Doro Wot

Ethiopia is known for its amazingly tasty ethnic dishes, but of these fine meals, one stands out as extra special in the eyes of Ethiopians. It’s simply called doro wot (chicken stew or I prefer “chicken sauce”). It’s a red pepper spicy onion/garlic sauce with pieces of chicken and hardboiled eggs (both the proverbial “chicken and the egg”). We had some EXCELLENT Doro Wot out in the Gmz region, which was served with great pride to us as honored guests. Then, about one week later, as part of our orientation schedule, we participated in the making of this special meal. We started from scratch, I mean FROM SCRATCH! Early that morning, we purchased two live chickens from a roadside market. After bringing them home, Travis, the only male in our group, had the customary responsibility of killing one of the chickens (following the example of the guard who was on-duty that day). You can see the murderous look in Travis’ eye as he prepares for the slaughter in the picture. We could include other pictures of the process but it gets pretty gruesome after this one (the fact that the knife was dull did not help any!). Though we’ve heard stories, we didn’t get to experience seeing a chicken run around with its head cut-off because the ladies who were helping us cook had us cover them up with a tub to eliminate the blood splattering everywhere (see the first chicken’s blood-splattered tub in the background of the picture?). After we slaughtered, plucked and cleaned our chickens, the ladies pretty much took it from there, but it was helpful orientation none-the-less. Chicken is VERY expensive here so if we want any chicken in our diet, we will probably go with the self-slaughter route now that we know how it works (and now that we’ve become cold-hearted killers). It is a lot of work though, so it won’t be a common routine.



A funny follow-up to our doro wot experience took place this week in language school. As we were learning the names of the body parts our teacher would draw the pieces of the face on the board and say the Amharic word (no English). He drew two eyes “Ain, Ain.” He drew a nose, “Afincha, Afincha.” He drew a mouth “Af, Af.” He drew teeth “terse, terse.” He drew an ear “Joro, Joro…doro wot, not juro wot!” We all busted up laughing at the thought of a new Amharic speaker ordering Joro Wot (Ear Stew) at a restaurant. Random laughs like this make language learning entertaining at times.