"Hark, We Bring the Good News"

Today, January 7^th, is Ethiopian Christmas so people all around the city are gathering with family, slaughtering animals for the celebratory doro wot or beg tibs (that is chicken sauce or fried lamb chunks). Not surprisingly, there was literally blood flowing down one of our side streets from the slaughtering up the hill. Although today does not feel like Christmas for us, we did decide to celebrate the Ethiopian Christmas in three ways.

 

First, we purchased a sheep for our houseworker and good friend, Aster (Esther). We had been talking with her about what her family would do for Christmas and what kind of food they would eat. She said that they would get a few chickens for the meal. When we asked why they wouldn’t get a sheep (which is more typical for Christmas), she simply said that they are too expensive. We agreed with our housemates that buying a sheep for Aster’s family would be a fun present to give her and so last week we shared our desire. Aster and her whole family got really excited about having a sheep given to them. Saturday, we met her and her husband at the sheep market (on the side of the road) and let her husband pick out a nice fat sheep! And from what I learned in a class field trip to the sheep market, he picked out a really nice one. We slapped down 700 birr (that’s about $55) and we loaded the bound sheep into a public transportation minibus. Her kids must have been watching for us because as soon as we came into sight, they came running to greet us and see their Christmas sheep. The joy on their faces was obvious.

 

Second, last night, we went to a local restaurant and ordered some food to-go. We brought our own Tupperware because we had never heard of someone ordering Ethiopian food to go. We then brought our food to another house to surprise an Ethiopian friend of ours who was working as a guard (he used to be our guard when we lived at the other guesthouse). He was so excited to see that we had come to visit him (and not the foreigners living in the house). He invited us into his tiny guard shack where we talked for about 45 minutes, all in Amharic, and then we ate the food together. After supper, he made us some really nice coffee, which we could not turn down even though it was too late in the evening to be drinking strong coffee. He walked us back to our house and very emphatically thanked us for visiting him. Then, much to our surprise, he showed up at our door with a wrapped present for us today. Inside we found a very fancy Ethiopian Christmas card with flowers, butterflies, glitter and it even played familiar Christmas music when it was opened. This was like the caviar of Ethiopian Christmas cards and it really meant a lot that he went through the effort to buy and deliver it to us.

 

Third, we collected a bunch of the small candies and toys that certain friends in Texas had sent us and we made goodie bags for the kids at the orphanage nearby our house. So, this afternoon, despite both of us feeling pretty nasty with colds, we went and delivered the goodies to 17 children. They were very excited to get the bead necklaces, whistles, play-doh, tootsie rolls, etc. It would have been nice to stay and play with them, but we definitely weren’t feeling up to it.

 

I can still here Linus quoting from Luke 2 (although we missed seeing that Christmas special this year). Angels came to the shepherds and brought Good News of a Special Child born in Bethlehem. Although we are not angels, and our news isn’t nearly as Good, we also have good news of a special baby. However, this baby hasn’t been born yet. He/she is still inside of Andrea’s tummy!