Happy Fasika! (Drop It Like It's Hot)

For those of you whose knowledge of Amharic does not extend to holidays:

Fasika = Easter

Fasika will probably be the biggest celebration I see while I'm in Ethiopia. I will not be arround to see the celebration of the Ethiopian millenium which I imagine will also be a big deal. You can also tell how long a ferenji has been in town by how many invitations to eat at other peoples houses you get. I recieved three. People who had been here 3 months or upwards seem to recieve about 20 each. Fasika is also the celebration of the end of Orthodox Ethiopians fasting period which is the 40 days of Lent plus 15 extra days at the start for some reason I can't remember. At 9PM of Saturday before Easter Sunday they are allowed to eat meat again and they do this with great gusto. Starting with lots of chicken then going to sleep and waking up to eat lots of sheep and some more chicken. Beef is eaten, but it's not a celebratory meat (sort of like how you'd be much more likely to eat turkey than beef at Thanksgiving or Christmas).

I just got back from my first meal of the day which was incredibly filling and consisted of doro wot (chicken fried in burbere sauce), tibs (boiled mutton), ouzo, coffee and tallah (a disgusting local drink that I can describe as a homebrewed beerish thing that has a lot in common in flavour to cold weak coffee). Also a banana. Not particularly the healthiest meal I've ever eaten. There's way more food than you can eat and all they do is put more and more in front of you, constantly urge you to have more and then look faintly distressed if you say "No" on the very valid grounds that you are full, so that next time you feel guilty and say "Yes" but only a little and then they serve you/pour you way more than you wanted. The food is good though, but I am luckily only going to two meals (I dodged an invitation) otherwise I might explode/get embarassingly drunk. Which is what I expect to hear happened to some of the other ferenjis tomorrow.

What was perhaps the funniest part of the whole event was Ethiopian's love, but general misunderstanding of top 40 party rap. The meal starts we all go through the ritual handshake greetings that characterize Ethiopia, say we're all fine, get introduced to people we don't know, etc, sit down and start to eat. While we're starting to eat our hosts son turns on the DVD player and starts playing some music. Myself, Norma (a 73 year old coworker from Penticton) and an extremely Orthodox religious family will spend the next hour or so listening to such fine artists as Snoop Doggy Dog, The Game, Lil Jon, 50 Cent, Ludacris, G-Unit, and Eminem sing about how good they are at spending money, doing drugs, and having sex with promiscuous women. I'm fairly certain they also have no idea what the songs are about because I can't imagine the strongly held religious beliefs would allow them in the house if they did. The only attempt I made at explaining rap was quickly sidelined by their disbelief that poor people exist in North America, though so we didn't stay on the topic for too long.

To be honest I'd say that despite the fact that they don't understand the lyrics I'm pretty sure they can grasp the meaning of the songs as the videos that accompany the songs are exactly the ones you'd see on MTV or Much Music in all their bikini-girl glory. It was a surreal meal, now I'm going to go have my second one though and if it's notable I'll write about it tomorrow.

Jordie out