Gummy bears and restlessness.

I'm watching my roommate pack up her bags while I sit on the bed and destroy a bag of gummy worms, a gift from their recent trip to Jerusalem for orthodox Easter. Sigh. My year in Egypt is coming to an end all too soon, and not soon enough. I have just one more push to the end: an intensive Arabic class all day, every day, for the month of May. After that, I'm a free girl.

The problem is that two of my roommates are moving out in the next few weeks, bringing our foursome down to a lonely pair. May 31st, we'll pack our bags, too, and say our goodbyes to 6A el-Diwan. 

Gummy bears aren't much of a consolation. Actually, my comfort food of choice lately has been beets, which I've been boiling and combining with every imaginable food group. That is, until my pee started turning pink. I thought I'd better lay off for a while, and turn my attention instead to gelatinous, sugary grub.

I've been back in Cairo for four days now--not very long, but long enough to settle back in to the familiar rhythm of life here, smelling the sweet clouds of sheesha smoke, relaxing to the dull roar of traffic like the sound of a distant seashore, taking in the broad expanse of the Nile as I cross the bridge at sunset. This is where I've staked my life for the past year, for better or for worse. For better, I'd say.

But now that plans have been set for the fall, now that my roommates can start giddily anticipating Mexican food and driving and a good white russian and all the other benefits of an American existence--I find myself increasingly restless to still be here. I'm eager for a humid 4th of July, with bumble bees and lightning bugs and bbq sauce (which, as I found out this morning, my host family decidedly does not like. My host mother forced herself to keep eating a bottle of imported bbq sauce (a gift), though, reminding us that we should be thankful for all food that comes from God. Even if it's icky, strange American sauce that's ruining her perfectly good chicken). 

But no, as my Arabic textbook at the foot of my bed reminds me, there is work still to be done--good work still to be done. But ah, I'd give a lot to be able to pack my suitcases this week, slip away quietly, and hear the British Air flight attendants welcome me to Chicago. Two more months, two more months...

#@%! and phone calls

The first phone call I received back in Egypt was from Farek, my taxi driver friend. I had called him at 6:30am when I touched down at Cairo International, knowing that he sometimes works all-day shifts at the airport. I had actually woken him up, apologized, and told him that we should catch up sometime when he was awake.

He called back a few hours later. With customary enthusiasm, he sang out:

"Halllllo Aleesa! How is everything? How is your treeeb?" at 300 decibels into my ear.

"My treeeb to Assubyia was gooot!" I sang back in Egyptian English...yes, my trip to Ethiopia was good! 

"Aleesa, I have a question for you. My wife wants to know a word in English."

Now, Farek and his wife both come from pretty conservative, lower class backgrounds. His wife is a sweet, veiled woman--but has a bit of checkered background, in that she once worked at Hard Rock cafe, den of vice and alcohol that it is. 

The point, though, is that she has incredible and idiomatic English. I met her just once, at their wedding, where she served us endless places of spicy meat kofta, threw both Nod and I into a dance circle in the street, and let me put henna on the palms of my hands.

I hear a bit of shuffling in the background, and Heba comes onto the line. I was a little nervous that she would reprimand me for calling her husband at 6:30 in the morning--after all, I'm not quite sure what cultural protocol is in this kind of situation.

"Hello!" Rang out a cheerful, bright voice on the other line.

"Um, Hi, Heba! How are you?

"Great! I have a question--it's about a word I saw on the internet." 

I gulped. Deep breath. 

"Um, sure, what word is that?"

"What does 'Fricking' mean?"

Great. Here's a pious, veiled woman, asking me what "Fricking" means after I've been in the country for a whole 2 hours.

"Um..." I faltered. "Well, it's kind of like a swear word." I wasn't even sure if she knew what "swear word" meant.

"Oh, is it like *@!$# ?" she asked innocently.

"Actually, yes! It's exactly like that."

"I saw the sentence 'You have no fricking idea.' So is that like saying 'You have no *@!$-ing idea'?"

"Yes, that's correct."

"Thank you!" 

I hung up the phone, a bit baffled. Welcome to Egypt! Land of constant surprises and paradoxes...

Easter in Ethiopia.

Holidays away from home are never the same. Growing up, Easter had taken on several priceless traditions- building a cross of flowers at church. Hunting for the especially hard-to-find $1 egg that my dad hid as a bonus in the annual Easter egg hunt. Savoring the one coveted Cadbury egg in my basket. 

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.

Upon returning from an extended absence more googly-eyed, tanner, and unshowered than when I left.

Dear readers--at least, the few and faithful that are left--let me apologize for my extended absence. The last month has taken me from the Valley of the Kings in Egypt to the peaks of the Simien Mountains in Ethiopia, and I haven't had much of a chance to get online between it all. Now that I'm back in crowded, humid, but endearingly comfy Cairo, munching on a sugar-drenched breakfast of french toast pita bread and sweet tea, I feel that some updates are in order. 

To begin. The Walter family did indeed trek out to the mighty Sahara, braving marriage proposals and aggressive carriage drivers to see the wonders of the orient (and the mess that is my apartment). Now, a week is hardly any time at all to recover from jet lag and begin to experience a brand new country, but they did as well as they could--even attempting roasted pigeon for lunch and spending an evening with my Arabic-only host family. All in all, it's hard to botch a week of lounging by the Nile and Red Sea, camel riding, and exploring the pyramids. Highlight: getting congratulated by a vendor in the central market for bargaining with him so hard and watching my sister and her friend get offered 100,000 camels a piece for their hand in marriage. 

Low point: saying goodbye to my family at 10pm at the Cairo airport as they sat forlorn and waiting for their 4am departure. 

A scarce 72 hours after my family touched down safely in Chicago (just in time for a grueling and jetlagged Monday morning), I was catching my own red eye flight to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Why pay $500 to travel some thousand miles into the horn of Africa, you ask? That's the price of love, my friends. And, well, because I can. I strongly recommend that all of you find post-college jobs that simultaneously pay the rent and provide unrestricted vacation time. Peace Corps and random English gigs abroad both do the trick nicely. 

Yes, I was fortunate enough to spend the last three weeks traveling with the esteemed Mr. Razi through his adopted homeland--the land of injera, the birthplace of coffee, home to world class runners, hyenas, baboons, avocado juice, grass huts, and my boyfriend. Not a bad combination of things. This morning in Cairo, where the smog is creating a cozy grey cloud over the city and every man over 14 smokes like a chimney, the mountains of Ethiopia feel very far away. But for the past three weeks, they've provided a welcome respite from the urban congestion of Egypt.

My first hours in Ethiopia were completely deer-in-the-headlights; for all my travels, this was my first foray into "real" Africa (Arab North Africa being much more linked into the Middle East than the rest of the continent). It's a uniquely humbling experience to be so completely disoriented. 

"Um, Nod, where the toilet? Oh, there aren't toilets? I'm squatting for the next three weeks? No, that's cool... Oh and, um, how do I eat? How do I shake hands? Could you order a bottle of water for me?" Luckily, Nod was a gracious and accommodating host, and by the end of three weeks, I was ordering my own tea like a pro. Er, not exactly like a pro, but I had at least an ounce of a clue about what was going on around me.

Ethiopia turns out to be an entirely different country from Egypt, though only Sudan is separating the two. Green acacia trees, jagged mountains, hyenas, baboons, tribal dancing, a unique and flourishing orthodox Christianity, and the best coffee you've ever had in your life. Just to breath clean air and step away from the roar of Cairo's traffic was enough to make me feel a world away. Being able to wear short sleeves and do a full handshake/shoulder-bump greeting with Ethiopian men was a welcome break from Islamic modesty and gender roles in Egypt. The only downside: being a healthier country than Egypt, there is a lamentable lack of desserts in the country. I ate rice pudding for breakfast at 5am on Egypt Air, and thanked God for Egyptian waistlines.

While a lot of our trip was simply spent taking in Ethiopian culture and scenery and enjoying each other's company, a few important life decisions were made, too. It all began as my falafel-and-lard-fueled Egyptian body was pushed to the max by a two day hike at 14,000 feet through the simien mountains. Determined not to be the pudgy flatlander of the group, I worked myself into an exhaustive, meditative space by the morning of our third day in the mountains. Stunning cliffs and troops of playful baboons along the way also provided a nice backdrop for contemplation. 

It was in this serene environment that I decided to accept an offer from Georgetown's MA in Arab Studies program, rather than a few other grad school options I had on the table. And then, best of all, Nod decided to join me in DC this fall, hopefully finding some kind of job in health/development kind of work. No matter what, it's a fun fact that Amharic is the #2 language spoken in DC. Ethiopian injera from now 'til 2011! 

Many more stories to come from the horn of Africa...but for now, just an update from a delightful month of travels.