11/27/2009

Today, in the muslim community, is a big holiday called Arafa. Basically, the muslims celebrate the obedience of Abraham in taking Isaac up to the mountaintop to sacrifice him. As a Christian, I'm a little confused by this, but I plan on finding out a little more about it. Either way, it's a big celebration with lots of food. Our host family is muslim, so almost the entire family was here for the feast. They had bought a cow 2 weeks ago specifically for this celebration and even offered to show Kimberly when they slaughtered it. She very quickly declined that invitation. She said if she saw that, she probably would never be able to eat beef again.

Our host mother invited our entire group over for some food from the celebration. Unfortunately, we were not able to eat much of the beef. I'm not sure if I've mentioned this yet in my posts, but a very popular dish here is called kitfo. It's basically raw beef, finely
chopped and soaked in butter. When we were going around the table, my host brother from out of town said, "this is beef, do not be scared of it." I asked him, "cooked or not cooked" because the lights were off. Right at that moment someone cut the lights on and I could see the
pinkness...sadly, I had to pass. The rest of the food was delicious though, including some beef in which they had cut it into small chunks and charred it. I've come to the conclusion that they eat meat in two forms...raw and charred beyond recognition. The beef though was really good, it had the taste of unsalted fatback, hmmmmm.

This has been quite the week for feasts here in Ethiopia.

**Update 11/29/2009
It has been raining quite a bit since yesterday. We are very thankful
for this. hopefully, it will cause the river to swell and bring water
to the whole community.