Its a Good Friday

Today is Good Friday, which means that it is a really big holiday here in Eritrea. Basically everything is closed and most people have the day off. Even the medical students and the interns have the day off. The nurses in the hospital are off and there is a skeleton staff covering. No orders can be changed for the patients, so things are on stand-by until tomorrow when things go back to normal. The Christian people here fast all day until around 6pm or so when they go to church for Good Friday festivities.

I had a great morning, which started with a phone call from Denton around 6:40am. It was a nice way to wake up as we have only spoken 3 times on the phone since I have been here. The day then started at 11am Eritrean time (which means 11:45 because nothing starts right on time here) with lunch at Andu's house. Andu is the associate dean of the medical school here whose first class graduated in 2009. With the help of Jack Ladenson who is a PhD at Wash U they were able to supply the medical school with all of the books necessary to run the school. Andu is originally from Eritrea but spent 30 years in the US during the majority of the Ethiopian-Eritrean war getting his PhD in Immunology. He is married to an American woman and has 3 children, all of whom live in the US. He came back to Eritrea in the early 2000s to help with the initiation of the medical school.

Andu took us out to his house which is on the outskirts of Asmara. Driving there we passed through an area with a lot of newer construction (circa 1998) of large houses that was sort of the Eritrean equivalent of the suburbs. The difference is quite obvious though with groups of cows and goats being shuffles through the streets, people on bicycles riding on the main roads, and the soil around the construction is all red and unearthed like new construction in the US. Andu lives in a large, very nice house in the Eritrean "burbs" on a dirt road that is quite a bumpy ride. He gave us a tour of his house which is 3 stories tall and features a living room, a den, a formal dining room, a large kitchen with granite counter-tops, 5 bedrooms, and an attic bonus-room on the third floor with two separate balconies. It is built in sort of Spanish-villa style with all tiled floors, a red clay roof, and a separation between 2 of the guestrooms and the laundry room from the main house. It was very nice and in stark contrast to the house that we visited last week.

For lunch, he served national food including Injera with Shiro and another meat-containing dish, fried potatoes, salad, and spinach all of which was so delicious and healthy. After the main meal, we had a coffee ceremony during which I took an obscene amount of pictures. The coffee beans start out raw for the ceremony, which is something I have never seen before. They are actually green before they are roasted. His niece, who lives with him and did all of the cooking, roasted the beans in a small pan over a miniature coal fire in the living room until they turn brown-black. Part of the ceremony involves taking the smoking beans in the pan around the room and allowing everyone to smell them. Then, they are poured into a small container where she mashes them into coffee grinds with a wooden tool. At this point, she takes them and pours them onto a straw mat that is used to funnel them into the vase that the beans are cooked in with water to make the coffee. The coffee is brewed water and beans all together (no filter) in the vase over the small coal stove in the living room and each time it starts to boil over, she pours some out and then back in. She does this several times until she feels the coffee has brewed long enough. Then, the cups are filled with sugar and the coffee is poured and served. After being at another one of these, it seems that the typical food to serve with this even is freshly popped popcorn. We each had 3 cups of this coffee while snacking on the popcorn.

Spending time with Andu in this setting was very different from being at his office at the beginning of our trip. He seemed very at-ease at his house. During lunch, he talked about the industry here in Eritrea and the mining of gold, which is a relatively new resource that was discovered for the country. It has been just in the last year that the gold mining has started with production. Eritrea's other big exports are fish and salt.

We talked some about the possibility of increasing tourism here because now that I have been here I can see that there is a lot of potential for this country. He did say that there is talk of increasing tourism, but it doesn't sound like there are any immediate plans to increase the publicity for the country. Before I knew about this program for the residents, I didn't know that Eritrea was a country. I also would never have thought to visit because of the surrounding countries--Sudan, Ethiopia, and the close proximity to Somalia. Now that I have been here, however, I see that this small country is actually very safe and relatively tourist friendly. The problem though with the lack of knowledge about this place and the perception of this part of Africa is still a huge hindrance. Another major problem with tourism here is the lack of freedom for visitors. A permit has to be obtained to go almost anywhere in the country. Also, there needs to be more for tourists to do while they are here and some of the restrictions on travel need to be lifted. Regardless of what happens, I do see this as a place that I would love to come back to someday.

Generally, the people here are beyond friendly. They are also very beautiful and definitely gracious in everything that they do. Above all they lack that air of stress that Americans have. The culture is so relaxed (almost annoyingly so), which is indicative in the 2.5 hour lunch break that they take every day. The lunch break is also a necessity so that they can return home for lunch because people are relatively poor here. One thing that I love seeing are the older men--in their 50s to 70s even out in their suits (because a large part of the older male population wears suits) riding their bicycles. Very few people have cars, and bicycle is a very common and reasonable way to get around this city. There are also a lot of buses, but due to the crowding on the bus and the fact that so many people have Tb, we have avoided those.

The second half of our Good Friday involved going to Melles' house where we were able to meet his two kids, talk with his wife, Tsige (pronounced see-gay), and once again eat dinner. We started the evening with a more formal coffee ceremony again. So, today, I have had essentially 5 shots of espresso. ZZZZZzzzztttzzz...zzzztttzzz...(I may need an ambien and some benadryl to fall asleep tonight!). As it was 2 nights ago, the food was incredible. I don't want it to seem like all I'm doing here is eating, but much like in the US, the social gatherings are centered around food. Tonight's conversation with Melles and his family was the most natural and entertaining that we've had since we've been here. His family is so nice and easy to talk to. His children also speak excellent English with almost an American sort of sound. Tonight was a fun night with plenty of jokes and another lesson on the Tigrinya language. It was a good ending to our time with Dr. Windus who had to leave to head back to US tonight. Tomorrow should be another busy day of exploring the city Hannah and I and now Henish as well.