Fasika!

On Good Friday I stood in the middle of the road surrounded by herds of goats and cows. People were walking around with chickens, bags bursting with onions, teff flour, eggs, and all of the other things they needed for the feast: Fasika.

Fasika, also known as Easter, is a huge holiday in Ethiopia. For the Orthodox Christians, the religious majority here, it marks the end of the 50 day Easter fast. It means not eating in the mornings and giving up all animal products. Fasika is the end of this vegan fast and people celebrate it with a bang. Neighbors will pool their money together to buy a cow in pursuit of a good feast.

My first holiday in Ethiopia was helped along by my host family. From buying me cultural clothes to explaining how and why certain activities happen they really made my day wonderful. My host sister Hannah was especially helpful in translating, guiding, and even planning our escape when the family became overwhelming. Without my host family I would not have enjoyed Fasika as much as I did.

There are certain cultural touchstones that are universal. Being told to eat massive amounts of food with your family is one of them. By noon of Fasika I had already eaten three times, and mind you, these are huge portions! The food was delicious but I was ready to burst. The big dish on Fasika is doro wat, or chicken stew. It's spicy and served on injera, the thin teff bread, with a hard boiled egg. In the region I live in now there is a special food called k'ocho. It comes from a tree locally named "false banana," which, as the name implies, looks nearly identical to a banana tree. Women shave the leaves down and create a paste. They then bury the paste and let it ferment. After baking, it becomes a thin, chewy bread. It is served with ibe, the local spicy cheese. Meals are eating all together with voices overlapping and overwhelming each other, mothers and siblings constantly calling out, "Bei! Bei!" or "Eat! Eat!" It is overwhelming, exciting, and makes you feel like a part of this new place.

As I start to count down the days until I move to my permanent site, I have thought more and more about the life I will be making for myself here. When I got my Ethiopian residential ID at the beginning of training I was excited, but I did not feel like a "resident" just yet. It was experiencing Fasika, a holiday, with the family I have come to know and love that has begun to make Ethiopia home, even in just small pieces.