Weavers

On the same grounds of the After School Club, Meketa, the UK nonprofit dedicated to helping the Jewish community of Gondar, Ethiopia, has set up a workshop so weavers are able to practice their craft. Jews have been noted craftsmen for centuries. We may have mentioned already that when the king made Gondar the capital of Ethiopia 200 years ago, he brought the Jewish craftspeople from the rural communities to be involved in building his palace. 

The weavers' workshop is located just yards, or meters, from the classrooms.

A weaver prepares the yarns in order to begin a new batch of scarves or talitot. 

The workshop has about 6 or 7 looms. Each day, it seems, a rotating team of weavers is there working as music is played in the background.

One weaver is offering a completed talis for sale.

The weaver controls one operation of the loom 

with his feet from a hole dug into the ground.

A few women in the community crochet kippot. I met

this woman several times at the synagogue, and each 

time she was busy crocheting with her head bent 

over her needles and yarn. She did take a break from her 

crocheting once when she searched my bag and 

patted me down, the first time I went into the synagogue. 

 

Two Reasons...

Two reasons why I will have trouble leaving Ethiopia:

Learning about and being involved with the Jewish community has been an extraordinary experience. We first met the Kechene Jewish community of Addis Ababa at a small Friday night service. The Jews there want very much to live their lives publicly despite the harsh discrimination in the work place and hatred from their neighbors.

Here in Gondar, Jews mix easily with their neighbors. The children go to school together and the adults drink coffee together in the small shops. The community is committed to Jewish practices and moving eventually to Israel.

We've mentioned that we have been volunteering at an after school program for Jewish students in grades 3 through 7. On Friday, the club sponsors a Kabbalat Shabbat. The students sing songs in Hebrew, then say the blessings over the candles, wine, hand washing, and motzi. Strong emotions of connectedness rise in my chest during the simple ceremony. 

A young girl lights the Shabbat candles, then says the blessing.

A boy says the blessing for wine. 

The same boy says the motzi.

Secondly, I'll miss the charming children. They certainly enjoy the after school club. 

They arrive and study seriously even though this is not a mandatory program. They play hard, also! 

 

  

 

 

 

Micro loans in the Gondar Jewish Community

Here in Gondar, we are volunteering at an after school program sponsored by Meketa, an organization based in the UK. Children in grades 3 through 7 go to public school half day, so those who attend school in the morning come to the after school program in the afternoon, and students who have school in the afternoon attend in the morning. The purpose of the program is to supplement the public school curriculum. For the most part we have been assisting with English language instruction. The other text books are in Amharic, so teaching those topics would be a challenge for us.

Meketa, in conjunction with government programs, also offers micro loans to people in the Jewish community. Yesterday, a staff person took us to visit four people who have received micro loans.

Ferede buys beans and wheat in large quantities from the regional marketplace. Then, he sells them in a small neighborhood market for a profit. He borrowed 10,000 birr (500 USD) which he must repay in two years. His monthly payment is 417 birr.

Genet bakes rolls six days per week, because she does not bake on Shabbat. The rolls, made of black wheat and corn, are eaten for breakfast. Sometimes she also bakes injera. When we met Genet, she had just returned from the market 30 minutes away. She went to buy more flour, but returned empty handed because there was no flour available.  If she is not able to buy more flour she will not be able to bake the next day. Genet supports a family of 8 people: her husband, 5 children, and an aunt who is ill.

Genet, the baker

The entry to Genet's house.

Kassaw sells local brands of beer and homemade beer from his house. He has an area in front of his house with benches where customers can sit, drink beer, and eat a traditional bread made of corn and wheat. The bread is round and flat like injera, but made with different ingredients. Kassaw told us that his house is not a good place to sell beer, because he is not located in the market or on a often-traveled path. However, government regulations prevent him from re-locating.

Kassaw, his wife and baby in their mud hut.

Kassaw's beer making apparatus.

Fresh bread is cooling near the benches on which 

customers sit to drink beer in front of Kassaw's house. 

Fenta has a small shop on a main road that she runs with her daughter. They sell a limited inventory of cleaning and food items. There is also an open space in front of her shop for serving tea and bread. 

Fenta's shop and the neighboring shops.

Fenta, her daughter, and the Meketa staff person.

Fenta has an interesting story. She left her rural village about 17 years ago and moved to Gondar in order to register for aliya to Israel. She had a farm in her village and was able to live a comfortably there. Unfortunately, most of the people in Fenta's family left for Israel shortly after she arrived in Gondar, but she was not able to go for reasons that I do not understand. For all these years, Fenta, her two daugthers and 2 grandchildren have been waiting to go to Israel. Because of her farming background, she doesn't have and has not been able to develop good business skills. Consequently, her small shop does not do very well and she has trouble supporting her family. By coincidence, I ended up sitting in the same row as Fenta at the Kabbalat service at the synagogue the next evening. She greeted me as she might an old friend! 

Fenta. 

Omo Valley: The Dorze People

The first first thing we learned about the Dorze people when we entered their village is that they shape their huts like elephants.  Evidently, at one time, there were many elephants living in their area, but no longer.

 Every hut has a sort of ''nose'' at its south side, serving as a reception room. There are also small "gables" on the roof that look like ears and eyes.  In the middle of the hut there is an open fire for cooking. There are also low benches to sit around the fire. Along the walls are sleeping places and areas for storage.  The Dorze people bring cattle into their huts for warmth on cold nights. The body heat from the cattle warms the hut.  Smaller huts are built for cooking or storage. 

In addition to resembling elephants, Dorze huts are unique because they are built with a large central pole.  The smoke from the cooking fire hardens the thatched roof, so the huts can last 60- 80 years. When termites attack the base of a hut, the Dorze can just remove the hut from its foundation and relocate it. This allows the home to last much longer, but every move shortens the height of the hut.

In the Dorze community, women prepare kocho (flat bread) out of the enset plant, which is also called  "false banana", because it looks just like a banana tree without the fruit. Being a staple for about a third of Ethiopians, kocho is nowadays highly regarded for its nutritional value. It is consumed in towns troughout the country.  It is said that if you have false banana plants, you will never starve. 

My nutritional science background drove me to research the nutritional value of the enset plant. Quite frankly, it looked colorless and of low nutritional value to me.  I found a technical report, however, that said the enset plant produces the "highest yield per hectare and highest energy content per kilogram of edible yield", particularly because the kocho is often eaten with kale.  The report recommended expanding the cultivation of enset.

We watched a demonstration of how kocho is prepared. First, the young woman scraped the starch off the inside of the long leaf. The only parallel I can think of is scraping the edible portion off an artichoke leaf.  However, the enset leaves are  2-3 feet long. 

The women then mix that starchy product with water and put the mixture into a clay pot underground, where it remains for 3 months.

  After the designated time period, they remove the dough-like matter and pat it into round shapes. 

Then, the round shaped kocho are folded between two large flat leaves of the enset plant and baked over a fire. We tasted the kocho, but didn't really care for it. Perhaps, it's an acquired taste!

The men, in addition to working in agriculture, are known for weaving. They create traditional clothing, scarves, and blankets for community use and also to sell to tourists.

Lalibela Weekend Market

Lalibela, a lovely town of about 35,000 people perched at an altitude of 2,600 meters among vast rocky peaks, is known for a cluster of 13 churches built during the 12th century, and possibly a bit later. The churches were not actually built, but excavated underground out of rock. They are amazing feats of 12th century architecture. Each church, with its own characteristics, is still used for worship. We visited the churches and saw crowds of people in their traditional white shawls gathering for prayer. 

However fascinating the churches (a UNESCO World Heritage site) are, the Sarturday market in Lalibela is even more colorful. People walk for miles to the market from their rural villages to sell their wares and to buy what they need from the other vendors. Many of the villagers have several donkeys walking alongside them on the narrow dirt roads. Others lead small herds of goats to the market, which they hope to sell. 

In the market there is entire section for onions.

A few vendors sold sugar cane.

Many people sold grains including teff, wheat, barley and sorghum. 

Two young women are negotiating a purchase. 

The aromas entice you as you stroll through the section with spices. 

The noisy section for livestock gives you a selection of cattle, 

goats, donkeys.

Even live chickens are for sale.

Non-food goods take up a sizable section of the market.

Handwoven shawls are worn by both men and women.

Smaller pieces of fabric are used for belts; larger weavings

for bedding. By midday, the temperature is quite high and every option

to create shade is used.

Ubiquitous plastic sandals are available in ever color imaginable. 

Baskets serve many purposes. These pictured are used

for serving meals - injera covered with beans, meats, and vegetables.

In the morning, we saw droves of people carrying heavy loads to the market on their heads or their backs, or walking with donkeys alongside them bearing one to three large sacks.  At the end of the long, hot, dusty day, people were walking back to their villages with smaller parcels and donkeys relieved of their burdens.