EASTER COMES TO ADWA

It was a holiday to remember. Sunday, May 5^th,  2013 meant more than Cinco de Mayo for American couple Daniel and Danielle Luttrull. A few years ago the couple celebrated Cinco de Mayo in Waco, Texas, by taking their dinner to-go from a sketchy but delicious “taco truck” on the side of the road. Last year the wife was helping to throw a Mexican-themed baby shower for her sister. This year their bedroom was filled with the unmelodic chanting of the neighborhood churches, broadcasted by loudspeaker throughout the town; chickens squawked and goats bleated for their lives at 4 AM, as all the neighbors awoke and began sharpening their knives. They were celebrating Ethiopian Orthodox Easter.

“Christmas morning is the closest thing—American—that I can compare it to,” Danielle said. “But there’s really nothing else like it.” Imagine a town where 93% of the population has fasted from meat and every other animal product for 55 days. They have eaten nothing since Maundy Thursday. And so, in the wee hours of the eve of Easter, sleep was nearly impossible. It wasn’t Santa who was coming—it was the delicious doro watt, kay watt, dulet, and tibbs (four beloved Ethiopian meat dishes). Saturday night Orthodox and Catholic Easter services alike began at 11 PM, and lasted until 4 AM—the release from mass signaling permission to break fast. No girls in flowered dresses would head to any Adwa church at 8 or 10 AM Easter morning; keep church for the night—Easter Sunday was for eating.

Hours before Easter, the Luttrulls received a text from another Peace Corps volunteer, Laura from Assela: “Twas the night before Fasika (Easter) and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, because they were all killed and cooked.” The Luttrulls were surprised, while planning a joint Easter meal with their neighbors, when the man of the house—Girimkil Mebratom—asked, “What time? One o’clock? Two o’clock?” Had Mr. Mebratom been referring to what the Ethiopians call “the foreigners’ clock,” this would have been more of what the American couple had in mind: the menu was calling for spicy chicken and goat stews, after all. But on the Ethiopian clock, one o’clock is 7 AM; two o’clock is 8. Danielle requested 8 AM, which was readily agreed to. With evening came Mr. Mebratom and his 13-year-old son to the Luttrulls’ door, holding two of their own chickens. Mebratom indicated the one under his son’s left arm. “Better. Fat. Daniel, test.” Daniel held the chicken, testing its weight. “Nay Teddy. ‘Ajoka, yikerta, ajoka,’ illu,” Mebratom laughed. (“Teddy’s chicken. ‘Be strong, I’m sorry, be strong,’ Teddy told the chicken.”) As the neighbors bid goodbye until morning, the Luttrulls verified the time. “Two o’clock?”

Mebratom: “One o’clock.” The breakfast hour for spicy stew had been changed: 7 AM it was. But for the neighbors who hadn’t eaten in days, and hadn’t tasted meat or eggs or yogurt or butter in two months—it only made sense that they would celebrate their Easter meal as soon as was possible.

Teddy’s egg-laying pet wasn’t the only animal doomed to an ill fate this Fasika. Thousands of goats were led by rope from market to homes Saturday, thousands of chickens carried upside down by their tied-together talons. The Luttrulls witnessed two rogue sheep bullet past them, tied together by the neck, like two children wildly escaping a dreaded three-legged race. Every family in Adwa would be preparing various kinds of meat Easter morning—most probably, at least one of the stews would come from a live animal, slaughtered in the family’s own yard. “Do you think there is a goat shortage after Easter?” asked Lauren, another Adwa PCV. Lauren’s Easter plans consisted of visits to four different houses, where she would be expected to eat a full meal at each home. The Luttrulls limited themselves to various meals with one family. Too many times the couple has been stuffed beyond Thanksgiving style, their hosts ignoring their protests and insisting they eat at least two plates of food. (Ethiopian definition of insisting: as the guest moves his plate away from the host, begging, “No! No! I’m so full!”, the host pulls the plate back towards herself and indignantly scoops heaping piles of seconds onto the injera. This provides conflict for the young Americans, whose culture had its share in saying, “Clean your plate! There are people starving in Ethiopia.”) While Lauren claims to not have perfected the art of refusing food, she’s discovered how to refuse seconds of the locally-made beer, sewa: “I put the cup under my chin, and block the opening with my hand, shaking my head no. It works.”

The second of the three core goals of Peace Corps’ mission is “To help promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served.” Official goals aside, it’s only natural that proud Americans would want to share their culture with their neighbors. So while the Luttrulls contributed to the Easter feast in Ethiopian ways—the coffee ceremony, monetary contribution for goat meat, making yogurt, supplying special Ethiopian liquor—they also added some American flare, making brownies in their makeshift oven, and guacamole (it was Cinco de Mayo, after all). If the brownies weren’t enough (according to Daniel, “They loved them! We’ll have to make them more often”), Danielle’s family sent them plastic Easter eggs from America. This resulted in what was most probably Adwa’s very first Easter egg hunt. It was at least a first for the seven participants, which is ironic given that as Daniel noted, “Easter egg hunts make more sense here. They haven’t eaten eggs in eight weeks. Also, since many of these children raise hens they have actually hunted for eggs before.”

The hunt was a definite success. According to Danielle, “The moment we said, ‘Go!’, they shot like bats out of hell. It was hilarious to see: even the 16-year-old dashed about the yard in a frenzy.”  The children appeared to love every minute of it. Within the plastic eggs were hard candies, fake tattoos, and coins. After each child collected their five, they cheered, “Hamushta!” (Five!), sat in the grass, and immediately took to their loot. “Hanti kirshi allani!” said Luam (I have one birr!), counting the coins from her eggs. It was evident that this birr held more value to her than if the Luttrulls had just handed her 5 birr, the approximate cost of the candy and coins in Luam’s eggs. Welcome to the fun and excitement of the beloved Easter egg hunt.

Mr. Mebratom had something to say of the matter. “Elly,” he repeated, demonstrating with his hands twisted together, and one hand emerging from within the other. “Elly and…rabbit,” he concluded, with the help of the 18-year-old. “Competition.” Daniel, watching Mebratom’s hands, hearing him say, “Under stone,” suddenly realized “elly” is “turtle.” “The tortoise and the hare!” Daniel said. “Yes, yes,” said Mebratom. “Meron, rabbit, the same. All children go, go, go. She sleeps. After five minutes, she go. She to find.” Meron, Mebratom’s 4-year-old daughter, had been napping at the start of the hunt, despite her brothers’ efforts to wake her by putting brownies in her mouth. A few minutes into the race, the bustle had woken her, and she sheepishly watched from the side of the house. When Meron, confused, wouldn’t agree to follow the others, Danielle picked her up to find the eggs together. After Meron’s first reach into tree branches for a green egg, her smile showed compliance. She was ready to hunt. The tale of the tortoise and the hare was being revived in Ethiopia.

As it turns out, when you set up camp in a place whose mother tongue is not your own—miscommunication is bound to occur, continually. Holidays are no exception. Danielle was making brownies at 4:30 AM (not because they bake for 2 ½ hours; but because one too many mic checks from the church stopped her sleep cycle at 3 AM). Daniel was awake making guacamole at 6. But when Misilal—Mr. Mebratom’s wife who speaks not a word of English—arrived with the main entrée that morning, she arrived alone. She held a plate of injera for two, and a bowl of doro watt. It looked more like a strange pizza delivery than an Easter party. The Luttrulls indicated all the seating, the pile of plates, the row of cups, and the dishes they made, saying, “Your family. We eat together,” and for reasons unknown, she insisted otherwise. The feast they had planned on suddenly became a quiet and disappointing breakfast for two. When Misilal brought them a bag of fresh raw meat, the Luttrulls realized this was the goat stew they had paid for.

“It was like an awful M. Night Shyamalan movie,” Danielle said. “Once it all went down, we started realizing how they had been interpreting everything all along—and awful interpretations. When Girimkil asked, ‘Our house or yours?’ and we said, ‘Our house,’ we thought we were inviting them. They thought we preferred to eat their food in our own home without them. A breakfast delivery. When we gave Girimkil a 100 birr note, and said, ‘For the meat tomorrow,’ we thought we were ensuring them a great Easter feast. They thought we were having them fetch us goods. We felt awful.”

But when the family showed up at the Luttrulls for lunch, the Shyamalan film theory quickly deflated. “So, was this the plan all along?” the Luttrulls wondered, experiencing yet another rollercoaster of misunderstanding that has become a weekly occurrence for them in Adwa. Instantly everything was perfect. Daniel and Luam (Girimkil’s oldest daughter, in the sixth grade) prepared “tibbs” together: goat meat, onions, and jalapenos sautéed and served over injera. For the first time the Luttrulls could feel the role reversal: they provided the meal, they served the meal, they ate last and little so their neighbors could feast—and it was their first Ethiopian holiday that no one had to roll them home for. “Unbelievably, I was even a little hungry,” Danielle said. “A few times I walked past the plate of extra injera in the empty house, and I tore off pieces, sprinkled them with salt and mitmita (hot pepper), and snacked on it. That’s when you know you’ve been here awhile. You eat plain injera with salt.”

To the untrained eye, the holiday bustle and happenings were evident in every corner of the town. Throughout all of Holy Week several people have been wearing rings weaved from palm branches. On Saturday thousands wore a single piece of grass tied around their heads like crowns. The streets were deserted on Good Friday, as several Orthodox Christians stayed at church from 6 AM until 6 PM. Colombian Sister Ruth of Don Bosco Catholic Mission claims that one of their volunteers mistook an invitation to an Orthodox service as an invitation to another Catholic church. Laughing, she said, “Ricardo thought that because the church has the same name as our school—Kidane Mariam—it must be Catholic. He did not stay the whole day. When he returned, we laughed. He did not know that there was only one Catholic church in Adwa.” But when asked how long her own Catholic Good Friday service lasted, she said, “It was 9 AM until 4 in the afternoon.”

It was certainly an Easter the Luttrulls will experience only one more time—in 2014. Everything was different, down to the Easter vigil. “St. John Vianni, pray for us,” was sung for them in Italian this year. There was no ham to be seen (Americans find themselves explaining what a pig is to Ethiopians). While they heard no “Happy Easters!”, they heard several “Melkam Fasikas!” (and one “Merry Christmas”). And there certainly weren’t any milk chocolate bunnies. But there was an Easter egg hunt this year in Adwa, Ethiopia—one so delightful and new for the children that the Luttrulls are already planning to introduce them to Christmas stockings this year, perhaps via old socks nailed to trees. “If there’s anytime for someone to visit us here, it’s Easter,” Daniel said. “It’s definitely worth seeing; and you don’t even have to miss your own Easter to see it.”