Melkam Addis Amit (Happy New Year)

This weekend we had the pleasure of celebrating Ethiopian New Year. For those wondering we have now entered the year 1998. For a more detailed description of the Ethiopian calendar see Thea’s previous post: Whats the date? What's the time?

Anyway were invited for dinner at Sher and Anne (Sher is a colleague from UNECA) for some amazing Indian food and relaxing night with some of their other friends. On new years day Jens and I were invited at an Ethiopians diplomat’s house, whom Jens knew from his French class. Again another great meal of Injerra, local brewed beers, buna (coffee in Ethiopian) and interesting conversations made this weekend to be very satisfying but also very tiring. New Year is celebrated here mainly within the families and with the exception of the Sheraton (who put off some massive fireworks) and some other hotels it is not a real public event. What is typical is the large scale slaughtering of sheep, goats, chickens etc. And the ones that were able to survive this holiday will not be happy for too long as Meskel (the finding of the true cross of Jesus) is dated for the 27th.