Tuesday, February 17, 2004
Baptism and Beer
Timket (Tuesday 20th January)
-----------------------------
Eritrean Epiphany. "Timket" in Tigrinya. After a weekend in Asmara, I stay an extra couple of days so that I can see some of the Timket celebrations. The celebrations in Asmara are shown on Eri-TV (the state channel) each year, so they are quite famous.
Bahti Meskerem (aka "September 1st Square") is to the east of the city. A row of banks and large office blocks opens out to a big space. On one side is a gravel expanse that is mostly used as a car park, on the other is a stone terrace of stepped seating, much like a stadium stand, with a row of shops underneath. This is where rallies were held in previous times, now it is home to the occasional spectator event: cycle races and traditional holiday festivities. Today it has sporadic rows of children, giggling and calling down to the crowd beneath them. The crowd beneath them is a seething mass of children who buck and sway like a flock of birds or a shoal of fish. They are all armed with plastic bottles or jerry cans, full of water which they throw at each other with glee. The kids on the stand squirt water down on anyone foolish enough to stray beneath them. When I make that mistake they scream with glee as they soak my head. I decide it's best to climb up into the stand myself.
The shoal of kids continues to swim about, chasing the latest hapless victim, then turning tail as the victim gets his revenge backed up by nearby turncoats. Then a car approaches. Bahti Meskerem straddles one of Asmara's prominent streets, so it is no surprise to see a car attempting to pass through. The driver is surprised however, as the shoal realises it has prime prey and rushes with one mind towards him. Hundreds of whooping kids surround the car, pouring water through the hastily closing windows and splashing the windscreen and body. The driver manages to carefully reverse, turn around and head back in the direction he came from, tail between his legs and windscreen wipers on full.
I stay and watch the fun for a while until it seems to calm down and I deem it safe to get back down to the street. Walking behind the "car park", I come across the source of all the water: a small fountain set in a little park. There are gangs of kids filling up bottles from the fountain, and families sitting or strolling around. A pleasant holiday atmosphere. But now the fun has gone on long enough. The crowd back at the car park is being dispersed by soldiers and police armed with long sticks. They thrash indiscriminately at any kids within range and the children scatter. Sometimes they manage to catch one of them. I see three policemen holding down a couple of older children. Their captives protest and are rewarded with kicks, and whacks from one policeman's stick. Meanwhile a small group of adults is arguing with his colleague, and crying out each time the boot or stick is used. I wonder if I should take a photograph of this, but I can't be sure of not being seen by another policeman or soldier, as there are many of them running to and fro now. Instead, I slink back to the bus station, feeling ashamed and angry.
Holidays in the Sun?
--------------------
Wednesday 28th January
There is a plan. A carefully-hatched plan that Jo and I have cooked up to go to Assab, the southern-most town in Eritrea, very near to the borders with Djibouti and Ethiopia. We will travel down to Massawa and then south to Assab by bus. It takes two days so the passengers will sleep outside a pension in a small town on the way. The scenery is apparently breathtaking: desert and volcanic craters, sea and ostriches. Then we will get on a boat at Assab which will take us back to Massawa in a further two days, to chill out before returning to Asmara. That is the plan.
There is a catch. Jo, Nicola and I arrive at the Ministry of Tourism, clutching our letters of permission from our respective zoba offices. We almost get our permits when the woman realises that we are residents, not tourists. "I'm sorry," she says, "I can't process these. You have to get the permits from the Ministry of Education head office." So that is where we go, still clutching our permits. Once at the Ministry offices, we are told that they will happily process our application for permission to travel, and that we should come back in ten days. Ten days! We wanted to go to Assab tomorrow! No amount of pleading will get us our way, so we go on our way. So ... we have had to wait until this day to get to Asmara to present our letters of permission to go to Assab during our ten day break from school, but the procedure for providing the permit to travel takes ten days. That is the catch.
As a last ditch, we decide to get the bus anyway and see how far we can get with the letters we have. But when we get to the bus station we are told that the Assab bus for the next day is full. The next bus is a couple of days later, too late to fit our carefully-hatched plan.
So there is another plan. Nicola hooks up with another couple of VSOs and goes her own way. Jo and I decide we will go to Massawa, stopping off for a couple of days in Ghinda. This gives us time to spend a day in Jo's village before we leave, and celebrate Nigdet -- the local saint's day -- with them.
Nigdet
------
We get to Shimangus Lalai early that afternoon. There are several people climbing the hill with us, and a few four-wheel-drives parked at the top when we get there. As we pass the coptic church, we walk through a small crowd and can see that there is a much bigger crowd of people crammed into the churchyard. We can hear some chanting coming from the church, but can't get close enough to see anything.
In the compound people are bustling about everywhere. Hadas greets us with glee. She's so happy that we sould make it for the ceremony / party. She guides us into the house next door to Jo's, usually unoccupied but today full of women making coffee and food. Rubka is sitting in the room kneading a white dough that Jo explains is "Helbet": a paste made from mashed beans that Rubka will knead and whip until it is light and airy. When we are offered some, it is delicious: a whipped mousse of subtle, creamy flavour that combines perfectly with the heat of the silsi (chilli sauce) and the sour injera used to mop it up.
We are offered coffee, then sewa flavoured with honey. Delicious. And then the priests come in.
They come into the adjoining room from outside. They are swathed entirely in white, except for the occasional blue velvet cape that is soon discarded. White shawls, white trousers, and white hats like stiff turbans topping off their owners like the cap of a box of pills. Each of them carries a stick, some of them carry fresh branches trailing fern-like leaves. They sit around in a couple of circles, about a dozen priests in all. Perhaps that number is significant, a reference to the loyal disciples.
There are an interesting lot, these priests. There is a very old-looking guy with an impressive bushy grey beard , a wrinkled face, and squinting eyes. There is one who peers about him and stumbles into his seat, who may be blind. There is a jolly priest with a relatively young face who beams his smile around the room, particularly at me and Jo. And there is one who is completely bald, with a lean, skull-like face that breaks into a leering grin under two wide, staring eyes. He reminds me of the bald guy from the Flying Pickets.
So they sit and are offered food and coffee by the women in the other room. Men from the village file into the room and sit around the walls, talking and eating as well. Before eating, one of the priests says a prayer.
Once the food is consumed, they start to pray. They stand in a circle and each takes his turn to say a prayer. There is silence in both rooms as each has his moment. Then they start to chant. It is a beautiful sound: twelve men harmonising extremely well, although there is the inevitable flat voice among them. Those of us who had previously been shuffling our feet a little during the drawn-out prayers are now transfixed as we listen to the lovely unaccompanied singing.
Now the priests arrange thmselves into opposing lines and start to dance as they sing. Those with leafy branches swing them in time to the song as they bend their backs and weave their way with a swagger amongst each other. At certain points, one priest will take up the main melody and the circle will re-form to give him his stage, then it will break into lines again and the weaving and swaggering resume.
Meanwhile sewa and araki is being passed among the onlookers. As soon as we turn our backs our sewa cups are refilled, so Jo and I are getting gently pissed. As is the guy handing out the araki. I notice that each time he pours a few glasses for the tray, he downs a swift one himself. It takes a few trays to get around the whole crowd so he is having three or four arakis to each round. Later on in the afternoon he is so drunk that he ends up spilling much of the contents of the sewa bucket over the floor while attempting to fill some cups.
The priests have finished their dancing and chanting and are spread around the room now, chatting and downing booze. All this time the women have been waiting on the men and me and Jo. They have been constantly cooking, serving coffee or chai, or cleaning up, with just occasional breaks to listen to the prayers. With most of the work now done, they can finally relax a little and have some food themselves. It seems the only work a man is willing to do is to serve the drinks, possibly because of the attendant perks. The only other man working is Hailu. He is the little wizened old guy who sleeps outside Jo's house because his home is full of Food Aid grain. He's dressed in a snappy black suit that's slightly too big for him but makes an impressive change from his usual scruffy coat and bobble hat. His job is mainly to show people to their seats. A curious kind of maitre d' is he.
When we get chatting to a friendly villager -- who turns out to be the local evangelist vicar -- we learn that this house belongs to the village orthodox priest and his wife, so he is playing host to the ceremony / party and a bunch of his colleagues from Asmara and environs. It seems the life of a coptic priest is a good one: travel from village to village to celebrate the various saints' days, eat, drink and dance, then drink some more. There is a bit of piety, and a lot of gaiety. I think they've got the balance right.
At the end of the afternoon the priests start to leave one by one. Each goes round the whole room, offering a wooden cross to be kissed. The one from the flying pickets makes a beeline for me, grinning his mad grin, eyes nearly popping out. I'm amazed when, instead of offering me a cross to kiss, he grabs my hand and gives me the over-under matey shake. He says something in Tigrinya, which may or may not be along the lines of "stay cool bro' ", then leaves to rejoin his posse.
We are still plagued by the never-ending sewa so we decide we'd better leave because we intend to go to Ghinda in the morning. So we take our cups over to Hadas' house for a short coffee then make our escape proper.
-----------------------------
Eritrean Epiphany. "Timket" in Tigrinya. After a weekend in Asmara, I stay an extra couple of days so that I can see some of the Timket celebrations. The celebrations in Asmara are shown on Eri-TV (the state channel) each year, so they are quite famous.
Bahti Meskerem (aka "September 1st Square") is to the east of the city. A row of banks and large office blocks opens out to a big space. On one side is a gravel expanse that is mostly used as a car park, on the other is a stone terrace of stepped seating, much like a stadium stand, with a row of shops underneath. This is where rallies were held in previous times, now it is home to the occasional spectator event: cycle races and traditional holiday festivities. Today it has sporadic rows of children, giggling and calling down to the crowd beneath them. The crowd beneath them is a seething mass of children who buck and sway like a flock of birds or a shoal of fish. They are all armed with plastic bottles or jerry cans, full of water which they throw at each other with glee. The kids on the stand squirt water down on anyone foolish enough to stray beneath them. When I make that mistake they scream with glee as they soak my head. I decide it's best to climb up into the stand myself.
The shoal of kids continues to swim about, chasing the latest hapless victim, then turning tail as the victim gets his revenge backed up by nearby turncoats. Then a car approaches. Bahti Meskerem straddles one of Asmara's prominent streets, so it is no surprise to see a car attempting to pass through. The driver is surprised however, as the shoal realises it has prime prey and rushes with one mind towards him. Hundreds of whooping kids surround the car, pouring water through the hastily closing windows and splashing the windscreen and body. The driver manages to carefully reverse, turn around and head back in the direction he came from, tail between his legs and windscreen wipers on full.
I stay and watch the fun for a while until it seems to calm down and I deem it safe to get back down to the street. Walking behind the "car park", I come across the source of all the water: a small fountain set in a little park. There are gangs of kids filling up bottles from the fountain, and families sitting or strolling around. A pleasant holiday atmosphere. But now the fun has gone on long enough. The crowd back at the car park is being dispersed by soldiers and police armed with long sticks. They thrash indiscriminately at any kids within range and the children scatter. Sometimes they manage to catch one of them. I see three policemen holding down a couple of older children. Their captives protest and are rewarded with kicks, and whacks from one policeman's stick. Meanwhile a small group of adults is arguing with his colleague, and crying out each time the boot or stick is used. I wonder if I should take a photograph of this, but I can't be sure of not being seen by another policeman or soldier, as there are many of them running to and fro now. Instead, I slink back to the bus station, feeling ashamed and angry.
Holidays in the Sun?
--------------------
Wednesday 28th January
There is a plan. A carefully-hatched plan that Jo and I have cooked up to go to Assab, the southern-most town in Eritrea, very near to the borders with Djibouti and Ethiopia. We will travel down to Massawa and then south to Assab by bus. It takes two days so the passengers will sleep outside a pension in a small town on the way. The scenery is apparently breathtaking: desert and volcanic craters, sea and ostriches. Then we will get on a boat at Assab which will take us back to Massawa in a further two days, to chill out before returning to Asmara. That is the plan.
There is a catch. Jo, Nicola and I arrive at the Ministry of Tourism, clutching our letters of permission from our respective zoba offices. We almost get our permits when the woman realises that we are residents, not tourists. "I'm sorry," she says, "I can't process these. You have to get the permits from the Ministry of Education head office." So that is where we go, still clutching our permits. Once at the Ministry offices, we are told that they will happily process our application for permission to travel, and that we should come back in ten days. Ten days! We wanted to go to Assab tomorrow! No amount of pleading will get us our way, so we go on our way. So ... we have had to wait until this day to get to Asmara to present our letters of permission to go to Assab during our ten day break from school, but the procedure for providing the permit to travel takes ten days. That is the catch.
As a last ditch, we decide to get the bus anyway and see how far we can get with the letters we have. But when we get to the bus station we are told that the Assab bus for the next day is full. The next bus is a couple of days later, too late to fit our carefully-hatched plan.
So there is another plan. Nicola hooks up with another couple of VSOs and goes her own way. Jo and I decide we will go to Massawa, stopping off for a couple of days in Ghinda. This gives us time to spend a day in Jo's village before we leave, and celebrate Nigdet -- the local saint's day -- with them.
Nigdet
------
We get to Shimangus Lalai early that afternoon. There are several people climbing the hill with us, and a few four-wheel-drives parked at the top when we get there. As we pass the coptic church, we walk through a small crowd and can see that there is a much bigger crowd of people crammed into the churchyard. We can hear some chanting coming from the church, but can't get close enough to see anything.
In the compound people are bustling about everywhere. Hadas greets us with glee. She's so happy that we sould make it for the ceremony / party. She guides us into the house next door to Jo's, usually unoccupied but today full of women making coffee and food. Rubka is sitting in the room kneading a white dough that Jo explains is "Helbet": a paste made from mashed beans that Rubka will knead and whip until it is light and airy. When we are offered some, it is delicious: a whipped mousse of subtle, creamy flavour that combines perfectly with the heat of the silsi (chilli sauce) and the sour injera used to mop it up.
We are offered coffee, then sewa flavoured with honey. Delicious. And then the priests come in.
They come into the adjoining room from outside. They are swathed entirely in white, except for the occasional blue velvet cape that is soon discarded. White shawls, white trousers, and white hats like stiff turbans topping off their owners like the cap of a box of pills. Each of them carries a stick, some of them carry fresh branches trailing fern-like leaves. They sit around in a couple of circles, about a dozen priests in all. Perhaps that number is significant, a reference to the loyal disciples.
There are an interesting lot, these priests. There is a very old-looking guy with an impressive bushy grey beard , a wrinkled face, and squinting eyes. There is one who peers about him and stumbles into his seat, who may be blind. There is a jolly priest with a relatively young face who beams his smile around the room, particularly at me and Jo. And there is one who is completely bald, with a lean, skull-like face that breaks into a leering grin under two wide, staring eyes. He reminds me of the bald guy from the Flying Pickets.
So they sit and are offered food and coffee by the women in the other room. Men from the village file into the room and sit around the walls, talking and eating as well. Before eating, one of the priests says a prayer.
Once the food is consumed, they start to pray. They stand in a circle and each takes his turn to say a prayer. There is silence in both rooms as each has his moment. Then they start to chant. It is a beautiful sound: twelve men harmonising extremely well, although there is the inevitable flat voice among them. Those of us who had previously been shuffling our feet a little during the drawn-out prayers are now transfixed as we listen to the lovely unaccompanied singing.
Now the priests arrange thmselves into opposing lines and start to dance as they sing. Those with leafy branches swing them in time to the song as they bend their backs and weave their way with a swagger amongst each other. At certain points, one priest will take up the main melody and the circle will re-form to give him his stage, then it will break into lines again and the weaving and swaggering resume.
Meanwhile sewa and araki is being passed among the onlookers. As soon as we turn our backs our sewa cups are refilled, so Jo and I are getting gently pissed. As is the guy handing out the araki. I notice that each time he pours a few glasses for the tray, he downs a swift one himself. It takes a few trays to get around the whole crowd so he is having three or four arakis to each round. Later on in the afternoon he is so drunk that he ends up spilling much of the contents of the sewa bucket over the floor while attempting to fill some cups.
The priests have finished their dancing and chanting and are spread around the room now, chatting and downing booze. All this time the women have been waiting on the men and me and Jo. They have been constantly cooking, serving coffee or chai, or cleaning up, with just occasional breaks to listen to the prayers. With most of the work now done, they can finally relax a little and have some food themselves. It seems the only work a man is willing to do is to serve the drinks, possibly because of the attendant perks. The only other man working is Hailu. He is the little wizened old guy who sleeps outside Jo's house because his home is full of Food Aid grain. He's dressed in a snappy black suit that's slightly too big for him but makes an impressive change from his usual scruffy coat and bobble hat. His job is mainly to show people to their seats. A curious kind of maitre d' is he.
When we get chatting to a friendly villager -- who turns out to be the local evangelist vicar -- we learn that this house belongs to the village orthodox priest and his wife, so he is playing host to the ceremony / party and a bunch of his colleagues from Asmara and environs. It seems the life of a coptic priest is a good one: travel from village to village to celebrate the various saints' days, eat, drink and dance, then drink some more. There is a bit of piety, and a lot of gaiety. I think they've got the balance right.
At the end of the afternoon the priests start to leave one by one. Each goes round the whole room, offering a wooden cross to be kissed. The one from the flying pickets makes a beeline for me, grinning his mad grin, eyes nearly popping out. I'm amazed when, instead of offering me a cross to kiss, he grabs my hand and gives me the over-under matey shake. He says something in Tigrinya, which may or may not be along the lines of "stay cool bro' ", then leaves to rejoin his posse.
We are still plagued by the never-ending sewa so we decide we'd better leave because we intend to go to Ghinda in the morning. So we take our cups over to Hadas' house for a short coffee then make our escape proper.
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