Monday 15 December 2008

The Market (and Christmas, power and chanting)

The power finally came back after six days without. It took two days of repairing, and now it looks like someone just twisted the broken ends of wire together up on the power poles!!

Of course that doesn’t mean continuous power. It was off again on Friday night for an hour-and-a-half after dusk.

It’s coming up to Christmas, but the only sign of anything here is… absolutely nothing. No tinsel, no lights, no people going mad spending lots of money and no shops and TV showing Christmas this, Christmas that offers etc. Ethiopian Christmas (Orthodox church) is on 7th January and other than people visiting their families and lots of food (injera of course,) things are pretty normal.

The local Orthodox Church went completely mad on Friday morning with the P.A. up to maximum, waking both me and Göran up at 6am with chanting. Apparently it’s not just a “call to prayer” but some of the service as well, so if you’re too lazy to get to church, you hear the service anyway. I prayed for peace and the ability to lie in a bit longer and was rewarded with a power cut which silenced the priest, but unfortunately his power of prayer was stronger than mine and the power (and chanting) was restored after only a few minutes!

The Market

The twice weekly market in Gilgel sells spices, vegetables, fruit (oranges and bananas), posters, clothes, old bottles, goats and chickens, eggs and more. It’s open air and very busy. Here is a selection of photos. (Remember to click on them to see them in detail.)

Note the traditional balance scales and, fascinating to me, all the bees around the shiro powder. I’m not sure why the bees like the powder so much – it’s mostly ground peas and spices, but they get covered collecting it.








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