When in Ethiopia…
- You may walk an average of 5 – 7 miles a day. (We walked a total of 140 miles to ministry this month!)
- The taxis are made for 12 passengers, but it is not unusual to squeeze 20 people in the van.
- It is hot when the sun is out, but cools down fast when it is shaded.
- Men don’t wear shorts, only pants.
- The food is filled with lots and lots of spices.
- There’s these sweet little things called Bajajs that we use for transportation.
- There are no turkeys, so we ate chicken for Thanksgiving.
- The culture is very different from the rest of Africa, a lot more Middle Eastern influenced.
- Injera (a spongy type bread) is eaten with every meal and is used to scoop up the food rather than using eating utensils.
- People may secretly try to touch your hair on a taxi, especially if it is blonde.
- Men consider basically anything outdoors their restroom.
- Two large scoops of sugar in a very tiny coffee cup is considered not much sugar.
- There is no such thing as personal space on public transportation.
- Woman do not have to wear skirts (yay!).
- You may tear the butt of your jeans and use tent tape to repair it.
- Kids sell gum and other small items on the streets.
- There are delicious french fry stands on your way home from ministry.
- Everyone loves to talk about how they were the first to discover coffee.
- Construction is happening everywhere. We enjoyed comparing our neighborhood to a scene from Divergent.
- The streets are filled with beggars everywhere you go.
- They have coffee ceremonies consisting of 3 rounds of coffee often.
- You may decide to start eating burgers again because it is the most familiar food around.
- It’s not odd to accept an offer for a ride from a stranger (aka hitch-hike).
- You may refer to food on the table by it’s color due to not knowing what it is.
- They take great pride in the fact that they are the only African country that was never colonized.
- You can’t go to work with your shoes dirty, so there are shoe cleaners all along the road.
- We say amasaganalu for “thank you”.
It’s hard to believe that our first three months in Africa are up and we are headed to India today! Thank you for your continued prayers and all of the comments on my blogs. Sorry I don’t respond to them often, but know that I am always reading them and find great encouragement in all of your comments. Once again, thanks for reading!
God bless!
Ashley
