26.10.04

Learned how to make injera today from one of the women who works at the hotel. It's poured on a big flat earthenware pizza stone turned up around the edges. We see women firing them in little fires outside huts as we drive around. It's poured from a birdhouse-shaped gourd that has a whole the size of a loony cut in the wide part to pour the batter in, and the very end cut off the stem end, so it makes something like a fast-moving cake decorating tip to pour out of.

The stone is supported by bricks and is above a hot fire of little sticks. An "oven lid," something like a very large Taiwanese rice farmer's hat, is put over the injera while it cooks. After three or four minutes, the lid is taken off, the injera lifed with the fingers onto a grass-woven version of the pizza stone, and transported to the pile of finished pieces.

It's elegant, if smoky. I watched today, Almaz said she's "giving me homework"--I'll do the pouring next time. Then she invited me and Andy (after determining his relationship to me--I don't know if everyone is just being cautious, or if our relationship looks different to them than a marriage relationship, but everyone suggests that we are brother and sisters and allows me to say we're married) into her house to eat a piece with some shura. I have never had such fresh injera. It was incredibly soft and chewy and yum.

Today is another day where we're not out in the field because they're doing 18 month visits instead of 12 month. Andy is reading his textbook. I am thinking about what I really really want to do/see before we leave. Our departure from Soddo is two weeks from today. Our departure from Ethiopia is only three days after that.