9:30am, Oct. 7th, Back at the EDSONATRA Hotel in Addis:
I’ve been thinking about the art of the gursha. That’s the name for the Ethiopian morsel, the skillfully formed bite, of injera and whatever else happens to be on the platter. I don’t think there is really a synonym in English. There’s just no comparable practice, or art form, in our culture to match it. We have food, we skewer food with fork, we transfer to mouth. Here, it is different. In fact, Shimeles asked me, in all seriousness, if I was getting enough to eat because I couldn’t form a proper gursha. He was worried I was starving because he and Teddy were taking all the big morsels while I was dabbing at the shiro with a wad of injera unskillfully bunched in my fingers. I had to laugh… of course I wasn’t starving! In fact, I felt more bloated and fattened than I did even during the infamous fall of 2002, in the clutches of the Food Zoo. It’s easy to achieve when you’re gorging yourself with meat three times daily, and exercising about as much as a rutabaga. But I realized, when he brought it up, that my eating skills were really sub-par. Not wanting a failing grade in food management, my favorite subject, I asked for assistance and began to observe very carefully how the proper Ethiopian gursha is formed.
First, a properly-sized piece of injera is torn from the whole… no small feat when it is buried by the tibs and berbere spice and shiro, and when you have to pull it off one-handed. This piece should be several inches in diameter, and is flopped right down on top of the first thing you want to collect in the bite. Then, you begin the mopping process, which must be done aggressively but gingerly, as a saturated piece of injera is easily ripped, and you want it to remain intact. Then you begin to bunch the injera over and around the various things you want it to contain: fir-fir, tibs, shiro, berbere… using all four fingers to cup the injera somewhat vertically to the plate, while using the thumb as a shovel and a compress. Then, the really tricky part, is rolling the whole mass so that it is folded into a sort of upright mini-burrito shape, closed at the top and surrounded by a wall of injera all around, but open at the bottom. This is where I usually succeed in ripping the moist injera into fragments and the whole gursha falls apart. However, if successful, you then squeeze all four fingers and thumb to compress the roll into a tight mass, so that it can be lifted without losing any contents, and it is dabbed finally into any of the sauces or gravy swimming atop the platter, and is then lifted to the mouth and inserted all at once, the whole massive roll, usually with the head tipped back and left hand under the chin to prevent spillage.
A common practice in Ethiopia, to show affection (for friends of either sex, but especially your relatives or significant other) is to feed the tastiest gursha you can create into the mouth of your friend. It’s not something you see every day, but especially while at fancier restaurants when observing dating couples, it’s quite common. Fearing that I was starving to death, Shimeles and Teddy took it upon themselves to begin feeding me their most skillfully created gurshas, which I must admit were wonderfully full of tasty tidbits and so enormous that in accepting them, both my cheeks had to puff out to accommodate the enormous mouthful. Ingdiyeh, our hostess at the Wintana Restaurant in Logiya, (where we ate three times a day, every day, for the entire stay in the Semera region) was especially fond of me after my clumsy attempts to embrace the local customs, and began feeding me her best gurshas at every meal too, which perhaps were the best yet, and not quite so large as the others, though I felt a bit embarrassed the way I accidentally bit her fingers while accepting the gursha almost every time.
Ethiopian manners are interesting too: it is no shame to get your hand dirty- by the end of the meal, the right hand will often by dripping with shiro and gooey pieces of saturated injera all the way up to the wrist. The head is thrown back so that the mouth can be stuffed right up to maximum capacity, and you gnaw on bones to suck out the marrow and then extract the leavings and place them in front of you on the table top. All of this is quite acceptable, as is flossing after the meal. However, a little burp is an extreme faux pas, and I’ve found it a pretty difficult one to avoid considering the amount of gassy mineral water consumed at each meal. There are other peculiarities I’ve had a hard time with, besides the omnipresent goat. Orange soda for breakfast, for example. In all, though, I think my stomach has accustomed itself to the Ethiopian gastronomical conventions, and I’m happy to say that I ate a salad yesterday and, except for some gurgling and gassiness last night, I think I overcame the ecoli invasion of my guts with minimum discomfort.
Oh, so I mentioned my efforts to embrace the culture. Well, it’s not too impressive, but I think our hosts at the Wintona felt I’d done far more to inject myself into their way of living than any other Farenji to come that way, including the Peace Corps kids, UN-DRC guys, or the USAid fellows. I bought a nice sarong and was in the habit of wearing it around with my Chacos on non-working days. Admittedly, it was quite breezy and nice, and I’d gotten pretty good at securing it by the end. But moving quickly or taking large steps was impossible in it, and I could only assume that both those things were virtually unknown to the locals living under that oppressive climate. It was very convenient, if worn sans-panties, when taking a crap in the local Arab-style squatter toilets (regular pants, dropped around the ankles, were always right were you wanted to shit). BUT, I found that without underpants, the rubbing of your thighs in that hot weather actually increases the sweaty-balls factor. And, worst of all, holding my bladder for hours on end tended to produce a modest erection which stood out like a flagpole under the thin fabric… so I wasn’t totally sold on the whole sarong thing.
I learned a couple of words which I used at every opportunity: Shintebate, ebakeish, ameseganallo, ambowaha, seulam, edimaduka, ciao, denanesh, denaa, ischi: which were, respectively: toilet, please, thank you, mineral water, hello, good morning, goodbye, how are you, fine thanks, and ‘OK.’ Shimeles and Teddy tried to coach me in the horribly difficult art of producing the guttural and explosive Ethiopian consonants, but I failed miserably, and gave up after producing raucous laughter throughout the restaurant.
I chewed chat, once with Muhammed (Shimeles’ rich friend) and again with Mesfin, our acquaintance from the Semera office of infrastructure development, who was certifiably addicted to it. That second time was at the Wintana restaurant, and I think most everyone there was pleased I was involving myself in the local traditions, except Teddy, who had a similar attitude toward stimulants as does Clark, and looked on with an expression of severe disapproval. The stuff is disgusting. It has a chokingly bitter taste, and the little pieces of chewed leaves catch in the throat occasionally when they slip out of your cheek, making you gag. Watching people chew chat, you feel like it’s rather denigrating, as their lips and teeth and tongue are covered with little green flecks and saliva, and after awhile, the eyes of the long-time chewers become squinty and covered with a kind of hazy film, and everyone becomes lazy and chatty and retarded. The two conversations I was a part of involved talking about how horrible it was how some people let themselves become addicted to chat (ironic), and about Mormonism in America, neither of which was especially fulfilling. I wasn’t feeling anything but embarrassed and sick to my stomach, and when the conversation turned to Amharic, I tried to go converse with Teddy who had been cruelly relegated from the chat circle, only to be informed harshly by Shimeles that it was extremely rude to depart from said circle before the chat was finished. I felt rather disgusted with him, and almost wanted to slap him or spit on him or tell him how pathetic the whole thing was, but instead held my tongue and went back and listened politely to the idiotic banter between him and Mesfin. I felt nauseated for the rest of the day, and resolved to make that the last time I chew chat. But, anyway, it bought me points with the locals.
Oh, and I asked one of the waitresses, Helen, to dance with me to Amharic music. I think it was fairly amusing for everyone, but in all honesty, I did quite well for a farengi, and Helen was a spectacularly poor dancer. Our hosts were calling for an engagement, but I had to call it off. No dancing, no deal.