Post Tagged with: "ethiopian"

Essential Amharic

March 30, 2014

If there are any words a faranji, or foreigner, might be likely to learn when visiting Ethiopia, wuha and injera would easily make the top five; the former meaning water in Amharic, Ethiopia’s official language, the latter not having an English equivalent. Much of my recent time in Ethiopia was spent documenting the problems associated with getting wuha, easily the most fundamental of life’s necessities, but sadly quite hard to come by in a number of places in the world.  The video I shot and produced above shows the difficulties that people living in some rural areas of south-central Ethiopia have in accessing the resource.  Fast-paced and polished, this video will be used by ChildFund, Australia in an upcoming campaign to bring water to the area. Ethiopia is not entirely water-scarce; I hate to give that impression.  There are places in the country where cattle graze in plentiful, green pasture alongside rolling[…]

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Everywhere a Coffee Bar

February 10, 2014

Three coffee shops next to each other on the same block?  One right across from the other?  This isn’t the left bank of the Seine or downtown DC.  This is Ethiopia! Sure, coffee is grown and exported from other African countries like Tanzania and Kenya, but only in Ethiopia is coffee cultivated, harvested, roasted, and afterwards widely consumed by the public.  In fact, coffee is deeply entrenched in the fiber of Ethiopian society. Long before the Italians came to attempt a takeover of the country (they failed), Ethiopians have been savoring sweet espresso, home-style.  The Italian espresso machine did catch on, however, as it has elsewhere, and is nearly as ubiquitous in Ethiopia as the jabena, the traditional kettle in which coffee is prepared here. Coffee even originates from Ethiopia.  It comes from a region known as Kaffa, from which most languages derive their word for the caffeinated essential.  Below,[…]

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48 Hours in Vintage Harar

April 28, 2011

It’s hard to believe it had been five years since I’d been to Ethiopia, not counting the many hours of down time spent making a connection in Addis Ababa’s airport. Recently I arrived a couple days early for a ChildFund assignment in this Horn of Africa country so that I might explore an ancient city in Ethiopia’s exotic East. Harar’s meandering old town is other-worldly, a step back in time along the caravan routes of the middle ages. Indeed, if it weren’t for Coca Cola’s stubborn presence inside the city walls it may sometimes be difficult to decipher which decade, or even century, you were losing your way in. Most Ethiopians don’t mind having their photograph taken. It was my original intention to shoot only portraits for these two days I’d set aside. However, I was quickly enveloped in the atmosphere of the town and the eye candy was too[…]

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