While the resin incense burning in spreading the scent in the air, coal stove heats up in the feet of Belenesh. When the beans are roasted, their smoke is pushed towards us, and the aroma is so intense as to be unknown even to an Italian.
It 's the coffee ceremony, welcome in a house of Ethiopia.
Belenesh invites us to help you grind the beans in a mortar and pestle to prepare the brew tanks that will be served three times in imitation of porcelain cups with at least two tablespoons of sugar each. Horn of Africa, exactly the Ethiopian region of Kaffa -hence the name-is in fact the original plant whose fruits are much appreciated throughout the world.
The Ethiopians know that and I am proud, as are the fact that Lucy, the first hominid (to be precise austrolopitecus afarensis, but here called Dinqinesh , or "you're beautiful") has been found in their land giving it the name of the cradle of humanity.
Jaka and I are here only for a little over a week, but we're absorbing as much as possible of Ethiopia, flooding in its history, its people and its traditions.
Above all, perhaps what marks us at the moment, the raw ambivalence of what the UN considers the fourth poorest country in the world.
Ethiopia is not in fact a tourist destination, and the few who choose it as such rely on package tours organized by European agencies rather than from independent to savor the everyday reality as well as landscapes. And if Thus the ill-concealed surprise at the sight of the few Ethiopians faranj (white-skinned foreigners, in Amharic) often turns into frenzy to get to know and practice the little English (at best) or groped to sell some item or service (at worst), we also discover when we go totally independent travelers from all their interpretative scheme, arousing interest and curiosity exaggerated.
With all the good but also the hassles that may arise, we are never alone.
Despite this, we quickly learned to dribble unsolicited bids, and so far we are able to enjoy all that Addis Ababa, Bahir Dar e Gondar avevano da offrirci.
La capitale, un confuso caotico e rumoroso miscuglio di fango e potere (che lascia lo spazio di una strada tra una delle principali baraccopoli e il lussuoso palazzo del Primo Ministro), ci ha aiutato a prendere le misure di questo paese a noi nuovo, regalandoci la vista dello scheletro di Lucy e l'emozione di assistere alla preghiera cantata al mausoleo di Beta Maryam (il credo etiope, unico al mondo, รจ un cristianesimo di derivazione copta egiziana vissuto intensamente dalla popolazione e spesso pervaso da un forte misticismo).
Una volta sull'altopiano, Gondar ci ha sorpreso svelandoci un'Africa di castelli seicenteschi dalle torri merlate e dall'atmosfera medievale, a surreal experience lived so far from Camelot. But it was definitely Bahir Dar on the shores of Lake Tana, for us so far left an indelible mark: to share the daily life of an Ethiopian family who hosted us for three days in his mud house without even the bathroom, was the more faithful mirror of a reality only photographed back in the tourist brochures.
The injera (a type of flatbread made of a local grain called Teff that Ethiopians use as a dish and pour on which various types of condiments) of Belenesh, wine Yordanos craft, stories of childhood tigrina the householder Kidane, ambitions and hopes of us Aizier have catapulted us into daily life far away, in contact with the earth and from her employees.
In those days, the wonderful painted monasteries of Lake Tana and Blue Nile Falls (the source of which we have been bugged by a rotund hippopotamus among the papyrus) were just wonderful side dish.
We are going to leave, to a trek to the mountains Simiens populated by herds of gelada baboons we know new surprises in store for us and spectacular views from its more than 3000 meters.
Our Horn of Africa continues, and so the portarvici with us.
Big hugs anointed injera and shiro
Tommy and Jaka
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