In college, a few hundred miles away from any relatives, I occasionally had to settle for Easter Sunday cafeteria brunch, which hardly does the occasion justice. But I also spent one Easter weekend attending Saturday vigil at Catholic mass, which was one of the more poignant services I've been to in my life. Midnight baptisms and candlelit processions beautifully depicted the meaning of Christ's resurrection.
More than once, however, I've found myself in another country for Easter, which promises to provide a wholly different experience. Twice I was in Ecuador. The first time, spending Holy Week on a sun-drenched beach in Monanita, Ecuador, we went to the local church...only to find that it wasn't holding mass that day. Presumably too many of the parishioners were still passed out on the sand from the night before.
The next year in Ecuador, I spent the holiday in Quito instead. A huge Good Friday procession involved men dressing up in what can only be described as purple KKK costumes, beating themselves and dragging crosses through the streets. Huge floats depicting Jesus or Mary were carried by the faithful. Easter itself that year was spent with my friends, where we celebrated the holiday a bit less piously: by hitting raw eggs with tennis rackets in a game that my cousin invented. Genius.
This year, I was to spend Easter in Ethiopia, where my boyfriend is working as a Peace Corps volunteer. Most of the country is Orthodox Christian, though it has its own traditions unique within the global Church. It's not too different than the Copts in Egypt, however, so I spent the weeks leading up to Easter preparing myself by following local traditions here.
Orthodox Christians in Egypt and Ethiopia aren't messing around. Religious vegan fasts account for a full 210 days of the year. I knew that they would spend a solid 6 hours at church on Good Friday, fast totally on Saturday, and spend the night at the church until 3am on Easter Sunday. Clearly, these were no pushovers.
Good Friday in Ethiopia involved hours of rigorous prayer prostrations, all in the ancient Ethiopian language of Ge'ez, which neither Nod nor I understand. Rather than participate self-consciously in a ceremony we didn't understand, we decided to watch from a distance. The church was filled to capacity, with hundreds of men and women outside, all dressed in gauzy white cotton. On this cloudy, humid afternoon, they stood and bowed for hours, commemorating the crucifixion of Jesus.
On Saturday, though, it was time to go to the market. We held hands with two kids from Nod's compound, who took us through the bustling stalls of onions, tomatoes, live roosters and sugar cane. We emerged with a live rooster under each arm, ready to make into the famous and spicy doro wot sauce that everyone would use to break their 55-day vegan fast. We climbed into a horse cart to carry all of our produce home, bouncing and laughing over the bumpy dirt road all the way home. Easter hadn't been this fun since I found my dad's $1 prize egg perched in the exhaust pipe of his car and won bragging rights for the whole day.
Unfortunately for the roosters, that was the last fun they had on this green earth: that afternoon, we gathered around to watch the slaughter, and then the women set about cooking and cleaning to get ready for the 3am celebration.
Now, to prepare for Easter, the whole compound set about cooking and cleaning, cleaning, cleaning (the whole compound, that is, except for Yaye, the host dad. He was perfectly content to watch TV and mess with the goat, who was tied up in the yard to be eaten later that weekend): rooms swept, clothes washed, hair braided into all sorts of elaborate designs.
Not wanting to miss out on this important part of the celebratory ritual, Nod and I went down to the beauty salon Saturday morning, with a big packet of fake hair in tow. I confess, I'm one of those girls who likes to go abroad and play dress up. I'm not ashamed.
Nod, however, was feeling a little squeamish to be the one male (and foreign male, at that) at the hair parlor that morning--and even more so when he had to go out to buy yet another batch of fake hair for me after the first one had been used up. Minus 3 girlfriend points for that one.
The women in the shop seemed curiously compassionate towards him, though. When they found out that he did work with HIV/AIDS, all sorts of questions started coming out. I giggled--yup, here we are at a hair salon in tiny Huruta, Ethiopia, fielding questions about HIV transmission! I suppose it's these moments of unlikely connections that I love about traveling abroad.
When I emerged, the results were pretty outrageous: a full head of braids, with big black nylon curls at the bottom. Awesome. My dream come true. They lasted for about a week before they started getting frizzy--when I finally took my braids out in Egypt, the pile of fake hair looked something like a dead animal on my dining room table. My roommates weren't too pleased.
But back to Ethiopia: though the family was fasting and wouldn't eat until 3am, they invited us to get a sneak taste of their freshly made doro wot. Delicious, even if it makes your whole body sweat just to smell it! The family, though very devout, decided that they weren't going to go to church for the Saturday vigil. Why not? They were worried about hyenas on the road. Yet another moment when I realized I wasn't in Egypt any longer.
We hadn't heard any hyenas for a few days, though, so Nod and I decided that we still wanted to go. I took a shower before we got dressed. The shower is out in the "shint beyt," which is a little lean-to outside that also doubles as the toilet. Nod installed a hot water heater, though, which made the whole arrangement really pleasant, actually. There's something about hearing the wind and having chickens wander in during a warm shower that's really endearing.
I borrowed some traditional white clothes from the family, and we set off under a sky full of stars with an 8 year old boy from the compound. Feeling our way over the bumpy dirt road in the darkness, wrapped together in a big blanket, watching other pilgrims make their way toward the brightly lit church, was indeed a holy moment.
As we approached the church, we could hear the priest reading from the Bible and see the sanctuary filled with warm light. Men, women, and children were wrapped in white scarves and blankets, praying, sitting, some sleeping while they waited for dawn to come.
I entered the church on the women's side, stepping around ancient women with weathered faces who were sitting along the walls. A priest came around and sprayed us all with perfume as the church filled with the sound of prayer.
We walked back home together and watched the stars from the porch of Nod's room, thankful for the quiet awe of the moment.
In the morning, we made the family banana bread, hoping to get out of the raw ox meat that they were eating. Luckily, we were spared two weeks of worms/parasites/bacterial infections and ate more doro wot and banana bread instead. By 11am, they started taking shots of homemade liquor and handing out glasses of wood-tasting local beer. Luckily, we were also able to duck out of most of that! Instead, we had endless cups of macciatos from coffee beans roasted right in front of us. Nescafe? You're dead to me.
Thus ended Easter celebrations in the horn of Africa. The only thing missing? My family and a chocolate bunny. Here's to next year's Easter--if life has taught me anything, it's that you can never make any predictions. One year ago, I couldn't have imagined rooster slaughters and braid shops. Life is good indeed.
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