Not Just a Cup of Joe

Ethiopians know coffee, and if you claim to be a coffee connoisseur, Ethiopia’s beans best be on your radar. I, myself, take pride in not being able to tell the difference between the world’s finest brew from the day-old diner special to the instant coffee crystals that’s only distantly related to the coffee bean, but don’t tell that to an Ethiopian. They know what real coffee is and even more than that, they know how to serve it. You see, for Ethiopians, coffee is not used as a stimulant to keep people going when they didn’t get enough sleep. Instead, it is a very important part of Ethiopian culture and hospitality. Whenever we are invited over to someone’s house for a meal, we always must plan on coffee to follow. And we aren’t talking about running the boiled water through a coffee machine. We’re talking a whole coffee preparation ceremony lasting over an hour. What? That’s a lot of time for us Americans, but in Ethiopian culture, the time it takes is part of its beauty, as the guests and hosts socialize throughout the whole process. Ethiopian coffee builds friendship and community, so it’s a VITAL part of this culture.

Last week, we had two friends from the States staying with us as they welcomed an Ethiopian boy into their family. Trent, the new father, and his brother, Drew, the new uncle, had wanted to experience the Ethiopian coffee ceremony. I called up one of our friends and politely asked if his sister, Membrat, could help us (it’s always the women who prepare the coffee). She agreed and so the three of us headed over to their house where Membrat, wearing her Sunday best, welcomed us. She invited us into their one-room living quarters where she lives together with her brother.

Beginning the coffee ceremony, she lit the charcoal on which the coffee would later boil.

While the charcoal was heating up, she washed the raw coffee beans several times and then, using a small propane burner, she roasted the beans on a metal pan. After 10-15 minutes of roasting the beans, they had turned from green to black. She took them off the heat, allowing them to cool a bit before picking out those which did not roast well. As I said, Ethiopians know their coffee.

She then put water to boil on the charcoal “grill” and got out her large mortar and pestle (the pestle was made of wood and the mortar was a heavy metal bar, which looked like it was once a machine part of some sort). With all the beans inside the pestle, she pounded the mortar by hand for about 5 minutes as the fresh coffee smell filled the room.

After the beans were finely ground, she dumped the powder into the traditional “jebena” along with the boiling water (a “jebena”is a very specific clay pot/pitcher used for the coffee ceremony).

Leaving the coffee to boil on the charcoal fire, Membrat poured water for us to wash our hands and then fed us some homemade injera, shiro and potato wet (traditional Ethiopian foods). Despite being full from our lunch, we could not say “no.” As we ate, Membrat prepared the coffee cups (Ethiopian hosts do not eat with their guests). After washing the tiny cups and saucers, she added sugar to each one and began to pour the coffee. Ethiopian women always pour coffee high in the air in a long thin stream, yet never splashing or missing the tiny cups. Finally polishing off our second lunch, we received our first cups of coffee (a real coffee ceremony requires three cups for each person). Although the cup is small enough to be drunk in one swig, it goes without saying that this coffee is meant to be sipped. Also, another piece of advice, you are not expected to drink the final sip as there is no coffee filter to hold back the grounds. No filters and plenty of time in the jebena for steeping, the coffee is served very strong, yet very smooth.

So what did Trent and Drew think? Well, despite Drew being a knowledgeable connoisseur of good coffee, he remarked that it was probably the best coffee he had ever tasted. Trent, who somehow managed to live nearly 30 years of life without ever even tasting the stuff, decided that it was time for his first. He also enjoyed all three cups, but sadly giving him the world’s best on his first taste means its only downhill from here. So whether you are an addict, a virgin or somewhere in-between, we highly recommend trying a cup of Ethiopian joe, but make sure it’s been when washed by Ethiopian hands, pounded with an old machine part, boiled in a jebena, served in three consecutive cups and steeped in incredible Ethiopian hospitality! It doesn’t get any better than that.

Its STILL Greek To Me

About a month ago, I (Travis) began what I consider to be a great privilege – to team teach Greek 4 at the local Bible college. This course focuses on Greek Exegesis, which is a fancy word for “How to use Greek to best determine meaning within the New Testament.” It is a class that I had both at Moody and at Dallas Seminary and one of my favorites so when the school principal offered for me to partner with the Greek teacher this semester, I jumped at the opportunity.

 

Because this is a high level Greek class, the class size is very small (3 students), which gives us an opportunity to really dig in and help these students. Because this is a methods class (“how to do something”) instead of an information class (“memorize all this data”), we are allowing the students to turn in their assignments a day early for professor comments before the actual graded assignment is turned in. In the subjective world of grading, I can feel the tension that teachers must face. I want to encourage my students with high marks, but at the same time I want to be honest, not being too generous so as to not press them further. I would not consider myself an easy professor and so I think that this class is more difficult than most at the school, but I don’t want our students to sell themselves short. Last week, my co-teacher excitedly said “You are lifting these students to the sky!” I hope he didn’t mean “…by their necks!”

 

Under Arrest

Today in class, we learned an interesting new use for the phrase “under arrest” in Amharic. With only six weeks of class remaining (now only three left), we asked our teachers if we could focus on one difficult grammatical structure each week. The first week it was “compound gerunds” which function as “present perfect” tense verbs, or in other words a past action which has results that continue to the present - “I have eaten” as opposed to “I ate.” After spending a week on this form, we are feeling better about using them and now they actually pop into our conversations every now and then. Last week was conditional clauses, or “if…then” statements. There are three different types of these in Amharic, and although we still aren’t great at them, we can squeak a few out in life when needed. This week is relative clauses, as in the sentence – the ice cream “that we made last night” was delicious (yea, ice cream is still on the brain from the last blog!). So today, having seen progress in our relative clause formation, our teacher excitedly responded with what could literally be translated, “by Friday you will have the relative clauses under arrest!” Upon inquiry, we learned that this is the normal way to say that we have mastered something. It’s always fun to find unique uses of words, even though we disagree with her comment.

 

To truly put the relative clause or any other pesky element of the Amharic language “under arrest” feels like an unreachable goal most of the time. It isn’t a joke when Amharic is ranked up with Chinese as one of the most difficult languages in the world. Why? What makes it so difficult? The verbs. Amharic is a language that puts their verbs at the very end of the sentence. For example, a long sentence literally translated into English might be “Yesterday afternoon the big hairy dog the man’s left leg who at the school next to my house teaches with his dirty tail repeatedly hit.” So as this sentence enters our brains, nouns, prepositional phrase and elements pile up in our mind, without clearly finding their meaning with relation to each other until the verb comes along. That’s annoying. But then once the verb does come, there can be many, many little morphemes (or word pieces) slapped onto it in order to give it person, number, gender, tense, mood, etc. For example, let’s look at the basic verb tenagere, which means “he spoke.” Using this root, in one word (kaltenegagerachulachom) I can say “if you guys (or yall) do not speak to each other in behalf of them…” Let me break that down for you. ke-al-tenegagere -achu-le-acho-m

 

“ke”=if

“al”= negation part 1

“tenagere”=he spoke, but “tenegageru”=they spoke to each other (reciprocal)

“achu” =  second-person plural, (you, yall) simple past tense verb suffix

“le”= dative of advantage (speaking in BEHALF of _______)

“acho” = third person plural direct object suffix (them)

“m” = negation part 2

 

Believe it or not, Andrea and I are getting to the point where we can produce verbs like this (if given enough time) and we can understand them when we hear them (once again, given enough time); but to actually put them under arrest in the prison of our everyday speech, there is a long journey ahead, and though our class will end in three weeks, the finish line is most likely not right around the next bend.

 

Endless Possibilities

Our friends from our Texas church didn’t know that it was Andrea’s (and I quote) “favorite food.” They didn’t know that Travis’ closest college friend had an annual tradition of celebrating birthdays with this tasty dessert. They didn’t know that during road trips back in the States, we frequently hit the drive-thrus for no other reason than indulgence in this delicacy. They didn’t know that we were disappointed upon arrival to see how expensive this treat was to buy here in Ethiopia (although we didn’t get our hopes up). They didn’t know that a few times in the past nine months, some friends and family had sent us money particularly designated to splurge on this delight! They didn’t know any of this, which added all the more to our excitement when our adopting friends delivered the gift we will never get enough of – an ice cream maker!

 

Last Friday’s movie night (Star Wars 5 – The Empire Strikes Back) was even more exciting as we served our first attempts at making ice cream – Double Almond Chocolate, and Blueberry-Plum Frozen Yogurt. Both of them were amazingly flavorful, and made at the fraction of the cost of ice cream in the stores! What a treat! Even as I write this blog, my taste buds are having a party with an amazing Lemon Sorbet, our housemate’s first attempt with our machine. Never again can we entertain the idea that we are roughing it over here in Ethiopia. So where do we go from here? Mango, Papaya, Pineapple, Strawberry-Banana, Lemon, Cookies and Cream, Peanut Butter, and with the help of some recent care packages…Butterfinger, almond, PB Cup, Chocolate Chip, and my ultimate favorite…MINT OREO!

Hey Travis, Don't Eat Yellow Snow! (almost)

Having switched to the afternoon language classes, schooling is a lot different. Instead of spending our mid-morning tea break talking with our friends from various missions, it is often just us and a handful of Amharic teachers tipping back the tea (there are not many students in the afternoons). One of the morning students we miss most is a friend named Adrian. Adrian, like us, takes learning language VERY seriously and yet at the same time enjoys the lighter side of language as well. So although we no longer get to hang out in the mornings, we still have a means of passing messages to each other. You see, Adrian’s teacher in the morning (Yenesaw) is also our teacher in the afternoon and this particular guy loves to learn English idioms or slang phrases. It’s hilarious whenever Yenesaw rips out an English phrase with an Ethiopian accent like “Oh, she is foxy!”, “going the whole nine yards”, “like icing on the cake or the cherry on top” or “a few fries short of a Happy Meal.” No there are no McDonalds here, nor do they have cherries, nor do they play American football so as you can imagine these idioms take some time before they sink in correctly.

 

So late last week, Yenesaw “jumped into the deep end” with a new idiom, yet didn’t quite get it exactly right. Having said our goodbyes after class, Andrea and I started walking away when Yenesaw got a rush of inspiration and decided to debut his new phrase, “Hey Travis, Don’t Eat Yellow Ice!”  We couldn’t help but laugh at his attempt to send me off with the classic advice written in Jr. High yearbooks. Now in his defense, Amharic does use the same word for “ice” and “snow,” so it makes sense why he loused it up, but as usual, it needed polishing. That Sunday, when I saw Adrian at church, I mentioned it to him, to which he buried his head in his hands…“man, we worked so hard on that phase that morning and he messed up – YELLOW ICE? He knew it so well just a few hours before!” Our English idiom/slang student had disappointed his teachers once again, but nevertheless, it was funny. I know the laughter goes the other way around in our Amharic, so we’ll be gracious this time.

 

During yesterday’s tea break, Yenesaw asked me a question about the English word “legitimate” so I naturally taught him the phrase “too legit to quit.” I even gave him a good in-class scenario in which he can use it this coming Monday. Let’s just say I don’t have high hopes for him remembering it all the way until Monday and then using it correctly. Now if I could only get an MC Hammer video to help burn it into his mind! But then, I might have to convince him that hammer pants are no longer cool!