The UNMEE Line


For my next three posts, I've decided to write about things that happened during my most recent trip to Senafe (March 19-22). And I'm going to begin by discussing my visit to Serha, a village located adjacent to the UNMEE line separating Eritrea from Ethiopia.

The UNMEE line is the de facto boundary between Eritrea and Ethiopia. The UNMEE line differs substantially from the de jure border as delimited by the Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission in its 2002 decision. That is, the UNMEE line tends to favor Ethiopia while the Boundary Commission decisions gives more territory to Eritrea. The UNMEE line was not designed to be permanent. However, because the border has not yet been demarcated on the ground, it remains the de facto boundary. I don't want to get much into politics here, but if your interested, I would recommend doing a google news search on the Eritrea/Ethiopia border to learn the most recent news about the boundary.

Anyway, north of the UNMEE line is the Temporary Security Zone (TSZ), a demilitarized zone located entirely within Eritrea. Don't ask me why the TSZ doesn't straddle the UNMEE line. I originally thought it did, but apparently not. We do a lot of our work in towns inside the TSZ. Therefore, at one point Amanda said our office should write a travel guide to the TSZ, since we know all about the hotels and restaurants down there. Then she expanded the idea and suggested that we write a travel guide to demilitarized zones of the world. Wouldn't that be awesome? Bill, do you want to contribute?

But I digress. On our last trip to Senafe, we visited Serha, the last town on this side of the UNMEE line. The picture above depicts the last UNMEE camp inside Eritrea. Apparently, Ethiopia is located just on the other side of that camp. The mountains in the background of the picture below are also in Ethiopia.



Here's a picture of Simon in Serha. Serha is probably the most desolate town I've beeen in here. Unlike even the surrounding villages, Serha is flat and barren. At least many of the surrounding villages have hills or trees or cacti or something. Serha has nothing but dirt and small buildings.



We were supposed to take a witness statement or two in Serha, but that didn't pan out. So, instead, we went to another village nearby to take statements. In the picture below, we're taking a witness statement in a hidmo (the traditional house of the Eritrean highlands). We only took one statement that morning becuase the woman we interviewed and her family insisted on giving us coffee, kitcha (a kind of traditional bread), and fritata. And, as I mentioned in a previous post, coffee takes a long time here. But while it wasn't the most productive morning, it was definitely one of the more memorable ones I've had here because I was treated to trypical Eritrean village life; something I don't get a lot of in Asmara.

Keren: The City I've Almost Visited


This past Friday, I went to Keren to interview a couple of witnesses for work. This is the third time I've been in Keren, but so far, I haven't really visited the city. And, unfortunately, with only three weeks remaining until I leave Asmara, I'll probably never make it to Keren for real.

The first two times I was in Keren were in October 2006. We passed through Keren on our way to and from the West. On our way to Barentu, we stopped in Keren just to have lunch and tea, so I basically just saw two buildings: the restaurant where we had lunch and the hotel where we had tea. When we returned from the West, we again stopped in Keren to eat. However, this time I wasn't hungry, so I decided to go explore the market a little bit. I had heard that there were nice baskests in Keren, and I was determined to find some before we left. I did succeed in finding a store where a little old woman was selling beautiful baskets, and I bought a few. It was actually a pretty funny experience, because she couldn't speak English, so we had to communicate in a combination of very limited Tigrinya and Italian and Spanish. (She speaks Italian, and I speak Spanish.) And at one point, she ran out into the street to find a kid who could help her translate something into English.

But, anyway, by that point in our trip, I was low on cash and couldn't afford to buy several of the things I wanted. So, I left Keren determined to return before the end of my stay in Eritrea so that I could spend a lot of money at the market.



Unfortunately, that has never happened, and this Friday was the first time I had been back to Keren since October. Again, I saw very little of the city. We ate lunch at the same restaurant we had been to before and then headed off to the Keren Hospital to meet our witnesses. After completing our work, we actually spent a fair amount of time just hanging out in Keren. However, we didn't really see anything. Instead, Yosief, our driver, and I had regular coffee at the cafe at the hospital and then headed over to another cafe to have traditional coffee. We must have spent an hour and a half just having coffee.



Finally, it was time to go. I had been hoping to stay in Keren for the weekend, but I was waiting to hear from Genet and James about whether they were going to be able to take the bus to Keren and join me. In the end, James said he couldn't come because he didn't get a travel permit, and Genet couldn't tell me whether she could come or not because she was waiting to hear back about something related to her job. So, in the end, rather than spend the weekend alone in Keren, I returned to Asmara with Yosief and the driver.



Maybe someday I will actually make it to Keren, but for now, it shall remain the city I almost visited.

Beverages

At long last, I am finally sitting down to write about the wide world of Eritrean beverages. I'll try to limit this to those that are unique or at least somewhat interesting. The most logical place to begin would probably be with sewa, but since I don't actually have any pictures of sewa, I will begin by discussing Eritrean coffee ceremonies.

Coffee: Traditional Eritrean coffee is a huge production. Traditionally, women make the coffee. Other than the elderly, most people in Asmara only have traditional coffee on special occassions. However, according to my friend Genet, older retired people will make traditional coffee every morning. Traditional coffee is also most common in the villages were people do not have access to either cafes serving cappucinos and macchiatos or to instant coffee.

My friend Genet performed a coffee ceremony for James' parents when they were visiting from Berkeley. Most of the following pictures were taken during that coffee ceremony.

Coffee ceremonies require several specialized devices, including a small cabinet where everything is stored, a short stool, a jemina (the clay pot the coffee is made in), a small stove, charcoal, a mortar and pestal for grinding the coffee, a small pan for roasting, a hair ball (a filter for the jemina made either from plastic or horse hair), and little coffee cups.



From what I can tell, the first step in making Eritrean coffee is to roast the beans. You can find green coffee beans in any store or market here in Eritrea. The woman preparing the coffee then roasts the beans over a charcoal fire like this one.



Next, she would grind the coffee. Traditionally and still in the villages where they don't have electricity, the coffee in ground by hand. The coffee is ground with a mortar and pestal, but I think they vary somewhat from those we use in the states to grind spices. Of course, Genet used an electric coffee grinder to grind ours.

The next step is to put the coffee in the jemina. The jemina should actually already have hot water in it.



Once the coffee is in, you put the jemina back on the stove. The cooking process is fairly lengthy. What Genet did was heat the coffee until it started boiling, then she removed it from the heat and cooled it down, and then put it back on the stove. She did this several times before the coffee was ready, each time checking the color of the coffee in the little tin cup.



Here is a picture of Anna pouring coffee in Tesseney. In Tesseney, they make their traditional coffee with ginger. It is really amazing stuff. The ginger makes the coffee spicy, and in a strange way, it reminds me of the Mexican hot chocolate with the chilis in it. Also, Eritreans like to put a lot of sugar in their coffee, and while the sugar can some times over power regular coffee, it can't overpower the ginger in the coffee from Tesseney.



Sewa: Before I came to Eritrea, I read a book called Ciao Asmara. The author, Justin Hill, referred to Sewa throughout this book as "sewer." And I think that's pretty apt. Sewa is one of those things that Eritreans really like than foreigners will never like. Sure, they will all tell you that you should try their grandmother's sewa or their best friend's aunt's sewa or warm sewa or cold sewa or sewa that is fresh or sewa that is a few days old and that if you just tried this one other kind of sewa, you would like it. But the fact is, you won't. It is just one of those things that foreigners just aren't going to understand, and that's fine. Fortunately, Eritreans often make mes when they make sewa, so I can usually decline the sewa without insulting anyone because I am still having a traditional drink.

Now, I realized, I know very little about sewa. What I do know if that it is an alcoholic beverage (although there is actually a Muslim version that is non-alcoholic) that is made from some sort of fermented bread. As a result, when sewa is fresh, it has chunky things floating in it. Since I don't know how you make sewa, I was hoping to find a website explaining it that I could provide a link to. Unfortunately, I haven't found anything like that.

Mes: Mes is a traditional alcoholic beverage made from honey. If you order it at an Ethiopian or Eritrean restaurant in the states, I believe they call it honey wine. However, mes really isn't wine. First, it is thicker than wine. It isn't thick, but it does have some consistency to it. Also, it doesn't really resemble wine in any other way. It's pretty tasty stuff though. Traditionally, it is served in glass bottles with a bottom that looks something like a smashed ball with a very long neck . That is a horrible explanation, but unforunately I don't have a photo. Also, according to the "mes place" (it's someone's house where they serve mes, so it doesn't seem to have a name), mes is made with red honey. My friend Genet says that honey comes in three colors--red, yellow, and white. I had no idea there was more than one color of honey.

Asmara Beer: What do you think? Do my friends and I drink enough beer?


There is one Eritrean beer brewer and that is the Asmara Beer Factory. From what I have gathered, the Asmara Beer company was previously the Melotti Beer Company, which was owned by an Italian family and was making beer in this country up until the late 90s. Asmara Beer is pretty cheap stuff--about 70 cents a bottle--but it's still a lot better than cheap beer in the US. I mean, I would drink Asmara Beer long before Coors or Budweiser.

Asmara beer bottle have one label on the front. I recently learned that they are actually supposed to have a back label as well, but the mechanical arm at the Asmara Beer Factory that is supposed to apply that label is broken, so the label doesn't go on. I don't know how long the arm has been broken, but what I can tell you is that I have never, in the six months I've been here, seen a beer bottle with two labels.

Zibib: Zibib is the brand name of a traditional Eritrean anis liquor. Zibib is really nasty stuff. It is so strong that literally a month after drinking Zibib out of some plastic cups we have in my house here in Asmara, you could still smell the Zibib. And this was after several washings. But Zibib is pretty popular here. People even put Zibib in tea. It has a special name, but I don't remember what it is. I should probably learn though so no one tricks me into drinking some.

Random Hash Photos...


Unfortunately, I don't really have time to write, but I wanted to post something So, I have decided to share some more photos from the hashes I have been on over the last couple of months.This, of course, means that I am yet again putting off my description of Eritrean beverages, which I have been planning for weeks now. But don't worry. It's coming. And in the meantime, I hope you enjoy these photos.

This first photo is of Niklas, James, and Anna on the December 30, 2006 hash. Because there were only four of us on this hash, we decided to go off trail a bit and expore some areas where we had never been before. At one point, we decided to walk along a ridge-top, which according to the local kids who yelled after us, is populated by hyenas. Fortunately, we didn't actually encounter any hyenas. i wouldn't mind seeing one while I'm here, but I would prefer to do it from the safety of a moving vehicle.


Here's brian, our former fearless leader, on his second to last hash. If you can't read it, his t-shirt says "Poach eggs, not elephants." I think he wore that shirt on every single hash. We miss Brian ... and his Land Rover. Our new fearless leader, Courtney, doesn't have a car, so there is always a risk that no drivers will show up and the hash will have to be cancelled.


Here I am ringing the stone bells outside the church shown below. This was the December 16, 2006 hash and was one of my favorites. Of course, I was scolded for actually ringing the bells rather than just posing with them. Apparently by rining them, I was calling the local villagers to church. Oops ...


This picture is of some village kids we encountered on the December 23, 2006 hash. They were some of the most aggressive I've met. While the village kids are often reluctant to have their pictures taken, these boys insisted that I take their picture.


Check out the three peaks in this picture. They are located between Keren and Barentu, a couple hundred kilomters from Asmara. Pretty impressive landmark, huh? This photo was taken on the February 24, 2007 hash. I had been on this trail before, but the last time I tried to photograph these peaks, my picture didn't turn out at all. This one isn't great, but it is a definite improvement.


We think this is a chalk quarry, but we aren't sure. Anyone know? This was taken on the March 3, 2007 hash.


These next two were taken on the March 8, 2007 hash. This was a really short hash, but we went to a really beautiful location. I'd actually been there once before when there was actually water coming down the waterfall, but this time was more exciting because we actually climbed up the waterfall a bit. Here are Soe, Woldu, and James climbing.


And this photo of Courtney, James, and me was taken down in the canyon.


Finally, my favorite recent hash photo is this one of Soe in the straw hat taken on March 3. He's Burmese, but someone suggested that he looked Mexican in that hat. What do you think?