant churches held their overnight church services (loudspeakers on the churches exteriors are a part of the service…), and then were invited to an early breakfast with their compound families who couldn’t wait to break their fast. Dishes served were doro wat, k’ai wat, t’ibs, or gunfo – all beloved and tremendously spicy meat and dairy dishes. They spent the rest of the day going from house to house, being repeatedly served heaping plates of doro wat, overfull glasses of homemade barley juice, and large chunks of dense wheat bread.

For me however, the day was anticlimactically quiet. I was invited to my compound’s main house for a coffee ceremony, where I was served coffee, barley juice, and bread, and later I was also invited next door and back to my favorite family’s house for more coffee ceremonies with them and their friends. I thoroughly enjoyed myself, because let’s face it, I don’t like spicy food, but I also was a bit disappointed that I wouldn’t emerge with any war stories of forcing down a 4^th plate of meat or a 6^th glass of juice.

In the end though, it reminded me of an important lesson: not everybody celebrates the holidays in exactly the same way. This is clearly true in America, but easy to forget when you’re learning about a new culture. It’s tempting to paint the picture with broad generalizations and an image of perfect homogeneity for the sake of simplicity, but there are complexity and variation within any culture. In my case, I gravitate toward quiet people, so my holiday was a quiet one. The people in my neighborhood are not wealthy, so it’s entirely likely that they ate their meat dishes with their families in the morning, and served the cheaper snacks in the afternoon.

All in all, it was a pleasant day, full of families, friends, and fun. Maybe next year I’ll give the neighborhood kids an Easter egg hunt!

All dressed up for Easter!