Local traditions and culture in Ethiopia

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After you have finished your meal you may, out of habit, place your napkin on your plate. Do not do it here! If there is any food left, the restaurant will give this to poor people after they close. If you put the napkin on it – they won’t. It is a really hard habit to break, but please remember to leave your napkin on the table when you finish.

In Ethiopia everything is different even the calendar! Ethiopians have 13 months instead of 12, that’s why they use as slogan “Ethiopia: 13 months of sun”. Their end of the year corresponds to our 10th of September and, like us, they celebrate it with big parties. The Ethiopian Calendar is 8 years behind the Gregorian Calendar so when I was there in 2010 I celebrated the beginning of 2002 :-)))
Time is also different in Ethiopia: Ethiopians divide the day in two times 12 hours but the 0 Ethiopian hour means hour 6 for us. For example 2pm for Ethiopians means 8pm for us. We have lunch at 7hours and dinner at 2 hours. Some patience is needed. So if you don’t want to get crazy for any meeting with locals, schedules and so on, ask before if they are talking about Ethiopian time or European time.

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Tejj is the basis of Ethiopia’s diet. With this cereal (second picture) Ethiopians prepare the Injera, a kind of tort which you will find everywhere accompanying all kind of meat and vegetables (main picture) Maybe there are different ways to prepare it because depending on the area where we were, Injera’s color was darker. Texture is funny but it does not have a special taste so after few days eating the same you get bored and you change it with pleasure for a dish of spaghetti with tomato sauce (which were not bad at all, Ethiopians cook spaghetti better than French!). Although Tejj is a very nutritious and complete cereal, Ethiopia is the only country that eats it.

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The flower of paradise, Allah’s gift . . . that’s how this stimulant is known by the chat consumers. Chewing the leaves of this small plant - Catha Edulis - (second picture) releases people’s mind and it is very appreciated by poets and philosophers who use it as a source of inspiration. Nowadays people, especially in the south of the country, chew chat like an ecstasies which liberates their body and mind. They chew it in small groups, it is already a social activity and a kind of way to escape from the reality. In Harar, when sun goes down, many chat sellers appear to sell their fresh product (main picture).
Mid term consequences? Chat plantations already occupy almost all the cultivable land having displaced its most ferocious competitor: the worldwide renewed Ethiopian coffee. Chat’s cultivation is easier and produces more benefits. Coffee exports have been considerably reduced while tones and tones of chat leave the country daily to Djibuti and Yemen where it is known as qat.
Health consequences are insomnia, anorexia and men’s impotence.

Going to Ethiopia during the heavy rainy season (from June to September) means to have a shower almost everyday. When it rains, IT REALLY RAINS! In Bahir Dar usually it started raining by 7.00 -8.00 pm so it was never a problem for our day tours. But it was also in Bahir Dar where storm and rain were heavier (see the picture), being the air incredibly humid with regard to other places that we visited. Just to give you an example, simple cotton underclothes took 3 days to dry inside the room. So when you leave the hotel, especially at dinner time, keep a light raincoat always with you, for sure you will need it!

On Lake Tana is easy to see some nice Tankwas. This papyrus canoes look like exactly as the ancient papyrus canoes depicted on the Egyptian Temples’ walls and nowadays they are still used as the main means of transport on the lake. The construction of a tankwa needs two people’s work for a whole day and it has a life of only few weeks. If it rains a lot, your tankwa will die in only few days.

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These beautiful and colorful umbrellas don’t have a aesthetic use. They are not used to protect people from sun or rain either. We can see these umbrellas only in religious events like Timkat, processions or funerals (picture 2). I was very curious about the meaning and I asked some locals about it but nobody could give me a good answer. Later I have read that they represent the celestial spheres, which I find very poetic!
Usually umbrellas, incense and white dressed priests with golden crosses appear together in these festivities.

Yes, banks here accept them! American Dollars are the preferred currency for American Express Travellers Cheques. Some banks in Addis Ababa actually sell them too. British Pounds sometimes get a much worse rate. Standard fees are what the banks describe as 0.5% but actually come out at 1.5%. Banks in the historical towns (Gonder, Axum, etc.) may charge 2.5%. There are no banks in Lalibela, but several hotels will encash them for you.

PLEASE NOTE: ALMOST ALL FOREX POSITIONS IN BANKS CLOSE BETWEEN 12PM-1PM FOR LUNCH EVERY WEEK DAY.