If you arrived at this column thinking, “I didn’t think Ethiopia had any food” you’re not alone. One of the most persistent images Americans have of Ethiopia is of starving naked masses with bellies distended from kwashiorkor. We watched these televised images in the 1980s and we still can’t get them out of our minds.
No one is more aware of this perception than Ethiopians themselves. If any one of them had a take home message for me as an individual or my group study exchange team as a whole, it’s that the famine is over. A middle class is developing. Restaurants are thriving in Addis Ababa. Some people are fat. If our hosts would have had their way, our team would have gone home with 10 extra pounds a piece just as proof that you can find food in Ethiopia.
This is not to minimize the fact that thousands still suffer from food insecurity, just as they do in the United States. This is to tell the story you may not have heard, the story of a rich cuisine and food tradition.
My first experience with Ethiopian food was in a Bay Area restaurant. It’s cliché, but it really was love at first bite. I hear people say that you either love or hate injera, the staple bread. I can’t imagine not loving this tangy, spongy, tortilla-like food that allows me to eat with my hands. With my right hand, I can tear a piece of injera and lovingly scoop up a berbere-infused chicken or lamb dish, or gomen, my favorite veggie dish. Or, best of all, I can scoop up tibs, a simple sauté of goat or beef with onion and chili peppers.
I was hungry yet enthusiastic when I landed in Ethiopia and my culinary needs were met daily with a most delicious blend of tastes and textures. Eating Ethiopian food in the motherland was a highlight of this foodie’s adventure.
Central to my food experience in Ethiopia was my first host sister, Winsette. Once she found out I’m a true believer in Ethiopian cuisine she made it her mission to make sure I had a chance to learn to cook it myself. Our afternoon in the kitchen was one of my most memorable on the trip. Lesson one: injera. It’s not as simple as it looks. Winsette began the mixing and fermenting process a day before my lesson, thereby getting most of the real work out of the way. By the time I stepped in the task should have been simple: pour the batter on a hot, flat, round griddle to make a solid piece of round bread.
Only after I stared in horror at the holes in my first piece did she tell me that little girls are taught to pour injera batter from a very young age and are swatted on the hand when they make holes. Turns out that the effortless, fluid motion she’d used to pour her batter had been cultivated over years and was a sign that she was ready and able to take care of a future husband.
Imagine the panic as I realized I had a matter of hours to learn the art of injera making. And my personal history has shown that I’m really pretty bad at anything designed to prepare me for a husband. I felt doomed, but Winsette lovingly explained that each of my tattered efforts at injera were “Perfect, just perfect!” Was she just being nice or was she celebrating that she had absolutely no competition from me finding an Ethiopian husband?
Melissa Mendonca lives and works in Red Bluff as a youth development program coordinator. She has wanderlust in her heart and a love of stories that make our world seem smaller. You may reach her at nolabluebayou@hotmail.com
